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Halloween Horror Nights 28 General Discussion

Ok I'm giving it a shot...

The Pickle Rick clue is said to be really clever. With Legacy stating that some of these R&M clues are a lot simpler than we think, it got me thinking about a theme around people being turned into non-human objects. Also, Meteor... sounds a lot like Meat Eater.

As for the 80s tie in... well I'm stumped on that end.

*double post* but this seems to have gone unnoticed. What if Meteor is about something crashing on Earth and turning life forms into something else? Seems like an 80’s movie plot and sort of matches up with Pickle Rick
 
Eh. I'm not sure LL took away from the event. I'd put her in the unnecessary column.

Ooh! Interesting. How so?

The entire concept of Lady Luck was lazy and cheap and had nothing to do with the event and no house. It took over the merch and in my opinion was the death knell to Sting Alley as a scarezone and I think kind of created the photo op scarezone.

Its a shame because looking back at the map this year was absolutely one of my favorite years. 5 of my favorite houses were this year, the first time they used the projection mapping (I think?), the first and in my opinion still best use of the podium scarezone with 7, and I honestly thought death drums was pretty cool and fun.

Fear - Introducing him messed with the entire story line of the icons and his concept, no house, and scarezone was just bad. He was like Bone (not an Icon :eek:O: ) but Bone was much better done
 
@Legacy in your opinion do you think this year has more potential than 27 did? That year had a lot going against it but ended up being really good
That's a loaded question. Every year has "unlimited" potential. Universal doesn't go in thinking, "eh... we'll let this year get away with just being 'okay' instead of 'good.'" There are innumerable variables that can impact that though. A boo-hole on the wrong side of a corridor can kill a scare. A mediocre scareactor can ruin a distraction (or an overzealous scareactor can over-distract from a scare). A frazzled stage manager/coordinator/show director can give a house or street's cast ineffective or bad direction for what they're suppose to do. The wrong color gel in a light can hide details from guests. A poor house write-up in the guide map can confuse guests before they even show up. Queue music that's too loud can annoy guests before they even enter a house. Hell, a guest LOOKING THE WRONG DIRECTION can ruin a scare (lord knows how many scares I wasted because someone turned their head at the wrong time...). Universal can only control so much. A good amount of the event's success is just based on feel and shear luck.

(And by the way... I have witnessed all of those things...)

Here's what I can say about this year. There are legitimate spoilers in here.

1) If you like "set-pieces" (big scenes/props in houses), this will be a good year for you. This is beyond facades. A few of the houses have full-size vehicles within the houses themselves (I've only shared one). This includes parts of an airplane.
2) If you like "scenes" in the houses (yes, that require resets), this will likely be a frustrating year for you. Fallen last year, evidently, was predominately those sorts of scares-scenes that require a reset. That's likely why a lot of people complained about the lack of scares in the house. The scares were there... just easily missed. I've been told they're expanding that method this year. I anticipate a lot more missed scares because of it.
3) If you like Universal attempting new ideas, this should be a good year (provided the ideas are actually executed). The three houses I'm most interested in are specifically because of those ideas. Two of those ideas indirectly tie to house concepts I've developed over the years. (Here are your freebies: Ragtag relates to a Hunger Games house I treated. Surprise relates to a "Deja Vu" houses I've wanted to see attempted anywhere). The last one, Meteor, is pitched as only having a single light source (a moon) for the entire maze (plus the exit signs, but what can you do?).

My biggest beef, creatively, with HHN has been a sense of stagnation. They tend to be a few years behind what local/regional haunts are doing. Tilted floors, crouching sections, black-out mazes, massive puppets, are decades old by the time Universal attempts them (and then they tout them as super innovative, but whatevs). I want new locales and different ideas. They've started trying, at least. It remains to be seen if luck is on their side with the execution.

The entire concept of Lady Luck was lazy and cheap and had nothing to do with the event and no house. It took over the merch and in my opinion was the death knell to Sting Alley as a scarezone and I think kind of created the photo op scarezone.

Its a shame because looking back at the map this year was absolutely one of my favorite years. 5 of my favorite houses were this year, the first time they used the projection mapping (I think?), the first and in my opinion still best use of the podium scarezone with 7, and I honestly thought death drums was pretty cool and fun.

Fear - Introducing him messed with the entire story line of the icons and his concept, no house, and scarezone was just bad. He was like Bone (not an Icon :eek:O: ) but Bone was much better done
Few points -

- Icons don't need houses, just like the event doesn't need icons. That's fans craving a formula.

- Luck didn't create the photo-op scarezone... Guests did. It was an organic evolution that Universal had to adapt to. Face-Off was the first "actual" photo-op zone (which was conceptually based off 7).

- Sting Alley isn't dead.

- Fear, at least, existed for a purpose. Fans can get pissy that he retconned their beloved icons, but it was interesting idea that worked well if you allowed it to. If you're going to bring all the icons together in that structure, there needs to be a focus and Fear provided it. Bone just existed because "Festival."
 
- Icons don't need houses, just like the event doesn't need icons. That's fans craving a formula.

- Luck didn't create the photo-op scarezone... Guests did. It was an organic evolution that Universal had to adapt to. Face-Off was the first "actual" photo-op zone (which was conceptually based off 7).

- Sting Alley isn't dead.

- Fear, at least, existed for a purpose. Fans can get pissy that he retconned their beloved icons, but it was interesting idea that worked well if you allowed it to. If you're going to bring all the icons together in that structure, there needs to be a focus and Fear provided it. Bone just existed because "Festival."

I get that Icons don't need houses, but if they are going to have limited interaction and visibility to guests, it helps to flesh out their characters and bring more out. In my opinion, both LL and Fear fit that bill where you had to go out of your way to see them and once you did there wasn't a whole lot there.

There wasn't really all that much to do with LL except for take a picture. Wasn't there even a Photo Pass type person there for part of the event?

You definitely know more than me, and that is really exciting. But for the past years, it has been. Sting Alley and the area of the park by the lagoon that is now being bulldozed were my two favorite places for scares from the old days.

Agreed, to bring all the Icons together there needed to be something to do that and on paper Fear sounded great. It seemed like it didn't gel together the way that it was supposed to which was a shame and because of that Fear as an Icon felt very underwhelming.
 
There wasn't really all that much to do with LL except for take a picture. Wasn't there even a Photo Pass type person there for part of the event?

They added the formal photo op a week or two in, when it became obvious they needed to do something. It wasn't even in the actual ScareZone. I'm with Legacy on this one, this was the staff playing catch-up with real world culture. I still think she was a weak and unnecessary icon, but the new selfie culture would've disrupted any zone that year.
 
A "Deja Vu" house......so it's basically Happy Death Day?

Yup; which means Surprise = Happy Death Day. My guess is the connection to the Surprise bday party scene where Tree gets killed

Mirror scares repeated Rooms to get a sense of “Ive been here before” with a different scare location. Idk could be cool

They tried it HW for two rooms and it was sort of cool. I think Orlando could knock this house out of the park though since the adaption over there, while good, suffered the black wall treatment in parts
 
Awesome.

I was more making the point that sometimes fans's opinions differ from the GP

There is this strange contingent of people who seem to like to be scared more by what is already familiar to them than the unknown. Living in California, I see this often as people praise HHNH a lot, even when it falls short. I think the strength of last year's Knott's Scary Farm might be the first step towards bringing down this strange idea that IP=scarier.

I have a really good example of this from last year when during an interview with Jon Cooke (the former director of Knott's Scary Farm) someone asked how they compare themselves to HHNH. Cooke basically said, and I'm paraphrasing, "We don't. They have the money for IPs, so we work with what we have and try to make the experience as creative and scary as possible"

To me, scary is scary whether IP or Original, though I am more often entertained by not knowing what is coming than by seeing what scenes from a movie I have already seen they decided to adapt.
 
There is this strange contingent of people who seem to like to be scared more by what is already familiar to them than the unknown. Living in California, I see this often as people praise HHNH a lot, even when it falls short. I think the strength of last year's Knott's Scary Farm might be the first step towards bringing down this strange idea that IP=scarier.

I have a really good example of this from last year when during an interview with Jon Cooke (the former director of Knott's Scary Farm) someone asked how they compare themselves to HHNH. Cooke basically said, and I'm paraphrasing, "We don't. They have the money for IPs, so we work with what we have and try to make the experience as creative and scary as possible"

To me, scary is scary whether IP or Original, though I am more often entertained by not knowing what is coming than by seeing what scenes from a movie I have already seen they decided to adapt.
I think that is a great point...Scarecrow worked for me because it was the first HHN house to actually make me feel uncomfortable while walking through...Perhaps the allure of HHN is no longer scare, but walking through your favorite horror IP

IDK, but I do hope the team continues to push houses like Scarecrow through
 
I think that is a great point...Scarecrow worked for me because it was the first HHN house to actually make me feel uncomfortable while walking through...Perhaps the allure of HHN is no longer scare, but walking through your favorite horror IP

IDK, but I do hope the team continues to push houses like Scarecrow through

I hope they do too.

Two examples that things might be swinging back the other way.

As I mentioned before, Knott's Scary Farm had a great year last year and people noticed. I am relatively plugged into the horror/theme park community out here and last year I heard multiple, non plugged in people saying that they should have just skipped HHNH. To the point where people would recommend KSF over HHNH to those trying to decide. It was a step in the right direction to be sure as a lot of the GP just go for IP out here. Granted, I think some of this is also down to this idea that, much like having a Disneyland AP, attending HHNH is sort of a status symbol (in fact, regular guests are allowed to record and take pictures in the houses at HHNH and it makes their lines move so slowly).

The second example is HHNO this year. The last time we had this many Original concepts was 2011 (clocking in at 7 Originals) and part of the reason we are getting so many is because of how popular/well reviewed the Originals were last year. Once again, this is a step in the right direction and I truly hope they knock the Originals out of the park this year so that we can keep a nice 5/5 split.

I will say this, based upon the current rumor line up I am probably more interested in the Original concepts this year than the IPs, but a lot of that is once again my being more scared by the unknown than the known.
 
I hope they do too.

Two examples that things might be swinging back the other way.

As I mentioned before, Knott's Scary Farm had a great year last year and people noticed. I am relatively plugged into the horror/theme park community out here and last year I heard multiple, non plugged in people saying that they should have just skipped HHNH. To the point where people would recommend KSF over HHNH to those trying to decide. It was a step in the right direction to be sure as a lot of the GP just go for IP out here. Granted, I think some of this is also down to this idea that, much like having a Disneyland AP, attending HHNH is sort of a status symbol (in fact, regular guests are allowed to record and take pictures in the houses at HHNH and it makes their lines move so slowly).

The second example is HHNO this year. The last time we had this many Original concepts was 2011 (clocking in at 7 Originals) and part of the reason we are getting so many is because of how popular/well reviewed the Originals were last year. Once again, this is a step in the right direction and I truly hope they knock the Originals out of the park this year so that we can keep a nice 5/5 split.

I will say this, based upon the current rumor line up I am probably more interested in the Original concepts this year than the IPs, but a lot of that is once again my being more scared by the unknown than the known.
Interestingly enough, Howl-O-Scream was a scarier event than HHN for many years (the last two have been lackluster)...

I'm in no way knocking HHN, but I feel it has shifted gears a bit...This year seems like it is shifting back
 
Interestingly enough, Howl-O-Scream was a scarier event than HHN for many years (the last two have been lackluster)...

I'm in no way knocking HHN, but I feel it has shifted gears a bit...This year seems like it is shifting back

Funny you should say that, I do agree that HOS can be scarier, but that is because they have different scare tactics. One time during an UTH Tour at HHN we mentioned having gone to HOS that year and how interesting we found some of their scare tactics and the guide said, word for word, "We wish we could get away with doing some of the things they can do there." Obviously Universal is more corporate so I am sure legal ties their hands more.

That being said, last year's HOS was particularly bad so we decided to take a year off this year (the first time I have taken a break since 2009), so read that as you will.

Okay, actual speculation time, is Tuesday still the next announcement? Also, are we expecting one or both IP scare zones to be announced at that time?
 
Funny you should say that, I do agree that HOS can be scarier, but that is because they have different scare tactics. One time during an UTH Tour at HHN we mentioned having gone to HOS that year and how interesting we found some of their scare tactics and the guide said, word for word, "We wish we could get away with doing some of the things they can do there." Obviously Universal is more corporate so I am sure legal ties their hands more.

That being said, last year's HOS was particularly bad so we decided to take a year off this year (the first time I have taken a break since 2009), so read that as you will.

Okay, actual speculation time, is Tuesday still the next announcement? Also, are we expecting one or both IP scare zones to be announced at that time?
Can confirm, I have done HOS since the first year...My all time favorite haunted house ever came out of HOS

I really enjoy HHN though
 
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