Bride is up there as one of my favorite houses of this year, even with having done it last year. The cast is great.
Halloween Horror Nights 30 (UO): Reviews, Photos, & Videos
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- Feb 12, 2014
- 2
- 8
It's been a couple of weeks since my trip, but my rankings still stand.
Houses:
1-6 range from All Timers to Great:
1. Case Files Unearthed: Legendary Truth
WOW! Best Shrek house ever. It's similar to Slaughter Sinema (one of my all timers) but is unique enough to stand apart from it and other houses I've been through. Although the story is hard to decipher at first, it's fantastic. The Kitty Kat Club facade is one of my favorite rooms I've seen.
2. Puppet Theatre: Captive Audience
Underrated. THE Spiritual sequel to Dollhouse of the Damned. The tents have proven themselves to be among the strongest house locations in the park and I think that this year cements that. The sets and layout of this house are so inspired and create one of the best atmospheres of the year. The "theatre" scene is one of the best of this tent's history (maybe better than the La Llorona bridge?) and I wish I could have seen this without the vinyl, those masks are beautiful.
3. Wicked Growth: Realm of the Pumpkin
Not sure what else to say about this that hasn't already been said. Perfect. I had a bad run initially but each one after that improved significantly. I love the little callbacks to HHN history in this house (Meet'z Meats, Nathaniel Crowe, Slaughter Cinema props in the witches' hut) and I can see why this is becoming an all time favorite for some. It's up there for me too. The Pumpkin Lord needs to be the icon for HHN 31.
4. HHN Icons: Captured
This is the house that suffers the most from the vinyl, but it's still amazing. For a fan who has only been going since 22 and missed most of the icons, getting to see them in their own environments was such a treat. The Usher is the MVP of this house, but the Bloody Mary scene is the standout even with its limitations. So much fun.
5. The Haunting of Hill House
This was THE scariest house of the year, easily. It was hard to be on edge in most of the houses this year, except for this one. Some of the scenes (The Bent Neck Lady Hallway, The Cellar) were genuinely scary and disturbing. I was impressed with how much of this they were able to cover in the house, given how the timelines of the show seemed tricky to present in a house. I think they really succeeded! Best Netflix house yet.
6. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Biggest surprise of the year and strangely, the most fun house of HHN 30. The cast had amazing energy during every single run of this house that I had and it was fun to see Chop Top and Nubbins! The hallway before the Sawyer foyer was terrifying.
7-9 are GOOD.
7. Scarey: Horror in the Heartland
Another treat for the history nerds. I loved getting to see DEAD END again even if it wasn't at its peak. The layout/flow of this house is strange and I understand that that's why people aren't in love with it, but it didn't bother me too much. The second half of the house is where it falls apart unfortunately.
8. The Bride of Frankenstein Lives
This is one if the most impressive storytelling feats that they have ever pulled off at Horror Nights. Every scene moves the story forward and the cast is a major part of that, specifically the opening Bride; she is amazing. I think that my gripes with this house come with the VERY repetitive design of the castle (the last 3 scenes before the finale are forgettable) and the lack of scares. It's a good house, but due to its nature it was hit or miss for me.
9. Revenge of the Tooth Fairy
I really wanted to like this house but every run that I had through this was just okay. I love the idea for it and the Tooth Fairies look and were awesome, but as with Bride I feel like the set design in some places felt a bit underwhelming. The Facade is gorgeous. I don't understand the last scene, it felt very small.
10 is...
10. Beetlejuice
Ughhhhhh. The biggest disappointment I've had at Horror Nights. Beetlejuice is one of my favorite movies and I though that the success of Ghostbusters would carry into this house. It sort of did? In like 3 rooms? But for the rest of the house I was just annoyed with the possibilities of what they could have done with the scenes. I feel like having the entire Dante's facade was unneeded (as great as it looks), and we needed to see more of the Maitland's house before and after the Deetz. We saw a tiny bit of it in the transition scene between Dantes and the Dinner scene, but there should have been more. I did have a good final run of this house and I wills ay that the cast is having a blast and is doing a great job!
Scarezones:
1. Lights Camera Hacktion
2. Gorewood Forest
3. Crypt TV
4. Seek and Destroy
5. 30 Years 30 Fears
I really loved the event this year. Even though it's not at 100%, I was just so happy to be back.
Recency Bias aside, this is my event ranking:
1. 30 (can't help it at the moment)
2. 23
3. 28
4. 29
5. 25
6. 27
7. 22
8. 24
Houses:
1-6 range from All Timers to Great:
1. Case Files Unearthed: Legendary Truth
WOW! Best Shrek house ever. It's similar to Slaughter Sinema (one of my all timers) but is unique enough to stand apart from it and other houses I've been through. Although the story is hard to decipher at first, it's fantastic. The Kitty Kat Club facade is one of my favorite rooms I've seen.
2. Puppet Theatre: Captive Audience
Underrated. THE Spiritual sequel to Dollhouse of the Damned. The tents have proven themselves to be among the strongest house locations in the park and I think that this year cements that. The sets and layout of this house are so inspired and create one of the best atmospheres of the year. The "theatre" scene is one of the best of this tent's history (maybe better than the La Llorona bridge?) and I wish I could have seen this without the vinyl, those masks are beautiful.
3. Wicked Growth: Realm of the Pumpkin
Not sure what else to say about this that hasn't already been said. Perfect. I had a bad run initially but each one after that improved significantly. I love the little callbacks to HHN history in this house (Meet'z Meats, Nathaniel Crowe, Slaughter Cinema props in the witches' hut) and I can see why this is becoming an all time favorite for some. It's up there for me too. The Pumpkin Lord needs to be the icon for HHN 31.
4. HHN Icons: Captured
This is the house that suffers the most from the vinyl, but it's still amazing. For a fan who has only been going since 22 and missed most of the icons, getting to see them in their own environments was such a treat. The Usher is the MVP of this house, but the Bloody Mary scene is the standout even with its limitations. So much fun.
5. The Haunting of Hill House
This was THE scariest house of the year, easily. It was hard to be on edge in most of the houses this year, except for this one. Some of the scenes (The Bent Neck Lady Hallway, The Cellar) were genuinely scary and disturbing. I was impressed with how much of this they were able to cover in the house, given how the timelines of the show seemed tricky to present in a house. I think they really succeeded! Best Netflix house yet.
6. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Biggest surprise of the year and strangely, the most fun house of HHN 30. The cast had amazing energy during every single run of this house that I had and it was fun to see Chop Top and Nubbins! The hallway before the Sawyer foyer was terrifying.
7-9 are GOOD.
7. Scarey: Horror in the Heartland
Another treat for the history nerds. I loved getting to see DEAD END again even if it wasn't at its peak. The layout/flow of this house is strange and I understand that that's why people aren't in love with it, but it didn't bother me too much. The second half of the house is where it falls apart unfortunately.
8. The Bride of Frankenstein Lives
This is one if the most impressive storytelling feats that they have ever pulled off at Horror Nights. Every scene moves the story forward and the cast is a major part of that, specifically the opening Bride; she is amazing. I think that my gripes with this house come with the VERY repetitive design of the castle (the last 3 scenes before the finale are forgettable) and the lack of scares. It's a good house, but due to its nature it was hit or miss for me.
9. Revenge of the Tooth Fairy
I really wanted to like this house but every run that I had through this was just okay. I love the idea for it and the Tooth Fairies look and were awesome, but as with Bride I feel like the set design in some places felt a bit underwhelming. The Facade is gorgeous. I don't understand the last scene, it felt very small.
10 is...
10. Beetlejuice
Ughhhhhh. The biggest disappointment I've had at Horror Nights. Beetlejuice is one of my favorite movies and I though that the success of Ghostbusters would carry into this house. It sort of did? In like 3 rooms? But for the rest of the house I was just annoyed with the possibilities of what they could have done with the scenes. I feel like having the entire Dante's facade was unneeded (as great as it looks), and we needed to see more of the Maitland's house before and after the Deetz. We saw a tiny bit of it in the transition scene between Dantes and the Dinner scene, but there should have been more. I did have a good final run of this house and I wills ay that the cast is having a blast and is doing a great job!
Scarezones:
1. Lights Camera Hacktion
2. Gorewood Forest
3. Crypt TV
4. Seek and Destroy
5. 30 Years 30 Fears
I really loved the event this year. Even though it's not at 100%, I was just so happy to be back.
Recency Bias aside, this is my event ranking:
1. 30 (can't help it at the moment)
2. 23
3. 28
4. 29
5. 25
6. 27
7. 22
8. 24
Last edited:
- Sep 9, 2019
- 716
- 2,443
Last night was some of the best run throughs a I've had yet this year. Everything was clicking in the houses (except BJ) and the scarezones were a good time at Crypt and Hackathon.
My quick reviews and rankings:
House Rankings:
1. Wicked Growth
2. Hill House
3. Icons
4. Case Files
5. Scarey
6. Beetlejuice
7. Puppet Theater
8. Brides
9. TCM
10. Tooth Fairy
Scarezones, only Eddie and Gorewood get any recognition.
Couple of notes:
-Beetlejuice is low on everyone's rankings, but in all honesty it is this year's "fun house." They tend to have a comedy house each year and BJ is just that, go in having the expectation to laugh and nostalgia and you're good. Both of my run throughs that tunnel was off and I feel like those early hallways are entirely too empty and in dire need of SAs.
-Wicked Growth is phenomenal and easily a top 10 for me. On a funny note I was on the Behind the Screams tour yesterday with 2 SAs from WG, and they told me that Saturday night alone 14 people kicked out due to trying to steal Lil Boo. He's becoming his own celebrity, and would not be surprised to see him become a new HHN Bear or the Pomeranian picture, a fun easter egg to find.
-Case Files easily has one of the most intricate stories ever, and if you have a chance to do the 3 house tour, do it, you get A LOT of information on the story.
Overall it is a solid year that I feel like the intensity is definitely dialed down quite a bit, but we have 2 absolutely great houses in WG and Hill and lot of solids with the rest, none truly are weak and Tooth and Brides are only lower on my list just due to the amount of run throughs I had last year in them during Lite.
House Rankings:
1. Wicked Growth
2. Hill House
3. Icons
4. Case Files
5. Scarey
6. Beetlejuice
7. Puppet Theater
8. Brides
9. TCM
10. Tooth Fairy
Scarezones, only Eddie and Gorewood get any recognition.
Couple of notes:
-Beetlejuice is low on everyone's rankings, but in all honesty it is this year's "fun house." They tend to have a comedy house each year and BJ is just that, go in having the expectation to laugh and nostalgia and you're good. Both of my run throughs that tunnel was off and I feel like those early hallways are entirely too empty and in dire need of SAs.
-Wicked Growth is phenomenal and easily a top 10 for me. On a funny note I was on the Behind the Screams tour yesterday with 2 SAs from WG, and they told me that Saturday night alone 14 people kicked out due to trying to steal Lil Boo. He's becoming his own celebrity, and would not be surprised to see him become a new HHN Bear or the Pomeranian picture, a fun easter egg to find.
-Case Files easily has one of the most intricate stories ever, and if you have a chance to do the 3 house tour, do it, you get A LOT of information on the story.
Overall it is a solid year that I feel like the intensity is definitely dialed down quite a bit, but we have 2 absolutely great houses in WG and Hill and lot of solids with the rest, none truly are weak and Tooth and Brides are only lower on my list just due to the amount of run throughs I had last year in them during Lite.
- Sep 9, 2019
- 716
- 2,443
Updated Rankings based on this past weekend:
1: Wicked Growth: Easily best designed house and fun to go through each time.
2: Hill House: Best scares IMO of this year
3: Icons: Last run had the Director on the throne and I liked the little hand gesture he makes with the smoke next to the throne. Reminded me of old school WWE Kane lol
4: Case Files: This was lower in my first ranking, but my last 2-3 runs were great. They got the timing down for some good scares for first timers
5: Brides: There was one scare that got me good that I don't remember from last year, where a vampire on a swing comes towards you in a portal like effect. I wasn't expecting it and it got me good lol. Plus Reznor music.
6: Scarey: Some fun rooms, but nothing overall stands out IMO. I'm not huge on the Carey lore so that plays a factor.
7: Puppets: Personally I have yet to have a really good run in this house, but I love the look of it. Might go up in the rankings based on my next trip.
8. TCM: Chainsaws go brrr
9: Tooth Fairy: It's fine. Might just be overkill from this year and last for me.
10. Beetlejuice: Some effects weren't working. It's fun if you love the film, but I feel like this is a skip when the wait times are consistently high for this house.
1: Hackathon: Good blend of scare actors and props. Also I saw a girl literally fall out of her shoes from a scare. I only laugh because she was okay, just embarrassed lol
2. Crypt TV: A lot of people are down on this one, but it's fun for people watching. The bird-like creature gets some people good. Congestion is a problem.
3: Seek & Destroy: The human victims add to the zone, but overall kinda bleh. Everyone looks the same.
4: Gorewood: More like Borewood
5: 30 Years: Get your photo taken or something.
Skipped out on both shows. Don't really feel like either needed a repeated viewing yet.
1: Wicked Growth: Easily best designed house and fun to go through each time.
2: Hill House: Best scares IMO of this year
3: Icons: Last run had the Director on the throne and I liked the little hand gesture he makes with the smoke next to the throne. Reminded me of old school WWE Kane lol
4: Case Files: This was lower in my first ranking, but my last 2-3 runs were great. They got the timing down for some good scares for first timers
5: Brides: There was one scare that got me good that I don't remember from last year, where a vampire on a swing comes towards you in a portal like effect. I wasn't expecting it and it got me good lol. Plus Reznor music.
6: Scarey: Some fun rooms, but nothing overall stands out IMO. I'm not huge on the Carey lore so that plays a factor.
7: Puppets: Personally I have yet to have a really good run in this house, but I love the look of it. Might go up in the rankings based on my next trip.
8. TCM: Chainsaws go brrr
9: Tooth Fairy: It's fine. Might just be overkill from this year and last for me.
10. Beetlejuice: Some effects weren't working. It's fun if you love the film, but I feel like this is a skip when the wait times are consistently high for this house.
1: Hackathon: Good blend of scare actors and props. Also I saw a girl literally fall out of her shoes from a scare. I only laugh because she was okay, just embarrassed lol
2. Crypt TV: A lot of people are down on this one, but it's fun for people watching. The bird-like creature gets some people good. Congestion is a problem.
3: Seek & Destroy: The human victims add to the zone, but overall kinda bleh. Everyone looks the same.
4: Gorewood: More like Borewood
5: 30 Years: Get your photo taken or something.
Skipped out on both shows. Don't really feel like either needed a repeated viewing yet.
Here’s my never-ending review after my trip…I try to be vague with most spoilers, but there are a couple of things I couldn’t avoid. Going to break it in half as it's too long for the boards. 
This is going to be a rambling mess as I was sleep deprived when I typed it up on the flight home in Word and am copying it here. Not sure how the formatting will come through. Ran out of steam for the Zones and Shows so might update them later. The ranking is by overall enjoyment of the house on a scale of 1-10. Then I provided the same ranking in terms of scares, how much plexi/shower curtains harmed the house (the lower the number, the better), and then how much I enjoyed seeing it on the 6-house tour with a little tour nugget.
First off, the 1000lbs gorilla in the room is of course the pandemic so for anybody wondering how much mask usage there is in the park I’d say about 5% of attendees were wearing masks while walking around the streets, maybe 20 - 30% while in queues, and I can’t give an accurate number for in the houses, but when in line from what we could see and people coming out of houses at the end I’d say it was probably pretty close to 40% put them on for the house. Seemed like each “group” of people would be consistent. My group would all put on our masks for the houses, while next group wouldn’t, then the next group would. Seemed like it was slightly more in favor of no masks for the houses. The shocking part was the Nightmare Fuel show where we were packed in like sardines and it seemed like almost nobody was wearing masks.
We were never asked/told/suggested to wear them. We wore ours a lot (2 guys almost 100% of the time in the parks other than eating and drinking) and we were never mocked by anybody which was nice. If you’re worried about your personal safety and want to wear one 100% of the time when you aren’t eating, you won’t feel any sort of peer pressure to take it off…and, unfortunately, same goes for those whose who choose to never wear one, they won’t feel any pressure to put one on either.
Lastly, each house has something hidden in it…often multiple times in each house. Not going to say what, but they’re very small and one of the ones that was pointed out to us in Wicked Growth is IMPOSSIBLE to see during the event. A fraction the size of a raven or honey badger thing in years past.
EDIT to add that our UTH tour guide revealed the codenames from the past year to us. Don't want to give them all away but they were all food/kitchen related and even if Legacy gave them to us, there is NO WAY anybody would have figured them out. They're so tangential - Tooth Fairy was TOASTER because they both began with T-O.
1. The Wicked Growth 10/10
By far the best house of the year and one of the best houses ever. Amazing scenes, great scares, and just over all amazing.
Scares: 10
Plexi: 0 Didn’t really notice it at all in this house and didn’t harm it at all
UTH: 10 Only two rooms you weren’t allowed to take pictures, bridge scene (Which makes sense since they don’t want to give away trade secrets) and the final room. Fun fact, the pumpkin vines throughout the house grow in thickness as you walk through illustrating the growth of the Pumpkin King.
2. HHN Icons Captured 9.5/10
Amazing house, everything I hoped for in an Icons mashup and then some. The final throne room works better than I thought it would on paper. Super fun house that would have easily been #1 any other year.
Scares: 7 There were some good scares, but it was a lot of “look what happened to this poor victim” and then a musical cue to make you look at the icon standing nearby.
Plexi: 3 There were some scares, like a scareactor shining a light at you, from the side that could easily be missed because they had to remain behind the plastic curtain.
UTH: 10 This house was awesome with an amazing façade. Only room you weren’t allowed to take pics was the “mirror hallway” certainly due to some sensitive rights issues. The victims in each room are wearing the event T-Shirt from the year(s) of that section’s Icon. The “winner” changes every shift and, “Jack is our star…so he probably appears a larger percent of the time, but everybody else is pretty equal.” We saw Caretaker, Jack, Chance, and Lady Luck(!) on the throne in our runs through.
3. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 9/10
This one blew me away. I really didn’t expect it to be as good as it was. I expected a Halloween type house where Leatherface was in every single room, but it wasn’t that at all. It takes the first movie, assumes that Nubbins and Chop Top are in the house so they’re fair game in the timeline, and creates something that just feels right and not like a mash up.
Scares: 9 there are some amazing scares, but one of my 4 runs through the house was a bit of a dud. Not because of a cast change or anything either, but I just missed everything.
Plexi: 1 VERY little impact.
UTH: 8 The Tour of this house was great, but there were a TON of rooms you weren’t allowed pictures of which was disappointing. The reasons being for this house seemed to be they didn’t want you to take pictures of anything too violet or from TCM2. That was my take at least. The entire house is built slightly raised off the floor and done with creaky/flexing wood to give you feeling of walking across old floorboards. During the tour, it was spot on as they were definitely making a bunch of noise, but during the event there’s no way anybody would notice that.
4. Case Files Unearthed 9/10
This shocked me as I wasn’t expecting much out of it. I don’t care for the legendary truth mythology and figured it would just be a spooky ghost house, but boy was I wrong. I loved the Crime Noir feel of the house and some of the creatures were awesome. The final room, while I’m not 100% sure what was going on, was like something out of the corny 80’s horror movies you’d discover on HBO growing up.
Scares: 5 While I loved this house, the actual scares were lacking. More of monster battle house than a scary house.
Plexi: 3 The plexi was extremely noticeable for a couple scares and creatures, but I don’t think impacted them all that much.
UTH: N/A I was initially THRILLED that this house wasn’t on the 6 house tour (I think HHN365 said it was on their 6-house one) but after going through it a few times, kinda wish we did get to do it and find out some of the stuff in the house.
5. The Bride of Frankenstein Lives 9/10
This house was awesome! The façade was amazing and the bride actress in that room knocked it out of the park. Lots of BIG rooms with stuff you’re watching happen, and not a lot of the traditional “walk down a hallway with boo holes randomly slamming down” scares. Unfortunately, the bungie scare was only fully working one time through. The two times someone was just standing up there and once it was empty and didn’t seem like a cast change.
Edit to add there were a couple instances of you walk into a room, see a scareactor in front of you, then hear a AAT sound going on behind you. It was really odd and a couple people in my group picked up on that.
Scares: 7 Not nearly as scary as I expected based on what people said last year, there needed to be more of the brides scaring you.
Plexi: 4 While the “Big” rooms didn’t have any, where they did have it you really noticed it and it affected the house quite a bit.
UTH: N/A Bummed I didn’t get to see this one. Almost booked a 3 house tour later in our trip just to see it.
To be continued in part two....
This is going to be a rambling mess as I was sleep deprived when I typed it up on the flight home in Word and am copying it here. Not sure how the formatting will come through. Ran out of steam for the Zones and Shows so might update them later. The ranking is by overall enjoyment of the house on a scale of 1-10. Then I provided the same ranking in terms of scares, how much plexi/shower curtains harmed the house (the lower the number, the better), and then how much I enjoyed seeing it on the 6-house tour with a little tour nugget.First off, the 1000lbs gorilla in the room is of course the pandemic so for anybody wondering how much mask usage there is in the park I’d say about 5% of attendees were wearing masks while walking around the streets, maybe 20 - 30% while in queues, and I can’t give an accurate number for in the houses, but when in line from what we could see and people coming out of houses at the end I’d say it was probably pretty close to 40% put them on for the house. Seemed like each “group” of people would be consistent. My group would all put on our masks for the houses, while next group wouldn’t, then the next group would. Seemed like it was slightly more in favor of no masks for the houses. The shocking part was the Nightmare Fuel show where we were packed in like sardines and it seemed like almost nobody was wearing masks.
We were never asked/told/suggested to wear them. We wore ours a lot (2 guys almost 100% of the time in the parks other than eating and drinking) and we were never mocked by anybody which was nice. If you’re worried about your personal safety and want to wear one 100% of the time when you aren’t eating, you won’t feel any sort of peer pressure to take it off…and, unfortunately, same goes for those whose who choose to never wear one, they won’t feel any pressure to put one on either.
Lastly, each house has something hidden in it…often multiple times in each house. Not going to say what, but they’re very small and one of the ones that was pointed out to us in Wicked Growth is IMPOSSIBLE to see during the event. A fraction the size of a raven or honey badger thing in years past.
EDIT to add that our UTH tour guide revealed the codenames from the past year to us. Don't want to give them all away but they were all food/kitchen related and even if Legacy gave them to us, there is NO WAY anybody would have figured them out. They're so tangential - Tooth Fairy was TOASTER because they both began with T-O.
1. The Wicked Growth 10/10
By far the best house of the year and one of the best houses ever. Amazing scenes, great scares, and just over all amazing.
Scares: 10
Plexi: 0 Didn’t really notice it at all in this house and didn’t harm it at all
UTH: 10 Only two rooms you weren’t allowed to take pictures, bridge scene (Which makes sense since they don’t want to give away trade secrets) and the final room. Fun fact, the pumpkin vines throughout the house grow in thickness as you walk through illustrating the growth of the Pumpkin King.
2. HHN Icons Captured 9.5/10
Amazing house, everything I hoped for in an Icons mashup and then some. The final throne room works better than I thought it would on paper. Super fun house that would have easily been #1 any other year.
Scares: 7 There were some good scares, but it was a lot of “look what happened to this poor victim” and then a musical cue to make you look at the icon standing nearby.
Plexi: 3 There were some scares, like a scareactor shining a light at you, from the side that could easily be missed because they had to remain behind the plastic curtain.
UTH: 10 This house was awesome with an amazing façade. Only room you weren’t allowed to take pics was the “mirror hallway” certainly due to some sensitive rights issues. The victims in each room are wearing the event T-Shirt from the year(s) of that section’s Icon. The “winner” changes every shift and, “Jack is our star…so he probably appears a larger percent of the time, but everybody else is pretty equal.” We saw Caretaker, Jack, Chance, and Lady Luck(!) on the throne in our runs through.
3. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 9/10
This one blew me away. I really didn’t expect it to be as good as it was. I expected a Halloween type house where Leatherface was in every single room, but it wasn’t that at all. It takes the first movie, assumes that Nubbins and Chop Top are in the house so they’re fair game in the timeline, and creates something that just feels right and not like a mash up.
Scares: 9 there are some amazing scares, but one of my 4 runs through the house was a bit of a dud. Not because of a cast change or anything either, but I just missed everything.
Plexi: 1 VERY little impact.
UTH: 8 The Tour of this house was great, but there were a TON of rooms you weren’t allowed pictures of which was disappointing. The reasons being for this house seemed to be they didn’t want you to take pictures of anything too violet or from TCM2. That was my take at least. The entire house is built slightly raised off the floor and done with creaky/flexing wood to give you feeling of walking across old floorboards. During the tour, it was spot on as they were definitely making a bunch of noise, but during the event there’s no way anybody would notice that.
4. Case Files Unearthed 9/10
This shocked me as I wasn’t expecting much out of it. I don’t care for the legendary truth mythology and figured it would just be a spooky ghost house, but boy was I wrong. I loved the Crime Noir feel of the house and some of the creatures were awesome. The final room, while I’m not 100% sure what was going on, was like something out of the corny 80’s horror movies you’d discover on HBO growing up.
Scares: 5 While I loved this house, the actual scares were lacking. More of monster battle house than a scary house.
Plexi: 3 The plexi was extremely noticeable for a couple scares and creatures, but I don’t think impacted them all that much.
UTH: N/A I was initially THRILLED that this house wasn’t on the 6 house tour (I think HHN365 said it was on their 6-house one) but after going through it a few times, kinda wish we did get to do it and find out some of the stuff in the house.
5. The Bride of Frankenstein Lives 9/10
This house was awesome! The façade was amazing and the bride actress in that room knocked it out of the park. Lots of BIG rooms with stuff you’re watching happen, and not a lot of the traditional “walk down a hallway with boo holes randomly slamming down” scares. Unfortunately, the bungie scare was only fully working one time through. The two times someone was just standing up there and once it was empty and didn’t seem like a cast change.
Edit to add there were a couple instances of you walk into a room, see a scareactor in front of you, then hear a AAT sound going on behind you. It was really odd and a couple people in my group picked up on that.
Scares: 7 Not nearly as scary as I expected based on what people said last year, there needed to be more of the brides scaring you.
Plexi: 4 While the “Big” rooms didn’t have any, where they did have it you really noticed it and it affected the house quite a bit.
UTH: N/A Bummed I didn’t get to see this one. Almost booked a 3 house tour later in our trip just to see it.
To be continued in part two....
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After the part 1 houses, there’s a bit of a falling off point for the rest. The next 3 are virtually tied in my book but each is a completely different house, and the ranking order could pretty much changed on a nightly basis for me.
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6. Puppet Theatre 7/10
I had no real interest in this house, but it was a lot of fun! The façade was absolutely stunning. One bummer about having express is your line doesn’t pass in front of the façade so wasn’t able to get a good/head on view of it lit up at night.
Scares: 5 The scares were a mixed bag. A lot of “look what happened to this poor person before you got here” stuff as well as some humorous shenanigans by the scareactors before they jumped to the side and did a proper scare.
Plexi: 3 There was a lot of it, but shockingly didn’t seem to affect the house much. There weren’t very many of the “closet door scares” that happen as you walk by and see something in your peripheral vision, or hear a sound cue to make you look. So while there’s a lot of it present, it doesn’t impact the scares all that much.
UTH: 8 This was pretty fun on the tour, there were a couple rooms that you couldn’t take pictures and they seemed to be odd choices. One was the externally built hallway before you entered the tent (maaaaybe concerned about the movie poster owners?) and the marionette hallway (they mentioned them being bought from Pakistan or Prauge or something, and maybe concerned about the owners being pissed they were used in a gory house?) After you go through the main stage room (seen all over the peacock video) each of the following rooms has that red curtain in it, somewhere, to orient you where you are in relation to the stage. Like the room with the piano and the hole in the ceiling, if you look up through the hole (in the dark) you can (allegedly) see the curtain as you’re in the orchestra pit. Stuff like that, I NEVER notice…maybe some people do.
7. Revenge of the Tooth Fairy 7/10
I was REALLY looking forward to this house and it was a bit of a let down. I LOVED the Popup Book Façade and the house was incredibly violent. For some reason, it just didn’t work for me.
Scares: 5 The drill made me cringe
Plexi: 9 This house, more than any other, was killed by the plexi in my book. There were some big rooms that didn’t have any which was great, but soooo many of the other scares are the ones where the scareactors would normally step/reach/lunge through the doorway and they were unable to do it.
UTH: N/A Not on our tour
8. Haunting of Hill House 7/10
This was at the bottom of my hype list from the beginning. I couldn’t get into the show (tried to watch it a few times and got bored), not a fan of ghost stories, etc. Then I saw the breathtaking façade and got a little bit excited. Then heard a rumor that there were 100+ ghosts in the show and many are hidden in the house (not true…our UTH guide didn’t point out a single hidden ghost) and it started to creep up my hype list. But the house just wasn’t that great. Visually, it was really nice, but the scares just weren’t there for me. The whisper hall is 12’ long, the one in Graveyard games was only 3’ long. When it was working, that was AMAZING. Our last run through something was off with the sound and it was disappointing.
Scares: 6 I understand the source material is a slow burn with bursts of scares, guess the house was the same.
Plexi: 1 I really don’t recall any plexi issues in this house. I could be forgetting something though.
UTH: 5 This was really disappointing, especially as someone who didn’t watch (or care about) the show. The tour was basically, “This is the part of the show where XYZ happens and you find out ABC.” It was like a DVD commentary track where the director is just explaining what’s on the screen. Pictures were really limited as well. Have to go back through my pics to try to remember what was allowed, but what I remember is façade, entryway, red door room, first half of the dumbwaiter room, and that’s about it. “A certain themepark down the road has stringent rules that their mouse can never be more than one place at a time…we’re obviously against that rationale but this house totally flies against that. The Bent Neck Lady is the star of the show and key to our marketing, everybody goes into this house expecting to see her. So in this room, the (effect) happens to the right, then about 10-15sec later, happens on the left. Then, at the end of the room, you get an (effect) straight ahead. This is so that as many people as possible can see her in the house and not be disappointed.” That’s paraphrasing what our guide said and that was pretty cool to try to make sure people who waited in line for 2 hours get to see the “star of the show.” The other cool tidbit from the tour was, “The first tall man you encounter is, well, a tall man. The second one you encounter, is on 1x/1 step (not familiar with industry terms for stilts, so might have this wrong) stilts like Fear. The third one, is on 2x/2step stilts and is really freaking tall.”
9. Welcome to SCarey 6/10
This was probably my least favorite house. It’s only ranked above Beetlejuice because I didn’t expect much from it, so I wasn’t so disappointed. It’s a true mashup where you enter through a water treatment facility, go through the sewers, then magically go somewhere else, then at the end you just see a big legendary truth sign. The HR Bloodnguts scareactor mask was TERRIBLE.
Scares: 6 Nothing really stood out other than the Meaty Meetz scare.
Plexi: 3 A little impact, but nothing too bad.
UTH: 8 I think we were pretty much allowed to take pics wherever we wanted. I enjoyed the tour more than actually walking through the house, think that's the first time that's ever happened and I've done the tours at least 10 times. The story is that you are travelling through Carey, OH and you start out through the sewer and then make your way through or something. This was our last house and was dragging ass a bit so didn’t pay complete attention. Got some good info in each room like the HR Bloodngutz shelf of VHS tapes has the tapes named as the “codenames” for each room of the original maze. Got some other cool tidbits like that.
10. Beetlejuice 4/10
What a disappointment! I love the movie so much, but this house was a letdown. It was a “fun” house, don’t get me wrong. It was one of the first we did and I had a blast in it…but throughout our stay, it steadily went downhill from there. Our first pass through, the vortex tunnel worked. The next 3 or 4 times through, it wasn’t spinning. The Beetlejuice barker in the façade was such a let down. The actor clearly wasn’t doing the voice and that really hurt it. He pointed directly at me at one point and the pre-recorded message was something really stupid and irrelevant like “so, you wanna marry me?” or something. If he was just spouting out stuff like, “I’m the ghost with the most!” that would have been great. IP quotes would have been great. Or, if he was miced up and could comment on stuff like a girl wearing a huge balloon hat thing from Margaritaville that would have been great. Instead, it was just irrelevant stuff. We got hung up on the switchback into the house once and he was making comments while pointing at people that made no sense. It was a missed opportunity to have a Chucky-style interaction or to use lines from the movie.
Not to go into details, but as soon as you enter the house proper the first two characters is the old smoking lady (who doesn’t have smoke coming out of her neck) standing behind plexiglass casually talking. Not even an attempted scare. Then it’s the flat guy on the line…who doesn’t move. He’s on a line and should slide back and forth or something, but was just completely stationary. The house was like that a lot, just disappointing and static/boring. The worm and big head gags were the highlights. Something as simple as putting the shrunken head on a swivel with a servo would have improved the house. Too static.
Scares: 1 The biggest scare I got was the "bed sheet over the guy" gag. Wasn't expecting it and it gave me a good jump. That tells you how unscary the house was.
Plexi: 9 Hey, look, it's Beetlejuice dancing a jig behind a plastic wall. Wow, scary and and awesome.
UTH: N/A Would have liked to have seen this with the lights on.
Zones. All were pretty boring. Gorewood was too crowded to be anything too great, Seek & Destroy was boring. 30 Years, 30 Fears was just a confusing collection of random things. Eddie’s Revenge was OK. CryptTV I had no interest in, but was probably the most interesting zone as there was stuff to watch and interesting set pieces. The masks were awesome in the zone.
Shows:
Carnage Factory was both amazing and a let down. The fountain effects are a step up from 29, the water project effects were a giant leap above 29. The “generic hard rock music” hurt. Obviously they wouldn’t have anything as iconic as the Ghostbusters, Killer Klowns and Stranger Things themes, but the music was just underwhelming and hurt the show. However, it was still AMAZING, the only letdown on my part was it wasn’t as great as last year. REALLY enjoyed it though.
Nightmare Fuel was awesome. Sexiest show I’ve ever seen at HHN, but was a bit odd. You had the “trick” Legacy posted from the British TV show at the very beginning and then that guy is just kinda running around doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the show until he goes back to bed. The fire dancing stuff was INSANE, especially the guys when they got the big things of fire going. Music was really good and the crowd was totally into it.
After the part 1 houses, there’s a bit of a falling off point for the rest. The next 3 are virtually tied in my book but each is a completely different house, and the ranking order could pretty much changed on a nightly basis for me.
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6. Puppet Theatre 7/10
I had no real interest in this house, but it was a lot of fun! The façade was absolutely stunning. One bummer about having express is your line doesn’t pass in front of the façade so wasn’t able to get a good/head on view of it lit up at night.
Scares: 5 The scares were a mixed bag. A lot of “look what happened to this poor person before you got here” stuff as well as some humorous shenanigans by the scareactors before they jumped to the side and did a proper scare.
Plexi: 3 There was a lot of it, but shockingly didn’t seem to affect the house much. There weren’t very many of the “closet door scares” that happen as you walk by and see something in your peripheral vision, or hear a sound cue to make you look. So while there’s a lot of it present, it doesn’t impact the scares all that much.
UTH: 8 This was pretty fun on the tour, there were a couple rooms that you couldn’t take pictures and they seemed to be odd choices. One was the externally built hallway before you entered the tent (maaaaybe concerned about the movie poster owners?) and the marionette hallway (they mentioned them being bought from Pakistan or Prauge or something, and maybe concerned about the owners being pissed they were used in a gory house?) After you go through the main stage room (seen all over the peacock video) each of the following rooms has that red curtain in it, somewhere, to orient you where you are in relation to the stage. Like the room with the piano and the hole in the ceiling, if you look up through the hole (in the dark) you can (allegedly) see the curtain as you’re in the orchestra pit. Stuff like that, I NEVER notice…maybe some people do.
7. Revenge of the Tooth Fairy 7/10
I was REALLY looking forward to this house and it was a bit of a let down. I LOVED the Popup Book Façade and the house was incredibly violent. For some reason, it just didn’t work for me.
Scares: 5 The drill made me cringe
Plexi: 9 This house, more than any other, was killed by the plexi in my book. There were some big rooms that didn’t have any which was great, but soooo many of the other scares are the ones where the scareactors would normally step/reach/lunge through the doorway and they were unable to do it.
UTH: N/A Not on our tour
8. Haunting of Hill House 7/10
This was at the bottom of my hype list from the beginning. I couldn’t get into the show (tried to watch it a few times and got bored), not a fan of ghost stories, etc. Then I saw the breathtaking façade and got a little bit excited. Then heard a rumor that there were 100+ ghosts in the show and many are hidden in the house (not true…our UTH guide didn’t point out a single hidden ghost) and it started to creep up my hype list. But the house just wasn’t that great. Visually, it was really nice, but the scares just weren’t there for me. The whisper hall is 12’ long, the one in Graveyard games was only 3’ long. When it was working, that was AMAZING. Our last run through something was off with the sound and it was disappointing.
Scares: 6 I understand the source material is a slow burn with bursts of scares, guess the house was the same.
Plexi: 1 I really don’t recall any plexi issues in this house. I could be forgetting something though.
UTH: 5 This was really disappointing, especially as someone who didn’t watch (or care about) the show. The tour was basically, “This is the part of the show where XYZ happens and you find out ABC.” It was like a DVD commentary track where the director is just explaining what’s on the screen. Pictures were really limited as well. Have to go back through my pics to try to remember what was allowed, but what I remember is façade, entryway, red door room, first half of the dumbwaiter room, and that’s about it. “A certain themepark down the road has stringent rules that their mouse can never be more than one place at a time…we’re obviously against that rationale but this house totally flies against that. The Bent Neck Lady is the star of the show and key to our marketing, everybody goes into this house expecting to see her. So in this room, the (effect) happens to the right, then about 10-15sec later, happens on the left. Then, at the end of the room, you get an (effect) straight ahead. This is so that as many people as possible can see her in the house and not be disappointed.” That’s paraphrasing what our guide said and that was pretty cool to try to make sure people who waited in line for 2 hours get to see the “star of the show.” The other cool tidbit from the tour was, “The first tall man you encounter is, well, a tall man. The second one you encounter, is on 1x/1 step (not familiar with industry terms for stilts, so might have this wrong) stilts like Fear. The third one, is on 2x/2step stilts and is really freaking tall.”
9. Welcome to SCarey 6/10
This was probably my least favorite house. It’s only ranked above Beetlejuice because I didn’t expect much from it, so I wasn’t so disappointed. It’s a true mashup where you enter through a water treatment facility, go through the sewers, then magically go somewhere else, then at the end you just see a big legendary truth sign. The HR Bloodnguts scareactor mask was TERRIBLE.
Scares: 6 Nothing really stood out other than the Meaty Meetz scare.
Plexi: 3 A little impact, but nothing too bad.
UTH: 8 I think we were pretty much allowed to take pics wherever we wanted. I enjoyed the tour more than actually walking through the house, think that's the first time that's ever happened and I've done the tours at least 10 times. The story is that you are travelling through Carey, OH and you start out through the sewer and then make your way through or something. This was our last house and was dragging ass a bit so didn’t pay complete attention. Got some good info in each room like the HR Bloodngutz shelf of VHS tapes has the tapes named as the “codenames” for each room of the original maze. Got some other cool tidbits like that.
10. Beetlejuice 4/10
What a disappointment! I love the movie so much, but this house was a letdown. It was a “fun” house, don’t get me wrong. It was one of the first we did and I had a blast in it…but throughout our stay, it steadily went downhill from there. Our first pass through, the vortex tunnel worked. The next 3 or 4 times through, it wasn’t spinning. The Beetlejuice barker in the façade was such a let down. The actor clearly wasn’t doing the voice and that really hurt it. He pointed directly at me at one point and the pre-recorded message was something really stupid and irrelevant like “so, you wanna marry me?” or something. If he was just spouting out stuff like, “I’m the ghost with the most!” that would have been great. IP quotes would have been great. Or, if he was miced up and could comment on stuff like a girl wearing a huge balloon hat thing from Margaritaville that would have been great. Instead, it was just irrelevant stuff. We got hung up on the switchback into the house once and he was making comments while pointing at people that made no sense. It was a missed opportunity to have a Chucky-style interaction or to use lines from the movie.
Not to go into details, but as soon as you enter the house proper the first two characters is the old smoking lady (who doesn’t have smoke coming out of her neck) standing behind plexiglass casually talking. Not even an attempted scare. Then it’s the flat guy on the line…who doesn’t move. He’s on a line and should slide back and forth or something, but was just completely stationary. The house was like that a lot, just disappointing and static/boring. The worm and big head gags were the highlights. Something as simple as putting the shrunken head on a swivel with a servo would have improved the house. Too static.
Scares: 1 The biggest scare I got was the "bed sheet over the guy" gag. Wasn't expecting it and it gave me a good jump. That tells you how unscary the house was.
Plexi: 9 Hey, look, it's Beetlejuice dancing a jig behind a plastic wall. Wow, scary and and awesome.
UTH: N/A Would have liked to have seen this with the lights on.
Zones. All were pretty boring. Gorewood was too crowded to be anything too great, Seek & Destroy was boring. 30 Years, 30 Fears was just a confusing collection of random things. Eddie’s Revenge was OK. CryptTV I had no interest in, but was probably the most interesting zone as there was stuff to watch and interesting set pieces. The masks were awesome in the zone.
Shows:
Carnage Factory was both amazing and a let down. The fountain effects are a step up from 29, the water project effects were a giant leap above 29. The “generic hard rock music” hurt. Obviously they wouldn’t have anything as iconic as the Ghostbusters, Killer Klowns and Stranger Things themes, but the music was just underwhelming and hurt the show. However, it was still AMAZING, the only letdown on my part was it wasn’t as great as last year. REALLY enjoyed it though.
Nightmare Fuel was awesome. Sexiest show I’ve ever seen at HHN, but was a bit odd. You had the “trick” Legacy posted from the British TV show at the very beginning and then that guy is just kinda running around doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the show until he goes back to bed. The fire dancing stuff was INSANE, especially the guys when they got the big things of fire going. Music was really good and the crowd was totally into it.
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- May 24, 2018
- 1,772
- 2,374
You are encouraged to take selfies with the throne...they smartly made the "steps" up only like 2" deep with candles and stuff on them so that you can't climb up there
- May 24, 2018
- 1,772
- 2,374
Did two nights of HHN with express this past week (Wednesday and Thursday). Going to give a quick review of the houses in order of which I've done on night one and scarezones as a whole. RTs will stand for how many runthroughs I've had.
Bride of Frankenstein Lives!: It was alright. Liked the scenic but I haven't gotten any great runthroughs of this. Had it not been for the black walls in Hollywood's version, I surprisingly would've preferred that version! RTs: 2
Revenge of the Tooth Fairy: I really dug the Tim Burton storybook style for the facade and the tone. This was another repeat house that I haven't watched the POVs for but still wasn't exactly feeling it with the scares. I enjoyed this more than Bride though. RTs: 2
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: This was my least-anticipated house as I have grown very stale of the IP after going to the Hollywood event for so long. Even then this is the third time this IP has been at the event. I was pleasantly surprised how fresh this felt compared to the ones in Hollywood. This was basically "Blood Bros" but done way better. I was really caught off-guard by those pigs. Very creative use of creature effects right there. It was great to see Chop Top in here but I was a little disappointed to not see Grandpa as a scareactor, but this was great! RTs: 3
Horror Nights Icons: Captured: This was my most-anticipated. The facade with Fear's lantern was nothing short of spectacular. The scale of the house was the total opposite of what I was expecting. The scenes were a lot more small and intimate and not exactly grand as I expected them to be. This was unapologetic fan-service and I absolutely enjoyed it. I got Jack at the throne for most of my runthroughs then got Caretaker for one of them. I was so excited and happy to see Jack on the throne I totally wasn't paying attention to the other icons trying to scare me. Man I loved this. RTs: 5
Puppet Theater: To preface this, on our way over there, it started to rain. By the time we got into line, the next great flood was starting and I was trying to see if anyone had an ark to spare. Even though I had a spare poncho, I was a little irked at getting wet by the rain and having my shoes soaked. I wasn't able to enjoy it as much my first time around because I was soaked and miserable, but after a few more runthroughs, I loved it. Beautiful scenic, great scares, and I loved the scareactor with the tiny puppet legs on his face. That was great. RTs: 4
Wicked Growth: Realm of the Pumpkin: WOW. Easily my favorite house this year. That facade of the run-down when you get inside is gorgeous. This also has probably the best set design I've seen in any HHN house in a long time. Everything about this was fantastic. I loved the bridge, the scares, the sets....but what impressed me the most was how much they were able to cram into that small sprung tent. They pushed the boundaries HARD as to what they can fit in there and it's pretty incredible. Maybe someday I can see the floorplan just to see how much they were able to cram in there. Easily the most impressive and scariest house for me and each runthrough just kept getting better and better for me. RTs: 5
Welcome to SCarey Ohio: This was a little nostalgic as I got to relive some scenes from Legendary Truth and Orfanage from HHN 20. But yeah, I enjoyed this. It was also cool to see some scenes from other houses I never got to experience like HR Bloodengutz, Cleaver, and Spawning. Good house. RTs: 4
Case Files: Unearthed - Legendary Truth: I really liked how this had a whole narrative here.I was really impressed by how tall some of the sets were, specifically the one that goes into the speakeasy. I really loved the creativity of the story and the setting. Unfortunately my last runthrough of this was awful on my second night as we did this right before park closing and literally 1/3 of the entire cast was entirely missing. Even the speakeasy lady! But the first couple of ones I got were alright. I still enjoyed it. RTs: 3
Haunting of Hill House: While the one in Hollywood was okay, that cardboard cut-out facade was pathetic. It was really awesome to see a full-blown facade walking in there. Really liked this and felt like it did the show justice. Was hoping there would be an effect to show the tall man in his "invisible" form like when we first see him from the show, but oh well. Glad to see Smiley was in it. RTs: 4
Beetlejuice: Got a poor runthrough my first time and got a slightly better one the second time, but I enjoyed this despite it not being that scary. I had fun in this one as I felt that this was supposed to be more fun than scary. RTs: 2
As for other notes, we used express, but we didn't use it until the lines started to build. We try to save them for second RTs, but we only had to use them for BJ and Hill House on our first night. Lines were surprisingly not too bad. If I was a one-and-done kind of guy, I probably would've managed fine if I was early for stay and scream and did HH and BJ first.
We ran into Mike Aiello into the event! Really awesome guy! He was kinda shocked to hear that our group had flown from California to see the event and thanked us for supporting us. You can tell that he really loves what he does and he actually appreciates the haunt industry as a whole. Since we're from Cali, he asked us how was Knott's Scary Farm. He said he saw the POV for Mesmer and loved it. I told him to check out the POV for Origins as that was slightly more impressive to me. But yeah, he's awesome. He was also stunned to hear that they don't serve pizza fries at Hollywood.
Also the rain kinda damped our experience the first night, so we didn't get to see the scareactors in action for Crypt TV and Seek and Destroy. We did the second night though! Overall it's just an okay year for scare zones. They kinda felt more like photo ops to me than actual zones. I think my favorite one was Terra Queen's. That was cool. Speaking of the rain, walking around with damp shoes and a rash was not fun the first night. But we managed.
Also.....pizza. Need in Hollywood now. I also got the carnitas from that stand and happened to have the last one of the night before they sold out! They sell them in a cornbread "taco" with cojita cheese, cilantro, and sauce. Highly recommend. It's delicious.
Oh, one more thing: The vinyl. Ugh. I absolutely would've enjoyed some houses a LOT more if they weren't there. I Probably the reason why the houses at the bottom of the list ranked so low for me was because they were the worst offenders of the plexiglass. To make it worse, it was extremely inconsistent! Some scares the scareactors got in my face (Which I loved!) and some were stuck behind the obvious plexi. Like why even bother!? I felt Hollywood did a better job implementing it then Florida at places where they did. But yeah, this was a real buzz kill for houses that should've been better. Pointless safety theater at it's finest.
House rankings:
1) Wicked Growth
2) Icons
3) Hill House
4) Puppet Theater
5) Texas
6) SCarey
7) Case Files
8) Beetlejuice
9) Tooth Fairy
10) Bride
Had a great time at HHN 30 and hope to be back for HHN 31! I have a feeling Albert Cane might play a bigger role for next year. :look:
Bride of Frankenstein Lives!: It was alright. Liked the scenic but I haven't gotten any great runthroughs of this. Had it not been for the black walls in Hollywood's version, I surprisingly would've preferred that version! RTs: 2
Revenge of the Tooth Fairy: I really dug the Tim Burton storybook style for the facade and the tone. This was another repeat house that I haven't watched the POVs for but still wasn't exactly feeling it with the scares. I enjoyed this more than Bride though. RTs: 2
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: This was my least-anticipated house as I have grown very stale of the IP after going to the Hollywood event for so long. Even then this is the third time this IP has been at the event. I was pleasantly surprised how fresh this felt compared to the ones in Hollywood. This was basically "Blood Bros" but done way better. I was really caught off-guard by those pigs. Very creative use of creature effects right there. It was great to see Chop Top in here but I was a little disappointed to not see Grandpa as a scareactor, but this was great! RTs: 3
Horror Nights Icons: Captured: This was my most-anticipated. The facade with Fear's lantern was nothing short of spectacular. The scale of the house was the total opposite of what I was expecting. The scenes were a lot more small and intimate and not exactly grand as I expected them to be. This was unapologetic fan-service and I absolutely enjoyed it. I got Jack at the throne for most of my runthroughs then got Caretaker for one of them. I was so excited and happy to see Jack on the throne I totally wasn't paying attention to the other icons trying to scare me.
Man I loved this. RTs: 5Puppet Theater: To preface this, on our way over there, it started to rain. By the time we got into line, the next great flood was starting and I was trying to see if anyone had an ark to spare. Even though I had a spare poncho, I was a little irked at getting wet by the rain and having my shoes soaked. I wasn't able to enjoy it as much my first time around because I was soaked and miserable, but after a few more runthroughs, I loved it. Beautiful scenic, great scares, and I loved the scareactor with the tiny puppet legs on his face. That was great. RTs: 4
Wicked Growth: Realm of the Pumpkin: WOW. Easily my favorite house this year. That facade of the run-down when you get inside is gorgeous. This also has probably the best set design I've seen in any HHN house in a long time. Everything about this was fantastic. I loved the bridge, the scares, the sets....but what impressed me the most was how much they were able to cram into that small sprung tent. They pushed the boundaries HARD as to what they can fit in there and it's pretty incredible. Maybe someday I can see the floorplan just to see how much they were able to cram in there. Easily the most impressive and scariest house for me and each runthrough just kept getting better and better for me. RTs: 5
Welcome to SCarey Ohio: This was a little nostalgic as I got to relive some scenes from Legendary Truth and Orfanage from HHN 20. But yeah, I enjoyed this. It was also cool to see some scenes from other houses I never got to experience like HR Bloodengutz, Cleaver, and Spawning. Good house. RTs: 4
Case Files: Unearthed - Legendary Truth: I really liked how this had a whole narrative here.I was really impressed by how tall some of the sets were, specifically the one that goes into the speakeasy. I really loved the creativity of the story and the setting. Unfortunately my last runthrough of this was awful on my second night as we did this right before park closing and literally 1/3 of the entire cast was entirely missing. Even the speakeasy lady! But the first couple of ones I got were alright. I still enjoyed it. RTs: 3
Haunting of Hill House: While the one in Hollywood was okay, that cardboard cut-out facade was pathetic. It was really awesome to see a full-blown facade walking in there. Really liked this and felt like it did the show justice. Was hoping there would be an effect to show the tall man in his "invisible" form like when we first see him from the show, but oh well. Glad to see Smiley was in it. RTs: 4
Beetlejuice: Got a poor runthrough my first time and got a slightly better one the second time, but I enjoyed this despite it not being that scary. I had fun in this one as I felt that this was supposed to be more fun than scary. RTs: 2
As for other notes, we used express, but we didn't use it until the lines started to build. We try to save them for second RTs, but we only had to use them for BJ and Hill House on our first night. Lines were surprisingly not too bad. If I was a one-and-done kind of guy, I probably would've managed fine if I was early for stay and scream and did HH and BJ first.
We ran into Mike Aiello into the event! Really awesome guy! He was kinda shocked to hear that our group had flown from California to see the event and thanked us for supporting us. You can tell that he really loves what he does and he actually appreciates the haunt industry as a whole. Since we're from Cali, he asked us how was Knott's Scary Farm. He said he saw the POV for Mesmer and loved it. I told him to check out the POV for Origins as that was slightly more impressive to me. But yeah, he's awesome. He was also stunned to hear that they don't serve pizza fries at Hollywood.
Also the rain kinda damped our experience the first night, so we didn't get to see the scareactors in action for Crypt TV and Seek and Destroy. We did the second night though! Overall it's just an okay year for scare zones. They kinda felt more like photo ops to me than actual zones. I think my favorite one was Terra Queen's. That was cool. Speaking of the rain, walking around with damp shoes and a rash was not fun the first night. But we managed.
Also.....pizza. Need in Hollywood now. I also got the carnitas from that stand and happened to have the last one of the night before they sold out! They sell them in a cornbread "taco" with cojita cheese, cilantro, and sauce. Highly recommend. It's delicious.
Oh, one more thing: The vinyl. Ugh. I absolutely would've enjoyed some houses a LOT more if they weren't there. I Probably the reason why the houses at the bottom of the list ranked so low for me was because they were the worst offenders of the plexiglass. To make it worse, it was extremely inconsistent! Some scares the scareactors got in my face (Which I loved!) and some were stuck behind the obvious plexi. Like why even bother!? I felt Hollywood did a better job implementing it then Florida at places where they did. But yeah, this was a real buzz kill for houses that should've been better. Pointless safety theater at it's finest.
House rankings:
1) Wicked Growth
2) Icons
3) Hill House
4) Puppet Theater
5) Texas
6) SCarey
7) Case Files
8) Beetlejuice
9) Tooth Fairy
10) Bride
Had a great time at HHN 30 and hope to be back for HHN 31! I have a feeling Albert Cane might play a bigger role for next year. :look:
Just got back from a 4 night trip with my Mom and Dad, it was my 3rd HHN and their 1st. Gonna' try to keep this relatively short, but we all really enjoyed the event this year! It's great to have the Horrah back, and there was plenty to enjoy this year. Now before I get into the meat and potatoes, it's best to rip the band-aid off...
So about the vinyl...thankfully it didn't impede on visibility which is good! However it did hamper certain scares and houses, so unfortunately this year is not firing on all cylinders due to that. It's also very weird when certain houses had no plexi for some great close up scares, yet some houses had plexi for scares that were further away. It was very inconsistent to say the least. That said, there were still plenty of effective scares to be had, and the scareactors were making the most around their boundaries the best they can. Now with that out of the way...
The Houses
Personally, my family and I enjoyed all ten houses! As usual I can give a precise ranking yet since I gotta' mull things over, but here's a lil rundown on them in no particular order. (Also, I forgot to keep track of how many times I went through each house. I do know I've hit each one up at least 3 times.)
Wicked Growth: Realm of the Pumpkin - Coming into this event, it was hard to ignore the hype this house has gotten. Everyone's been singing it's praises and it was gonna' be fun to see if it lives up to that. Thankfully, it most certainly did! The set design and use of space in this house is insane, it feels so big yet sacrificing no length from what they shoehorned into the Sprung tent. It's easily one of the most impressive house designs I've seen, and this house just brings it with a plethora of scares, effects and characters. This house feels like the least affected by the vinyl, with plenty of open scares and a very aggressive cast which made this one of the scariest houses for me. Amusingly, for as scary as this house is, it also has some great moments of humor too with it's e-prompts. A nice dose of horror and humor, perfect for a Halloween theme.
Puppet Theater: Captive Audience - Well, it looks like it's another great year for the Sprung tents as Puppet Theater was a blast as well! Like with WG, the set design and use of space in PT is downright impressive. It's clear to see A&D is really playing with what they can stuff in the Sprung tents, as PT constantly shifts from tight spaces to big open rooms, making for a really dynamic journey. Also, this house is creepy as all get out. I loved the theme, and there's some really fun scares and characters in here.
Case Files Unearthed: Legendary Truth - Have you've ever had a year where there's a house that you really grew fond of? It may not ultimately be the best of that year, but you can't help but hit it up over and over? Case Files became that house for me! On my first run-through, I wasn't exactly sure what the story was, but I had a blast and took it as a Noir-variant of Slaughter Sinema. An that's actually a good way to describe this house on the surface, but the very next morning I did the 3-house Unmasking the Horror Tour and got the whole story (plus the bounty of easter eggs in this house) and I appreciated this house tenfold! There's so much wonderful nods to the event in this house, and when you know the story it makes sense pretty nicely. The set design is easily the best I've seen in the Shrek theater, and there's a great batch of characters and creatures in this one! I just had so much fun going through this house every time, so it easily cemented it's place as my personal favorite house this year.
The Haunting of Hill House - So Orlando has so far had a interesting track record with Netflix properties. In 2018 the first year of Stranger Things was a hit, with it surprisingly me nicely with how well done (and scarier than expected) it was. For 2019, while the Season 2+3 house was bigger, it was generally agreed it didn't hit the highs of the original. So how would Haunting of Hill House fair? A property which is more of a family drama that has some ghosts in it, rather than a scare a minute thrill ride. The end result? A&D getting creative with the direction and delivering a very impressive and scary house! Out of the three Netflix houses they've done so far, it's easily the scariest. There's a ton of scares baked into this house, and if you hit it on a good run you're gonna' get hit a lot! I had some very harrowing run-throughs of this house, so hat's off to A&D and the casts for bringing this to terrifying life!
Texas Chainsaw Massacre - This was my pick for the Dark Horse house, and I'm very happy to say it lived up to that! Nice sets, surprising puppets and a energetic batch of casts who gave me some very consistent run-throughs. Including some very memorable ones involving those who were in front and behind my family. I know that's a lil strange to say, but since this house freaked out a lot of folks, it was pure entertainment seeing others get wrecked in this house!
Welcome to (S)Carey: Horror in the Heartland - So this house was a smorgasbord in every way. A whole batch of settings, monsters and effects all smashed together with pretty much little to no transitions. Also, this felt like the shortest house this year which is a shame since I dug this house. Every run-through there was a different scare which managed to get me good, so it was worthwhile for me hitting it up multiple times. Also, there was a Leave it to Cleaver scareactor who was making the most of their vinyl situation as it looked like they were smashing their face up against it for a scare, and that was doing the job for a lot of folks like myself!
HHN Icons: Captured - It's another variety house, but with most of our favorite Icons (sans Mary) and a lot smoother transitions than Scarey. I enjoyed any of the run-throughs I had with this one, and I got Jack, Usher and the Director multiple times, as well as Caretaker and Chance up on the throne. A simple but effective gimmick considering how many times folks have been going through to get everyone. Now I will say, this house was one that got hampered by Covid Protocols. Part of it was vinyl, but there was a lot of "speaking" roles, so the facemasks blocked that, and this house could've benefitted by a live victim or two instead of a bounty of mannequin's. Other than that, I still enjoyed it, and I can honestly say I like the tweaks that the Storyteller got!
Bride of Frankenstein: LIVES - While I experienced this last year, this house got some little tweaks which punched it up quite nicely for me! Casts were really solid all the way through, too. I enjoyed it before, and I really enjoyed it this year!
Revenge of the Tooth Fairy - This one got a tad bloodier than before, and it sounded like James's VA was changed in the opening narration. (I preferred the original one.) I still enjoyed this house, though I did feel last years version was stronger.
Beetlejuice - While I didn't see 2020's version, I'm glad I got to see this one! Now yes, I can totally see why people are down on this house. For some the scares aren't there, for other's it's more of a passive kind of experience with you walking by scenes and not through them. Others it's the vinyl, but admittedly I think with way the house was designed, there wouldn't be much of an upgrade if the vinyl was removed. That said, I treated this house as a "fun" house and a palette cleanser for the scarier stuff, and it worked just fine for me in that regard! Can't say the same bout the vortex tunnel which never worked, but it happens.
That's it for the houses, next up is the final part with scare zones, shows, food & drink etc.
So about the vinyl...thankfully it didn't impede on visibility which is good! However it did hamper certain scares and houses, so unfortunately this year is not firing on all cylinders due to that. It's also very weird when certain houses had no plexi for some great close up scares, yet some houses had plexi for scares that were further away. It was very inconsistent to say the least. That said, there were still plenty of effective scares to be had, and the scareactors were making the most around their boundaries the best they can. Now with that out of the way...
The Houses
Personally, my family and I enjoyed all ten houses! As usual I can give a precise ranking yet since I gotta' mull things over, but here's a lil rundown on them in no particular order. (Also, I forgot to keep track of how many times I went through each house. I do know I've hit each one up at least 3 times.)
Wicked Growth: Realm of the Pumpkin - Coming into this event, it was hard to ignore the hype this house has gotten. Everyone's been singing it's praises and it was gonna' be fun to see if it lives up to that. Thankfully, it most certainly did! The set design and use of space in this house is insane, it feels so big yet sacrificing no length from what they shoehorned into the Sprung tent. It's easily one of the most impressive house designs I've seen, and this house just brings it with a plethora of scares, effects and characters. This house feels like the least affected by the vinyl, with plenty of open scares and a very aggressive cast which made this one of the scariest houses for me. Amusingly, for as scary as this house is, it also has some great moments of humor too with it's e-prompts. A nice dose of horror and humor, perfect for a Halloween theme.
Puppet Theater: Captive Audience - Well, it looks like it's another great year for the Sprung tents as Puppet Theater was a blast as well! Like with WG, the set design and use of space in PT is downright impressive. It's clear to see A&D is really playing with what they can stuff in the Sprung tents, as PT constantly shifts from tight spaces to big open rooms, making for a really dynamic journey. Also, this house is creepy as all get out. I loved the theme, and there's some really fun scares and characters in here.
Case Files Unearthed: Legendary Truth - Have you've ever had a year where there's a house that you really grew fond of? It may not ultimately be the best of that year, but you can't help but hit it up over and over? Case Files became that house for me! On my first run-through, I wasn't exactly sure what the story was, but I had a blast and took it as a Noir-variant of Slaughter Sinema. An that's actually a good way to describe this house on the surface, but the very next morning I did the 3-house Unmasking the Horror Tour and got the whole story (plus the bounty of easter eggs in this house) and I appreciated this house tenfold! There's so much wonderful nods to the event in this house, and when you know the story it makes sense pretty nicely. The set design is easily the best I've seen in the Shrek theater, and there's a great batch of characters and creatures in this one! I just had so much fun going through this house every time, so it easily cemented it's place as my personal favorite house this year.
The Haunting of Hill House - So Orlando has so far had a interesting track record with Netflix properties. In 2018 the first year of Stranger Things was a hit, with it surprisingly me nicely with how well done (and scarier than expected) it was. For 2019, while the Season 2+3 house was bigger, it was generally agreed it didn't hit the highs of the original. So how would Haunting of Hill House fair? A property which is more of a family drama that has some ghosts in it, rather than a scare a minute thrill ride. The end result? A&D getting creative with the direction and delivering a very impressive and scary house! Out of the three Netflix houses they've done so far, it's easily the scariest. There's a ton of scares baked into this house, and if you hit it on a good run you're gonna' get hit a lot! I had some very harrowing run-throughs of this house, so hat's off to A&D and the casts for bringing this to terrifying life!
Texas Chainsaw Massacre - This was my pick for the Dark Horse house, and I'm very happy to say it lived up to that! Nice sets, surprising puppets and a energetic batch of casts who gave me some very consistent run-throughs. Including some very memorable ones involving those who were in front and behind my family. I know that's a lil strange to say, but since this house freaked out a lot of folks, it was pure entertainment seeing others get wrecked in this house!
Welcome to (S)Carey: Horror in the Heartland - So this house was a smorgasbord in every way. A whole batch of settings, monsters and effects all smashed together with pretty much little to no transitions. Also, this felt like the shortest house this year which is a shame since I dug this house. Every run-through there was a different scare which managed to get me good, so it was worthwhile for me hitting it up multiple times. Also, there was a Leave it to Cleaver scareactor who was making the most of their vinyl situation as it looked like they were smashing their face up against it for a scare, and that was doing the job for a lot of folks like myself!
HHN Icons: Captured - It's another variety house, but with most of our favorite Icons (sans Mary) and a lot smoother transitions than Scarey. I enjoyed any of the run-throughs I had with this one, and I got Jack, Usher and the Director multiple times, as well as Caretaker and Chance up on the throne. A simple but effective gimmick considering how many times folks have been going through to get everyone. Now I will say, this house was one that got hampered by Covid Protocols. Part of it was vinyl, but there was a lot of "speaking" roles, so the facemasks blocked that, and this house could've benefitted by a live victim or two instead of a bounty of mannequin's. Other than that, I still enjoyed it, and I can honestly say I like the tweaks that the Storyteller got!
Bride of Frankenstein: LIVES - While I experienced this last year, this house got some little tweaks which punched it up quite nicely for me! Casts were really solid all the way through, too. I enjoyed it before, and I really enjoyed it this year!
Revenge of the Tooth Fairy - This one got a tad bloodier than before, and it sounded like James's VA was changed in the opening narration. (I preferred the original one.) I still enjoyed this house, though I did feel last years version was stronger.
Beetlejuice - While I didn't see 2020's version, I'm glad I got to see this one! Now yes, I can totally see why people are down on this house. For some the scares aren't there, for other's it's more of a passive kind of experience with you walking by scenes and not through them. Others it's the vinyl, but admittedly I think with way the house was designed, there wouldn't be much of an upgrade if the vinyl was removed. That said, I treated this house as a "fun" house and a palette cleanser for the scarier stuff, and it worked just fine for me in that regard! Can't say the same bout the vortex tunnel which never worked, but it happens.
That's it for the houses, next up is the final part with scare zones, shows, food & drink etc.
Pt. 2 (Everything else!)
Scare Zones
Zones were a tad middle of the road for me. Lights, Camera, Hacktion! was the runaway favorite for me as that had so much going on both the stages and the ground that it made for great distraction scares. For 30 Years, 30 Fears I felt that did it's job as a welcoming/entry zone. The truss/flame tower was awesome, and all the stilt-walkers were awesome. (Though it was a tad odd that the main visuals and audio are the icons who arn't in the zone.) Gorewood Forest was visually sweet with the veins on the trees, though kinda' hard for the scareactors to do much with the cramped space. The costumes did make for some nice camo, though. As for Seek & Destroy, I personally dug it. It was fun seeing the various folk submit to the Controller, and I saw some great moments with the chainsaws. Finally there's Crypt TV which was pretty much the photo op zone. Now I'm not against that, since the stages and most of the costumes looked nice. The issue is it was in San Fran which doesn't have the space to support that kind of zone.
Shows
Marathon of Mayhem: Carnage Factory - Now after 2019's runaway hit, Carnage Factory doesn't hit the insane highs the previous show did. The fountain effects are more impressive, but for me this one felt a tad one-note in terms of it's flow, color palette, etc. The audio felt a tad louder than it should be, and I'm normally not bothered by stuff like that but for this show it felt a bit much.
Halloween Nightmare Fuel - For not really knowing to expect save for the Magus Utopia tricks, I really enjoyed this show! A full-frontal assault on the senses with dancing, aerial acts and fire, lots and lots of fire. This show crams a lot into it, and overall the fully packed crowd I saw it with dug it a whole lot! Now is it a "How the hell did they get this approved?!" kind of show? Personally for me, nah. There are other Halloween theme park shows out there which ain't afraid to show a bit of skin and get suggestive with the dancing. It's not like Puppet Up!: Uncensored over at Knott's Scary Farm which has no problem dropping a healthy amount of uncensored F-Bombs which is something you don't see at other Halloween theme park shows...and that's not even getting into how blue that show can get on top of that! Either way, HNF is a lot of fun and I'd say it's a very nice swan song for the FFL Amphitheater!
Food & Drink
With the expanded specialty pop up tents, there was plenty of things to try, and this is what my family and I had...
Field of Screams Gyoza
Pumpkin Guts
Lamb Spit and Severed Ribs
BBQ & Bahn Mi chicken tender sandwiches.
Ace SpACE Blood Orange Cider Float
Ghoul Juice
We honestly enjoyed all the items we had, the Coca Cola BBQ was a big winner, along with the chicken tender sandwiches which were a nice surprise! The Ghoul Juice was a hit for my Dad and I, and I really liked the Blood Orange Cider Float. All in all, a big winner this year were the food options. An I look forward to seeing what they bring in next year!
Final Thoughts & Memorable Moments
It was a bumpy road to get here, but overall it's great to have HHN back! For my Mom and Dad's first year, they really had a great time! For me, while this year doesn't reach the highs of 28 or 29, it's still a solid year for me with the great food, a killer main show and some very memorable houses. I look forward to seeing what lurks in 31, but until then...here's some particular moments which stuck with me.
"Heey" - Spoken by the guy behind me as we were looking at that one particular scareactor (and unknowingly at the time, scare) in Wicked Growth. Which was a spoken right before disaster moment since the scareactor decided to say "hi" as well in their own little way, and the three of us hit the deck so fast. That was my introduction to *that* scare.
So a Hockey Game Broke Out in the Kitty Kat Club... - On one of my many run-throughs of Case Files, there was a family in front of me who was going through for the first time and the daughter of the group had her "Fight or Flight" reaction set to "Flight" on MAX. Every single scare she was darting this way and that between the family, and when we got to the Kitty Kat Club she got one of the scares near the end and immediately turned backwards and ZOOMED to the stage. Without even thinking, my right arm and shoulder shot out and cross-checked her before she ran into the stage and the jazz singer. Needless to say, the whole family and the house ops nearby was very thankful I blocked her in time.
Thankfully, the family enjoyed Case Files and the same went to the daughter. She wasn't traumatized or anything, she just flies instead of fights. Though as my Dad pointed out, if I had my arm any higher I would've clotheslined her and that would've been a different story!
360 No Scope & One Foot - So something that happened a couple times is I would get a really good enough scare that had me doing this awkward hop on one foot in reaction. H.R. Bloodengutz himself was the first to get that out of me, and there was one scare in Haunting of Hill House which got me to do that -and- almost crash into a wall. But the winner went to a particularly infamous scare in a house represented in SCarey. *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG*. I fell hook, line and sinker into that scare, and when it hit me I hopped a full 360 on one foot. That was one of the harder scares I got on the trip, fitting since it was the only time I saw that scare, too!
An finally...
Seek & Chain Reaction
On the final night, my family and I were staking out Seek & Destroy and watching folks come up to the stage. A pair of girls approached for a selfie with the lady cyborg and one of the guards. As the pic was getting taken, another guard approached from behind and flicked/snapped their flashlight behind them. That scared the heck out of the girls who immediately took off and ran straight at a nearby chainsaw who jumped on the opportunity and sent them running the other way where they proceeded to get pinballed between several other troopers. As this was going on, the lady cyborg and guards on stage were still perched in their same position they had for the selfie and were watching in disbelief at these girls running into all the scareactors through sheer chain reaction. All because of that snap of a flashlight!
Scare Zones
Zones were a tad middle of the road for me. Lights, Camera, Hacktion! was the runaway favorite for me as that had so much going on both the stages and the ground that it made for great distraction scares. For 30 Years, 30 Fears I felt that did it's job as a welcoming/entry zone. The truss/flame tower was awesome, and all the stilt-walkers were awesome. (Though it was a tad odd that the main visuals and audio are the icons who arn't in the zone.) Gorewood Forest was visually sweet with the veins on the trees, though kinda' hard for the scareactors to do much with the cramped space. The costumes did make for some nice camo, though. As for Seek & Destroy, I personally dug it. It was fun seeing the various folk submit to the Controller, and I saw some great moments with the chainsaws. Finally there's Crypt TV which was pretty much the photo op zone. Now I'm not against that, since the stages and most of the costumes looked nice. The issue is it was in San Fran which doesn't have the space to support that kind of zone.
Shows
Marathon of Mayhem: Carnage Factory - Now after 2019's runaway hit, Carnage Factory doesn't hit the insane highs the previous show did. The fountain effects are more impressive, but for me this one felt a tad one-note in terms of it's flow, color palette, etc. The audio felt a tad louder than it should be, and I'm normally not bothered by stuff like that but for this show it felt a bit much.
Halloween Nightmare Fuel - For not really knowing to expect save for the Magus Utopia tricks, I really enjoyed this show! A full-frontal assault on the senses with dancing, aerial acts and fire, lots and lots of fire. This show crams a lot into it, and overall the fully packed crowd I saw it with dug it a whole lot! Now is it a "How the hell did they get this approved?!" kind of show? Personally for me, nah. There are other Halloween theme park shows out there which ain't afraid to show a bit of skin and get suggestive with the dancing. It's not like Puppet Up!: Uncensored over at Knott's Scary Farm which has no problem dropping a healthy amount of uncensored F-Bombs which is something you don't see at other Halloween theme park shows...and that's not even getting into how blue that show can get on top of that! Either way, HNF is a lot of fun and I'd say it's a very nice swan song for the FFL Amphitheater!
Food & Drink
With the expanded specialty pop up tents, there was plenty of things to try, and this is what my family and I had...
Field of Screams Gyoza
Pumpkin Guts
Lamb Spit and Severed Ribs
BBQ & Bahn Mi chicken tender sandwiches.
Ace SpACE Blood Orange Cider Float
Ghoul Juice
We honestly enjoyed all the items we had, the Coca Cola BBQ was a big winner, along with the chicken tender sandwiches which were a nice surprise! The Ghoul Juice was a hit for my Dad and I, and I really liked the Blood Orange Cider Float. All in all, a big winner this year were the food options. An I look forward to seeing what they bring in next year!
Final Thoughts & Memorable Moments
It was a bumpy road to get here, but overall it's great to have HHN back! For my Mom and Dad's first year, they really had a great time! For me, while this year doesn't reach the highs of 28 or 29, it's still a solid year for me with the great food, a killer main show and some very memorable houses. I look forward to seeing what lurks in 31, but until then...here's some particular moments which stuck with me.
"Heey" - Spoken by the guy behind me as we were looking at that one particular scareactor (and unknowingly at the time, scare) in Wicked Growth. Which was a spoken right before disaster moment since the scareactor decided to say "hi" as well in their own little way, and the three of us hit the deck so fast. That was my introduction to *that* scare.
So a Hockey Game Broke Out in the Kitty Kat Club... - On one of my many run-throughs of Case Files, there was a family in front of me who was going through for the first time and the daughter of the group had her "Fight or Flight" reaction set to "Flight" on MAX. Every single scare she was darting this way and that between the family, and when we got to the Kitty Kat Club she got one of the scares near the end and immediately turned backwards and ZOOMED to the stage. Without even thinking, my right arm and shoulder shot out and cross-checked her before she ran into the stage and the jazz singer. Needless to say, the whole family and the house ops nearby was very thankful I blocked her in time.
Thankfully, the family enjoyed Case Files and the same went to the daughter. She wasn't traumatized or anything, she just flies instead of fights. Though as my Dad pointed out, if I had my arm any higher I would've clotheslined her and that would've been a different story!
360 No Scope & One Foot - So something that happened a couple times is I would get a really good enough scare that had me doing this awkward hop on one foot in reaction. H.R. Bloodengutz himself was the first to get that out of me, and there was one scare in Haunting of Hill House which got me to do that -and- almost crash into a wall. But the winner went to a particularly infamous scare in a house represented in SCarey. *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG*. I fell hook, line and sinker into that scare, and when it hit me I hopped a full 360 on one foot. That was one of the harder scares I got on the trip, fitting since it was the only time I saw that scare, too!
An finally...
Seek & Chain Reaction
On the final night, my family and I were staking out Seek & Destroy and watching folks come up to the stage. A pair of girls approached for a selfie with the lady cyborg and one of the guards. As the pic was getting taken, another guard approached from behind and flicked/snapped their flashlight behind them. That scared the heck out of the girls who immediately took off and ran straight at a nearby chainsaw who jumped on the opportunity and sent them running the other way where they proceeded to get pinballed between several other troopers. As this was going on, the lady cyborg and guards on stage were still perched in their same position they had for the selfie and were watching in disbelief at these girls running into all the scareactors through sheer chain reaction. All because of that snap of a flashlight!
- Aug 15, 2017
- 40
- 75
Just got back from my trip, and I kind of have to agree with what a lot of people have been saying; the vinyl hindered a lot. Quick thought before I place my house ranking, none of these houses were bad and on any other year would have been great. Unfortunately by placing vinyl curtains and walls up many great scares turned into pop out and stare scares; or in the case of Tooth Fairy pop out and do a little dance scares.
1: Haunting of Hill house- This gets my #1 because it balanced a having beautiful theming with consistent scares. Props to the woman with the pregnant belly that my wife thought was a mannequin until the woman, and baby in her stomach, moved towards her.
2: Wicked Growth: This house is gorgeous and even when the scares aren't happening you still love it because of the theming. Would love for more houses like this.
3: Icons: I liked how they structured this house and that they gave themselves a way to bring back the icons down the road for future anniversary years. Some icons had better scenes and the throne was cool but ultimately served no purposed; a fun house to walk through.
4: Legendary Truth: Case Files: Loved the variety of creatures, even though I had no idea what they were. I enjoyed how the house was set up to be like you were walking through each book. Biggest hinderance really was the story and having no explanation about what was going on.
5: Puppet Theatre: First run through this house was 30 mins to closing and it was just after a cast change. It was less than stellar, and the puppet section was truly lacking. Upon multiple repeats it just got better and better, and this house is one I wish didn't have vinyl up. You could tell the designers really loved the idea and was just hindered by the vinyl, with multiple scares turning into show scenes and not scares.
6: Texas Chainsaw: Anyone saying this was better than the 2016 version must have had a bunch of bad runs, because this was way too inconsistent with the story and scares. I really wish they would have just stuck to adapting TCM 2, rather creating a bizarre hybrid of the 1st and 2nd movies. This was a lot lower on my list til I finally had a good run and every Leather face got me. The scares were too reliant on timing and for that reason it is so low.
7: Bride of Frankenstein: As a fan of the Universal Monsters and the Bride of Frankenstein I had high hopes for this house. The combination of being rushed through scenes and the vinyl really ruined it for me. That said the Bride of Dracula that soars at you, got me really good. I thought there was a vinyl sheet in front of her, and then realized I was wrong when she kept coming at me. This showed me that while the majority of scenes with vinyl hindered the scare, sometimes it was used as a way to deceive you.
8: Beetlejuice: While I never expected this house to be scary I did expect to at least see more scareactors within. Each run through seemed to always be missing someone, and the timing always seemed to just be off. That said the barker, and the Beetlejuices throughout were great. It was a fun house, but it was lacking.
9: SCarey: Went through this with 5 mins left, and me and my friend got all the scares. I was worried that I enjoyed it for that fact alone, and so when I went back through it the next I realized that was exactly the reason. This house changes scenes on you so fast, sometimes you dont realize you've gone to a different property. My guide for my UTH gave me a great description of this house, he said to look at it as if you were watching a HHN network and flipping through the channels. I enjoyed the Meetz and Bloodengutz sections, but that was a small part of the house.
10: Tooth Fairy: of boy what this house could have been. I really enjoyed the narration, especially since my name is James. What really made this house suffer was due to the placement of the sheeting on certain boo holes, instead of a small bug eyed fairy popping out and scaring me, all i got was a bugged eyed fairy popping out and doing a little jig at me. To me this house could have been great, and I would love to see more houses like this.
The scarezones were all pretty much sub par with the exception of Lights, Camera, Hacktion. That zone was a blast and I could tell everyone from guest to the cast were having fun. Seek and destroy was a cool idea, but clicking a flashlight at someone is not scary and while the controller experience is cool the way its set up doesn't allow for many people to experience it. Crypt TV was just a photo op and always chocked the flow of traffic, and Gorewood was cool to look at but due to traffic was ineffective. In the end stepping back into the fog was like going home, and I didn't realize how much I missed HHN. I'm hoping next year we don't have to face similar last minute changes like we did this year, but I suppose we will just have to see. The food this year was top notch, and needs to continue that way. This wasn't a great year, but it wasn't a terrible year either. Like others have said, very middle of the road; I see what was meant to be. Have a good time with friends anyway despite the issues.
TR/DR: Potential great year hindered by last minute additions, making it a middle of the pack year. Had fun anyway.
1: Haunting of Hill house- This gets my #1 because it balanced a having beautiful theming with consistent scares. Props to the woman with the pregnant belly that my wife thought was a mannequin until the woman, and baby in her stomach, moved towards her.
2: Wicked Growth: This house is gorgeous and even when the scares aren't happening you still love it because of the theming. Would love for more houses like this.
3: Icons: I liked how they structured this house and that they gave themselves a way to bring back the icons down the road for future anniversary years. Some icons had better scenes and the throne was cool but ultimately served no purposed; a fun house to walk through.
4: Legendary Truth: Case Files: Loved the variety of creatures, even though I had no idea what they were. I enjoyed how the house was set up to be like you were walking through each book. Biggest hinderance really was the story and having no explanation about what was going on.
5: Puppet Theatre: First run through this house was 30 mins to closing and it was just after a cast change. It was less than stellar, and the puppet section was truly lacking. Upon multiple repeats it just got better and better, and this house is one I wish didn't have vinyl up. You could tell the designers really loved the idea and was just hindered by the vinyl, with multiple scares turning into show scenes and not scares.
6: Texas Chainsaw: Anyone saying this was better than the 2016 version must have had a bunch of bad runs, because this was way too inconsistent with the story and scares. I really wish they would have just stuck to adapting TCM 2, rather creating a bizarre hybrid of the 1st and 2nd movies. This was a lot lower on my list til I finally had a good run and every Leather face got me. The scares were too reliant on timing and for that reason it is so low.
7: Bride of Frankenstein: As a fan of the Universal Monsters and the Bride of Frankenstein I had high hopes for this house. The combination of being rushed through scenes and the vinyl really ruined it for me. That said the Bride of Dracula that soars at you, got me really good. I thought there was a vinyl sheet in front of her, and then realized I was wrong when she kept coming at me. This showed me that while the majority of scenes with vinyl hindered the scare, sometimes it was used as a way to deceive you.
8: Beetlejuice: While I never expected this house to be scary I did expect to at least see more scareactors within. Each run through seemed to always be missing someone, and the timing always seemed to just be off. That said the barker, and the Beetlejuices throughout were great. It was a fun house, but it was lacking.
9: SCarey: Went through this with 5 mins left, and me and my friend got all the scares. I was worried that I enjoyed it for that fact alone, and so when I went back through it the next I realized that was exactly the reason. This house changes scenes on you so fast, sometimes you dont realize you've gone to a different property. My guide for my UTH gave me a great description of this house, he said to look at it as if you were watching a HHN network and flipping through the channels. I enjoyed the Meetz and Bloodengutz sections, but that was a small part of the house.
10: Tooth Fairy: of boy what this house could have been. I really enjoyed the narration, especially since my name is James. What really made this house suffer was due to the placement of the sheeting on certain boo holes, instead of a small bug eyed fairy popping out and scaring me, all i got was a bugged eyed fairy popping out and doing a little jig at me. To me this house could have been great, and I would love to see more houses like this.
The scarezones were all pretty much sub par with the exception of Lights, Camera, Hacktion. That zone was a blast and I could tell everyone from guest to the cast were having fun. Seek and destroy was a cool idea, but clicking a flashlight at someone is not scary and while the controller experience is cool the way its set up doesn't allow for many people to experience it. Crypt TV was just a photo op and always chocked the flow of traffic, and Gorewood was cool to look at but due to traffic was ineffective. In the end stepping back into the fog was like going home, and I didn't realize how much I missed HHN. I'm hoping next year we don't have to face similar last minute changes like we did this year, but I suppose we will just have to see. The food this year was top notch, and needs to continue that way. This wasn't a great year, but it wasn't a terrible year either. Like others have said, very middle of the road; I see what was meant to be. Have a good time with friends anyway despite the issues.
TR/DR: Potential great year hindered by last minute additions, making it a middle of the pack year. Had fun anyway.
- Aug 20, 2019
- 390
- 751
Welcome to Scarey: Horror in the Heartland- I loved this house with all my being. This house is pure comfort food for any fan of Horror Nights. I know it’s gotten a lot of hate recently and I don’t really understand how. It’s just as thematically consistent as Case Files or Icons Captured; yet, it’s derided for offering the same mash up formula. I think the transitions in the first half are really strong: from the sewers of Carey, to the catacombs of the Hive, to the haunted house of Dead End and Legendary Truth. The scares come fast and heavy, more so than a lot of other houses, lots of points where the actors ping-pong from one scare into another. Particular shout outs to the sculders at the beginning, the second vampire who wasn’t hidden behind vinyl, Cindy, and Meety Meetz who popped up in a lot of different locations every time I visited. The settings were varied and claustrophobic, and I loved the reappearance of the “skool” with a massive interior façade that really set the tone for the maze: gothic and distinctly American, everything we love about Carey.
Wicked Growth: Realm of the Pumpkin- It was really hard to rank the next three because I thought the quality was very consistent across the board, but I had a solo run through Wicked Growth that bumped it to number 2. There is a certain charm to this maze that I felt oddly comforting, from the smells to the characters to the locations. It’s like the embodiment of Halloween that everyone knows but has never actually experienced. Every detail in this house feels like a vital part of the story, from the smells of dirt and dust, to the pumpkin headed figure that glides silently past on the covered bridge. The house makes great use of its space in the sprung tent and winds and twists to the great climax with the Pumpkin Lord. Particular shout out to the barn with the scarecrows as they consistently had people rushing past to get away from them. The exterior entry with the pumpkin arch was perfectly photogenic and complimented beautifully with the rich and detailed farmhouse interior façade. “FEAR THE PUMPKIN LORD! HE GROWS...HALLOWEEN!”
Case Files Unearthed: Legendary Truth- When people say they like the houses for their immersive qualities, this is what they’re talking about. From the moment you step inside the Shrek theater until the moment you leave, you are immersed in the shadowy underground of 1950’s New York and the gumshoe paranormal investigator Boris Schuester. The pulp aesthetic and unfolding narrative may be lost on a lot of visitors; however, if you’re lucky enough to do this house more than once, you’ll find tons of story to latch onto as it unfolds as action all around you. There’s an effect in the first scene of the house where Tim Foil’s reading of the Boris Schuester novel melds sonically into Boris himself taking over the narration. It was very cinematic and shows an attention to detail that cannot be understated. The length of this house also surprised, with each scene taking us through the investigation and includes some true “wow” moments: The recreation of the Kitty Kat Club, the basement, the museum all had impressive use of vertical space and felt authentic and put me in the shoes of Boris. I thought the finale was great, with the gauntlet of Legion monsters sending us straight for the exit.
Puppet Theater: Captive Audience- This was the favorite house of my friends and we made sure to visit every night. Puppet Theater brought camp and macabre fun to the line-up. This felt like a spiritual successor to Dollhouse of the Damned in many aspects, and had a good balance of sinister violence and visual gags. A lot of the performers in this house were on fire every time I went through: the dancing clown always froze people in terror and got great scares from the mirror gag right in front of him, “I’m not done rehearsing!” Shakespeare in the Tent, and the puppeteers in the finale gauntlet. Scenically this house is a treat and recreates the opulence of opera houses from the turn of the century. Weaving in and out of backstage areas of the Grandeur leads to some great scenes from the cramped corridors of the costuming room that opens up to the collapsed theater and balconies. Speaking of costuming, this house might have some of the most creative and memorable costuming from the entire event. Every character was well dressed in theatrical costumes and appropriately horrifying masks. The little gnome man is a stand out as well as the harlequin clown. In any other year this house would dominate.
The Haunting of Hill House- I try not to go into the IP houses with any expectations because execution can vary wildly from any preconceptions about what should or shouldn’t be featured. However, I’m very happy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed The Haunting of Hill House. This house felt long, and it felt like it just kept going and going. The entry with the façade alternating between the softer orange lighting to the lightning and red lighting sets the mood really well and is a great introduction to the gothic beauty of Hill House. The selection of ghosts was great, but kind of hampered by the use of face coverings. I understand the importance of safety in the age of COVID, but it does dilute some of the impact with the face actors (see also: ICONS). The fidelity to the source material is laudable, and as a fan of the show I was very satisfied by mostly all of the major characters being featured in some capacity. As usual, the sets are immaculate and derelict. The use of painted backgrounds to extend the sets were a clever touch and added a bit of unease.
Part 2 below
Wicked Growth: Realm of the Pumpkin- It was really hard to rank the next three because I thought the quality was very consistent across the board, but I had a solo run through Wicked Growth that bumped it to number 2. There is a certain charm to this maze that I felt oddly comforting, from the smells to the characters to the locations. It’s like the embodiment of Halloween that everyone knows but has never actually experienced. Every detail in this house feels like a vital part of the story, from the smells of dirt and dust, to the pumpkin headed figure that glides silently past on the covered bridge. The house makes great use of its space in the sprung tent and winds and twists to the great climax with the Pumpkin Lord. Particular shout out to the barn with the scarecrows as they consistently had people rushing past to get away from them. The exterior entry with the pumpkin arch was perfectly photogenic and complimented beautifully with the rich and detailed farmhouse interior façade. “FEAR THE PUMPKIN LORD! HE GROWS...HALLOWEEN!”
Case Files Unearthed: Legendary Truth- When people say they like the houses for their immersive qualities, this is what they’re talking about. From the moment you step inside the Shrek theater until the moment you leave, you are immersed in the shadowy underground of 1950’s New York and the gumshoe paranormal investigator Boris Schuester. The pulp aesthetic and unfolding narrative may be lost on a lot of visitors; however, if you’re lucky enough to do this house more than once, you’ll find tons of story to latch onto as it unfolds as action all around you. There’s an effect in the first scene of the house where Tim Foil’s reading of the Boris Schuester novel melds sonically into Boris himself taking over the narration. It was very cinematic and shows an attention to detail that cannot be understated. The length of this house also surprised, with each scene taking us through the investigation and includes some true “wow” moments: The recreation of the Kitty Kat Club, the basement, the museum all had impressive use of vertical space and felt authentic and put me in the shoes of Boris. I thought the finale was great, with the gauntlet of Legion monsters sending us straight for the exit.
Puppet Theater: Captive Audience- This was the favorite house of my friends and we made sure to visit every night. Puppet Theater brought camp and macabre fun to the line-up. This felt like a spiritual successor to Dollhouse of the Damned in many aspects, and had a good balance of sinister violence and visual gags. A lot of the performers in this house were on fire every time I went through: the dancing clown always froze people in terror and got great scares from the mirror gag right in front of him, “I’m not done rehearsing!” Shakespeare in the Tent, and the puppeteers in the finale gauntlet. Scenically this house is a treat and recreates the opulence of opera houses from the turn of the century. Weaving in and out of backstage areas of the Grandeur leads to some great scenes from the cramped corridors of the costuming room that opens up to the collapsed theater and balconies. Speaking of costuming, this house might have some of the most creative and memorable costuming from the entire event. Every character was well dressed in theatrical costumes and appropriately horrifying masks. The little gnome man is a stand out as well as the harlequin clown. In any other year this house would dominate.
The Haunting of Hill House- I try not to go into the IP houses with any expectations because execution can vary wildly from any preconceptions about what should or shouldn’t be featured. However, I’m very happy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed The Haunting of Hill House. This house felt long, and it felt like it just kept going and going. The entry with the façade alternating between the softer orange lighting to the lightning and red lighting sets the mood really well and is a great introduction to the gothic beauty of Hill House. The selection of ghosts was great, but kind of hampered by the use of face coverings. I understand the importance of safety in the age of COVID, but it does dilute some of the impact with the face actors (see also: ICONS). The fidelity to the source material is laudable, and as a fan of the show I was very satisfied by mostly all of the major characters being featured in some capacity. As usual, the sets are immaculate and derelict. The use of painted backgrounds to extend the sets were a clever touch and added a bit of unease.
Part 2 below
- Aug 20, 2019
- 390
- 751
Texas Chainsaw Massacre- This was my biggest surprise. As a long-time visitor to the Hollywood event, I was pretty fed up when this was announced jointly for both coasts. However, this is probably the scariest out of the ten houses. I like that the set-up is very similar to Hollywood’s “Blood Brothers” house from 2016 in that we’re entering the story sometime between the original Texas Chainsaw and its (underrated) sequel. The direction is everything you’d expect from a Texas Chainsaw house. Even though parts are authentic to the films, a lot of it wasn’t but felt just as real to the series as anything. The constant presence of Leatherface means he’s around every corner and behind every door. Stuff like this makes me really want a Dead by Daylight house in the future. Also, kudos to the best finale at the event as my friends and I were constantly rushing to get out of there.
Revenge of the Tooth Fairy- I adored the aesthetic choices made here. Everything is just so...cute...for a lack of better words. The set-up is simple and effective: “What happens when you mess with the Tooth Fairy?” and we get to watch this dark fairy tale play out in gruesome fashion. The entry and façade are so imaginative and inspired, taking us into the actual pages of this story. The cast were always very manic and playing with the size advantage of being smaller. Without vinyl, this would probably feel less restrained, but otherwise a very solid addition.
HHN ICONS: Captured- Well...this may be the biggest disappointment for me. I may just be a victim of my own expectations, but everything about this just felt so...underwhelming. Putting all of HHN’s past icons in a single house seems like a no brainer for an anniversary house. However, the actual execution left me wanting more. I’ll start with the positives, which are the façade, the opening scene, and the finale, which I think delivered on the promise of this hellish reunion. However, this maze is just so bland in the scenes for the individual icons. What was Lady Luck’s location supposed to be? Why did we only see her monstrous form? The Director’s scenes felt very lifeless, he mostly just stood behind his partition and stared at people as they passed. The sets were very Saw-lite and uninspired. I was expecting some more film equipment, flashing lights, screaming victims...nope, just muffling blankets stapled to the walls. The Usher’s theater felt very miniscule. All he does is stand there and wag his finger at us. Not even a classic movie monster hiding behind one of those posters? The Caretaker’s scene was appropriately moody, but not at all scary. This is where some live victims would have really improved the quality, because watching him stab a dummy over and over felt very dull. The lack of Cindy here was an odd omission, but I guess they didn’t want to double dip with Scarey. I think the Storyteller had the best individual section. The use of the shadow projection was very well done and added some much-needed tension and flair to the house that led to two good startles, first from Elsa in her regular crone-like appearance, and then again from her demonic form. I don’t really understand why they would choose to drop some big changes to the character like this for a blip in the middle of a crowded attraction, but I’ll take the scare. The finale, with Jack and Chance was also way too brief for the most popular icon and it kind of diminishes Chance’s status because she has to stand in the corner and share with Jack. The fundamental problem with this house is that the icons are just not scary on their own. They definitely need more minions and monsters associated with the icons to fill out the gaps and add some thrills to what should be their headliner house. The few minions that were present (Caretaker cultist, Jack’s maniac) were so random and felt out of place. I also thought the actors portraying Jack’s maniacs were in the worst costumes at the event (event tee and prop weapon) and could easily be mistaken for house ops. The finale is the saving grace though, and the placement of the icons changed every time I went through. It was exciting to see so many of them at the same time and the “winning” icon also seemed to rotate regularly. However, this house was sadly just not what it should have been.
Beetlejuice- Very fun and faithful to the movie. However, just like Icons, it’s just not at all scary. This would be a great introduction to HHN for anyone hesitant to haunted attractions. It’s very colorful, well-executed, and exciting. The inclusion of a live-mic'd Beetlejuice at the entrance kept the crowd very engaged and heightened the energy of the attraction itself. This is another house that is pretty hampered by safety protocols, as there is a large number of face characters here. However, this just lacks any real thrill and as a result just didn’t do much for me.
Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives!-This maze looks great. However, just like Beetlejuice, there wasn’t a single good scare throughout. The partitions really hurt here as every potential scare had to be held back. The characters themselves, just like in Icons, aren’t really scary. I know a lot of people here love the classic Universal Monsters, they just don’t appeal to me. I missed the opening scene every time I passed through, and only realized there was a flying stunt on my last run. Maybe just retire the monsters for a bit.
Scare Zones and other thoughts later...
Revenge of the Tooth Fairy- I adored the aesthetic choices made here. Everything is just so...cute...for a lack of better words. The set-up is simple and effective: “What happens when you mess with the Tooth Fairy?” and we get to watch this dark fairy tale play out in gruesome fashion. The entry and façade are so imaginative and inspired, taking us into the actual pages of this story. The cast were always very manic and playing with the size advantage of being smaller. Without vinyl, this would probably feel less restrained, but otherwise a very solid addition.
HHN ICONS: Captured- Well...this may be the biggest disappointment for me. I may just be a victim of my own expectations, but everything about this just felt so...underwhelming. Putting all of HHN’s past icons in a single house seems like a no brainer for an anniversary house. However, the actual execution left me wanting more. I’ll start with the positives, which are the façade, the opening scene, and the finale, which I think delivered on the promise of this hellish reunion. However, this maze is just so bland in the scenes for the individual icons. What was Lady Luck’s location supposed to be? Why did we only see her monstrous form? The Director’s scenes felt very lifeless, he mostly just stood behind his partition and stared at people as they passed. The sets were very Saw-lite and uninspired. I was expecting some more film equipment, flashing lights, screaming victims...nope, just muffling blankets stapled to the walls. The Usher’s theater felt very miniscule. All he does is stand there and wag his finger at us. Not even a classic movie monster hiding behind one of those posters? The Caretaker’s scene was appropriately moody, but not at all scary. This is where some live victims would have really improved the quality, because watching him stab a dummy over and over felt very dull. The lack of Cindy here was an odd omission, but I guess they didn’t want to double dip with Scarey. I think the Storyteller had the best individual section. The use of the shadow projection was very well done and added some much-needed tension and flair to the house that led to two good startles, first from Elsa in her regular crone-like appearance, and then again from her demonic form. I don’t really understand why they would choose to drop some big changes to the character like this for a blip in the middle of a crowded attraction, but I’ll take the scare. The finale, with Jack and Chance was also way too brief for the most popular icon and it kind of diminishes Chance’s status because she has to stand in the corner and share with Jack. The fundamental problem with this house is that the icons are just not scary on their own. They definitely need more minions and monsters associated with the icons to fill out the gaps and add some thrills to what should be their headliner house. The few minions that were present (Caretaker cultist, Jack’s maniac) were so random and felt out of place. I also thought the actors portraying Jack’s maniacs were in the worst costumes at the event (event tee and prop weapon) and could easily be mistaken for house ops. The finale is the saving grace though, and the placement of the icons changed every time I went through. It was exciting to see so many of them at the same time and the “winning” icon also seemed to rotate regularly. However, this house was sadly just not what it should have been.
Beetlejuice- Very fun and faithful to the movie. However, just like Icons, it’s just not at all scary. This would be a great introduction to HHN for anyone hesitant to haunted attractions. It’s very colorful, well-executed, and exciting. The inclusion of a live-mic'd Beetlejuice at the entrance kept the crowd very engaged and heightened the energy of the attraction itself. This is another house that is pretty hampered by safety protocols, as there is a large number of face characters here. However, this just lacks any real thrill and as a result just didn’t do much for me.
Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives!-This maze looks great. However, just like Beetlejuice, there wasn’t a single good scare throughout. The partitions really hurt here as every potential scare had to be held back. The characters themselves, just like in Icons, aren’t really scary. I know a lot of people here love the classic Universal Monsters, they just don’t appeal to me. I missed the opening scene every time I passed through, and only realized there was a flying stunt on my last run. Maybe just retire the monsters for a bit.
Scare Zones and other thoughts later...
Some photos from last night
HHN 30 by Mike Sperduto, on Flickr
HHN 30 by Mike Sperduto, on Flickr
HHN 30 by Mike Sperduto, on Flickr
HHN 30 by Mike Sperduto, on Flickr
HHN 30 by Mike Sperduto, on FlickrHHN 30 by Mike Sperduto, on FlickrHHN 30 by Mike Sperduto, on FlickrHHN 30 by Mike Sperduto, on Flickr
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My HHN 30 House Rankings:
- The Wicked Growth: Realm of the Pumpkin
- HHN Icons: Captured
- Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives
- Case Files Unearthed: Legendary Truth
- The Haunting of Hill House
- Puppet Theatre: Captive Audience
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- Beetlejuice
- Welcome to Scarey: Horror in the Heartland
- Revenge of the Tooth Fairy
- Lights, Camera, Hacktion: Eddie’s Revenge
- Gorewood Forest
- Seek and Destroy
- 30 Years 30 Fears
- Crypt TV
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