The reviews have come pouring in as of late concerning Halloween Horror Nights 21, and from the sound of things, this is the best year the event has seen since it moved back to being only at the Universal Studios park. This year's theme is "Be Careful What You Wager," and features Lady Luck as an event icon.

As such, many of the park's houses and scarezones involve an element of luck or choice (for example, in the Your Luck Has Run Out scarezone, there are dozens of Lady Lucks scattered among roulette wheels and casino lights lying in shambles on the ground - some are her beautiful, temptress side while some are the dark, gnashing-teeth, sinister version and you can't tell which is which until you get close enough through the fog.

Nightmaze is a physical, darkened outdoor maze scare zone where the walls are always changing, so you may find yourself exiting just next to where you entered. One of the more impressive effects, I think, is in the Acid Assault scare zone, which turns the park's New York Streets area into a town decimated by acid rain. Through incredible projection (not unlike Wonderland's Starlight Spectacular), the building's facades appear to crumble, then even their infrastructure falls. It's truly incredible.

Overall, I think this year's theme is very cool. The mazes are all very classic, dramatic, and atmospheric, like a World War I maze where the nurses become Banshees (Nightengales: Blood Prey) and one that takes place in a classic cemetery, with the soundstage it's in actually cooled to 55 degrees with snow-machines all over the place (Winter's Night: Haunting of Hawthorne Cemetery). There's also only one that uses a movie theme (The Thing) and none rely on past event icons... It's been a while since I've seen their event be this original and non-"gimmicky." I'm not a fan of years like 2009, in which almost every single house was based on a cheap property tie-in (Saw, The Wolfman, Chucky, etc) or years when it relies almost entirely on the past like 2006's Sweet 16.

Has anyone been, or have any opinions?

Haunted Houses:

Nightingales: Blood Prey

H.R. Bloodengutz Presents Holidays of Horror

Saws N' Steam: Into the Machine

The Thing

Winter's Night: The Haunting of Hawthorn Cemetery

Nevermore: The Madness of Poe

The Forsaken

The In Between

Scare Zones:

Your Luck Has Run Out

Nightmaze

Grown Evil

Canyon of Dark Souls

7

Acid Assault

You can read reviews and see photos at Theme Park Review and Screamscape to name a few.

The thing I like about HHN is how much of a variety there is year to year. They do a great job of promoting their biggest event. I was able to go last year, and was blown away by the amount of detail put into everything from the mazes, to the set up around the park itself, to the in-line vendors who were selling "shots of blood".