We went last week of September and the answer is a hard no. We walked in at 7 with express and hit every haunted house and didnt get out till 1am. We also skipped the shows. If you want to do everything in 1 night express is mandatory. Also you need to do rope drop to close. Another thing to keep in mind is that the event is open longer on weekends than if you hit it a weekday night, so you may paradoxically have better luck getting everything done in a single night on a weekend night with express if you are also trying to do the shows sense the shows will eat a good chunk of time sense you have to get their early to get a seat and they last a bit.
Also EVERYTHING, includes the special horror nights food offerings too so being there longer will let you have room to grab the snacks.
I don’t want to say any guarantees because maybe this was an anomaly, but we went on a Saturday night in early September last year and made it through every house at least once, most of them twice (the ones we didn’t do twice were by choice), and our favorite house three times, every scare zone several times, and both shows, all without Express Pass. It was our first time going and we had the AP that included the ticket, so we decided to check it out. The night before I saw all the advice about how you have to have an express pass, so we went to buy them and they were sold out already. I was kind of upset, but we decided that since our ticket was free, if we missed out we would think about returning some other weekend. By the end of the night when we accomplished more than we expected, we both agreed that we would have felt like we wasted money on express pass because it just wasn’t necessary that night. Our longest wait was about half an hour, and that only happened twice.
Here’s what I think helped us out:
1) We were there the second weekend it was open, so all of the bloggers and influencers from out of town had come down the weekend before, and a lot of locals weren’t in Halloween mode yet/it was still getting dark later so there were still several daylight hours which could ruin the vibe for some people. So there might be that small pocket when the event isn’t as crowded yet as it would be later in the season (but definitely not opening weekend).
2) It was a Saturday, so we had the max hours.
3) Since we’re APs, we were able to do Stay and Scream and I had looked up which houses get busy first so we could knock those out of the way right away. This worked great, and I think we got through Beetlejuice and Hill House before HHN even opened that night and 5 houses in our first 90 minutes. I do think you have to at least have stay and scream or express pass. There’s just no way to get it all in without one of those advantages.
4) We did the scare zones and shows in the middle of the event when the lines were peaking, and we followed the app so that we could jump in line as soon as one of the houses dropped under half an hour. We didn’t get into any lines if they said they were over 45 minutes, and there was definitely some inflation in the estimated wait times. I remember we made one exception to our short line rule for Icons, so we saved it for last so we knew we wouldn’t miss anything else if we got stuck in a long line. I want to say the wait was 45 or 55 minutes, and our actual wait was under 25. We were shocked (and ecstatic).
5) Following the advice of other blogs, we did a huge meal at Toothsome first so that we didn’t need to eat a full meal the rest of the night. It was pretty hot so we stopped for drinks a few times, but I think we only jumped into a line for snacks once, and we picked that booth because of how short the line was.
6) Covid. Unfortunately I think this was in the middle of another spike, so that might have depressed attendance. It also affected how much the scare actors in the scare zones could interact with guests, so I don’t know if we would have spent more time hanging out in them otherwise. Although we did spend quite a bit of time in our favorites.
7) Pure dumb luck. Like I said, I fully get that this could have been an anomaly, but we’re going to shoot for the same time to go down this year since it worked out so well for us last year. In following the updates around that time, I think the early September weeknights would have given us similar results (minus the extra hours of operation). But honestly we will probably get express passes anyway this time just because we absolutely fell in love with HHN last year and don’t want to risk our luck falling on the other side of the coin.
Can't wait to hear all the details!
I can’t wait, not only will this be my first time to Universal but I’ll also get to experience HHN.
