New York around Halloween is a gold mine. An hour up, you have Sleepy Hollow, two hours down, you have Six Flags, and about 4 hours away, you have Universal. Where should you go to get your fright on?

Sometimes, you just need to scream. That feeling of your heart pounding, mind racing, sweat drops forming is, in a way, exhilarating. But sometimes you don’t want to feel that way because you’re worried about an exam. Sometimes, you just want a fun scare.

There are many options to get scared in New York, whether that be in an escape room in Queens, a haunted house up north, or even just going outside and seeing a rat scurrying in front of your feet. But there have always been two places in particular I’ve wanted to try, and this year I finally did.

Universal Halloween Horror Nights and Six Flags Fright Fest.

But what’s more worth your bang for your buck? I attended these two events about a month apart, and, with pricing for Halloween, the costs differed slightly. 

Breaking down Universal’s cost first:

• $93 round-trip flight
• $20 transportation to the airport (LGA and Newark)
• $160 ticket (included Early Entry)
• $60 round-trip Uber to the park

For Six Flags:

• $40 round-trip bus/train
• $98 ticket 
• $60 round-trip Uber to the park

Excluding food, Universal’s upfront is definitely more at about $333 versus Six Flags’s $198 cost. Factoring in food and merch also increases the price, but, for both of these excursions, these were day trips, meaning you don’t have to buy a hotel.

Also, by “Day Trip,” I mean literally a day trip. I flew to Orlando at 6 am and I flew back home the next day at 7 am, sleeping in the airport overnight as horror nights ended at 2 am anyways. 

In terms of cost versus benefit, Universal’s experience was more seamless. There’s a lot of information online (shout out to reddit), so, with Early Entry, we did all but one house (out of the 10) and three out of the four rides. Six Flags was a bit harder to navigate. A lot of the experience was trying (and failing) to use the app and just giving up and waiting in whatever line was closest. We did five out of the nine houses and five rides total. Universal’s experience was more of a “how can I sprint to the next attraction the fastest?” and Six Flags’ experience was more “how can I make my feet stop hurting from standing so much?” 

In terms of value, I truly believe I made both experiences worth it. I rode as many rides as I could; I did get scared (though I try not to admit that), and the experiences were fun! I would highly suggest going to both earlier in the season (and not on a Saturday). Six Flags on the Saturday before Halloween was definitely an experience and very chaotic, especially due to the little information online on how to plan out your day.

Personally, I would do both again. You may have that midterm next Wednesday, but will you ever get to say you did a day trip to Universal and survived? I know that your paper is due Monday, but a quick trip to New Jersey will help clear your mind. And, even after both day trips, I had enough energy to go to club meetings the next day and finish up (most of) my homework. You’ll procrastinate studying anyway, so why not do it somewhere scary?

Horror via Flickr