Halloween Horror Nights 2026 Review – Universal Has Issues, The Houses Do Not [Fright-A-Thon]

Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood is officially open for business. After an opening Labor Day weekend that featured celebrities, a hurricane, houses being closed for extended periods of time, and plenty of scares, is the event worth going to? Should you spend your hard-earned cash on a ticket? The answer is a bit more complicated than just yes or no. However, if you’d like to know exclusively about the houses of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood, you can read our House-By-House breakdown right here.

Starting off, there are plenty of things you can do at Horror Nights 2026, including haunted houses, scare zones, shows, rides, food & drink, and shop for exclusive merchandise. Horror Nights has a total of 9 houses/Terror Tram at the event that includes: Hellraiser, Stranger Things 5, Killceanera: Music By Slash, Evil Dead Burn, Dead Deader Deadest, Sinners, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness, and Terror Tram: Starring Art The Clown.

For complete transparency, I did not go to Media Night for this review, I went on Sunday, September 6th, otherwise known as The Hurricane Day. My time at the park started by getting to CityWalk at 5:30PM, which is a normal time to arrive if you want to get in the park at 7:00PM for the opening. Early access was sold out that day (and almost every Saturday for the rest of the run of the event), otherwise, I would have gone earlier with that. It was raining, which normally means that people aren’t going to come out to the park.

Spoiler Alert: People Did In Fact Come Out To The Park

So the first couple of nights at Horror Nights from opening Thursday to Saturday were busy but not horrific. The Sunday that I went was outright horrific from a wait standpoint. At one point in the night, every single haunted house was over 80 minutes to wait. It didn’t help that Killer Klowns From Outer Space was closed for a portion of the night because of the rain. That also doesn’t say anything about the fifty-five-minute wait it took to get into the park once it opened. They had everyone in the courtyard waiting and it was a SLOW process to get in.

If I wasn’t a season pass holder, I would have been more furious. I know it was raining off and on, that holds things up, but this has been a big problem with Universal Studios Hollywood in general, is getting people into the park. So whatever their logistics department needs to do to make it more efficient about getting people in the park at opening would be fantastic.

So with that out of the way, besides the park being packed to the gills and rainy, was it a good time?

If You Are Only Judging The Houses And Their Look, This Is One Of The Best Horror Nights Ever

The houses of Horror Nights 2026 are not only varied but they all seem to have some major upgrades when it comes to set design and the actual design of the scares. Sinners has some of the best-looking sequences in any Horror Nights house I’ve seen. There’s a two-story section inside Club Juke that’s awe-inspiring. The opening section that follows along with the famous musical number of Sinners is also a real highlight.

Those sort of things expand out to the rest of the lineup of houses. I was most looking forward to Hellraiser, Killceanera, and Sinners, and out of those three, Killceanera was the only real disappointing one, but not even by that much. Hellraiser is the best of the event and worth any sort of wait, especially if you’re a fan of the franchise.

There aren’t any stinkers in the bunch and while I would have liked to see something else besides Killer Klowns for the third time in seven years, that house is capturing people’s attention with some of the longest and most populous lines.

The Biggest Question For Most People: Is It Worth General Admission?

The simple answer to that is no. The more complicated answer is how much time you’re willing to tolerate long lines for. The lines have always been a part of Horror Nights, but after my latest general admission experience (on Labor day weekend, yes), I have never seen lines this long this early in September. Normally, the lines get longer as the event gets closer to Halloween. But this was a whole different beast with lines upwards of 80 minutes for every attraction and those lines holding firm into the late hours of the night.

With all of that said, the actual event itself, Halloween Horror Nights 2026 is fantastic. The haunted houses and scarezones are top notch, they all show that Universal is still the undisputed champion of Halloween events in SoCal. They have the best scares, the best IPs, and they even do some great work with original houses like Dead Deader Deadest.

The issues I had with the event are mostly to the actual logistics of Universal Studios Hollywood as a park. Which are fixable, somewhat.

Time For Expansion…

Now this part might not be possible based on the space that Universal Hollywood has at their disposal, but for the sake of the event and the crowds, if they want to continue to pack people in the park with ticket sales going up and up, they need to expand the event. 8 Haunted Houses and the Terror Tram might not be enough any longer with lines and crowds being the way they are. They’ve been on the backlot before which helped spread out the crowds, they’ve done houses is places like the Waterworld queue and the other soundstages they have. I saw firsthand how much one house going down screws up all the wait times across the park, but think about if there were two or three more houses? They have plenty in reserve and we saw Killer Klowns return for a third time this year.

Imagine bringing back The Thing or Alice Cooper or others out of retirement to bump that number up?

If you have general admission, its still fun and enjoyable for Horror Nights but you should temper your expectations. It might be reaching the point where getting the express ticket is the only way to go.

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