Halloween Horror Nights '19 General Discussion

[Horror Lover]

Yeah, from my experience all it takes is one IP that the GP really wanna see to get them to buy a ticket, and then they'll go through whatever else is there. This year Stranger Things and Us will likely be those two ips. I dont agree that having a few cult properties every year will kill the event, or people saying something isn't scary, you can have the scariest maze to date and there will still be people who go through and say they weren't scared, years like 2015 were popular enough to warrant extensions, even with there only being really Insidious, Walking Dead, and maybe Halloween to draw in the GP, and even the GP were tired of walking dead by then.

Again, funny how history works.. I remember in 2013, we complained that Murdy outright refused to do certain more cult following IPs Orlando was doing (Cabin, AWIL, Resident Evil) because he wanted to reserve maze slots for the more "GP relevant"/"time-sensitive" IPs like Insidious and Black Sabbath and the 2013 Evil Dead.. Now that he's getting more experimental with the lineup and doing lesser known IPs like Creepshow or a not-so-traditional horror IP like Ghostbusters.. and the consensus is that there aren't enough mainstream recognizable IPs..

 

[rageofthegods]

Again, funny how history works.. I remember in 2013, we complained that Murdy outright refused to do certain more cult following IPs Orlando was doing (Cabin, AWIL, Resident Evil) because he wanted to reserve maze slots for the more "GP relevant"/"time-sensitive" IPs like Insidious and Black Sabbath and the 2013 Evil Dead.. Now that he's getting more experimental with the lineup and doing lesser known IPs like Creepshow or a not-so-traditional horror IP like Ghostbusters.. and the consensus is that there aren't enough mainstream recognizable IPs..

You just can't win, can you? Lol.

You can bet on it, Jurassic World 3 is coming for 2021. HHN starts 3 months after its release, perfectly timed for the Bluray release, so you can bet that they'll be promoting it with a maze. If the rumors that the plot will involve dinosaur/human hybrids pans out, then they also get around the pernicious character problem that's been preventing the movie from coming.

 

[Spookies n' Stuff]

Again, funny how history works.. I remember in 2013, we complained that Murdy outright refused to do certain more cult following IPs Orlando was doing (Cabin, AWIL, Resident Evil) because he wanted to reserve maze slots for the more "GP relevant"/"time-sensitive" IPs like Insidious and Black Sabbath and the 2013 Evil Dead.. Now that he's getting more experimental with the lineup and doing lesser known IPs like Creepshow or a not-so-traditional horror IP like Ghostbusters.. and the consensus is that there aren't enough mainstream recognizable IPs..

Not to mention I imagine a lot of the GP will be drawn by the maze count alone, since its currently the highest in southern california, I expect a lot of billboards with Stranger Things, Ghostbusters, and Us if its true, and probably a lot saying "most mazes ever" somewhere on it. I think if the past two years have shown anything, its that you don't really need a lot of IPs for advertising to get the GP in the gates, I mean last year most posters and billboards had just Stranger Things, with maybe mention of Poltergeist and Halloween 4.

 

[DTH]

I can't wait for all these mazes to be filled with black walls and we'll see how much y'all will be championing this year :exclap: Letting a few cult IPs excite you into thinking this will return HHN to its glory days... HA! HAHAHAHA!

 

[HHNManics]

I can't wait for all these mazes to be filled with black walls and we'll see how much y'all will be championing this year :exclap: Letting a few cult IPs excite you into thinking this will return HHN to its glory days... HA! HAHAHAHA!

I love how this year's lineup seems like more effort was put it into than the last 2 years. And how it doesn't have something stupid like the First Purge, Blumhouse 1/2, Insidious, etc. Just a solid lineup.

I also ironically love how they changed the black walls at the end of Holidayz to actual painted walls and how most of the wood inside the mazes go pretty high. Surely must be a sign of a lot of black walls right?

 

[HORRORable Commenter]

Attendance won’t be a problem this year. Last 5 years we’ve had consecutive sold out nights, and stranger things is giant. Cult mazes will be busy no matter what, since the event will be busy every night and people just want to get into any maze they can. GP doesn’t educate themselves before going (the amount of “The girl is this new Blumhouse movie they’re making” comments I heard in line were staggering), so Creepshow will just be some weird maze with a skeleton guy.

 

[rageofthegods]

I can't wait for all these mazes to be filled with black walls and we'll see how much y'all will be championing this year :exclap: Letting a few cult IPs excite you into thinking this will return HHN to its glory days... HA! HAHAHAHA!

Bro, why are you so excited to see other people disappointed?

 

[hhnlover]

If this is the facade for a maze in July, i bet we'll have something exciting in September.

 

[Carl]

Attendance won’t be a problem this year. Last 5 years we’ve had consecutive sold out nights, and stranger things is giant. Cult mazes will be busy no matter what, since the event will be busy every night and people just want to get into any maze they can. GP doesn’t educate themselves before going (the amount of “The girl is this new Blumhouse movie they’re making” comments I heard in line were staggering), so Creepshow will just be some weird maze with a skeleton guy.

You are very correct. I think the event will be awesome and I don’t care about knowing what the cult classic IPs ARE.. I will experience them in the mazes for whatever the experience gives me and that’s all I expect or need. I’m totally cool with obscure IPs. As long as the experiences are good they could put anything there, pretty much. Just my opinion, and this will only be my 3rd year in a row going to this event. I went to HMH last year and it was excellent and I wish Universal would incorporate some of their structure for the experiences. They were surprisingly interactive.

 

[Brian G.]

Bro, why are you so excited to see other people disappointed?

Because being “right” is a helluva drug.

 

[Guygas]

Just to add my 2 cents on this whole debate going on, honestly i dont think it matters that we have some obscure ips that the GP wont know this year, if you want to get down to it stranger things is a big enough IP that it'll draw in just about anyone who even remotely likes it (which is a whole lot of people) it doesnt matter if Ghostbusters is a scary movie or not, GP hears the title and gets excited because its an IP they recognize the only people who are complaining are a very vocal minority, i sat asnd scrolled through the replies on twitter to the announcement, and there really wasnt that many people who were disappointed i think people saw a few bad comments and thought the worst.

Also to the point of having black walls this year. I think this year more than ever has less excuses for black walls, with the cutting of the terror tram (which apparently costs a crap ton of money in the hhn budget) being cut i think we'll have a lot more resources to distribute to every single maze. I cant imagine them bumping the maze count up to 10 and not being able to compensate for them. Also i feel like Murdy is going to try harder this year to have less black walls, i see him making jokes about it on twitter and what not, he knows its a huge problem.

 

[Freak]

Yeah, the past couple of years haven’t been great. I’ve complained to no end about how black walls have really held the quality back....but I’m certain this year, they’re going to correct that.

These points have been made previously, but walls are being built higher (Normally the black walls aren’t very tall), Chris has said before they announced Holidayz that they were “working to make a better event”, they’re having a “fan preview night” on a Thursday, THEY FINALLY DITCHED THE TRAM. If the last part isn’t enough to convince you that they’re at least trying to improve, then I don’t know what will. Just wait.

 

[DTH]

Are we so quick to forget that everyone was saying the same thing last year?
"They're really focusing on quality."
"We have crappy IPs so they could save money on sets."
"The First Purge is a good move so they can put all their money into Poltergeist."
"My cousin's grand dad met a guy who works at Universal who sold a churro to guy that told me there's not so many black walls this year."
"If you look at the construction, you can tell there's a lot of scenic."
"Murdy really wants to improve things."
"Harry Potter brought in enough money so we could do more things."
"They're bringing in someone from Orlando/some other haunt to make things better."
"They're adding alcohol to make up the costs for how amazing the sets will be."
And so on and so forth.

I'll be THRILLED if every maze, regardless of the IP, is amazing in scares and quality. I will be thoroughly happy if HHN has it's best year ever in attendance. But I won't let it blind me or forget the past. I read EVERY single comment on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Twitter for all of the announcements and posts. Does it make up 99.9% of the GP?! Of course not and it's silly to talk in hyperbole or make these reaching statements that make no sense just so you can make assumptions about where someone is coming from. However, I can personally tell you that this year, FROM WHAT I CAN PERSONALLY GATHER BASED UPON THE GIVEN DATA, has had lukewarm reactions, in comparison to previous years, to everything announced SO FAR. And the rumors in those threads about the upcoming properties has garnered the same lukewarm reactions, from veterans to newcomers. Without a shadow of a doubt, HHN will sell PLENTY of tickets this year and the next ten years. There are thousands of loyal fans. But there are ebbs and flows. Look at KNOTTS between 06-12. They got stuck in a rut. They no longer had sell out nights. There were empty weekends. They raised maze count. Lowered it. Tried new things. Created new experiences. They're finally getting their fan base back because of the CHANCES they took. Can HHN do the same? Sure. But HHN is historically famous for always doing the SAME-EXACT-THING every year. And people know that. To some that is a comfort, to others it's a nuisance. Keep pushing those buttons and eventually there will be a disinterest. All I'm saying is if there's a third year in a row of "meh" (and I am NOT saying that it will FOR SURE be MEH), then things will need to drastically change next year. And AGAIN, not saying for sure that I don't know if it's even drastically changing this year already. For all I know, they completely got rid of boo holes and every scare is on a dang bungee. But if you have 10 mazes all doing the same thing, running out of ideas, reusing the same scares and props and sets -- it's going to get stale. Now watch someone read this whole thing and only reply about how the GP doesn't know nor care about re-used props and sets...

10 mazes MAY or not MAY NOT be the savior to what this event needs. A fan night and some other ticket opportunities that are 10 years later than when we were saying they should happen MAY or MAY NOT show they truly do care. These cult properties MAY or MAY NOT be what has to be done to instill some creativity at the event. Getting rid of the Terror Tram MAY or MAY NOT boost up the budget to be allocated elsewhere to get rid of black walls. I really don't know. I'm not being positive nor negative. I'm just talking. I'm just theorizing based on previous incidences. I'm just indicating based on proven patterns and evidence. My hypotheses are determined by past facts that COULD or COULD NOT lead to future possibilities. I'm just turning the wheels. I'm just SPECULATING.

 

[chris.g]

How could you possibly be speculating when you've literally made a post praising its demise and riding the hype train on our dismay, that's just outright annoying dude. As someone who doesn't even want Ghostbusters, Us or Pandora's Box at the event, at least I'm open to it because I wanna see whether HHN can do well with original properties and soft horror. Ultimately, while I know my opinion will not matter to their financial gain, my experiences from this year will ultimately affect my outcome, but yet youre over here worrying about ours.

 

[HORRORable Commenter]

Are we so quick to forget that everyone was saying the same thing last year?
"They're really focusing on quality."
"We have crappy IPs so they could save money on sets."
"The First Purge is a good move so they can put all their money into Poltergeist."
"My cousin's grand dad met a guy who works at Universal who sold a churro to guy that told me there's not so many black walls this year."
"If you look at the construction, you can tell there's a lot of scenic."
"Murdy really wants to improve things."
"Harry Potter brought in enough money so we could do more things."
"They're bringing in someone from Orlando/some other haunt to make things better."
"They're adding alcohol to make up the costs for how amazing the sets will be."
And so on and so forth.

I'll be THRILLED if every maze, regardless of the IP, is amazing in scares and quality. I will be thoroughly happy if HHN has it's best year ever in attendance. But I won't let it blind me or forget the past. I read EVERY single comment on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Twitter for all of the announcements and posts. Does it make up 99.9% of the GP?! Of course not and it's silly to talk in hyperbole or make these reaching statements that make no sense just so you can make assumptions about where someone is coming from. However, I can personally tell you that this year, FROM WHAT I CAN PERSONALLY GATHER BASED UPON THE GIVEN DATA, has had lukewarm reactions, in comparison to previous years, to everything announced SO FAR. And the rumors in those threads about the upcoming properties has garnered the same lukewarm reactions, from veterans to newcomers. Without a shadow of a doubt, HHN will sell PLENTY of tickets this year and the next ten years. There are thousands of loyal fans. But there are ebbs and flows. Look at KNOTTS between 06-12. They got stuck in a rut. They no longer had sell out nights. There were empty weekends. They raised maze count. Lowered it. Tried new things. Created new experiences. They're finally getting their fan base back because of the CHANCES they took. Can HHN do the same? Sure. But HHN is historically famous for always doing the SAME-EXACT-THING every year. And people know that. To some that is a comfort, to others it's a nuisance. Keep pushing those buttons and eventually there will be a disinterest. All I'm saying is if there's a third year in a row of "meh" (and I am NOT saying that it will FOR SURE be MEH), then things will need to drastically change next year. And AGAIN, not saying for sure that I don't know if it's even drastically changing this year already. For all I know, they completely got rid of boo holes and every scare is on a dang bungee. But if you have 10 mazes all doing the same thing, running out of ideas, reusing the same scares and props and sets -- it's going to get stale. Now watch someone read this whole thing and only reply about how the GP doesn't know nor care about re-used props and sets...

10 mazes MAY or not MAY NOT be the savior to what this event needs. A fan night and some other ticket opportunities that are 10 years later than when we were saying they should happen MAY or MAY NOT show they truly do care. These cult properties MAY or MAY NOT be what has to be done to instill some creativity at the event. Getting rid of the Terror Tram MAY or MAY NOT boost up the budget to be allocated elsewhere to get rid of black walls. I really don't know. I'm not being positive nor negative. I'm just talking. I'm just theorizing based on previous incidences. I'm just indicating based on proven patterns and evidence. My hypotheses are determined by past facts that COULD or COULD NOT lead to future possibilities. I'm just turning the wheels. I'm just SPECULATING.

Horror nights is obviously taking chances this year. 2 originals, soft horror, longer running season. 2017 was the worst year of the event imo, but they are noticeably getting better. 2018 wasn’t anything too special, but had its highlights (Universal monsters, poltergeist), and those highlights really look like the feel they want to capture with the whole event.

 

[highdefrex]

And AGAIN, not saying for sure that I don't know if it's even drastically changing this year already. For all I know, they completely got rid of boo holes and every scare is on a dang bungee. But if you have 10 mazes all doing the same thing, running out of ideas, reusing the same scares and props and sets -- it's going to get stale. Now watch someone read this whole thing and only reply about how the GP doesn't know nor care about re-used props and sets...

10 mazes MAY or not MAY NOT be the savior to what this event needs. A fan night and some other ticket opportunities that are 10 years later than when we were saying they should happen MAY or MAY NOT show they truly do care. These cult properties MAY or MAY NOT be what has to be done to instill some creativity at the event. Getting rid of the Terror Tram MAY or MAY NOT boost up the budget to be allocated elsewhere to get rid of black walls. I really don't know. I'm not being positive nor negative. I'm just talking. I'm just theorizing based on previous incidences. I'm just indicating based on proven patterns and evidence. My hypotheses are determined by past facts that COULD or COULD NOT lead to future possibilities. I'm just turning the wheels. I'm just SPECULATING.

I know I don't really have a horse in this race in terms of the over 150 pages of comments in this thread. I've lurked over the years and only recently joined in order to comment once in a while. But regardless - and I'm not trying to pick a fight here - I'm just gonna say: We get it.

You've made your personal point, as you have the right to. But clogging up page after page portending doom about this year's event despite even admitting it "may or may not" be a winner (or loser) isn't contributing anything at this point. I know you're basing your statements on what you've, quote, "personally gathered based on the given data," but these forums, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, whatever, are still only a fraction of the actual HHN-going audience.

If we're using personal data as fact, then this year is gonna be a success, because everyone I've talked to about it so far who have been going for years - all of whom don't read these forums or follow HHN news on social media - are excited when I've relayed to them what's coming.

My point is: The event is literally right around the corner. We're weeks away. We'll know soon if things have changed for the better or worse; whether the event is a success or failure. So why not just wait and see how it goes, and then this sort of "has HHN become a GP-hated disaster!?"-esque conversation can be had once we've all experienced it with our own eyes and have actual data about their response to the event. I know for me - and certainly even lurkers who read this thread (and others) - I'd rather see speculation about what's coming to the event or new developments when I check it and it's grown by pages, not negative speculation over its success/failure based on something completely intangible at the moment. So please, I'm begging you, tone down the negativity and wait til you actually experience this year's event before going back and forth with everyone over this.

 

[hhnlover]

To change the topic, what finale scene do you guys want for each maze?

 

[Guygas]

To change the topic, what finale scene do you guys want for each maze?

Honestly the finales could be anything as long as we ACTUALLY get finales this year instead of just walking out of a black hallway.

 

[DTH]

I think y'all take me too seriously haha
Check the tone and the laughing emojis. I know it's the internet, but is anyone ever that serious?
And hey, when did I ever "praise" it's demise? Why would I be on an HHN forum and WANT that?
Why would I sit around and legitimately hope, like a sociopath, that you'll all be sad?
COME ON NOW! Y'all are talking like I haven't been around for years or on other forums with y'all.
I am a DIE HARD fan.
I have loved Murdy while everyone sat around blasting him for stuff out of his control. If it were up to me, he'd run the event for forever.
I DON'T EVEN MIND THE BLACK WALLS *gasp* In fact, I KINDA LIKE THEM SOMETIMES.
Full disclosure, I loved the Terror Tram even at it's worst! I'm pretty sad to see it go!
And I'm super open to all the properties. I'm hella down to see some Stay Puft. That will be WILD.
Can there be better properties? Sure. But there is such a thing as complexity.
I can be hopeful about how it'll be executed, pessimistic about what it may be, while optimistic to try something new.
We live in that grey area with everything.
It's human nature, man.
Do I have to say EVERY side of what I'm feeling just so it comes back around to positivity? Because I really shouldn't have to to please y'all.
I know it's hard to capture that in writing, it may even LOOK like it's coming off condescending, but if you must, you should ask questions before making assumptions. Half of the replies to my stuff make direct references to crap I DID NOT EVEN SAY.
A lot of inferences without solid weight and jumping to strange conclusions are made on here.
Read things in their entirety and look between the lines before replying, that's all I'm saying.
People threw around their valid opinions about this event 100% legitimately failing/sucking for years, but I say one thing this year leaning towards "hm, MAYBE" and the reaction is "OMG YOU'RE ANNOYING?"
I posted maybe 5-8 comments in here this entire month and suddenly I'm "CLOGGING UP PAGE AFTER PAGE?"
I know my opinions aren't the same as everyone else's right now, but WOW.
I'd rather stir this pot instead of everyone getting comfortable talking about stuff that hasn't been announced. Has ANYONE suggested any new properties lately?! Will anyone make any WILD guesses?
Even if it's been "leaked," go against the grain and say ANYTHING different! A property could pull out and be replaced last second, and you may end up with the answer! Get called stupid for suggesting Jaws is a possibility because of some upcoming anniversary, WHY NOT?
I know nobody wants their precious cult IPs to have not even a sliver of negativity thrown their way, but JEEZ.

 

[Guygas]

so what maze do we thinks getting announced this week? taking all bets