Its that time of year to tweet my annual tips for the best way to experience Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood…
— Horror Nights (@HorrorNights) September 18, 2013
As he does each year, Universal Studios Hollywood’s HHN Creative Director, John Murdy, has tweeted his list of tips for maximizing your enjoyment of Halloween Horror Nights. We’ve compiled these to make them a bit easier to read, but the full list can be found over at the official USH HHN Twitter account. This is Part I.
- Tip #1: Arrive EARLY. People in LA arrive late for everything…Laker games, Dodger games and HHN, especially on Friday nights. It’s a little known secret that we often pre-stage people in the park as early as 6:30, through the Gibson Ampitheater (RIP) gates. Listen for announcements at main gates of park, they’ll let you into the queue for an attraction early…get a head start on the event. Every night of the event we have an “Opening Scareamony” that kicks off HHN. They pre-stage people in the park for that…so fun to watch!
- Tip #2: Buy your tickets early if you can, most people wait till the last 24 hours before the event…that’s fine…if you can get them. The other reason to buy your tickets early is sometimes the prices change during the event, best prices are always at the beginning.
- Tip #3: Star Watching. A LOT of celebs attend HHN. I never tweet their names but they often tweet from the event. Never know who you’ll see.
- Tip #4: Best Nights to Attend – always get asked this question. I’ll assume you mean, “What nights are the least crowded?” That’s hard to predict. What I can tell you is believe it or not opening weekend was the least crowded last year…could change. We sold out most nights in 2012. A SELL OUT is exactly that, we have a set number of tickets, front of line and VIP passes we sell each night and we don’t add more. Many nights of HHN 2012, we never even opened the ticket booths so if you want to go on a certain night…buy your tickets in advance. The best place to buy your tickets is online http://halloweenhorrornights.com. Prices sometimes go up later so buy your tix early if you can. I can also tell you that in 2012 we sold out FRONT OF LINE passes EVERY NIGHT OF THE EVENT, so the Buy Early rule applies, especially to FOL.
- Tip #5: Don’t miss CHAINSAW CHASE OUT, a little something extra we do at the exit of the park each night, starts an hour before closing.
- Tip #6: TWITTER PASSWORDS. Each night before the event I will tweet (@HorrorNights)the password for the night. It changes every night. Here’s what to do: If you give the password to paranormal investigators TUCKER and SPECS in front of the INSIDIOUS maze, you might get something back. Each night I give the TUCKER and SPECS scareactors a few hundred items to give away. They tend to go fast, so get their early if you want it. This is just something special we do for the HHN fans on Twitter, it’s something associated with the movie…look for the password tweets.
- Tip #7: ANNUAL PASS HOLDER PERK – on the website there is a special link for purchasing tix to HHN for our Annual Pass Holders. Every Sunday of HHN, I’m hosting a behind the scenes presentation on the making of EL CUCUY. It includes a behind the scenes tour of maze. After the presentation, I’ll do a meet and greet and hang out as long as it takes for the AP HHN fans, pose for pics, whatever you like. This is something special we’re doing just for our ANNUAL PASS HOLDERS. There’s so much detail in the EL CUCUY maze, fun to see it like this.
So those are my tips for HHN 2013…employee preview tonight, opening night on Friday…been working on this for a year…and now its here!
— Horror Nights (@HorrorNights) September 18, 2013