- Apr 7, 2019
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Does anybody know if it’s possible to buy the blinky cup without the alcohol? I won’t be 21 till the end of October and I really want all of the cups!
Pretty sure they’ll serve you whatever in them.Does anybody know if it’s possible to buy the blinky cup without the alcohol? I won’t be 21 till the end of October and I really want all of the cups!
Any idea why this didn't come to Orlando?
Any idea why this didn't come to Orlando?
I’m dipping my toe into this briefly, but I’ve seen a lot of “if you’re not into scary things or jump scares this is the year for you” comments online. While I know this was stated in a constructive and positive way to get new people to the event I wonder for those here if they’ve noticed a drop off in “scary” vs other years. Is it being over stated? Only applicable to ST/Ghost?
I was just telling my friend this the other weekend! Last year was our first year actually attending but we always watched house scarezones videos since HHN 19 and last year we felt it had more of a fun Halloween vibe then we expected. Then this year it was like a perfect 50/50 of old school hhn and new school hhn! Honestly I would love to see them consistently keep up the perfect 50/50 fun for everybody that way and the event can continue to grow!I kind of mentioned this in the Hellbilly Deluxe scarezone thread, but it really feels like there's a tension this year between the old HHN and the new. Or maybe that that tension's been there for a while, but it's kind of coming to a head. And bear in mind I'm not really advocating for either/or! It's just something I've observed that's happening.
Like, old school HHN had a grime and sleaze about it. It was more squarely aimed at 20-somethings who would never go to MNSSHP: It emphasized sexy half-naked dancing of both sexes at Bill and Ted's, and it sloshed booze around left and right via jell-o shot nurses and full bars spread throughout the park, it embraced blaring heavy metal and later offputting dubstep, it had haunts full of dead bodies and squirty gore, it licensed z-grade slasher films full of torture scenes to line its houses. Heck, as recently as last year they had Chucky out making fun of guests via an insult comic.
But as time's gone on it feels like HHN has moved away from that. Again, this isn't a judgement call (I'm sure people will argue for the old or new ways just as fervently) but more just an observation. Increasingly it seems that HHN has aimed at a sort of PG-13 family friendly approach to horror. It's cleaner, with bigger and more accessible IPs and less exploitation-y baggage. It's less "sexy dancers and heavy metal" than "saleable monster iconography and electronica." Less "mosh pit" and more "Halloween party." Jell-o shot nurses got replaced with popcorn nurses, then disappeared altogether. Sexy dancing in Bill & Ted gave way to AOV (which is also amazingly awesome, but again, different). Blood-soaked slogans like "True Fear Comes from Within" and "All Jack'd Up" gave way to clean retro-styled slogans like "Maximum Screamage."
And again, there's pros and cons to this! A more family friendly, accessible event is *not* automatically a bad thing! Getting kids hooked on horror is good, having the event be a big success so they can dump more money into production values is good, casting a wider net so we get food options and specialty beverages and merch is all good! Making the event a big tent event is not automatically bad! But it is a _different_ thing than longtime fans are probably expecting because a big tent means shaving off a lot of the offputting b-horror edges some fans expect. And this year you can feel that divide *really* sharply, with various IP houses (namely Stranger Things, Ghostbusters, and Killer Klowns) getting the primary marketing and merch push and having a very different tone than the grimier bits of the event. You can see it in people complaining that Strange Things or Ghostbusters are too not-scary, while other people insist a certain scene in Depths of Fear goes too far. Hellbilly Deluxe and HOTC start to stick out really awkwardly when other IP holders refuse to be associated with them. There is, in short, a friction between the new style and old style of stuff this year, and it's super apparent.
What I'm interested in, more than anything, is how Universal decides to solve this identity crisis - is HHN going to be the PG-13 Halloween party it's slowly becoming, or are they going to run out of accessible IPs to grab a big tent audience with and retreat to a more exploitation/grindhouse/horror focused patronage over time? Are they embracing a moment of cultural tension where horror has entered the pop culture lexicon (however temporarily) or is this a fundamentally new direction for the event?
Regardless, I don't think it's a "scary/not scary" divide. Both Stranger Things and Ghostbusters as houses have plenty of jumps. The question is really the tone of the house and the content surrounding the jumps - is it enough for a house to be scary by having a Ghostbuster jump out and say a line from a movie, or do you need a dark room coated in gore and blood that has a mosnter come out and scream to make that same jump "scary?"
They probably realized putting Scoops Ahoy in Schwab's (in the middle of a scare zone and far away from the maze itself) would not be ideal.
Yeah. I disagree with him on Yeti, but I think he has a point. Keep in mind, not sure how many of the back houses he saw, we only hit Graveyard Saturday.
It's definitely an event with a split personality when you have the not-that-scary Halloween party houses up front but a zone with strippers and a Dominatrix and a housein the rear. Almost akin to the back room in an 80s video store--maybe that's the vibe they were going for?with a dead dog
Any idea why this didn't come to Orlando?
Never been to USH, is this a co-branded location? Educated shot-in-the-dark, but thinking maybe in Orlando Ben & Jerrys doesn't want to cover up their brand with an IP associated with a top competitor.
Never been to USH, is this a co-branded location? Educated shot-in-the-dark, but thinking maybe in Orlando Ben & Jerrys doesn't want to cover up their brand with an IP associated with a top competitor.
I can jive with a little variety. IIRC, Legacy did say back in March or April that half the event would take a more family friendly direction while the other half would go the opposite. While I've only been once, the three tent houses provided a level of grisliness that was sorely missing last year IMO. None of the original houses felt family friendly or tame.
Hope if they have to increase the house count, it's by just one. I would prefer it to stay the same, of course.
it is pretty hilarious to see the trailer for the new American Horror Story season (called 1984) and see how it would have been so perfect for this year of hhn lol
If I did, it would've been speculative based on the house lineup I had at the time. It wasn't something I was told.Pretty sure he didn’t say anything like that. But I’ll let him speak @Legacy