Springfield gets walls as Halloween Horror Nights enters it's second weekend

We headed out for another night of Halloween Horror Nights this past Saturday just to enjoy the event as a family. 
Because we were taking advantage of the "First Stab" for Annual Passholders we were able to get a few update pictures of Springfield and Wizarding World prior to heading down to the first stab queue. 


We'll also take a look at what was once Stage 28 and tell you if our "Halloween Horror Nights Guide" really works. But first, lets start with the update stuff. 

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Springfield and Hogsmeade

The biggest change since our last update was the addition of new walls to Springfield. Remember, Springfield is opening a full year before Wizarding World. 

Hogsmeade is still just a bunch of frames

Not only is there insulation and drywall up, but it looks like parts have already been painted. 

That looked to be the only actual "window". 

I little bit of insulation already on Hogsmeade

Moving over to Forbidden Journey, not too many open spots left in the show building, at least not on this side. 

Frame supports for Hogwarts Castle continue to go up

Lots of stuff moving into the show building

A look at the Hogsmeade portion they have yet to start on

Stage 28

Stage 28 is now officially history. It took them just over a week to completely remove the historical stage. While many are upset about this, the sets inside have indeed been preserved. 

Some pictures from the Transformers overflow queue

Halloween Horror Nights

We headed back out to Halloween Horror Nights this past Saturday, it was more of a "family" night than a "site" night (which are always fun) but we did follow our Halloween Horror Nights Guide and we are happy to say that it really worked out well. 

If you missed our full review of Halloween Horror Nights and the Eyegore Awards click the link. 

Even though we did use the guide, we actually did break the first rule about getting a Front of the Line pass. Not by choice, by the time we decided to go to the event (last Wednesday) they were sold out. So if you are planning on doing HHN, you must plan ahead. 

That said, using the Annual Passholder First Stab allowed us to do all of the mazes and the longest wait we had was about 45 minutes (for the Terror Tram). 

Basically how the First Stab works is you buy your ticket online with the special AP price, and it will say "Annual Pass Admission: Includes First Stab". There are also options for friends of AP's who don't have passes to use the Day/Night Pass. 
Also, if you buy your AP the day of HHN you can still use First Stab. Some friends we attended the event with did this option and even though some employees on the upper level said they couldn't do First Stab, they had no issues once they got to the lower lot. 

At about 6:20 we started our walk back to the backlot mazes. 

Just like all of the other guests, we were let out into the Terminus scare zone. 

We'll do a rundown of the order we did the mazes in. First stop was The Walking Dead. 

I personally thought the maze was MUCH better this weekend than it was on opening night. That could also be because we got to actually walk through the entire maze and didn't get stopped by backed-up guests. 

Next up we did From Dusk Till Dawn, which I also thought was improved. Make sure you are following @HorrorNights on Twitter for the special code, you can get one of these awesome cards. 

Next up was AvP, about 7:25 this was the line. 

This is definitely one of the breakout success mazes from this years event and shouldn't be missed. 

We had hoped to do Walking Dead again before leaving the lower lot mazes, but at about 7:35 the lines were already pretty long as you can see below. 

We next headed to Clowns 3D which had about a 20 minute wait by the time we got there. The Universal Scare Patrol was out so I did get a picture with one of their fun signs. 

My other favorite maze from last week was American Werewolf in London which was again amazing. They seemed to be doing a better job of crowd control this week as well. 

At about 9:00pm we headed up to the Terror Tram which by that point had a posted wait of 25 minutes, it turned out to be about 45. Still not bad. 

This is truly an experience that can't be duplicated at any other event and is great every year. 

Taking a cue from our Strategy Guide, we took this opportunity to grab a snack at Mel's and watch people getting scared in Mask-A-Raid. I think we would have rather sat in Dark Christmas, but there are no tables around there. I do think the talent in Mask-A-Raid was much stronger this week, which is great. 

Some pics from The Purge

By this point we were all pretty tired (since we were at Haunt 2 days earlier) so we decided to do one more maze and waited for Face Off over Dracula Untold. No particular reason other than this might be our last visit to HHN and we wanted to walk through House of Horrors one last time. 

As we were leaving, these were the wait times, at about midnight. So if you were getting in The Walking Dead or AVP lines at that time, you weren't doing anything else that night. 

That's going to wrap it up for this update. Not sure when we'll have another Universal Studios update, but it may not be for a few weeks. But ... depending on how the day goes, we may be able to swing by for a bit on Thursday prior to Queen Mary Dark Harbor. 

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