The five new scare zones, seven deadly mazes and terror tram at Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights made my recent pre-Halloween visit extra horrific.

The annual event conveniently starts at 7 p.m., right when darkness consumes the park, and ends at 2 a.m., when the real scares happen. The entrance of the park is an automatic scare zone filled with vapor, loud music, sound effects and cast members who chase around guests to begin the night of screams. On a recent visit, I took the safer way in, and went through the safe zone entrance that leads to the middle of the park. The two entrances are convenient, allowing guests to feel the horror right away, or simply letting the actual mazes do the scaring.

Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights theme, this year, is the Walking Dead. Compared to Knott’s Scary Farm, Griffith’s Haunted Hayride and Disneyland, Universal Studios changes its theme every year, giving guests something new to look forward to every Halloween season.

Original rides like Transformers, Revenge of the Mummy, Jurassic Park, the Simpsons and Despicable Me are open during the entire event, allowing guests to take a break from the deadly mazes.

Wait times for rides and mazes can be found throughout the park, making planning and time management easier.

The mazes are spread out within the park. “Face Off” is located at the front of the park, while “Dracula” and “American Werewolf in London” are in the middle of the park. The four major mazes — “The Walking Dead Maze/Terror Tram,” “Aliens vs. Predators,” “From Dusk Till Dawn” and “Clowns 3D” — are where the tour tram is during the day.

To enter the tour tram area from the middle of the park, I had to go through the Purge scare zone, down the escalators, scream through the Skullz scare zone, climb up through a tunnel, walk a little further down the dark path, until I got to the Terminus scare zone, reaching the area filled with lines of the four mazes.

“The Walking Dead Maze/Terror Tram” closes before midnight, for safety regulations, while the six other mazes continue on until 2 a.m. Once 9 p.m. hit, the wait time for the mazes were over an hour long, while people had to wait just under an hour for the rides. The food areas and bathrooms all over the park were always packed, but the scare zones were not as busy due to people’s extreme fear of being chased.

I wasn’t able to ride the Terror Tram, and was too much of a baby to go through the “Clowns 3D” maze. Out of all the mazes I was brave enough to go through, however, I thought the “Aliens vs. Predators” maze brought me the scariest experience. Aliens would pop out of both sides of the narrow corridors, and the predators had extraordinarily well-applied make-up that were enough to make me scream.

Overall, the event was fun, exciting and horrifying enough to make me want to go again this month!