For decades now, Universal Studios has offered the theme park world’s premier after-hours event:Halloween Horror Nights. The fan-favorite Fright Night leverages Hollywood’s talented set designers, prop makers, and actors to create film-quality haunted houses and scare zones year after year at Universal Studios parks around the world.
This month, Universal Studios Hollywood is expanding its after-hours offerings through a brand new event calledFan Fest Nights: a theme park-ified comic-con of sorts, featuring costume contests, shows, nerd-centric walkthroughs, themed eats, and an interactive theater experience set in the iconic Universal Studios backlot. It’s a totally unique event unlike anything a theme park has ever done before. For a first run, the inaugural Fan Fest Nights showed incredible promise for the future.
Comic-Con Meets Theme Park
Fan Fest Nights is no mere reskin of Horror Nights. While it features several experiences with the same quality level as the Halloween event, Fan Fest Nights’ activities are more akin to the film and TV activations you’d find at San Diego Comic-Con. The activities are all connected to the kinds of IP you’d find at a comic book or anime convention, like Star Trek, Dungeons & Dragons, One Piece, and Jujutsu Kaisen.
Of course, all of the experiences are crafted in a way that only Universal Studios can, and the centerpiece of the whole event is an interactive theater experience where you get to be part of the plot of Back to the Future on the actual Back to the Future set.
This one experience is worth the price of admission alone. While you can see Hill Valley’s Courthouse Square during Universal’s studio backlot tour any day, this is an opportunity to get out of the tram and walk around the square, fully immersed in ‘50s Americana.
This is the true Hill Valley set from corner to corner. From the Texaco gas station and the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, to the actual 50s-era picture cards - including the DeLorean - every inch of the Courthouse Square has something iconic to see. Just as soon as I started to get a good look around, though, the show started with a very convincing Marty McFly stumbling out of the gas station to ask passersby if they’d seen his friend, an older guy with white hair and a lab coat.
What amounts to essentially all of the main story beats of Back to the Future play out here in Courthouse Square, with actors portraying Marty, Doc Brown, George McFly, Lorraine Baines, Biff and his gang, Principal Tolkan, and a number of background characters to help bring the world of Hill Valley to life.
Unlike a stage play, the scenes take place all around Courthouse Square. Biff bullies George outside of the school, Lorraine meets Marty and develops a crush on him in the square, and Marty and Doc hatch their plan to harness a lightning storm on the steps of the courthouse.
Many scenes happen simultaneously in different places, and it’s up to you which storylines you want to follow, or how many times you come back to see it again from a different point of view.
After Marty brings the house down at the school dance, the show ends with a montage of the film’s climax projected onto the courthouse’s facade, followed by fireworks disguised as a lightning strike, and an impressive lighting effect that simulates the DeLorean speeding off back to 1985, leaving behind a flaming tire trail - the show’s coolest photo op.
All along, park attendees are included in the performance. George asks nearby kids for advice on impressing Lorraine while Marty compliments anyone wearing his signature orange puffy vest. All of the actors are always willing to stop and pose for a picture in a way that lets them stay in character and keep the scenes going. It’s an impressively choreographed and brilliantly acted show that endlessly repeats itself, albeit with multiple alternating casts, throughout the entire night.
More Adventures At Fan Fest
In the lower lot you’ll find two unique experiences: a walkthrough attraction called Dungeons & Dragons: Secrets of Waterdeep, and a Yoshi egg scavenger hunt in Super Nintendo World.
Secrets of Waterdeep is closer to the traditional kind of haunted house experience you might be familiar with from Horror Nights, but far more interactive. Groups of about 40 join legendary adventurers, the Harpers, to save Waterdeep from Xanathar the beholder. The short experience takes you from room to room as the Harpers lead your group away from a dragon terrorizing Waterdeep and towards Xanathar’s treasure. It culminates in a face-to-face encounter with Xanathar - a massive beholder created by the Jim Henson Creature Company for this event - who is defeated by hurling insults at him, naturally.
It’s a funny show that is carried by the performances of its guides, and fans of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves will especially appreciate its brand of humor. There’s some decent special effects and plenty of photo opportunities throughout - which is highly encouraged, unlike in Horror Nights.
After D&D, I headed into Super Nintendo Land to pick up my Yoshi crown and hunt down five hidden eggs. The crown provided clues to their location, and once found, a nearby attendee would place a sticker on your crown. Once all five stickers were found you were allowed to enter a secret queue to meet Yoshi. This was the longest line of the night (no express lane, unfortunately) but after around 30 minutes I got to take a picture with a pink Yoshi for the first time and Universal Studios Hollywood, so it was worth the wait. It’s nice to have an interactive experience in Super Nintendo World that you don’t have to buy a power band to take part in.
The other walkthrough experience, set in one of the stages often used for haunted houses, is called Star Trek: Red Alert. It begins as a tour of Picard’s Enterprise but is quickly interrupted by an alien invasion. You make your way through a series of rooms, meeting crew members along the way, until you end up on the Enterprise’s deck; theactualset used for the Star Trek: Picard series, brought to Universal Studios piece by piece from the Paramount lot. It’s an incredible set to get to stand in, but then it’s brought to life with actors, visual effects, and a fun, light storyline, and it brings the whole experience to another level.
A Great Start To An Event I Can’t Wait To See More Of
Universal Studios had a genius vision for Fan Fest Nights and nailed the execution nearly across the entire board. I was a little disappointed to see the Jujutsu Kaisen 3D movie, which is a regular attraction at Universal Studios Japan, was not in 3D as intended. I also heard a lot of negative reactions to the One Piece character meet and greets. Lines were taking up to two hours to get through, even though every other attraction in the park had no more than a 20-minute wait. When the event only lasts from 7 pm to 2 am, that’s a significant amount of time to spend standing in line.
But it’s easy to forgive minor flaws when so much is done so right. Universal’s take on a fan convention experience is brilliant, and I can’t wait to see how this event evolves in the coming years. I’d love to see a stunt show in the Waterworld theater and more interactive experiences in the backlot - though Back to the Future is so good, I wouldn’t mind seeing it become a recurring staple of the annual event.
Fan Fest Nights runs from April 25 to May 18, from Thursday to Sunday.Tickets are available on Universal Studios’ website. Attendance seems to be much lower than a typical Horror Nights event, but I don’t expect it to stay that way for long.
