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Howl-O-Scream 2016

Considering how last years theme reveal was a dissapointment, it wouldn't surprise me that the whole Evil Encore is just a fancy way of showing of repeat houses/icons/scare zones etc.

As for CoS returning for a 5th year (It debuted in 2012), well it's "better" they announced it right off the bat. If they waited till later eyes would've probably rolled out of sockets.

It's totally understandable Unearthed is coming back since it's only two years old, though to also no surprise it's just "Unearthed" and not "Unearthed: Scarlett's Revenge". Take it she didn't leave much of a impact to justify keeping the name on the house.

It'll be interesting to see what houses return and which ones won't, since if we're going by the oldest ones out, Zombie Mortuary is easily the oldest house at the event since it's been there since 2011. However there's a strange catch-22 since I've seen in a lot of reports last year that people loved that house, even more then the newer ones! So it could end up staying due to the popularity.

The next oldest houses are The Basement and Death Water Bayou (Both debuted in 2013, making them one year younger then CoS.), followed by Dead Fall and ZCU that came out two years ago.
All of which will probably be back this year..I'm expecting one new house at most
 
It will continue to return, but was just curios as to of how many years it's been at the park
 
Fiends is one the strangest things I've ever seen, and I LOVE it! I hope they do the fright feast for the preview nights too this year!
 
Looks like it will live up to it's name as "Evil Encore" because Nightshade Toy Factory might be coming back after 4 years, weird that it wasn't posted on Twitter but the official YouTube HOS page. Also the video looks to be low quality so I'm not sure if they just accidentally uploaded it or what


EDIT: May not be accidentally uploaded since they uploaded the one for Deconstruction also. Will be interesting seeing if other old houses come back EDIT 2: Looks like they unlisted the video and it may come back for a future annoucement
 
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Looks like it will live up to it's name as "Evil Encore" because Nightshade Toy Factory might be coming back after 4 years, weird that it wasn't posted on Twitter but the official YouTube HOS page. Also the video looks to be low quality so I'm not sure if they just accidentally uploaded it or what

I'm not too sure about this, especially since the Deconstruction video was marked private. Also, the two videos looked like proof of concept videos for when they were first made. (Especially with the Nightshade video clearly showing the Skyride building which was it's first location before it moved to the Morocco/Narobi building.)
 
I've noticed that HoS has been rather quiet recently, you would think they'd have announced everything already at this point but at the moment the site only lists six houses...but mention there'll be seven. So what is the seventh house going to be, perhaps something related to the (admittedly goofy looking) ventriloquist dummy they've been teasing?

Well...they just recently posted the various upgrades you can purchase and it reveals something right near the bottom.



So Zombie Containment Unit 15: Moving Targets is returning, even though it hasn't been officially announced on the site/twitter. If that's the 7th house, then wow...they really botched things since having the last house announcement be a returning house is rather anti-climatic. But then again, there really hasn't been much hype drummed up for this year. I'm still not sure what this Evil Encore is, especially since so far it doesn't seem to be connected to any house, show, scare zone or horde.
 
So.... Still no official word on what the 7th house is going to be? I really need to know because it is going to determine whether or not I'll be attending. 3 new houses I go, only 2 and I'm passing.
 
So.... Still no official word on what the 7th house is going to be? I really need to know because it is going to determine whether or not I'll be attending. 3 new houses I go, only 2 and I'm passing.
The 7th house which hasn't been announced is Zombie Containment Unit. You can tell because it has the same looking sign in the same location from last year just covered up right now
 
I'm pretty cheap usually and would definitely splurge for one of the tours. They seem like a heck of a deal. I can't imagine not at least paying to the front of line access, assuming park admission is included and that isn't an upgrade price.
 
So while HoS has yet to announce the return of ZCU15 for some mind boggling reason, I decided to do a little digging on this whole "Evil Encore" theme since not much is being said about it. Turns out not much is being said about on Tampa's side since Busch Garden's Williamsburg tells quit a bit more about this theme.

Apparently it revolves around a dollmaker named Mr. Karver (Who looks like a take on Pinocchio's Gepetto), who really brought life into the dolls he made. BGW, talks about the various dolls and their personalities.

Mr. Karver's Workshop | Howl-O-Scream | Busch Gardens Williamsburg

Though even with that info, BGW's HoS looks to have no house or scare zone dedicated to the theme. Which makes me question why bother with info of the theme if you're not really going to use it?

Then there's Seaworld San Antonio's HoS, where they're not only using the Evil Encore theme as well, but they're having a house AND and a scare zone dedicated to the theme. An' the house gives the full background to the theme.

Karver's Kradle | Howl-O-Scream at SeaWorld San Antonio

I think what happened here is the whole Evil Encore theme was created by the San Antonio crew, since they were able to make both a house and scare zone for it. For the other two parks it was dropped on them as a shared theme, so while it'll be used for the website and marketing materials, they're not gonna' use it much inside the event.
 
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