Now that HoS is up and running, and that media was allowed to film in the houses, time for some general thoughts. This is actually rather nice for me since in the past there really wasn't too much house footage allowed, so I'll happily take what I can get!
Demented Dimensions - Since Attractions Magazine got a lights on behind the scenes tour (so I saw the house in full detail), I can say this is a pretty cool house. It's certainly a "Hodgepodge" type of house, but it fits considering you're going through different dimensions. There's some creative rooms, scares, a nice variety all the way through. My only nitpick is from the beginning (and the desc) it sounded like you're going through a doorway to each dimension. Heck, it's prominantly displayed in the logo. However there's no doorways seperating the rooms, so the transitions are seamless and it feels like one weird dimension instead of multiple ones. I never thought that would end up as a nitpick, but there it is. But other then that, it looks like a fun house.
Undead Arena: Live - Alrighty, so what is this new house about? Post-apocalyptic world, divided between the Worthy and Unworthy. We're the Unworthy, so for sport we're taking part in a event at the Undead Arena: Live where there's zombies. "Step into the arena & fight to stay alive" as it advertises on the website. Now what is the event we're playing? "You Bet Your Life" (and Lost). It looks more like a cheesy old game show...at times. Other times I'm not quite sure what the heck it was trying to portray. There's some good ideas in this house (Various ways of splitting up the line/groups, netting for a particular scare to grab onto), but it doesn't come together, in fact it looks -thrown- together. Hopefully if it returns next year, they touch up and refine it since there's a fun house in concept here.
The Black Spot - Ah, the Black Spot. A classic mark of death or a curse. You know what else is a curse? Pirate themed houses in general since most I've seen throughout the years don't work. (With the lone exception being the Pirates of Emerson haunt in California.) There's a few unique scares in here, plus some good set design. This is one of the few houses where the walk to the facade is nicely themed. But unfortunately as a whole it doesn't really work, and knowing what house this replaced (Deadfall), it's not a worthy replacement.
Unearthed - A rather nice concept with some great set design, plenty of scares and a killer sound design to boot. Overall it looks like a really nice house, though it's a tad odd not seeing the witch this house belongs to. This is Scarlett's house after all, but I think the blunder here is Busch Gardens getting the guys who did the Blair Witch Project to create Scarlett, and in turn -they- have the rights to her and not the park. (That is the only reason I can imagine we never saw Scarlett after her icon year.)
Death Water Bayou - With Zombie Morturary gone, this is the oldest house at HoS...and it still looks pretty dang good! It's good good detail, scares abound and quite possibly the most killer bungee scares I've ever seen! I can see why it's been a longtime favorite to many.
Motel Hell - Wow, wow, wowzers. A old motel where nightmares come to life, and the motel mysteriously cannot be torn down. All thanks to the Sandman, to which "Mr. Sandman" is playing at various speeds throughout the whole thing. This is a -killer- house, one that HoS can be very proud of! The only downside to a otherwise great looking house is a mask room which looks very out of place. I'd let it slide if the masks looked like the Sandman mask they use, but these look more like Jabbawockez masks.
Overall, the event looks really fun. Especially when you look at the various scare zones and all the monsters elsewhere throughout the park. Though there's two other observations I have.
One is while HoS does have a nice variety of scares, it was hard to ignore they're using a lot of bungee scares. Now I know they can be amazing, especially in DWB. But not every house needs them.
The second one is, when it comes to the houses people are really loving this year, I'm noticing on a lot of lists that Death Water Bayou is in most people's top two (Along with Motel Hell), for some it's people's straight-up favorite, and this is the -oldest- house at the event!