The night before our Halloween Horror Nights run at Universal Studios Hollywood, we kicked off our SoCal Halloween weekend with Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor in Long Beach. Two very different haunts, back to back, and Dark Harbor turned out to be a fantasticway to start things off.
Getting in without the wait
We bought our tickets and parking in advance, which got us early entry. That decision paid off immediately: we barely waited to get into the event, and the lines at the mazes stayed short all night. If you’re planning a visit, booking ahead is clearly the way to go. Six mazes, one incredible ship.
We ended up doing all six mazes on offer:
- Infirmary — our favorite, hands down
- Lullaby
- Feast: The Final Cut
- Voodoo: The Queen’s Curse
- Breakout Maximum Security
- Big Top Terror Infirmary stood out from the rest because it’s actually built inside the ship itself. Walking through those narrow, dark corridors that are part of the real Queen Mary, not a temporary set , adds a layer of immersion you just can’t fake. It felt genuinely different from anything else we did that weekend.
What really got us was the ambiance outside the mazes.
Live music and performers were scattered along the paths between attractions, keeping the energy up all night. At one point we got chased down by a performer wielding a chainsaw, heart-pounding, and exactly the kind of unscripted chaos that makes Dark Harbor feel alive rather than just a walk-through checklist.
We skipped the rides this time around, but the mazes and the roaming scares were more than enough to fill the night. Before heading out, we made a stop to grab a Dark Harbor t-shirt , a solid souvenir from a genuinely fun night.
