The new Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas and the long-running Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood would seem from a distance to be one and the same with the only differences in the details and the delivery.
Like most longtime haunted experience fans, I wanted to know how Universal Horror Unleashed compared to Halloween Horror Nights and which one was better.
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I visited Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas on a November weekend night about a week after Halloween.
The initial collection of haunted mazes at Horror Unleashed includes the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Blumhouse’s The Exorcist: Believer, Universal Monsters and Scarecrow: The Reaping.
I’ve been going to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood for nearly two decades.
This year’s edition of Horror Nights brought back a few favorites (Friday the 13th, Poltergeist), introduced some new hits (Terrifier, Five Nights at Freddy’s) and delivered some solid original mazes (Scarecrow, Monstruos).
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I’ll always be a fan of Halloween Horror Nights. But for me, Universal Horror Unleashed offered a superior experience for roughly the same price.
Here are the four reasons Universal Horror Unleashed is better than Halloween Horror Nights.
1) Less Crowded
Universal Horror Unleashed felt virtually empty from the moment I arrived with only a few hundred visitors inside.
Halloween Horror Nights is crowded every year with thousands of visitors jamming the park on busy October weekends.
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Horror Unleashed can clearly handle a lot more people. Halloween crowds were thicker during October.
But Horror Unleashed is only about the size of a Costco warehouse store and the place could only comfortably handle a few thousand people at a time.
There were zero people outside when I arrived just before dusk. Timed entry helps Horror Unleashed control crowd sizes and spread attendance out throughout the day and week.
About 75 to 100 employees were working in the mazes, queues, shows, restaurants, bars and common areas — a large number for the amount of visitors.
Universal will clearly need to attract more than a few hundred people on a weekend night for Horror Unleashed to remain successful — but crowds should follow the positive word of mouth and new mazes and entertainment should draw return visitors.
The biggest downside of the light crowds was the low energy level in Horror Unleashed. The place felt like a ghost town rather than a hip new Vegas hangout.
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Universal will be able to eventually resolve that problem with an annual passholder program that will be able to backfill Horror Unleashed on slow nights and add buzz to the crowd.
The key will be to require timed entries for passholders and limit the number of times they can visit each maze. There would be no point of having passholders crowd out one-timers and unnecessarily increase maze wait times.
2) Less Rushed
Universal Horror Unleashed is housed in a 110,000-square foot warehouse in the Area15 experiential retail complex about 10 minutes away from the Las Vegas Strip.
Halloween Horror Nights is spread throughout the 400-acre Universal Studios Hollywood theme park.
Put simply: Horror Unleashed takes up a fraction of the footprint of Horror Nights.
Less time walking around means more time in the mazes, watching shows, eating at the two restaurants and drinking in the three bars.
I could stand in one spot in Horror Unleashed and see the entrances to all four mazes. Compared to Horror Nights, Horror Unleashed is tiny.
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I had planned to spend six hours at Horror Unleashed, but I was done in about three hours. And I sat down for a leisurely three-course meal with a cocktail in the Premiere House table service restaurant.
That would never happen at Horror Nights — which is always a marathon with the goal of making it through all the mazes, scare zones, shows and Terror Tram. There’s never any time to eat.
I also didn’t need to travel far to see the shows at Horror Unleashed. I watched a maniacal juggling clown on the Jack’s Alley stage by just turning around at my table during dinner. The wait staff kindly raised a few garage doors so the whole restaurant could watch the show.
The headline act had a dozen scareactors and dancers along with an engaging game show storyline starring the deranged Jack the Clown and his sidekick Chance. The smaller crowd let me get up close and stand right at the front of the stage. The actors did a great job interacting with the crowd and involving the audience in the show.
The Premiere House restaurant offered a few mini shows based on the Blumhouse movie franchises like Megan, Black Phone and the Purge that served as elaborate set-ups for meet-and-greet photo ops.
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Universal offers two types of tickets — with either unlimited ($89) or one-time access ($59) to the mazes. If you want to pay more, you can spend more time at Horror Unleashed. If you want to see it all and run, you can do that too. The more you spend the more you can do.
I can rarely ever make it into any Horror Nights mazes twice in one night. There’s too much to hit and not enough time to do it all. Horror Unleashed gives you the choice — binge or graze. It’s up to you, and your wallet.
The relaxed atmosphere in Horror Unleashed allowed me to slow down and enjoy the experience — something I rarely have time to do during Horror Nights.
3) Better Mazes
All four of the initial haunted mazes at Horror Unleashed have shown up at one time or another at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood.
All four of the Horror Unleashed mazes were as good as or better than the equivalent Horror Nights mazes.
The Horror Unleashed mazes looked better and were laid out better than the Horror Nights mazes.
Horror Nights sets a high bar in the haunt industry for movie-quality sets that look like scenes from the films. Universal just had more time, space and money to dress the Horror Unleashed mazes.
Horror Nights mazes are only built to last a month or so. Horror Unleashed mazes are built for year-round use — and they look like it.
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All four of the Horror Unleashed mazes had ridiculously short wait times. I never waited for more than one group ahead of me. Usually there was nobody in line.
The maze queues were clearly set up for Halloween — so there was plenty of room to hold a few hundred people in each line. But even that would pale in comparison to the average Horror Nights queues that look like cattle pens designed to hold 500 to 1,000 people.
4) Better Scares
Smaller crowds lead to better scares when the scareactors have room to work. I must have leapt out of my skin five times in every maze. The Horror Unleashed monsters were relentless and terrifying.
Constant congo lines are one of the top complaints about Horror Nights mazes. It’s hard to be scared when you can see the scareactor jump out at the group ahead of you.
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Horror Unleashed pulses maze entries by separating groups by 30 seconds. The line wrangler at the Scarecrow maze used a stop watch to pace the entries.
The Horror Unleashed mazes were expertly laid out with switchbacks that allowed individual scareactors to scare visitors two and three times along the route.
Every Horror Unleashed maze had a mini-show built into the experience where visitors were instructed to pause in a scene for a 30-second improv sketch. There’s never time or room for anything like that at Horror Nights.
Horror Unleashed wisely closed each maze for 15 minutes every hour to give the scareactors a break. The closures were timed so that there was usually only one maze closed at a time.
That means you’ll never walk through a Horror Unleashed maze when all the monsters appear to be on a break — something I wish I could say about Horror Nights.