So I went last night... a lot of thoughts...
But honestly, I didn't think the event was bad. In fact, I mostly had fun! However, I can easily see how YMMV. If you are a devoted haunt fanatic, you will likely find this event so-so at best. Obviously. the production values are not at the level of HHN, and (as well all suspected), scareactor talent in the mazes--while excellent when present--was very inconsistently placed.
But, despite spreading themselves too thin with too much at one time, IMO, it's clear many investments have been made. Lots of custom props (really liked the Pumpkin Spiders at the park entrance, and the Oz scarezone props), ambient music throughout the park (often specific music to the themed scarezones), scarezones all over the place, multiple themed bar areas, allowing individual ride attractions/stores to decorate for Halloween, and the frequent use of branded covers to the queue fences all add up to a full park experience. The vibe of the entire park is really fun, similar to the vibe of Scary Farm. LOTS of people were wearing SFFF merch. I think they did a great job here, and have really stepped up. And to clarify, they did change their mind about the park having a hard close.
They did seem to be taking the chaperone policy seriously at the park entrance, separating guests who appeared to be teens into a separate queue to see who their chaperone was. Inside the park, it's hard to say if it had much effect... it seemed pretty clear to me (despite the higher prices and aforementioned chaperone policy) that the main audience of this event was teens, and there was still a fair amount of them running (literally running) all over the place without their chaperone in sight. But by and large, I didn't experience any serious first hand problems with the crowd, aside from one minor event where a few teens thought it'd be funny to try to become impromptu scareactors while inside a maze and try to scare other guests.
And the park did seem to have a pretty good sized crowd.... while not a mob scene, it definitely was not a ghost town. But between the food, rides, shops, scarezones, and mazes, the crowd was really spread out--meaning that mostly, lines for rides and mazes were super short (Saw is the exception here), and in fact, many mazes were walk ons. And I think even many of us die hard haunt fans will find that even a so-so maze becomes a lot better when you're literally the only person in it, so the scareactors (who were all really, really good) can really focus in on you. Honetly, I got more scares here than I ever have at HHN. Whether those low crowds in mazes will sustain as the event heads into October remains to be seen.
Big shout out to the scareactors, who are really quite good throughout the entire park, scarezones and mazes. Not as in your face as HHN, but they have a fun level of interaction. One friend of mine said he got to go through the Saw maze alone, and the scare actors kept yelling, "Why are you leaving me here? Why aren't you helping me?" as he passed by. Pretty funny!
We did experience a delay with Saw opening (finally opened at 7:30), but we didn't have any other maze issues, and were able to get every single maze done (and ST twice!) by 10:15 without Express. That said, that same friend said he did run into a few mazes that temporarlily closed for techincal issues during the night, but we personally never saw them aside from the Saw delay... so again, YMMV. Also gotta give the park some credit for really pulsing people into mazes (when there was a line), so there was never a conga line effect.
Mini maze reviews:
Stranger Things: I think good for the budget they had, A bit short, many rooms too large, and while the final set room is suprisingly well done, it lacks a final scare. But no black walls (except where themed to be so).
Saw: much improved! No more "doctor's office" in the beginning, now you're dropped straight into the torutre rooms. The long black hallway mid-way through is now in theme, and added multiple overhead smoke effects, air blasts, and soundtrack. A few missing scareactors, but from a production point of view, it was excellent for the budget they likely had to work with.
Conjuring: Also much improved! They removed the short show scene at the beginning, likely to get higher throughput, which was fine with me. I was hoping they would've changed the extended "shutters" hallway section mid-way through the maze, but they didn't--however, there is at least a scareactor in there now. Also, many cool uses of projections (noteably a meanacing Anabelle shadow, and a very cool Zoetrope effect).
Trick 'r Treat: it's quite long, and I absolutely love that all the scenes from the movie are represented with live actors instead of the mannequins HHN used. For me, this one was the black wall maze, with lots of transitions between scares that didn't quite work for me--yet. But I do think this maze has a lot of potential if they tweak it. It's not quite there yet for me, but there's a good base to start with.
Aftermath: Just too short, and not all that much for the scareactors to work with. Felt a lot like the War of the Worlds section of the Terror Tram. Though it was interesting to walk though it in reverse. Also, the exit for this leads directly into Army of the Dead.
Army of the Dead: it was very slow to get going, with only two scaractors for a very large section of the maze... but once we got into the "casino" portion, I had fun with it. Still missing something, can't quite put a finger on what.
All the others are returning, and as such, they were all walk ons, and you were basically alone going through them, which amplified them to positive effect IMO. The scareactors in Sewer of Souls were super aggressive (in a good way) and all over the place, that was great! But boy, does that maze need some sound design. Willoughby's still the same, but I've always liked it. Truth or Dare had small set desgin improvments, but lacked a lot of scareactors. Vault 666 still the same, lots of scareactors, but they do like screaming loud at you to scare you, which kind of gets old. Condamed back to the classic version, which is fine.
Other issues the park needs to work out: adding maze wait times (or least stating if a maze is open or closed) to the app and wait board. And better line/queue management for mazes. A few mazes had this figured out, and let people go under or arround ropes if the line was short, or just refigured their queues for a shorter line. But most of the mazes made you walk the entire queue, even if it was empty, and would scream at people if they went under/over ropes. I figure this is a staffing issue, but this really should be addressed. There's really no reason to make people walk an entire empty queue, and while I get the safety issue from the park side of guests going around ropes, just reconfigure the queue so they don't have to.
TL; DR version: if you're looking for detailed set mazes, and that's your primary goal, this probably isn't the event for you. But if you're looking for an overall experience of more than just mazes, and are willing to overlook flaws in exchange for very low waittimes and possibly being in mazes alone, you could have a lot of fun here--especially interacting with the talented scareactos.
