This vacation has been phenomenal so far. First year of doing it alone (big ups to the "NEVER GO ALONE" tagline lmaoooo), but it's been an overwhelmingly positive crowd for the majority of my stay here.
4 nights in this past week, crowds were only as rough as I remember them being last year on Friday. Wednesday, I managed to get all 10 houses done without Express or Scream Early by closing, but it was tight. Last night, I did a run of all 10 plus Nightmare Fuel and a few walk-on house reruns in plenty of time.
Brief thoughts, and I don't want to rank at the moment because almost every house feels so much fun this year:
Monsters - Another banger in the series. I don't think it tops last year (the setting made that house), but there's enough to love to put it over Bride and maybe tied with the first in this series of houses. The smells in the theatre! Invisible Man section feels a little short, but I get there's not a ton one can do with that character. I wish they had included some scene of him claiming a victim or something. Jekyll & Hyde got a lot more to do than he did.
Exorcist: Believer - One of my favorites this year, and the cast alone put it there for me. As a whole, it's a fairly standard house that could probably have worked just as well in a tent scale-wise. But the cast playing the girls go HARD in here. Possibly the most aggressive cast I've seen since I started attending in 2018. The two at each opposing doorway in the round pathway room are almost crawling on the floor at times to get in your space. I love it.
Stranger Things S4 - I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to. I think the footage from media night really highlights how limiting screens can be, but being there in person helps to mitigate that feeling once you're immersed in the environment. Still wish there was even one scene of Hopper & friends vs. the Demo in prison. But everything included is still fun.
Bloodmoon - Beautiful to walk through. Fun cast. The courtyard scene, timed right, has that one excellent moment of the actress in a future scare just pacing out and glaring at you from across the set in a super unsettling way.
Dueling Dragons - Really fun, not all that intense until the Skelly Bois show up. Those dudes are pretty good at getting in your face. I did get smacked with the one fire-wizard-on-a-platform's cape sleeve on one walkthrough, did not expect that and I laughed.
Yeti - Not as strong as 2019, but this is still a really entertaining cast with some remarkable set pieces (The collapsed cabin feels immense). The little things in this house are it's strongest point though, baby yeti, the RV window, toilet snake, etc...
Oddfellow's - I adore how much fun this cast is having every time I run through. I was fortunate enough to get a solo walkthrough before closing last night and every clown was waving back & giving it their all. Bullerina is a top-tier HHN character, more people need to talk about Bullerina. That is all.
Darkest Deal - Favorite. Took my expectations and exceeded them. Super timing-dependent, but when you hit the flow, it's unrelenting in the best way. I tend to forget the non-Collector goat-man has an earlier scare before the ending run and then he gets right up in my grill. Shout-out to all the Collectors too, what a brilliant costume that treads the line between goofy caricature and intimidating very well.
Chucky - I set my expectations low and was still disappointed. I will say that I did 2 walkthroughs last night and they were much better than Wednesday's. But there's just...so much space that seems to have gone unused here, which is incredibly rare for HHN Orlando houses. I feel this was a problem with Blumhouse last year as well. I look at this house location and I see a lot of potential, but it hasn't been realized quite yet. I hope they don't give up on it or on Chucky as a property for a house, because both could have been better than what was done this year. Putting an interactive actor in the interlude area was a good step-up from last year though.
Last of Us - Not my favorite IP they've had, and the house doesn't really do much new that I can see in terms of scare techniques. However, the second Bloater is often super aggro because it has so much more space to play in, probably the best role in the house.
Zones weren't great design-wise, but the actors are doing their best with what they have. I appreciate seeing a couple old favorites back in Shipyard, the vamps are all really energetic and into their characters for '69, and Zodiac feels like a better photo-op zone than some of the actual photo-op zones have been in recent years.
My way-too-early hopes for next year are that at least one of the Tribute Store stories are fleshed out into original houses or that we finally get Creepshow out of IP limbo. Either way, I want more pulp comic horror as a theme at next year's HHN.
