The Ghastly Green Ghost

Easy there, pal. While you may not feel that Karloff's iteration of the Monster is scary, you can't argue that it's iconic and has proven to be very, very popular. I doubt we'll still be seeing imagery of the HHN Monster in another 80 years, so have some respect. I don't disagree with your point about the "traditional" Universal Monsters making less-than-effective scareactors in a house, but there are a LOT more creatures in that pantheon than you may realize. I'm sure there are some character creations that might still prove startling in this day and age.

I experienced the event when it was at both parks. While I remember it fondly, I'm not convinced that the event (or the general public) isn't quite ready for a split-park event again just yet. I think we're all getting a little used to the "sameness" of the event over the past few years. The houses are in the same soundstages, queue entrances and lines in the same locations, scarezones in the same spots. If you've ever had a route that you take on a regular basis (i.e. your walk to school, drive to work, etc) and done it in reverse, you'll find that the familiar can quickly become unfamiliar. It sounds to me that, instead of expanding the footprint of the entire event, we might first try a little bit of a "refresh." While there are a finite number of locations for houses, the soundstages have plenty of room to try something new. Maybe re-route the queue lines a bit, move house entrances to new spots and pick a new location or two for scarezones. I think we'd all be surprised how "new" and refreshing the event might be with just a little bit of change.

Kind of a relief. As original as a "lab animals run amok" idea is, I don't think it would work as an HHN maze. Then again, if it were the tongue-in-cheek house of the year, it's just odd enough to be a hit. Think "Creatures!" in a lab setting, stuffed to the gills with oversized foam-latex puppet zombie creatures. Hmmm, I may have just changed my own mind.

I have nothing to confirm this, but I do remember hearing once that the Hercules/Xena building is, in fact, condemned. I've never heard anything about the Hard Rock building's condition, but it's been unused for a LONG time. Unless it's been maintained consistently (which is doubtful if it was unused), I would think it would require a lot of work to get it back into usable-by-Guest conditions. I would take this story with a very large grain of salt.

Wow, Dr. Jimmy. Just . . . wow.

As I've said before, I agree with JWFearman's doubts about a reduction in house number. Reducing # of houses = bad publicity and negative marketing impact. Increasing # of scarezones = negligible marketing impact. And I think you're right about the new content this year, JW. There've been a lot of rumors about the legal entanglements that Universal ran into with Bloody Mary. If she wasn't used (or even officially mentioned) last year, I don't understand why things would suddenly change a year later. I loved Bloody Mary, don't get me wrong, but it's entirely possible that we will NEVER see her again at HHN.

So, playing the Devil's advocate here, where would they put this "super long" house? Would it be long enough to justify two sprung tents, or would it take up a much larger chunk of one of the soundstages than single houses typically occupy? If you were to take up a much larger portion of a soundstage, would that impact the number of other houses that you could fit into the remaining soundstage space(s)? You obviously couldn't fit a much larger house in the Disaster queue, but what about the Parade storage building? Unless you start talking about vertical construction, which, yes, has been done in the past on a relatively small scale, it seems like it's tough to find somewhere to put a drastically larger house. Other "super long" questions to ponder: are there issues with Guest capacity? While you may be feeding the same number of Guests into the house that a "typical" maze may take, are there issues with the placement of your exits? Is the fire marshall going to allow you to have that many additional Guests in a maze at one particular time? Does a longer maze compound issues with evacuation to the point where it becomes infeasible? With the current number and placement of houses, there are established and ordinarily-adequate amounts of queue space. What about word-of-mouth for a "super long" house and the additional queue line necessitated by extra Guest anticipation? What about staffing? If you double the length of your house, you are most likely going to double the number of required scareactors. It would seem that there are already complaints about the number of scareactors in some of these houses. Is there enough available seasonal workforce to supply the appropriate number of bodies for x additional roles, and is there enough room in the budget to account for this additional headcount? We've read a lot of speculation recently on the number/makeup of the house count this year. I don't have any insider information, but I've got my own common sense and it tells me this: Universal will never, EVER reduce the number of available-to-all houses. They won't convert House #8 into a separate ticketed house, leaving the General Public with only 7. Attendance and crowding are already issues and this simply compounds it. I also believe this negates the idea of having only 7 houses, even if one is a "super long" house. Universal seems fond of marketing every year's event as "the biggest year ever," and you lose that by reducing house count. The Marketing Department won't let them do that, for that reason alone. And, before someone says that it's not Marketing's call to make, let's all think back to previous years and the decision-making clout that Marketing holds. Now, I'm not saying that Universal WILL NOT do a "super long" house or an extreme house. I'm just saying that, if they do, it will be a mystical, magical 9th house.

I apologize in advance for my ignorance, as I'm a relatively new member of this forum. Having said that, can someone please clarify what the deal is with Emeric Belasco? Why is he (or anyone, at this stage) trustworthy? Just fill me in, if you don't mind.

I enjoy the Vincent Price version ("The Last Man on Earth," for those of you who'd like to seek it out), and it's honestly the closest version to the one in my mind's eye. Charlton's version ("The Omega Man") was just a little too 1970's for me. It may have been great in its day, but the soul brother vampires just didn't age well. And damn, don't get me started on that Will Smith garbage. Dr. Jimmy, I have nothing to add to your synopsis, except that the vampires never actually killed Robert Neville. What an ending! And, lastly, let us not forget that many people cite "I Am Legend," as the inspiration for Romero's original "Night of the Living Dead." Maybe there's a zombie tie-in after all?

Regardless of the meaning, it's a damn great book. Much better than all of the movie adaptations, IMO. Will Smith as Robert Neville . . . PFFTTTTT!

I don't really understand your point. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? Have you ever seen what's involved with Haunted Mansion Holiday? It is by no means an "easy" overlay, as it involves extensive redecoration, including the installation of additional audio animatronic figures. The entire experience of the attraction changes, including different lighting, narration and music. A new Simpsons attraction, on the other hand, would require a new ride film (time consuming, but easily done) and new choreography for the vehicles. It's not quite as difficult as you make it out to be. This isn't "The Amazing Spider-Man," after all. You're not changing a ride path or altering anything physically. But I digress, my intention was not to assign a range of difficulty to holiday overlays in general, it was simply to give an example that this sort of thing is occasionally done. You've just reiterated the point I was making. Any holiday overlay requires an investment in time and money. The question is, is the payoff worth it? HHN is already a huge-selling event. Would a re-themed Simpsons ride bring any more Guests to the turnstiles? I think we're getting our signals crossed here. My point was this: Some people have no interest in Halloween (it's not a popular holiday worldwide, FYI) and simply want to experience the park in a "normal" fashion. HHN is an after-hours, specially-ticketed event. You can choose whether or not you want to experience it. For this reason, a Simpsons overlay would only be utilized during the limited hours of the HHN event. Getting back to my earlier point: is the investment of time and money worth the payoff of a slightly different ride experience that you can only utilize for a few hours per night, a handful of nights per week?

So, in a way this idea is similar to Disneyland's annual rebranding of the Haunted Mansion into Haunted Mansion Holiday. It's not only a huge hit with returning Guests, but people will actually plan trips during this time of year so that they can catch the new version of the ride. That being said, there were rumors a few years ago that they would be applying this seasonal overlay to the HM at WDW. From what I've heard, it was eventually nixed because of the demographic difference between Guests in California and Guests in Orlando. You see, a large number of California theme park Guests are Annual Passholders and other locals. Orlando, on the other hand, gets a large number of international Guests. The difference is this: locals will come back to see something "tweaked" or "plussed" or otherwise differentiated from the norm. International visitors are seeing something for the first (and sometimes only) time. They don't appreciate limited-time things, as they don't have the luxury of returning frequently. Here's my question: Is a limited-time holiday-themed overlay worth the potential risk of misrepresenting your attractions and/or alienating first-time visitors? Does it behoove Universal to spend the money and effort to create an attraction overlay that will be used for one month out of the year? And, in that month-long span, it's probably only going to be operational during the limited hours of HHN, as both Universal and IOA operate normally during daytime hours. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of holiday overlays, but it just doesn't seem to be in Universal's best interests to create them.

I'll admit that some of the movie houses in the past were a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dead Silence houses. To generalize all movie houses as either "good" or "bad" is foolish. Here's my opinion: unless they're done in a truly exceptional way, IP (intellectual property) themed houses often end up resembling a walk-through exhibit more than a haunted maze. The sentiment becomes less "I feel immersed in this environment" and more "Look how faithfully they recreated that movie set!" That being said, my favorite houses are usually the more-or-less original concept houses. I say "more-or-less" because it seems that nothing is ever truly 100% original anymore. I'll always remember Ghost Town, Hellgate Prison, Interstellar Terror, Creatures!, Leave it to Cleaver and Psychoscareapy: HFTH, Demon Cantina and others. They may have drawn inspiration from movies (especially Demon Cantina), television and other media, but they were given an original twist by the HHN creatives. They weren't scene-for-scene recreations of things you've seen before, they were new and exciting experiences. There may have been familiarity (i.e. Cleaver's Meety Meetz and Bob's Big Boy), but it was never blatantly "hey, remember this? It looks just like the movie!" In an event like Halloween Horror Nights, the ideal house mix seems to include both original and IP houses. After all, it's the IP houses that are the most marketable, as well as the most easily described through word-of-mouth.

It's hard to extrapolate an entire event's theme on the suspicion that they'll include a house based on one particular property. Other years have included movie houses, yet the event wasn't entirely movie themed. Specifically, I'm thinking about the Carnival of Carnage year and the 'Dead Silence' house (one of my favorites, by the way). Begin completely unrelated soapbox rant: Since the advent of the HHN Icons, it seems easy for speculation to fall into the rut of "think of a profession and make up an Icon using it." We've had a caretaker, a movie director, a theater usher, a psychologist, a storyteller, a sideshow clown. There have been people proposing Icons who were horror dentists, other doctors, etc. etc. In a lot of ways, this line of creation leads to Howl-O-Screamification of the event. Oooh, this year it's a scary fashion show! Oh boy, now we've got a scary rock concert! Whoa, a scary nightclub DJ! Halloween Horror Nights seems to thrive best when the characters are rich and three-dimensional, with complete backstories. Bloody Mary's year was one of my favorites, as we got to experience her transformation from doctor to specter. She had motivation that we could associate with, not just "here's a creepy looking character that happens to kill people." Jack the Clown may have started as a simple "scary clown," but his personality has really evolved and emerged over the years. Personally, I think that's why some of us may look at the Storyteller and Fear as unsuccessful Icons: they weren't given much of a personality, so they became cardboard cutouts instead of real characters. Whatever this year's theme may be, and whoever the figurehead of the event is, I hope he/she/it features a fully-written background and personality. End soapbox rant.

I I don't know if anyone else follows movie gossip, but there was speculation that a new comic based on the Green Arrow character would take place inside a SuperMax prison full of super villains. What about a Hellgate Prison-themed event? Each house could feature a different "horror villain" who has been incarcerated in their own particular wing of the prison. As you proceed into each haunted house, the surroundings have been converted by the inmate to more closely resemble their comfort zone, similar to the recent Batman videogame's Arkham Aslyum. On another hand, it seems that the Western genre is hip and new again. Red Dead Redemption was one of last year's most succesful videogame properties, True Grit is getting a lot of attention at the box office, and it wasn't too long ago that Deadwood was a short-lived hit on HBO. How about an event that's entirely themed to Westerns? I know it was done in Ghost Town a few years back, but it might be the right time to bring it back as a larger theme. Just speculatin.' What do you guys think?

Thanks for the many corrections. I knew there were multiple houses with helmet lights, but I obviously couldn't get my ducks in a row. I think I agree with the Director (and several other posters) in that I would like to see the event head toward a more traditional Halloween theme. I know there have been subtle nods in that direction (the jack-o-lanterns in Central Park, the Hallow maze, the almost-but-not-quite used "Trick r' Treat" property), but a whole-hearted jump into Halloween would be welcome. I've found that my own Halloween mood is being tinted more and more by popular horror media. I enjoy watching horror movies, reading horror novels, playing horror games, etc, etc, but they don't really and truly capture the Halloween season. Horror movies do not equal Halloween. EDIT: Hooray! My second post ever!

Pardon my hazy memory, but wasn't 2006's "Cold, Blind Terror" an experiment in using cooler temperatures in a maze? I distinctly remember the use of mining helmets as a light source, but I don't recall any actual lower temperatures. Does anyone else remember this maze? If so, did you experience any colder temperatures, or was it simply an interesting title?