Halloween Horror Nights 29 General Discussion

Wednesday night (10/23) was odd. After a reasonable Monday, I thought with TMs blocked it would be a moderate crowd at best. Instead it was the busiest of the 13 nights I've seen this year. Even at 7:30 entry mob--there were no lines--stretched back beyond ticket booths. A hard crowd to read, too. Ton of little kids for a school night (in 10 minutes at Duff, passed by three strollers and an infant harness), many more older people than I'm used to seeing at the event as well. "Older" as in elegible for AARP. The only short lines were for booze.

Much of the cast of ZombieLand has stepped it up. I wonder if the online criticism got back to them. Springfield Chainsaw Team felt a bit more aggressive, as well, finally finding their groove and got a few classic guest freak-outs.

On the flip side, Vanity Ball was worse than ever. No one attempted to scare me on two walk-throughs, most just stood around, a couple chatted with friends.

 

No, it was as we were leaving Wolfman into Hunchback. She came though the doorway and everything. It sucked.

 

Monsters ops are apparently ... inconsistent ... I’ve heard about another particularly pushy one. Over all of my late-night runs where it’s almost pulsed, I’ve had quite a few experiences of the ops person coming into the room from the other direction to make sure that no guests were hanging around, I guess. Even when I’ve done solo runs, I’ve been ushered through aggressively. I just wanted to watch the Wolfman harness scare...

 

Just keep walking slow. It’s annoying when they do that, but what can they really do but tell you to “hurry”.

 

My tip is to slow down where you can still see the party ahead of you, but enough space where the actors have time to reset.

 

It sort of makes me anxious about making them mad. I know they’re the ones being kind of mean, but I’m still worried. I’m also not looking to piss off Monsters ops in particular; I want to have a good reputation as much as I keep repeating that house.

My UTH guide literally told us to fake-limp through the house if ops are like that. They can’t say anything about a purported injury. I can’t say how right or wrong that is, but given that even fellow team members are telling you to ignore ops, it must be a problem to more than just guests.

 

I have a few things to say but first wanted to address this:

It’s interesting you posted this because I saw that Yeti swinging wildly back under its perch last night from about three people back and thought he was probably going to smash some people in the face. When something like this happens, you absolutely need to make a point of it to Ops at house exit. I had an incident in Fallen where a scareactor left his boo hole and straight up chest bumped me to the point that I tripped in his/her costume fabric and fell into the wall on the opposite side. I unloaded on Ops at the end, but there’s a tactful way to do it:
1) express repeatedly that you trust it was an accident
2) express repeatedly that you don’t want anyone to get fired
3) politely point out that contact the other direction would result in you getting trespassed
4) most importantly, politely suggest that someone needs to coach the scareactor because you don’t want it to happen to someone else and cause worse consequences.

Anyways, last night was crowded but the house staffing was the best I’ve seen since opening weekend. I thought Monday was a joke - did four houses that night and all were awful relative to other runs through those houses.

It also felt like the aggression has hit a new level. Zombieland seems like it’s finally awoken from whatever slumber it’s been in for basically the entire event. Concur about Vanity Ball - it will probably end up winning scare zone of the year because it’s this year’s flavor of Vamp, but they all seem to have checked out after a solid first month.

Special kudos is in order for the Depths of Fear crew (pun not intended but I’ll roll with it now). This was my most anticipated house going into the event and it completely fell flat when it debuted. But talk about making lemonade out of lemons - whoever decided to scrap the fish and turn it into what it is now has completely redeemed what was a broken house. I would put my run last night on par with the best of Scarecrow or Tomb of the Ancients. Full disclosure: it took me like a month to see the dog so I probably missed the most egregious effects there (it was fogged out last night), but the energy this team has brought to the house is incredible. I doubt it will beat Stranger Things or Ghostbusters for house of the year, but it would get my vote.

 

Hellbilly definitely deserves it

 

Agreed. Biggest surprise of the year for me personally.

 

Considering Ghostbusters is Aiello's sendoff, I doubt they pick anything else. Hellbilly absolutely deserves SotY.

 

Sorry, I must have missed it, what has changed in Depths of Fear? I went in Mid-September. No more fish costumes?

 

Fish costumes still exist but are significantly cut back. The house went from having 8 Fish + Stilt to 4 fish, no stilt due to extreme costume issues.

 

Ah. Thanks for the update. I thought they looked pretty cool. The first one got me pretty good on our first run. The sadness of not being a local is you get one shot at this event!

 

HHN really is an event you have to see unfold live over the 2 months it's around. Effects, performances, and the like change so much in that time that it's very hard to get an accurate read of the event in total unless you go frequently enough.

 

I must say, both Rob Zombie properties are my favorites this year. Hellbilly is a fun zone and easily my favorite of the year, and one of my favorites over the past couple of years. And Ho1C is just fantastic.

Out of the original houses, Depths of Fear and Graveyard Games are tied for me.

 

Rob Zombie and Hellbilly Deluxe deserve a house or to come back as a zone in another area of the park with bigger props and more costumes.
even if a Hellbilly Deluxe house wont be as fun as the street was, i think it still could be amazing as a house that incorporates more stuff from his videos and more stuff from the artwork of the CD booklet,

 

Same. I didn’t even like that album until experiencing it through the zone. I swear, I listened to it a dozen times when I got back home.