Universal Studios Hollywood recently hosted a new special event entitled Fan Fest Nights to celebrate various fandoms at an after-hours experience. I attended during the final weekend and wanted to share my experience and thoughts of this new event.
According to Universal, “Step into the iconic worlds you know and love at Universal Fan Fest Nights—where Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Anime, and Gaming collide in one epic after-hours celebration.” Every event night celebrated every fandom they shared which included Dungeons & Dragons, Star Trek, One Piece, Back to the Future, Wicked, Jujutsu Kaisen, Super Mario, and Wizarding World.
We had the After 2pm Day/Night tickets, which let us into the park starting at 2pm and early access into select event offerings starting at 5:30pm. Normal park hours closed at 6pm, so there was that awkward transition between regular guest time and event guest time. Not everything was open yet starting at 5:30pm, and I’ll talk more about that as we progress through the post.
I’m going to go fandom by fandom for this recap, starting with the one that motivated us to go to the event in the first place.
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons was the main draw for myself and my friend who went with me, as well as many other people. The offerings included specialty food at The First Roll Tavern, photo-ops, merchandise, and an immersive show called Secrets of Waterdeep. The show was honestly the best experience I had at the entire event, with it being excellently themed, funny, creative, and some amazing effects. The actors did a great job, including some fun improv with some of us, and the details in the sets and animatronics were incredible. I wish we went back and did it a second time, but maneuvering Universal Hollywood Lots isn’t the easiest so we never went back down to the Lower Lot after leaving it.
The First Roll Tavern was a little underwhelming visually since it was essentially a themed quick service counter. But what it lacked in theming, it made up for in offerings. There was numerous drinks, mostly alcoholic with some non-alcoholic versions of the cocktails, and savor and sweet foods. We got the Hunter’s Mark (a fancy French dip basically), Traveler’s Rations (charcuterie), and the Goodberry cocktail. It was all quite tasty and a good, quick bite to help kill some of the early access time since neither of these two options took up enough time to fill the hour-and-a-half until official event start.
The merchandise was fun, but did not end up getting anything D&D specific. One of the main items advertised was the Bag of Holding, but I never saw it for sale anywhere. I only saw it once when another guest had it, but never spotted it in any store both in park and in City Walk. There were also t-shirts, pins, hoodies, and journals all D&D themed so a good variety.
Super Mario
The event specific offerings in Super Nintendo World were a Yoshi meet-and-greet and a scavenger hunt also themed to Yoshi that involved collecting egg stickers around the land. We ended up not doing either offering and instead rode the Mario Kart ride as our focus since that ride always has a very long line during normal park hours. While the offerings are cute, they definitely felt more aimed at children.
Since this area didn’t open again until 7pm, there was a long line to get in at event start which meant Yoshi had a full-line for his meet-and-greet immediately which was a deterrent for me since I didn’t want to spend that much event time for just that. The start of the Egg Hunt was also right at the front of the land by the meet-and-greet, so this caused a lot of congestion at the entrance to the area, so for the future they should maybe move the start of the non-meet-and-greet activity towards the back.
Back to the Future
Back to the Future is celebrating it’s 40th anniversary this year, thus making it a big deal to celebrate. And I think Universal did a great job honoring the iconic franchise, especially since they have the unique advantage of having the film-used sets, which they held all of the Back to the Future offerings at. We took the studio tour tram down to the clocktower where there were food carts, carnival games, character interactions, and a projection show on the tower of the moment where Marty goes back to the future. We arrived just as that show started which was perfect timing because there was no posted schedule of when anything in the Hill Valley area was happening. The lack of information and timings for things is my biggest complaint about the event and it was most evident at Back to the Future. There was no time table for when the project was going to happen, when the Prom band was going to play, or when you could meet Doc Brown and Marty. And I personally don’t love the franchise enough to loiter around waiting indefinitely for an experience, so we left not that long after arriving.
Wizarding World
So the wizarding world is at an advantage of having an entire land already existing for it so feeling immersed is easy to achieve. The added offerings for the event included magical creature meet-and-greets, a projection show on Hogwarts castle, and a specialty dining experience at the Three Broomsticks. The latter we did not do as it was a reservation-only, multicourse meal and we wanted to try the D&D food instead.
The creatures were a fun addition that don’t occur during normal park hours. These were popularized in Japan originally, so having them here for the event was a fun addition. We saw a niffler, occamy, and a baby dragon which I believe were all of the ones you could see. It is a fun bit of puppetry and immersion, and my friend in particular loved each experience.
The projection show, titled Hogwarts Always, was very cool to watch. The mapping they use to perfectly utilize the castle as a canvas is impressive, and the added moments of fireworks are a nice enhancement to different moments. There wasn’t much of a story to it, with it mostly focusing on iconic visuals like each Hogwarts house, devil’s snare, the Marauder’s Map, and Quidditch. I most enjoyed how the end of each show had a house winning the house cup, and it changed every showing so each house had their moment. We watched the show twice, mainly because it ran every half-hour and we were still in the area for it so we chose to get a different view so we could see more than the first instance. This show was also one of the few things on a set schedule that you could see in the app, which I wanted more offerings to have.
Wicked
Wicked was not originally advertised as being part of the event. Elphaba and Glinda aren’t on any of the big signs advertising the event nor advertised prior to it online. But I’m glad they added them in, even if only a small offering, since there was a big presence of Wicked fans present (myself included). The offering was simply a meet-and-greet area where it would either be Glinda in her pink, bubble dress, and Elphaba in full witch garb. We had walked past during a Glinda meet-and-greet and if it had been Elphaba I might have gotten in line. But there was no schedule for this shared anywhere, and the meet-and-greet spot wasn’t even listed on the things to do section of the app for the event.
Across from the meet-and-greet was a merch location full of Wicked merch, which I’m pretty sure is open all hours of park operation. There was so much stuff from Spirit Jerseys to Loungefly bags to jewelry and pins and other collectibles. There was character specific items, Emerald City themed items, and Shiz University stuff. I did buy some Wicked merchandise including an Emerald City Spirit Jersey, an Elphaba hat headband, and a logo magnet. Of all the fandoms included at the event, Wicked had the best merchandise offering.
Star Trek, One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, and more!
We did not actively explore each fandom area for a couple reasons. The first was primarily lack of interest and knowledge of the fandom and the second was we decided to drive home right after the event which is two-hours for us so we left the event early to do so. So we didn’t do the Star Trek experience, Jujutsu Kaisen show, or the One Piece meet-and-greets. I did really enjoy seeing all the fans of these fandoms come out in cosplay and get to have these experiences though.
What we ended up doing in lieu of these experiences when we had the time was ride some of the rides. When we were last at Universal Studios, certain attractions had crazily long lines and we missed some because of it, so we prioritized doing those hard-to-ride ones. And would you believe me that those rides were The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash and Despicable Me Minion Mayhem? Well they were, and they had no wait to ride so we of course jumped on. We also rode Jurassic World, once before the event during normal park hours and once in the weird interim of early access. Other attractions were also operating like both Harry Potter rides and the Revenge of the Mummy, but we did try to focus on event-specific offerings over rides.
Allegedly there were some other fun offerings like meetups at the DJ booths for fantasy fans or gamers, cosplay meetups, and trivia. None of this was advertised though, never listed in the app clearly, and we only heard about it from the tram tour guide when leaving the Back to the Future area. All of those details need to be in an accessible location for guests to find so we know we can go do that if we want and not having it already feels like a glaring oversight on Universal’s part.
Overall
Overall, I did enjoy Fan Fest Nights and would attend again, which Universal has confirmed the event with return next year. They have a good foundation for the event and I want them to expand the offerings even further. I would love to see more and new fandoms available, particularly ones that don’t already have a presence in the park. They also really need to make it more clear what all is being offered and when, especially for the occurrences running at various time intervals. If they can improve the communication and plus-up offerings, they have a great event on their hands. It is already good, but it can be great given the right changes and updates.
What fandom would you like to see at an event like this? Tell me about it in the comments!