Universal Studios Fan Fest Nights 2026 Review
Written by: Team Pacific Ghost Highway (Team Leader Casey Moriarty)
-5/2/2026
Every year, around this time – meaning early May – my friends and I start to fantasize about the
coming Halloween season. After all, it’s the halfway point, right? Half-O-Ween, for those who
celebrate. For us, it means several things: first, we’re beginning to become antsy, because it’s
been six months since we’ve been visiting any haunted attractions. It also means we’re starting
to get excited, since the first haunts will start opening about four months from now. It also
means we need some sort of celebration, and for Team Pacific Ghost Highway, we decided that
would be Universal Fan Fest Nights 2026 in Universal City, California.
Fan Fest Nights is a new event (2026 marks their second time doing it), and it’s clearly inspired
by their successful Halloween Horror Nights, but it’s altogether different. Instead of emphasizing
scares, the goal is to put fans right in the middle of their favorite franchises: this year, the
fandoms chosen were Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter, One Piece, Super Mario World,
Sailor Moon, Jurassic Park, and a mashup of Scooby Doo and the Universal Monsters.
Universal Studios is a huge park, and unlike most theme parks, it’s constructed on the side of a
steep hill, a consequence of its location in the hilly San Fernando Valley. This means Universal
Studios Hollywood is technically not in Hollywood, perhaps the first of its many filmmaking-inspired illusions; it also means the park is quite a slog to walk through. All this to say that, even
though we knew we’d be there from opening to closing (7:30 pm to 1:30 am on the day we went),
we wouldn’t be able to do everything, and would have to prioritize.
It was Jesse who first gave voice to what we were all thinking: “Scooby Doo,” he said in a
declarative tone, “is the absolute priority.” He spoke with such authority that none of us dared to
disagree: not that we would have. We wanted something spooky, and Universal Fan Fest wasn’t
a horror or Halloween event. The presence of Scooby and the Universal Monsters, however,
was good enough to warrant a visit from our team, and we decided to pile into a sedan and
make the trek.
Since we had to pick and choose what we were going to do, we decided to skip One Piece,
Super Mario, and Sailor Moon, since no one in our group was a big enough fan of those
properties to push for it. The activities relating to those franchises will not be discussed, simply
because we didn’t have the time to see them. Universal Studios is big.
We arrived around 7 pm for the 7:30 pm opening, and the line, though long, moved at a breezy
pace. The first thing we noticed was that there were multiple cosplayers waiting in the queue
with us: at first, this was jarring, since we were used to theme parks being very serious about not
allowing anything that even looks like a costume for their Halloween events. But Universal Fan
Fest is different, and they encourage cosplay, so we saw plenty of wizards, anime pirates, and a
few crewmembers of the Starship Enterprise (even though the Star Trek event was last year,
and was not repeated this time around).
Once we made our way into the park, we decided to seek out the Harry Potter event first,
correctly assuming it would be extremely popular and eventually develop a long line. We tried to
do a little sightseeing as we speedwalked our way there: if you’ve never seen Universal Studios
Wizarding World of Harry Potter, it’s worth checking out even if you’re not a fan, as the attention
to detail and fidelity to the world of the films is truly impressive. We walked through the village of
Hogsmeade, duly ooh-ing and ah-ing at the snow-capped castles until we made it to the line for
the Forbidden Forest-themed walkthrough.
The queue experience for this attraction was better than some places’ actual attractions, being
as it was in the overflow area for the Flight of the Hippogriff ride. We made our way through
Hogwarts Castle, watching pictures of the old headmasters arguing with each other until we
reached the entrance of the Forbidden Forest.
As we entered, we noticed several things: first, the attractions at Fan Fest are primarily actor
driven. That is to say, unlike a haunt, which is an assault on the senses of which actors are
simply one element, the set walkthroughs here rely greatly upon the performers to draw you into
their world by creating a character for you to meet. This means that the quality of your
experience will vary greatly depending upon who you get: our actor was alright, but had an
incredibly difficult time making himself heard over the blaring sound effects. This made it difficult
for us to follow the storyline, but we gleaned that the man we met was a teacher and we were
Hogwarts students, and we’d been tasked with helping find a lost hippogriff.
The set walkthrough was extremely straightforward, to the point of being boring at times – we’d
waited in line for an hour, and there weren’t really any surprises to be had – we simply walked
from one animatronic to the next, sometimes using imaginary “wands” at the behest of the
professor to activate some effect or other.
The animatronics are where Universal Studios really shines: they are impressive. We
encountered fairies, spiders, sinister vines, and ultimately the hippogriff itself in the Forbidden
Forest, and they really did look like they had walked off a movie set. The hippogriff, in particular,
was incredible, moving and breathing like a real animal. However, the majority of the experience
didn’t measure up, since it was simply interacting with an actor we couldn’t hear.
Our next stop was the much-anticipated Universal Monsters x Scooby Doo attraction, which
took place on the studio lot and required the use of the tram to attend. This one was much
better than the Harry Potter walkthrough and ended up being our favorite stop of the night. It’s
possible, of course, that we were biased, as fans of Scooby Doo, the Universal Monsters, and
the spookier side of theme park attractions in general, but we also really did think it was the
best.
The attraction was set up on the legendary Universal backlot, meaning there was a fairly long
tram ride needed to get there. As we sat on the tram, a video played explaining the situation: a
new monster movie was in production, and we were set to be extras. Details on the supposed
film itself were vague, but we were introduced via video to colorful characters such as the
director, publicist, art director, and the ambitious security guard with a dream of making it in
Hollywood. However, before we even arrived at the lot, the production was hijacked by a
masked figure called the Phantom Director, who summoned the original Universal Monsters
(Dracula, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Bride of Frankenstein, and Frankenstein’s
Monster) and commanded them to spread chaos. Only one team could help unmask the
Phantom Director and stop the chaos: Scooby Doo and the Mystery Machine!
As we arrived at the lot, we collected booklets with details on the case and helped the Mystery
Incorporated team discover clues. As I mentioned, this was the best experience of the evening,
and any Universal Fan Fest review should single out the fact that, unlike the other attractions,
this was an interactive activity that was actually interactive. We walked around the backlot,
uncovering information about the four suspects (characters we had met during the tram video)
and checking them off our list of suspects. As we did so, we met and talked to members of
Mystery Incorporated, who helped us to understand the evidence to determine who the
Phantom Director was. Periodically, however, one of the Universal Monsters would appear to
cause trouble (which was mostly standing in a prominent location and putting on a small show).
The performers were the best here: Universal had assembled some great people to
impersonate the Scooby Doo gang, and the monsters themselves put on visually stunning
performances, such as when the Frankenstein monster himself, illuminated by the Phantom
Director’s curse, shambled through the fog to do battle with a giant studio fan, or a shadowplay
by the Bride of Frankenstein. Finally, we visited a stage to watch the reveal, a live performance
assisted by large digital screens, where the Monsters and Mystery Incorporated chased one
another in a classic Scooby Doo sequence. We discovered we had correctly identified the
culprit, and now it was time to move on!
Our next stop was the Dungeons and Dragons Secrets of Waterdeep attraction, which required
walking all the way to the bottom of the hill, down multiple massive escalators. As fans of
spooky attractions and occasional D&D players, we enjoyed this one, although it suffered from
some of the same issues present with the Harry Potter walkthrough. That is, it was dependent
upon actor performances to elevate an otherwise weak story; our actors were more dedicated
than the ones we had encountered in the Wizarding World, but the whole experience was
hampered by a confusing attempt to sort the audience into D&D archetypes like Rogues,
Wizards, Bards, and so on. In theory, this made sense, but it had no practical bearing on the
story; we couldn’t choose what group we were in and barely understood which one had
been chosen for us anyway.
Just as in the previous attraction, there was an attempt made at audience interaction: the
actors, in excellent costumes depicting an elf and a Tiefling, told us we were needed to defeat
the evil Xanathar, which we were instructed to do through casting spells and other D&D staples.
We never quite gelled with this element, but this attraction was worth visiting, once again, for the
technical elements: a carefully constructed castle set served as home for a number of monsters,
including a wooden chest which sprung convincingly to life into a drooling, fanged mimic.
The finale featured an appearance from Xanathar himself, a massive animatronic of one of
D&D’s signature monsters: the Beholder. Xanathar cast his eye beams at us, attempting to
destroy us with his magic, as the cast urged us to defeat him with imaginary spells of our own.
These really were some of the best animatronics I’d ever seen, and for someone whose
particular area of interest was in special effects, making the price of admission worth it. These
creatures are no mere stilted robots; they move organically, like actual living things.
After leaving Waterdeep, we strolled over to the nearby Jurassic Park exhibit. This was not an
interactive walkthrough like the others; instead, it was simply an open area recreating the
Jurassic Park experience. Life-size dinosaurs, including a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a few
Velociraptors.
Once again, the creators did a beautiful job mimicking set pieces from the films:
My favorite was a zookeeper who did a nature talk with a velociraptor puppet. There was very
little winking at the audience there: they mostly treated it like a real-world nature talk.
We ended our visit with a stop at the Revenge of the Mummy ride, a classic indoor coaster that
has been in that location since 2004 and, while quaint and dated now, is still quite enjoyable for
fans of old-school dark rides.
Overall, do we recommend Universal Studios Fan Fest Nights 2026? It’s hard to justify the price
tag (tickets were $79.99 each), and some of the walkthroughs are certainly not as good as
others. This is not an attraction that is comparable to Halloween Horror Nights: it lacks the
polish, the refinement, and the cleverness. It’s also definitely not something that will appeal to
you if you are not already a fan of the featured properties. However, if you’re a big Scooby Doo
and Universal Monsters buff, then you’ll probably enjoy that element just as much as we did. It’s
also worth seeing if you’re a fan of animatronics and theme park effects: there is some really
incredible stuff here, and it’s absolutely stunning when it’s at its best. It is just sometimes a bit of
a slog to get to those points.