today we went to work early so that we could leave work early in order to go to halloween horror nights at universal studios. we went with nopalita (friend from back in the day at ucsc who lives in socal again) and alpha tom (friend from new zealand who lives in socal now). i had really been looking forward to this. i thought it would be really scary. universal hasn't done a themed halloween thing since 2000. they started doing it back when i was in high school and i went to the first year. coicidentally, so did twiddle thumbs but of course we didn't know each other back then. since universal is a movie company, their effects should be awesome. the website makes the horror nights seem so cool that twiddle thumbs didn't want to go at all. we've all been to knott's scary farm before (except alpha tom) so that's why we chose to go to universal. true, we should be saving money and energy to go into moving, but we need to do something with the halloween spirit this year as we won't be doing anything on halloween itself.

me and some pig/man thing

we drove down to universal and met up with twiddle thumbs's co-worker and his girlfriend. we wantered around the top, main level. there are of course sections of fog with people dressed up to scare you, fake chainsaws and all. the first thing we tried out was the van helsing attraction which became the a maze called the house of horrors. after that we walked over to the animal show which became the carnival of carnage, essentially a freak show. i don't think that's the right word but they had sword-swallowing, glass walking, etc. we saw fear factor live: celebrity edition (michael jackson, saddam hussein, paris hilton, the devil) and we wish we hadn't. it sucked so bad. over by shrek 3-d was another maze, the asylum. actually, at these events, maze isn't the right word because you're not trying to find your way out of them. you're really just walking down hallways and anxious at every corner of what will pop out at you. it'd be really scary cool fun if it was an actual maze that you are trying to get out of as people come after you!

bus wreck in front of bates motel

the tram ride is what we were really looking forward to as they will let you off and you get to wander the backlot over by the psycho house. how scary that will be! however, i must inform everyone how disappointing it was. not scary at all. in fact, by the website we were kinda under the impression that the backlot was the focal point of the evening. that it really took place down there. not true. you just walk past the bates motel, psycho house, and the war of the worlds section. the bates motel area was like dead high school kids. the war of the worlds section were flesh-eating zombies. then you hop back on the tram. lame! i would've loved to walk around the actual backlot, such as little mexico, little europe, court of miracles, etc. as the classic universal monsters, modern horror figures, and other ghoulies abound as you are armed only with a flashlight, or nothing at all. that would be true terror!

twiddle thumbs's co-worker and friend left early and we remained to check out the lower level to ride the mummy ride. alpha tom and i also rode jurassic park as the girls are too chicken for that. you don't realize how wet jurassic park gets until you ride it at night! during the day, the sun's rays dry every drop in miliseconds. at night however, it seems as if you got caught in the rain. after that, there was nothing really left to see. we didn't see all the attractions but we didn't need to. next year, i think it's back to knott's.