Movie

No, it doesn't have the cachet as its counterpart on the East Coast, but Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood is quite the production. The annual event that runs on select nights in the fall takes thousands of guests through movie set-quality haunted houses, or mazes, scare zones and even a terror tram. Halloween Horror Nights almost always sell out and Universal Studios Hollywood isn't that large, so it is very crowded. You can read full event details here. Today, we want to focus on the tips, so you can successfully navigate your way around this terrifying event.

Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood Tips for 2015

Arrive early!

With so much to do and so little time to do it in, you need every second in the park that you can get. You can get early admission into the park between 5:00 and 6:15 p.m. Then they close the gates until 7:00 p.m. We arrived at 5:15 p.m., and we recommend that you get there early too. The downside to arriving early is that you miss the opening ceremony, which we heard was pretty cool and involved fire. You also arrive in daylight and without the scare zones operating, but, and this is a big BUT, you can jump in line to see the most popular mazes before the park opens, making it so you can accomplish so much more than if you arrive after 7:00 p.m. To us, that is worth it.

For example, The Walking Dead maze had a 100-minute wait by 6:00 p.m. That is one hour before the park even opened, and the wait never went back down! But if you get there early you can be done with it and through another maze before the park opens. That way you get to see and experience so much more. We literally watched the wait for mazes at Crimson Peak and Aliens Vs. Predator go from 5 minutes to 70-80 minutes in the matter of half an hour between 6:30 and 7:15 p.m. Now THAT was frightening!