Inside Universal Forums

Welcome to the Inside Universal Forums! Register a free account today to become a member. Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members and unlock our forums features!

  • Signing up for a Premium Membership is a donation to help Inside Universal maintain costs and offers an ad-free experience on the forum. Learn more about it here.

HHN 27: Employee Preview Thread

While I am aware this is EP and things can change, rehearsal, etc, it's hard not to look badly at Blumhouse considering it's been like the one pure negative.
 
I didn't say The Shining has been badly received, just less so than predicted. As I said in the Most Anticipated thread, we ranked the houses into (basically) 4 tiers. We had The Shining in the 2nd tier. I'd say based off of tonight, it's low 2nd tier/high 3rd. But, this is based on a tiny sample size. No big deal.
 
Incredibly low crowds tonight. Taking away the TM + 1 really impacted attendance big time (and of course, Irma).

I was able to do three houses at the end of the night - Hive and Saw. I've heard incredible things about The Fallen and The Shining. I did what I could fit in in a matter of about 25 mins if you're wondering why I did those.

I hit a lot of scares, many of which were ones that probably won't be particularly effective in a conga line, but were great tonight. Anyway, here's some quick hits...

Hive - Facade felt a bit generic, Scares were on-point, great atmosphere/set design

Saw - Got some GREAT scares in here, however it felt short (of course I guess that's a downside to pretty much any house that goes into Shrek)
 
Personally my list goes as follows for my first night.
scarecrow
dead waters
fallen
AHS
shining
jigsaw
blumhouse
ash vs evil dead
Hive
As the event goes on this list may change but based on tonight this is it.
 
Having one "good" thing, automatically makes it better than Orlando's.
I know BoH faced a lot of challenges, but i'm more interested in why Universal had such a hard time working with them to get what they wanted? Supposedly it was going to be Insidious at first. Then it turned into BoH and eventually Purge replaced Ouija.

Any house that goes through those types of issues is really put in a bad spot.
 
General Observations, house-wise this year is looking pretty solid. When there's only one house that's being majorily hailed as a dud (Blumhouse), that's a good sign.

I'm looking forward to later this week/next week when scare zones are more ready to go/set up. Obviously they were hampered by Irma, so they definitely wern't at 100% build-wise. But my quick n' dirty observations of what was there are....

Altars of Horror - I'm curious if there's going to be any stages/podiums for it, since admittedly I can understand why they wouldn't. On one hand it does make the zone look pretty dang bare with only the signs, but on the other...there's actual space to move around because there's no big stages filling it up.

Festival of the Deadliest - I really do hope we start seeing some props, floats, something, anything put into the zone. Since for EP it was as bare as one could get in a zone. EDIT: It's been confirmed sets/set designs were seen back stage, so they'll be coming.

Invasion! - Alien-wise there's a nice range of straight-up goofy/campy and more serious/cool looking aliens. Though I didn't see any pictures/videos of human/military characters. I do hope the zone has those types of characters, but my opinion still stands that this should've been in Hollywood or New York.

Trick r' Treat - After seeing the dissapointing wet fart that was Hollywoods Hell o Ween, it's wonderful seeing pictures of this zone as it's giving me the Halloween vibe I wanted. I see the Princaple, I see Sam, I see the School Bus trick or treaters, I see the Werewolf Princesses who'll probably be mistaken as Vampires throughout the whole event. All in all, I'm a happy camper.
 
Last edited:
Top