marchofprogress

Thanks for being interested If I taught one person something new it was worth the time.That research helped me enjoy HHN on a whole new level. As far as your scare, I would definitely put that above a jumpscare, you are correct. The chainsaws, though, didn't make that scare at all - the scareactors did. My biggest problem is that some scareactors take the chainsaw as a license to just be lazy bums ... which is lame. I mean, cmon, how can anyone argue against the idea that a loud chainsaw sound is a lazy way to scare someone? In your case, there was TERROR! Yay, terror!!! Id be willing to bet that the scareactors here talking about their chainsaw skills probably do have them.. It's just that the ones who don't have any skill are the very vocal majority, and they make themselves impossible to ignore. Let's clone the good ones, what say ye?

Ahoy all - I brought this up at the end of my final event review but the mods merged all my event reviews together into one thread and every one of them alone is tl;dr - the odds that anybody makes it to the end are really small. So I thought I'd post this as a new thread. So far every year in the past there's been a thread on the forums wherein complete walkthroughs of the houses are given. Room by room, scene by scene, scare by scare. Is there any way we can do that here? I mentioned it in the Bloodengutz section of my review because for some reason as many times as I went through I didn't get to see nearly everything people were talking about. Plus I learned on these forums that there was a Warcraft II strategy guide in the In-Between house, and that's the cool kinda stuff I really like to know! So now that the event is over ... What do you all think? Anybody remember the houses well enough to give a room by room walkthrough? Anybody notice any cool Easter eggs? Or just notice something cool you'd like to share? I'll start by throwing out one of my favorite little details I happened to notice that nobody else I talked to caught: in the collapsing buildings in Acid Assault, they had windows lit up (some of them blinking) and they were timed in sync with the destruction so that they went out when the rubble fell past that point. I thought that was cool:) I don't have anywhere *near* a good enough memory to give a play by play of any of the houses... So I'm looking at you folks who went through some of them 40 times and such. What'd you see?

Uhm.... How about the furIES, plural? The myth behind them is .... ..... it's really convoluted and frankly I don't remember it all and I'll let you look it up on Wikipedia if you want to know, but I do know that they represent the vengeance bringers who sort of come to "collect the toll" for people who curse themselves and seal their own fate.. They're in Roman mythology too... As the furies as well, I believe. They're also in Dante's Inferno (we know Uni's playing with that) .... If memory serves, they are the guardians of the gate to the city of Dis, and they're basically like the Gorgons..and the furies are often confused with the gorgons anyway By all accounts, they're horrific creatures you do not want to encounter. I would think they'd be more likely to be what is 'hinted at' ... Lyssa is kind of obscure, and from what I remember about my Greek mythology .... Well, two things: 1- This one is a stretch, but I think translation problems or destroyed texts or something like that affected the list that led to the one you just gave, and 2- Kinda tied into that (but I'm pretty sure about this one) - She is really the goddess responsible for fury in the sense of madness, not fury as in the sense of ... anger/rage/what have you. And actually, she isn't even that. She's like a madness subcontractor - the Maniae (is that correct ? each one is called a Mania and they're a group) are the deities who are actually responsible for madness. This is why we call that kind of "fury-madness" mania instead of ... lyssa..ia. Regardless, the whole lot of them were tied in to vengeance and savage justice. Punishment, basically. That's the way madness was understood by the Greeks. In short .... MAN I hope you're right and they do an event themed on madness. Unlike what other people have said, I actually liked the way they tied Lady Luck's story in with the houses this year: a Decision was part of every one of those houses, each of which was the disastrous result of a bad decision. Imagine what HHN would look like if every single house was based on a different kind of madness? They could even be testing out new kinds of tech ideas... Collecting peoples names and having them whispered through the houses or something (I'm fully aware that this would be nearly impossible, but cool nonetheless). But in truth. ... I think they're more likely to be talking about the Furies. ....Which would also be really cool, because they would be able to have an icon that is made up of multiple icons. Imagine that? Cool find - can't wait to see the pic. Just had to throw in what I happened to know about madness (which is way way way too much, obviously )

I can tell you exactly where to get a Boom Stick: Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. Seriously, though- it couldn't cost too much to make your own . . .

I'm still looking forward to going through Scary Tales 31. There's just so much that can be done with that concept, and it is such a deeply disturbing theme... I'd get the Sads if they stopped. And because I have to Repruhzent : 1428 Elm Street. The sequel. ................... No, Screw it, don't change a thing about it. Just rebuild it exactly. ..... We all know what happens when you make a sequel to NoES ........ somehow it becomes about homosexuality and... there's...a...weird.... dog thing... And.... Freddy comes into the real world and.... boils the pool .... and..... wtf, seriously, I'm still wondering about this. Who let that happen? Gahbij! Really though, another Elm Street house? Just like another Scary Tales - answer is never no. And I wanna throw this one out there: as a personal favor to me, can everybody suggest they do a sequel to the chucky house? I didn't get to see it and - I swear to you that this is true - I still have dreams about going to go through it. Isn't that sad? Also, Bloodengutz. Again, don't care if it's exactly the same. I am always willing to give love to Arbor Day. Plant a tree! Selah, March.

Alright robot. I've come to like you quite a bit so I'm going to share some information with you. There's a lotta words here but if you're a connoisseur of HHN, I assume youre a connoisseur of fear itself. So I'm going to tell you very clearly where I'm coming from and I'm going to scientifically support what I'm saying. And to be quite honest I wish I would've seen a post like this one years ago because learning all this stuff took a lot of time and work. So... Take your protein pills and put your helmet on... This time I'm going to try to be serious as much as I can because I think HHN fans should know this stuff. AHEM. So.. .... After a bit of soul searching (putting my otherwise worthless BS in Psych to use), I think I may have an idea why: because my first experience hating the damn chainsaws was really geared toward the scareactor. He could've been holding a regular hacksaw. He just wouldn't go away and we'd lost one of our party and we were obviously worried and dealing with an issue and we didn't want to be bothered trying to hear over this jagoff standing 2 feet away revvving a chainsaw like its scary. I asked him to leave politely about 5 times (nobody ever gets me to do anything polite even 0 times because I'm a THUG and THUG means never having to say you're sorry, but ... .this 'nobody' had a ... chainsaw). .... I finally had to basically yell at this guy and tell him me and my brothers were going to beat the tar out of him unless he left (and my brother was already being held back - was his wife that we lost)..... So he revved his saw and walked off. HATE THAT GUY. Also... I've rambled about this elsewhere but I think jumpscares are cheap to begin with, and I have to disagree that most of the scares at HHN are jumpscares. They've been perfecting this artform for 21 years now. Ever see that documentary about their scare tactics? I can't remember the name of it but it's on Youtube. Anyhow, a ton of different tactics come up through the show... And the jumpscare isn't a big focus in and of itself. Let me back up and define my terms a bit .. I consider a jumpscare a startle response to a loud noise. That startle response is pure brainstem and it's instantaneous (close enough anyway). Without going into nerdy science stuff (anyone curious can find it quickly), the brainstem activation caused by the startle response can very closely mimic fear to an external untrained observer. One geeky science thing I will point out is that the brainstem can cause people to scream but it can also cause them to smile, and the smile triggers pathways to laughter. That's why some people laugh. The internal experience is (both subjectively and objectively, actually) almost purely surprise. Fear, on the other hand, more closely mimics anger to the external untrained observer. They're controlled by the same part of the brain (amygdala, for the curious) and that part of the brain is not in the brain stem. It is not an automatic response. In fact, the fight or flight response (often incorrectly believed to be a brainstem-based behavior) is often preceded by a moment of paralysis, and subjective experience of time slows down. This presumably evolved as a sort of "bullet time" for the brain to make quick decisions on whether to .... fight or to flight, as it were. People don't laugh in response to this. The internal experience is subjectively and objectively described as fear. It is primal. And it's also visceral - that fight or flight response makes really powerful things happen to people's physiology incredibly quickly; they notice it and recognize it as fear. They sweat, their pupils dilate, their muscles tense up, they shake, and - here's the interesting part - their brain's resources are diverted away from spinal reflexes (e.g. brainstem-based startle response). Actually their brain's resources are almost entirely shifted into "RED ALERT" mode and cognition and perception both slow down (learning, incidentally, becomes nearly impossible). Another key way to tell them apart is that the fight or flight response causes tunnel vision, while the startle response (in most people) triggers an automatic diversion of attention to the stimulus. In other words, they look in the direction of the loud sound. They literally cannot avoid it because it never enters a part of the brain they have even a bit of control over. Now, think all this and compare to your experiences at HHN. Ignore your personal experiences - I'm talking about the ones you've seen. I personally think the best scares I've seen are the ones where the poor guest is bounced down a hallway. Though I didn't actually get to see the house (GRRR, by the way), I hear that the Jason house in 07 did this repeatedly - guest sees one Jason, walks/runs/crawls away into another, walks/crawls/runs away into another, then gets it again from the ceiling. THAT is a fear response - you can tell by a number of factors. First off, it's obvious that guy (he's a guy in this story; I don't want to keep typing s/he and all that...my story my rules ) should have seen Jason # 2 or 3 or 4 - at least one of them, right? And if he didn't, after #2, he should expect #3 right? Yes, he should, but he has severe tunnel vision because of the fear and his reasoning is limited by his brain's reallocation of resources to the mission of getting him the hell out of there, so he's not thinking 'whats next?' Another thing: Jason isn't about loud. Jason doesn't have to do anything to scare the bejeebus out of you besides be there. From what I understand those bouncy scares in the Jason house were bouncing between stationary silent Jasons (or relatively so). The startle response - the pure brainstem response - is nearly twice the speed of ordinary human response time, which is a huge difference, but it's faster than perception as well. Think about it as if all the input from the eyes were going through pipes into the brain - all the pipes go into the brainstem and the brainstem responds before you know what you saw. This is one of those weird brain tricks that we never notice : our brains close the gap (largely because a fraction of human response time is not the same order of magnitude as the brain's experiential memory "clock," so to speak). Think about all the billions of times you've seen little girls surrounded by guys with chainsaws. What do they do? They run around like chickens with their heads cut off, don't they? .... That's actually pretty much dead on. The point is they never stop moving. Human reaction time is very fast, but if you watch someone running in a zigzagging path getting chainsawed at the end of zigs and zags and not stopping, they are responding before perceiving it, so the commands for the legs to zig the other way are already sent. Back to our guy playing pinball off Jasons .... If you look closely, you'll notice that he stops. It's brief - we're talking fractions of a second - but it's all the difference because of one other big key to Fear: perception. Your startle response is so fast that it doesn't give you time to truly perceive what you're running from. Your brain fills it in but .... You reacted without any chance not to. I spent a lot of time in 7. One thing I saw a couple times was the minions ganging up on some little girl, and the girl's response is frequently to cower on the ground. That is Fear. It makes no sense as Startle. Think about it - she would be running away from the minions at startle speed, while the minions would be seeing her run at response-time/perception speed. She would never get surrounded and taken down by startle response. How often do you see groups of chainsaw guys pinning someone like that? Rarely. In fact, sitting in 7 for the twenty billion hours I did, I noticed that Wrath's chainsaw-weilding minions for the most part revved their engine and the person would run and also .... drumroll... They'd frequently scream. Automatic screams are startle, not fear. People do scream out of fear but it looks closer to Macauly Culkin putting the aftershave on in Home Alone - there's a delay between stimulus and scream. For the same reason, actually. The stimulus has to be processed. Neural networks are alarmingly fast, but when you compare them to each other ... A Fear scream is a different beast entirely, and a Fear scream is something we respond to on a primal level. Fear screams make us scared too. Have you ever experienced a feeling of fear from a startle screamer? I haven't. In fact, I'm totally insulated from it - I usually laugh and enjoy the show. If that was a fear scream, I wouldn't. Because I would be involved, and if I wasn't involved already, the scream would make me involved. This is the reason that the chainsaw guys can go after one person and "scare" that one person and not everybody around them. Think about it - why do you think they need multiple chainsaws? It's a philosophical issue at play. Specifically, the idea of "spaces"... HHN creates a space (I'm talking about a cognitive idea here, not necessarily the physical space) where there are certain understandings and rules and expectations and mores. One of those is that nothing in the place can hurt you. That is massive. Need proof? Suppose you really were walking through the streets in NYC. How many people with a *real* chainsaw would you need running around ? You would need one. One people with a "real" chainsaw. Why? Because that is *horrific* - that is an epicenter of a fear explosion and people will get away, fast. THAT is a fear response to a chainsaw - leave, fast, now. If that actually happened and you saw the guy with the chainsaw, you would almost certainly develop what's called a "flashbulb memory" - you would remember what he looked like, in varying degrees of correctness and completeness. Not so with a startle response! Why? Because it's faster than your perception! If anybody does read this, some of you are probably as intrigued as I was (I did a little homework on this stuff in my time, can you tell?), but some of you are probably saying "WHATS THE POINT ALREADY?? WHY DO YOU HATE CHAINSAWS??" BECAUSE.THEYRE.CHEAP. You get me to jump with a chainsaw, I'm not going to remember you. Back to what I was saying about how I don't think jumpscares are the bulk of scares at HHN at all, the environment plays a huge role. Remember the first few times you went through a house ? Specifically, do you remember the second time, after you'd seen what it was about ? You're scared going in. If you're scared enough going in, your startle response is actually overridden.... But that takes something really extreme, like a coulrophobic going into a clown house. It's going to be hard to startle that person. His intense fear of clowns is going to fill him with so much dread and so much anticipation that the resources have already been diverted into the fight or flight / fear response (which, remember, takes a bite out of the impact of direct spinal reactions). You will scare the hell out of him though. I can keep going on and on pointing out all sorts of things this applies to but I'll use one last example, a personal one: I found Nightengales to be unpleasant because it was too scary. This is because the house ... well... is scary, and people who are experiencing fear shoot it off them in waves - it's contagious. The Fear Scream (which I heard more than a couple times in this house) is the biggest one of these catalysts, but even just looking at a person when they're experiencing pure fear ... It's not something you pick up on from a subconscious level: you can SEE IT. And it rubs off on you. And back onto him. And you. And him. This house wasn't a startle house at all - I can't remember one startle in there. Let me clarify one point before someone lists the 'startles' - the whole key of getting that jumpscare is that everything about the stimulus has to be quick .. Someone leaning over and whispering BOO at you will provoke a startle response. "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" would not. To put that idea in real-world terms, one of the good scares I've gotten from HHN was in the latest Body Collectors house (was that last year? year before?). One of the gentlemen came out from a door while the cattle line had stopped for a moment and he dragged a sword or something across the ground. Not like boo door, slam metal against ground, disappear, but like ........... Freddy running his blades along the pipe. A nice long drawn out scrape. That didn't get a startle scare out of anybody (well, maybe the guy next to the door) but it did provoke some fear responses. Uni has one final trick up their sleeve here. And it's a big one. They trick you philosophically. They create that cognitive space very strongly and leave no room for error: you go through so many different areas and lines and gates and when you're in the park, youre In The Park. But when you go into a house.... They take that away from you a little bit. It's a different space. It's a subtle change, but the more willing you are to suspend disbelief the scarier it is. If you'd completely suspended disbelief and that Gentleman came out and scraped his sword across the ground like that, you would pee MY pants. People don't go to that level (they were so strongly put into the superspace that they can't ignore that the house is a subspace), but they do flip in that direction. So the sword drag was a great scare. Because it played with stuff in our minds that we didn't even notice: INSIDE the houses, the whole "nothing here can hurt you there is no danger" rule gets turned quite far down. Think about it. In every house I've ever been in, the environment is similar, and it's always a place that would absolutely *scream* "Danger" in the Real World. You're sucked in right away. So that sword scrape plays on what is really the mother of all fears: fear of danger. The real threat of danger is incredibly strong as a fear provoker, but the imagined threat of danger is still a force to be reckoned with. So how do the effing chainsaws fit in? They ruin it, that's how. In the houses, it's too much. It's cartoonish. I think Saws and Steam could have been horrifying if they didn't rely so much on that cheap garbage. They really didn't have to! If they took all the random saw BS out and left it the same, less that one element, the house would've been much scarier! Why? Well.... Let's play the chainsaw game, shall we? Texas Chainsaw Massacre .... The brilliance of the film is how little you actually see vs how much you think you see and how much your mind imagines and creates. Let's stick with TCM. What's scarier in the movie, the sound of the chainsaw or the ROOM FULL OF BONES? A room full of bones? Not a jumpscare. I think it's actually hard to pull off a genuine jump scare in a house. I think chainsaws are cheap 100% of the time but I recognize that most people don't feel that way. However, the point has to be made that if the scare is cheap, it failed. Unless it's in a house like Bloodengutz or something where the whole fun is the cheap thrill. I'm probably boring everybody to tears and definitely taking up a lot of space here so I'll wrap up with this: think of the best scares you've had at HHN, ever. Think of your responses to them. I don't know about you, but every good scare I've gotten has made me stop in my tracks. Every one of them has made me unaware of my surroundings (ever wonder why sometimes you don't remember a room at all?). Not one of them has made me laugh (til later of course). Every time it is a halt, a reassessment, and a continuation - it's all business. There's no room there for laughter, or for running all over the place screaming. Just remember, your brain is an incredible organ. It has specialized parts developed over an incomprehensibly long period of time, and those parts work together to do amazing things. But really all it is is a collection of wires. That's it. And the circuits that get accessed control everything about you from your behavior to your perception. So, while your forebrain and higher cerebral functions know full well at HHN that you are not in danger and none of it is real, the parts of your brain that control fear (and startle) do not care what your higher cerebral functions think. In fact, those parts of the brain aren't in the circuit at all. If they were, HHN wouldn't be able to keep the lights on, because nobody would get ANY kind of rush out of it. To me, the chainsaws are tacky and unnecessary and they lead to laziness on the part of the designers (if you're satisfied with getting jumpscares, one guy in a room with a chainsaw is a legitimate and complete concept), and on the part of the scareactors (I know lots of you work hard and you're very good at what you do, but in my experience the bulk of the scareactors using the chainsaw are actually chansaws using the scareactor). It's pandering. It's ... scare prostitution. Cheap. I wouldn't mind it at all if I didn't know full-the-eff well that Uni could do better. The one thing I can legitimately say I was disappointed about this year without any tongue-in-cheek comment, sarcasm or joke is that they just kept adding chainsaws to make up for weakness. They have a team of professionals who are VERY good at their craft. Come on. Chainsaws? Get real. I think the Spade gang were much more intimidating with those medieval weapons, as fake and inaccurate as they looked. Create the illusion and stick to it. Don't remind me about it constantly. Every time you rev your chainsaw, you know what it sounds like to me? It sounds like somebody screaming "REMEMBER - ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THIS IS REAL!!!!!!" right in my face. And that kills my rush faster than the ops in the houses saying "MOVE IT ALONG." ...... Impossible to suspend disbelief when somebody's revving a stupid fake chainsaw. Impossible for me, anyway, and I might be alone in this category, but .. I don't know. I know the difference between fear and startle. Uni does one of them very very VERY well, and the other can't really be done very well (assuming we're talking about the same saturation level where every 10 feet it's another damn chainsaw). I'll close with an analogy. Friggin' Chainsaws Everywhere : startle response :: scaractor grabbing you and holding a gun to your head : fear response

.... Don't torment the nerds Robotsmith (I'm running out of different nationalities here - I've already hit you with like 30 of them, give a guy a break!!) Man. I didn't even have to look that up or write it out to know what it says. Before I Lost My Innocence, I would've wondered if it even meant anything. I miss those days. Things were simpler when I could count to 2 without Epic Failure, as The Kids say. Thank you for your review of The Streets. As you are, in fact, an army of robots, and obviously an international one (Just look at all the different surnames!) I'm not surprised you didn't mention how rough it is out there on The Streets. People tend to leave robots alone. I for one welcome our new robot overlords. Carino, March

Oh. My. GOD. Somebody else doesn't like the chainsaws! HEY EVERYBODY THIS GUY DOESNT LIKE THE CHAINSAWS, GET 'EM!!!!!! ... Chainsaw = LHOOQ. .... Nice. So far you're almost convincing me to give you TWO pieces of Triforce. But then, all of a sudden, oh no! Gibberish!!! NO TRIFORCE FOR YOU! You get turned into a bunny. ... Really though, which scareactor are you talking about? I saw at least four of them the nine thousand times I went to HHN ........At least four. I went back into my review (I don't remember what I wrote - who reads that drivel) into the Acid Assault section and it doesnt look like I mentioned any scareactors there. I did mention my guess that I would spend two nights watching that over and over, and for everybody keeping score :: TRUE! .... I also got to read my "The Lamps Running Away" headline and crack myself up (Simpsons. If you don't know it, find it.) So... which scareactor are you talking about, or are you just threatening me with a pipe? ... You're not one of those people who I tagged with a blue MARCHOFPROGRESS tape - except that you happen to be nuts and angry about it - are you? Eek sorry I thought posting a new topic each time was The Thing To Do. That must've been a pain in the butt for you -- sorry sorry sorry!

Have to give it up for Lady Vanity since she gave me pretty much the creepiest picture ever. Considered voting for the the banshees but ha....ven...t... we .... seen them before...? Either way I say Arbor Day tree is the only thing that wins more than Charlie Sheen. I am delighted to push a button next to it. I mean, come on, the Arbor Day tree? That costume is the greatest thing ever before you even see it!

Wh ....... HOW? In ten nights?!

Four words: 7. No contest. Next!

Even though: 1- it looks like Nighten ---------- that house of which we do not speak is winning pretty solidly 2- Said house became too intensely horrifying for me to enjoy (think Kristen Wiig in MacGruber "I peed my pants.......... I peed 'em.......") 3- Banshees are ridiculously horrifying 4- OMG they friggin' ripped people apart in that house 5- AND ITS GOING ON DURING A WAR WTH? ...... and... Even though: 1- Winters' Night is coming in second so far 2- Winters' Night is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been 3- Dr. Who ftw .... and... Even though: 1- I'm pretty sure the gold bug was the wrong kind of bug 2- Poe wasn't yelling anything appropriate at the end when he went mad (how about you yell what Poe *did* yell at the end when he went mad, Brando?) 3- Human raven - I'm still trying to forget 4- Red Death wearing shiny bright red robe 5- Red Death room was painted one color 6- I am still sad there were no bells, since "The Bells" is one of my favorite poems 7- Burying in the wall from the Black Cat rather than Amontillado ? Why not pick the story more people know? 8- WHY IS THAT MAN CUT IN HALF WITH A PENDULUM - that ruins the whole point of the story........ The biggest affront of them all ....... 9- I could keep going. But I won't. .... I have to vote for Poe. BECAUSE: 1- Nightengales could've been just a big kinda dark (maybe dimly lit?) room with one or two of those banshees in it and it would've been The Win. It didn't need to rely on artistry - anybody who remembers what this house looks like didn't go through it right. Hands down it still wins for Most F-ing Scary. 2- Winters' Night has almost the opposite problem - it was so beautiful that it almost took away from the scare value .... Hands down it still wins for Most Beautiful. 3- .... I don't think any of this would be happening without Poe so there's not really a way for me to NOT vote for the Poe house. Ever wonder why Rolling Stone magazine chose the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" as the top song of all time? How about cus the magazine wouldn't ... be... having that list at all without their name lender? 4- .... Poe. It's an unfair contest. Poe always wins. It's like ranking rock bands. If you want to come up with a different list than anybody else you have to exclude the Beatles because they are in everybody's top 3. They're the dad-gum BEATLES for Crying In The Mud. .... ... SO in short, Poe House because Edgar Allan Poe is the Beatles. Q.E.D.

DEATH DRUMS : My favorite part of this was the very end watching them roll away because it made me think of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark every time. They were just being wheeled away into some anonymous sterile warehouse to continue drumming and never be seen again! No, really ! Have *you* seen any of them since Halloween night? .... They can't get anything past me.

I'm sorry, I really can't help it, I have to ask, since this is like the most pro-chainsaw chain of posts I've ever seen (I chained "chain"s in that sentence, didja see whaddididthere? WIN): Why does everyone love the saws so much?! It's just a loud noise! It's the equivalent of just shouting at the top of your lungs, or sneaking up on someone and squeezing a duck in their ear. I don't see how the connoisseurs of HHN can be so strongly in favor of something that seems so .. cheap to me..... I don't get it. I'm serious, please, someone explain to me? : /

Mister Robotzynsky, will you please review The Streets? .... Not the ones at HHN, I mean like... In general ?

Things that are Awesome (a comprehensive list) : 1- Responding to your own forum post to post a list of things that are awesome (that's kind of a given, though, since I'm doing it and there's never been anything awesomer than me) 2- That time on Arrested Development when the Fonz looked at the photo everyone thought was incriminating imagery of treason, looked closer, then said "...those are balls." 3- The fact that Vanity showed up to accept megaprops within like 15 minutes of me posting said megaprops. Vanity.

I started out commenting on Senor Roboto's review (and domo arigato, Herr Robotnik for that review which makes mine look like poo) .... But realized I was only following his order. Robot man mentioned some kind of Unicode about scores in his review too but he didn't pass the Turing test so I am addressing it all on my own here .... I give reviews out of 10 based on my arbitrary feeling RIGHT NOW. Well, not NOW but when I get there and type it out. It probably changes by the time I type the "/10" part. Why? Well.. Let me get this out of the way: I <3 HHN XXI ... I considered Reflections a personal favor to me to make up for the nonsense I've dealt with at HHN before so all debts were forgiven but since then there have been some obvious slackings (don't get me started on the ad campaign poor Julian The Usher got stuck with - any of you Vaulters may know exactly how passionate I feel about how Poo that ad campaign was.....) ....... But this year? Friggin everything was great. And there's always something that sucks! Always! One of the main things that makes me think something sucks is when it doesn't fit in. I don't think the park should lean all toward chainsaws and fire... or all toward the opposite. "What the heck is the oppostie of chainsaws and fire, March??" you may ask. Friggin birds standing in the dark that's what! I didn't get Grown Evil at all the first few times I went. Frankly I thought it was ... A word that starts with an S that I don't think I'm supposed to say on these forums. .........STUPID < That word! Yeah! .... I didn't get it until I got into Battle Mode. "What the heck is Battle Mode, March??" you may ask.That's where I start circling the park like mis pantalones estan en fuego (I think that means something about having a cape? My spanish isn't very good). Any of you who may've seen me would be able to attest to this. I was the crazy fool with the dark glasses and the million cameras essentially moving through the park like I was being chased. I even had the bandanna and the camo pants. Doing that makes you circle the park a whole lot. And after I circled the whole park (that never happens before Battle Mode begins), I got it! iT .... Grew on me! BALLLANNCE! So yeah I thought this year was friggin great. I'm still going to point out what I didn't think was great, and that is because I'm a jerk. Get your own review! :: pushes you :: So heres MARCHS REVIEW OF THE WHOLE SHABANGABANGA! 1- Forsaken: Oh, shoot, I actually did respond specifically to what that Robot guy said. He was whining something about the facade - I didn't really understand it, it was all "1001000001010100001010" and stuff....... But ... I actually have the exact opposite feeling about the facade of this house. I feel like if in Real Life I were to walk in to a place with that kind of nonsense going on on the inside, that's EXACTLY what it would look like on the outside. Uni was probably going for total realism. Immersion. But uh this hosue was ...... Awesome. I saw it on the tour and took about a bazillion pictures. I know what you're thinking: "A bazillion?? That's half a kabillion!" YOU ARE CORRECT. If any of you were on the tour with me, I was the guy that was constantly holding your group up because I was a mile behind you taking pictures of everything. I think this house was the worst trigger for that. It was just so cool..... I like being in Houses that don't even need scareactors. Or darkness. Or tricks of any kind. That place was creepy in the middle of the day. So, Forsaken? 10/10 !!! 2- In Between(ers): I already told Robot this since it's a response to his review but:: THERE WAS A WARII GUIDE? If I would've noticed that I would've spent all night on Halloween walking through this house over and over and over and over and over and (etc). Also, I work for the company that makes those "3D glasses" and guess what? They don't do anything. They're just clear plastic. Jokes on allayall. And also? This house was pretty nifty. I don't care about anything that happens before or after that spining tunnel. Don't care. Doesn't matter. BECAUSE OF JUST THAT::: In Between(ers) ?? 10/10!!!! In fact, make that 10/10 and a PIECE OF THE TRIFORCE for having a war2 book in there (that they hid from me, bastard alien demon ...wahtever those things were...... I don't know, didn't get a good look at them. Pretty sure there were only like 3 of them in there). Wait a minute, that's true! I only actually had one scareactor cross my field of vision EVER in the half dozen + times i went thru this house! ..... WTF! THAT MEANS ITS GOTTA LOSE POINTS!! IN BETWEEEN(ers)??? ....... Ehhhh 10/10. Nevermind about that. 3- It's almost 2012 and I've still never met a spell check that knows the word "nevermind" - I am offended because they usually know the word Cobain. 3.1 - Also, where's my flying car? ALMOST 2012! 4- Poe: I AM SO EFFING GLAD I GOT TO SEE THIS ON THE TOUR AND TAKE PICTURES OF THE TELLTALE HEART ROOM. I say that in all caps like a huge jerk because I don't care - that room was a stroke of genius. Every time I look at those pictures I feel disoriented and a piece of my brain falls out my ear, lands on the floor, sprouts spidery legs, and scurries off. Poe house? 9/10 Which FRIGGIN PAINS ME. Why? Because this house is AWESOME but I was so bothered by 1- the inaccuracies and 2- the missed opportunities. Don't have Poe screaming "the horror" or "the madness" or whatever he screamed at you when you walked through (he said "the horror" to me... I couldnt help but say "mistah kurtz, he dead" then kick myself for being nerd enough to know what the quote at the beginning of Conrad's Heart Of Darkness says....) Know what you have him say? To show that he's going / has gone mad ? "What, March, if you're so damn smart!?!?" you say... well.. hold on for exactly one second. Okay I'm back. What I did there was grab my giant collection of Poe's work. It is within an arm's length of me, and has been since I was around 8. ( ::whispers:: I'm REALLY in to Poe ) ..... I grabbed it so I could quote exactly. You have him say THIS: "Keeping time, time, time, as he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells - of the bells, bells bells - to the tolling of the bells, of the bells, bells, bells, bells - Bells, bells, bells - To the moaning and the groaning of the bells" You know WHY you have him say that? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THE < expletive deleted > HE *DID* SAY! It was one of his last poems! And Screw My Seventh Grade English Teacher (there I said it) - that poem is about going nuts. Or, I mean, stick to the sources you have.... Friggin' everybody goes loony in Poe's work. This house was so Charlie Sheen Win that it got awarded a 26/10 by me, but it just got so many points deducted for stupid mistakes. Like......The Red Death room ...... ok fine for theatrical purposes, sure, put the Red Death in a shiny completely Red robe, that's fine, whatever.... you're wrong, but whatever.........do what it takes to get him seen and appreciated and obvious (he is the RED death after all)....... but don't paint the walls of the room one damn color !!! If you want to know why this bothers me sooooooo much, read the story again and tell me what Poe spent most of it describing. You might as well have just put army men dressed like army men in there. BOOGA BOOGA!! .... But you know what? Still 10/10 because .... .... .... Contractual obligation. It probably deserves the 9, maybe an 8, but .... Let me put it this way: because I've been playing metal guitar for over twenty years, I had to buy Metallica's St. Anger, and when it got stolen I had to buy it again. It's not because I like it - Lars is obviously using a garbage can instead of a snare drum throughout and it makes me want to surrender Panama or something - but it's because of contractual obligation. This is Metallica we're talking about here. Show some respect. Er, uh, I meant Poe. Wait what were we talking about? 5- Thing: It's not fifth in Robotskovick's list but there's no other house that could possibly fill the space that comes after mentioning body parts sprouting spidery legs and scurrying off. All I have to say about this house is two things: First, I am glad it wasn't filled with ... I don't know, unicyclists or something totally irrelevant because I still don't care what anybody says: the 2007 Thing house was not a Thing house because it was filled with soldiers dressed like soldiers, which ... are... somehow missing from the source material! COMPLETELY missing! Wahhh! I'll keep whining! .... Oh and the second thing I have to say is that if you have a choice between seeing the new Thing and Paranormal Activity 3, go see the Thing. Paranormal Activity 3 was Paranormal Activity with short people. And as far as what I have to say about the Thing house? .. I .... It was there... so ... uh.. yeah... there was niftiness, some recycled (totally minus two for that you bums) ... but it was also even colder in here than it was in the 07 thing house (totally plus two for that you bums) Thing house!??!?! ..... 6/10. Did you think everything was going to get a ten? Robotoffovich said in his review that 10s have feelings and he would know. 10 is binary. That's kinda his thing. 6- Saws Steam and Presumably Other Stuff That Wasn't In This House Like Plot And Scares: Thing one to whine about right off the bat: What the hell, Uni? The only place in the ENTIRE PARK that you dont completely douse in that horrrible horrible horrible horrible fog gas deathcloud you include the word "Steam" in the name?? I know there was a little bit (and it does have that one god awful room at the end where all it is is steam and sparks and everybody walks through there like "well this is annoying" and then afterwards says "that room was coooooool!".... LIARS). Thing two to whine about: I got the effing water in my mouth two times through this house and it was the grossest experience of my entire life and I can't imagine anything worse, which is noteworthy considering what was going on around me in the house ....... Just throwing that out there. Thing three to whine about: as many times as I went through, all I saw in the way of scareactors were ....uh... dudes. Just ... pretty much regular dudes. .... They kinda all looked like people I hang out with ... I didn't know whether to pityyelp or take them out for a beer. Thing four to whine about: I wish they would've done what they pretended like they were going to do and made the first half of the house some kind of horrid Utopia. Or at least one damn room. How will Regular Citizens know the Story??? All in all I'm not even going to give this shit scarezone with a roof a rating. I'm sorry to any of you who may have worked in there, since more than half of you are bigger than me, but this was lame. Alright scarezone (though I'm famous for my sentiment of "oh, yeah, another chainsaw, you got me, I'm having a great time now, got real scared, GTFO!!!!") but ... seriously? This is the scarezone you choose to make into a house? And you inject a pretty cool story to go with it but only on the website? And not even in the sense of the Bloody Mary house where people walked out the end saying like "I really had no idea what the heck that was all about ... must be something I missed" but where people walk through it and Larry The Cable Guy Walmart Nascar-for-the-wrecks .... oh I'm sorry I just got lost in Lowest common Denominator. Keep your farking saws outta my faces you sunnamuhbeeches! Another reason this one doesn't get a rating? See my last review (or the one before or .. I don't know one of them) where I completely blanked on the house and couldn't think of anything to say at all about it because I didn't even remember it. I thought I was just super drunk ...for that one house, somehow..... But when I went through it again after I remembered everything and it was just like "ohhh.. .yeah... that...sigh, is it over?" Two minutes for a scarezone I don't need to wait in line for, cool, rev your chainsaw if it makes you happy, but ... // Rage at this The unfortunate thing is that I can't totally hate it because .... For some reason it sounds like I am the ONLY ONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD WHO HATES THE STUPID CHAINSAWS AND THINKS THEY'RE CHEAP AND ANNOYING! All of you seem to love them! I used to think people loved the Chainsaw Drill Team just cus it was an irritating tradition we all just put up with, like Bob Barker telling us to mutilate the genitalia of animals (ever see the end of the Price is Right? That guy, man...) ....... But it sounds like people like it for realsies. And people have like voted it best house and all this nonsense ....... I don't get it .... If someone wants to explain it to me, cool, I more than welcome it, but if you tell me it's because "chainsaws are actually dangerous - those ghosts and zombies and stuff can't hurt you" I will have Robotsilini body slam you. Do I have to rate it? I guess it's kind of the law... Okay, if I HAVE to rate it you know what? I give it none. I give it none stars out of ten. Here, this is how I think about this..... Kill Bill 1. Kill Bill 2. I hated these stupid movies. And yet I had to see both of them. I hated it more because of that, because I felt like Tarantino ripped me off. Here's the thing: Tarantino made Reservoir Dogs. He made Pulp Fiction. If he was that hard up for the eight bucks, he could've asked me personally, and I would've happily oblighed. HE DIDN'T HAVE TO USE TRICKERY. I could think of ten billion scarezones that would make a better house. To sum up all of the above, I'm still just saying and doing absolutely anything I can in hopes that Uni will give me a house based entirely on the Path of the Wicked or ....Wonderland, which didn't need renamin. Because that's what that zone was. It was friggin WONDELAND please make it a house. ILL LET YOU PUT A CHAINSAW IN IT PLEASEEEEE!! I'm sorry I'm sorry I can change I can I can - c'mon you can put all the horrible gas in it that you want! The tin man can even spray my date with something that smells like nothing else in the world and isn't water or oil (still trying to figure out wtf that was, by the way, Uni.... skeevy pervs, the lot of you!) 7- Best.Scarezone.Ever. If you wonder why I deviated off Domo's list order again, it's kinda like number five above: there's really nothing else that can possibly occupy the number 7 on this list, since they named the zone 7. It's kind of like how there's no other movie that could occupy that place in my top 10. Which is rather unfortunate, cus Se7en couldve had a go at a much higher number. Oh, Oh, Oh did I mention? Best. Scarezone. Ever. 8- Bloodengutz: I'm'a get back to that. 9- Nighten -----creatures whose names we shant say: I don't care if those "nurses" were knitting tiny jumpers for little horrible babies those stupid creatures scare the bejesus out of me, even with their fake looking costumes (ever catch one in the light? ... cheesy....HORRIFYING but cheesy) ...... This house gets an extremely honorary trophy: it is only the second house that I eventually deemed Too Friggin Scary To Be Enjoyable. The first being 1428 Elm Street. Yeah that's right, I know you all already know about it, but I'm still going to point this out: those sick freaks TRICKED ME into walking into friggin 1428 friggin Elm Street! When I walked through that tent after they drugged me (oh I mean "pretended" ... yeah right) and saw that they wanted me to walk into 1428 ELM STREET I thought they were nuts, I almost left Orlando and went out ot Paraguay or something. And I live here! So kudos to whomever........ I only made it through this one three times. Then I stopped. Just too intense. The one other human I speak to who went to HHN agrees that this was WAY out of proportion with the other houses, to the point where it almost felt like ... unsafe? I don't know. I'm going to stop talking about it. Wait no, two more things... First off I think other people did agree with me because I noticed that the line on this one was usually pretty short, and it definitely was not because it was poo. The other thing...scoring.... uh...................... Yeah. 10/10. Solid. Imaginary things don't usually scare me but I did not feel Right in this friggin place.... I don't count Freddy as an imaginary thing, by the way, since the more I talk about him the realer he gets. I've seen him in Dreamland, have you? Well guess what? I have memories of this house that I don't know if they actually happened or if they were nightmares! .... so this is officially the only Made Up Nonsense House I've been in at HHN that I avoided because it ... scared me. Yes, I, me, March, a 28 year old man, 6'1, 200 or so pounds, grew up on streets, once fought off a mugger without using fists by being scarier than him, TWICE walked into a gun pointed at me so that it was pressing directly up against my head, was friggin scared by this house. More than any of the stuff I just said. Now can you take it apart and get it the HELL out of here please? My lawn's starting to die and my chairs just turned around. And Robotstonovich? EFF your idea for Bloodengutz for icon on one hand because if there was a banshee icon it would be like back in 07 where people were scared by the icon again. ... Though seriously that's actually kind of a stroke of genius and I think he's perfect... Shh. 10- Winters Night : .... I saw this one on the tour too nad was glad I got to take pictures and I think this house suffers from a really unique problem: it's SO BEAUTIFUL. It's just so ridiculously friggin BEAUTIFUL, like, so much I want to start a petition to get them to not take it apart. .... I didn't even notice any scares or attempted scares or anything most of the time I was in here because I was just in AWE. ....... In a way the house as a "scary haunted house boogy boogy boogy" deal kinda suffered from that. Actually, I think it completely ruined the scary. That house could've been terrifying. But ... I just couldnt take my eyes off anything, even when some random creature is crawling around missing parts or whatever..... Actually, even the random parts missing crawlycrawl. I was just jaw dropped the whole way through every time....... I stopped counting (and tbh I was very drunk one night so I don't have an accurate count anyway:)) but I probably went through this house a STUPID amount of times like two dozen or something. It was like the Mona Lisa. I could just keep going on and believe me, I would, and I did. Imagine what it would be like if you knew me in person ? I wouldn't shut up about HHN to begin with, then this?! .... SO, < THE END OF THAT > Now, what should I whiiinne about? Hmmm... Oh, this: I NEVER GOT TO SEE IT SNOWING. And I'm pretty sure that this was something that actually did happen, that the *act of snowing* occurred and it's not all you crazy Floridonians and assorted People Who Suck With Logic thinking that snow on the ground must have fallen there.... I NEVER SAW IT! I went through so many times! Sigh. This house? You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to give this house a *****/***** ....... because it's not fair to hold it to the same ranking. I just gave the banshees a 10/10 and I have no idea what the hell was in that house at all except me trying to get out. But this house is .... Something else. It doesn't get the sixth star for beauty though. They have to beat the last room in Dracula's castle to get that one again - the ossuary? My god that room was gorgeous. Robotstein didn't talk about the scarezones, but Robotstein is probably not a heavy metal guitarist who types 130 wpm - my lactic acids just starting to make my knuckles nice and smooth for some scale practice. I've only just begun! Why? Because offfff... Seeeevvennnnnn I looovvvveee seevvvennnnnnnnn I didn't think I'd ever find a place at HHN where I could sit longer than I sat watching the caterpillar in Wonderland just outright boldy nastily insult people ...... But seriously? I have digital proof that I spent at least 12 hours sitting in this zone in one week. Everything about it was great and I love all of you. Every one of you girls? I want to have all your babies. Every one of you guys? .... I want to have you minion about while I have all those girls babies. Friggin great. All the time. If any of the beautiful ladies read these boards you almost definitely saw me, and there was one cast that was particularly aware of me and I have to give the following two shout outs. Be forewarned : cover your childrens' eyes for number two: 1- I have a few for this : Vanity girl who was definitely aware of me because I was sitting behind you for a while waiting for my schmuck brother to call me (I was waiting for abot four hours, then I just gave up.... ): I give you superhardcoremadprops because you definitely knew i was behind you, that's first of all... And that's because you were the only one of those girls who was playing the whole stage including the back. I took lots of pictures from behind those stages (the way they catch the light makes some beeeauutiful picutres...... the stages, not the girls....well, the girls too, but I'm not that creepy), and while I was back there I couldnt help but realize that I could probably sneak up on the girl on the stage and actually scare her! ... It was only one cast, the other girl didn't do that so much, but kudos to you for that because I think it's totally in character. Of course vanity wants to see who's behind her. You probably thought I was checking you out! ... I was! But not for four hours. You still kept looking like I was though which was cool. Yeah yeah thats all well and good but the supermadprops comes from when it died down a little and you gave me a few poses... struck a pose and another and another and then you just suddenly stopped and dropped your arms and just stared at me. I believe that to be absolutely the most unsettling picture I've ever taken at HHN, possibly the most unsettling picture I've ever taken EVER, and I have a picture I shot of a car on fire hanging on the wall of this room. THAT WAS SO CREEPY OMG IT CREEPS ME OUT JUST THINKING ABOUT IT. YOU rule for that .... Kudos. And also halfhearted kudos to you Vanity ladies (and gents) for slowing down on shining the mirror at other people as the event went on. That is not vanity. That is breaking character. Lame. So halfhearted because it started as a 'NO DONT DO THAT' and ended as a "zZZANNNGGG!" (caption: excellent). 2- Reader discretion is advised for this ... Lust girl who was dancing about and stopped to catch your breath and look around and we locked eyes and I blew you a kiss a smile and a wave: you totally waved back and grabbed a tit at me, and it was the greatest experience of my life. Not because you were slam-bangin' hot and you know you were (though that was cool too) but because it is that kind of thing that makes HHN so cool: I DID NOT EXPECT THAT AND IT WAS ABSOLUTELY PERFECT. That is what would have happened if You really were Her!!! Totally in character, totally unexpected (and you knew it - and loved it - cus I saw you do it again the next day to some other guy who had the same reaction, though he was a lot more....droooly about it) and totally Win. If I paid the .... nine thousand and fifty dollars or whatever it is if youre one of those people who only goes to HHN once and that was all that happened to me all night... worth it. I'm going to start a petition: Boobies not chainsaws! .... And I'm gonna throw this in here to because I guess the roaming band of merrry men with the spade masks who started between 7 and grown and ended up at the front of the park (Dear Whomever Made The Decision To Not Leave That Part Empty The Whole Time: I Love You. KThxBye, March) ... I have to give the biggest rocking shout out to two of you, who I think mightve been the same guy, and I think might've recognized me (and Im almost 100% that #2 at least recognized me from being at hhn two thousand times): 1- The guy on the second or third day of the event (and I specify day - it was like right at 630) who walked up to me when you all were still between 7 and grown, kinda all congested... I said to you 'gee wheres the rest of your merry men" and you just like silently looked around and raised your hand up kinda slow and waved it around like "d..o.. you ... not ... see... that theres... pretty much just us here..right..now?" ...... That was awesome. 2- The guy toward the end of the event who, when it was just me and you hanging around for a minute and nothing was going on, struck a Gumby Running pose ...... That totally rivals that hot girl grabbing her boob at me as the most awesome thing to ever happen to me. Thank you for that that made my weekend. Also thank you double for that since from what I understand you can get fired for doing stuff like that. I specifically waited until after the event was over to throw my props out into the air for you os you wouldn't get canned for that because you, sir, are awesome. .... In fact, you, sir, get a piece of the Triforce for that. Yes. Yes you do. And I'm going to throw an anti and plus shoutout pair here while im at it : 1- ANTI! ::: BOOOOOOOOO to the lady luck who was posing by the wheel and obviously thinking she was prettier than everybody and too good to be there. Even though you were pretty, you weren't THAT pretty, dahling, and you're certainly not pretty enough to be a Total-B about it... that was out of character, and I don't like you. I never posed with the wheel though I did take some pictures and I did get a few with one of the Ladies there .... And I'm pretty sure there was more than one girl who posed because the first one was really sweet (she seemed genuinely sweet and she's supposed to be sweet - DRAW EM IN, SUGAR!) so I apologize if it was only one girl and you were just in a bad mood the few times I saw you roll your eyes at people and be genuinely Total-B-y, but I think that is not the case, and to the non-sweet Lady, I want to make it well-the-eff known that I DIDN'T TAKE YOUR PICTURE, "GORGEOUS." ...... NYAH . ( stream of consciousness in March's melon: "HEY YOU WHAT DO YOU SEE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL SOMETHING FREE") 2- PRO! The Lady Luck in the mask and the axe that I think was only there on 'Ween! They needed to put you there earlier you were cool as hell! I gave you the goofy 'wave each finger separately' wave on my way out and you totally gave me the same wave back and it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen I wanted to give you a great big kiss on your horrible, horrible cheek I could go on and on about 7 and the surrounding area. I want one of those girls. Not like in a skeevy perv way... I just really am going to miss having a girl to be all lithe and pretty while that horrifying cover of TBP plays and then totally jams out later to the real thing. I am seriously. going. to. miss. that. I had soooo much fun headbanging with you ladies and gents in this zone come 9pm or so. I love you guys. RIP 7. 20/10. By the way, totally not going to rate the other scarezones. Just because of 7. UNI - DO MORE OF THAT. Whatever you did there, IT WORKED. While I was spending hours sitting there watching, I actually saw other people who were doing the same thing - like re visiting multiple days just to sit and watch 7. YOU DON'T NEED ANYTHING ELSE IN THE PARK! Oh, that reminds me of the reason that I spent one entire night - yes that's right, from 7pm until closing time- hovering around 7: i was trying to see Leapfrog and I NEVER DID!!! I kept thinking of going to ask them to do it but I don't know if that's appropriate. No points off for that all... Just the fact that it happened once is awesome. Grown Evil Pretty much reviewed this in my intro... Didn't get it at first, totally lame on its own, but definitely .... That zone... Really ties the park together, does it not? Incidentally, I was honestly shocked you birds got any scares. Because seriously? Come on. Birds? Your masks didn't make you look any creepier than real birds/bats/etc. But somehow you all were really good at it. Superprops to the genius who decided to put a RAVEN in there ... I really hope that what I saw was correct and that they took that damn RAVEN out of Poe's house and put it in the aviary... I went through Poe after I saw him - and it was a him cus he friggin' said Nevermore to me - and there was no human sized Raven there, and I was sooooo glad about that. The human sized Raven in the Poe house may as well have been Grimace from the McDonald's commercials. DONT SCREW WITH MY POE! Cavern of the FRIGGIN HOLY $@&$ THERES ACTUALLY PEOPLE IN THOSE GIGANTIC THINGS?!?!?!!?!?!!? ?WTF!!! YEAH! Did NOT expect that!!!! I thought you were scenery!!!! I didn't see the giants move until the fourth or fifth time I went ... I'd gone through the zone a few times but I usually walked around it because I can't breathe the smoke. .. THAT FRIGGIN SCARED THE BEJESUS OUT OF ME! It was one of my favorite kinds of scare! I don't like jump scares those are lame - this was like that MoFo saw me the first day recognized that I was a fanatic that was going to be back a million times and just waited in the bushes until I walked in front of him to just kinda move - he didn't even step in front of me, just like shifted to the right. EFF the moving maze walls - THAT was unnerving. Dudes in robes? ... don't know about them. They were effective (I watched them a while - they were great with scaring kids) .... but to me they looked like holy men or something... And when I'm in a scarezone I don't want to see a figure I think I can go to for help. Also, I walked through the zone one night and just as I walked out it was time for a cast change so I have a picture of the Giants standing off to the side ... I kept shooting and shooting, knowing full well I was breaking my own rules of being invisible, and just as I suspected one of the guys on foot came up to me but it was pretty cool he didnt run up and scream or anything he just walked up to me and made a really really unnerving sound. I saw him coming, watched him come, knew what was coming, but then he made the sound and it was like that part in the Grudge where the kid meows. I was like "....did you make that noise??!" Speaking of which... Sting Alley That eprom the Ugly Ladies were using makes one of the creepiest sounds I've heard at HHN - I can actually still hear it in my head. Unfortunately this place was smokier than Uncle Cheech's apartment so I only got to go through the one time, and I was coughing for the second half of it.. That sucked! It seemed like it was so cool! So sorry girls, not much more to say ... Acid Assault Okay I said I'm not goint to rate scarezones, so let me take a sidetrack for a second (this is only the first so far, and I'm allowed one):: Acid Assault Building Collapse Friggin 2,985/10. That is seriously one of the coolest things I have ever seen. Wow. And so simple too! .... Acid Assault Oh yeah, the zone was THe Awesome too.... I'll take another little bit of a tangent here .. this was a Watching zone for me... I don't know if its because i "Look like [i'm] on [my] way to or from killing somebody, somehow, even when [i'm] happy" as one friend once told me or if it's because I'm a guy or if it's because I always walk so fast (YOU FLORIDONIANS WALK SLOW! ) or what but ... I don't get many scares. Like pretty much at all ever. I actually do think I prefer it that way because I love watching people get scared so much but I think it's strange and I wonder if anyne else has the same experience. I mean... I went every single time I could this year... so you'd think that just by the law of averages I would be the sixth person to pass by Mr Guy Hiding Behind The Wall, right? I don't get it! Anyway I walked through this zone with impunity ... One person suggested it might be because they saw me in the fog and I was wearing camo pants and a bandanna (yes I wore the camo pants every time, and a bandanna all but the first time - lesson learned there), so they might just think I'm one of them... I do frequently get the 'one of them' response ... Lots of girls walk into me in the fog and scream and I think it's funny ... but still. Whats the dillyiyoiyo? .... ..... Did I leave one out .... ? .. I left the Maze out.... The maze.... I wrote a friggin book abotu it in one of my reviews, go look at that if you want to know how i feel about it. Very cool, but Uni needs to throw some (read: "any") money at this idea now that they know it works. By the way ditto that to the "costumes changing through the course of the night" idea. BEAUTIFUL IDEA UNI ... I LOVE it .... thats one hell of a way to keep the people in the park!! You don't even need to really use hot girls to do it So I knew I left that out but isn't there oen more? I don't know, if there's one I left out, I'm sorry, it was awesome whatever it was. I bitch and moan only about the little things this year because it was such a good event and I think the little things are something to striek up a conversation about. Good show uni. Marketing and Merch I have to just make one point about this : am I the only one who was bugged by the video they played out front? There's this horrified guy tied to a wheel, then Lady Luck throws some knives at him and misses, then leaves, and that's it. What's the big deal? I used to not want to wait in the line during Reflections year! Just because Bloody Mary was basically repeatedly threatening to destroy me!!!! Other than that I think this was a pretty good year for merch and I actually think I bought everything they sold. One question though. The ludicrously large shot glass. Are they serious? What the hell am I supposed to do with that? Tom Collins for an Oompa Loompa? :::shufffles through papers real quick::: :::pulls out the Blue Notebook::::: :::flips pages:::: :::::crosses "Tom Collins for an Ooompa Loompa?" off the List Of Things I've Said::: Now, backing up.. Bloodengutz Said I'd get back to this hosue .... I somehow ended up only going through this .... four times i think? But I ended up just giving up because I kept missing everything. It sucks to walk through several roosm in a row where nothing's happening. That's what happens when there's just one awesome thing in every room. Which leads me to the following two points: 1- Friggin Arbor Day Tree? My favorite HHN costume ever, hands down, no contest. That wins. Flawless victory. Fatality. I seriously didn't see anything else the entire house I was laughing so hard. It really *was* like Grimace from the McDonald's commercials 2- And this is the reason I put off talking about the hosue cus I want to close on this point to leave it open for discussion.... For the past couple years somebody usually ends up posting a complete walkthrough of each house. That's the way it was in Vault, and I think this... might...be..the.. same place? Anyway, I really wish somebody would do that. Can we work that out together, now that the event is over? Can we post a room by room walkthrough of what was in there? I don't know about anyone else but I really love hearing stuff like the thing about the Warcraft 2 guide. I didn't see that, didn't know it was there, wouldn't have guessed it, and it's just .... cool. I'm gonna float that out there and leave on that though and hope that maybe this will turn into a little part of the forum people might do that in but if nobody does in the next few days I think I'll make a whole Real Post about it. Right now my hands are tired. I'm not a Robot! Once again.... to everybody involved, congratulations you guys. You really pulled it off and you did a great job and made a lot of people happy, and that's really what this is all about right? Thank you:)

...... Man. There is absolutely NO way I can *not* click on a link that says "Do robots have Luck?" even if doing so was 100% certain to lead me to a computer virus that killed my hard drive, created a sister for me, then got her pregnant. So, first off, shame on you. You shouldn't pummel an opponent who can't fight back. .... oooh, shiny things. .. oh.. yeah. the review. man. it kinda makes me sad reading it because .... my whole role in the universe has already been filled by you, whoever you are you damn dirty robot. how do you expect somebody to write anything more hilariousabsurdawesome than that? You ever see Walk Hard? I'm thinking of the scene here where Dewey Cox has to go on after friggin' Elvis (Jack White, in his own hair, with his own gibberish by the way - contractually obligated kudos to him) .... Now on to specifics! Edit after writing this all out: I really only followed your order and made one specific reference to what you said so I'm posting my review as MY REVIEW NYAHH. The specific thing was this: In Between(ers) - THERE WAS A WARII GUIDE? If I would've noticed that I would've spent all night on Halloween walking through this house over and over and over and over and over and (etc). Also, I work for the company that makes those "3D glasses" and guess what? They don't do anything. They're just clear plastic. Whatever weird hallucinations you have were all your own, and that dog? Totally on you, you heartless................. robot. Ok, story checks out, nevermind. .... If you would like to hear more, there's more! Love, March. (I close every communication with robots with "love")

Man you guys get some awesome shot. I am limited by my equipment. Tonight (my Photo Night) I had a flipcam (.mp4 videos only), a 3 year old 7mp digital camera,and my cellphone, which actually has a camera with better specs than all those others (not the least of which is the "near-0" shutter speed, meaning I can doubletap !) All of this, though, makes me miss the days I used to have access to a darkroom and I'd shoot on film with an SLR camera that offered precise control... Anybody know how to put a darkroom together on the cheap? I'd love to shoot on film again.

Yeah I posted on the boards that I wanted to maybe get a group of people to meet up today but that didnt happen. At least I don't think it did - I was late anyway. Got into the park around 7. I was armed with a flipcam ((which only takes video, but takes STUNNINGLY good video for such a small device), a 7.0 megapixel digital camera of the supersimple variety, and my cell phone, which is a 4G slide that has a built in 8.0 megapixel camera. Let me just go ahead and sum that up: the best camera I had on me was actually my *telephone* - isn't that crazy? Anyhow by the end of the night the phone and the digital camera were both out of battery (which caused a big problem finding my car in the garage, since I never bother to remember where I parked, instead choosing to send a text to myself). The flipcam was still going strong but I don't like to use that so much because it only records in mp4 format and ...w... what use is that? I have to say that out of all the HHns I've devoted a specific photo day to (this is #5 I believe?), this one is definitely the best. There are just SO MANY AWESOME THINGS TO SHOOT!!!!! Right off the bat I went to 7, which I hadn't been to in a while. I later returned there when I was leaving and MAN have those scareactors found their groove - that scarezone is f-l-a-w-l-e-s-s .. . I still think telling some of the sins apart is kind of difficult and don't really understand how some of the minions relate (are ... Sloth's minions.... running around a lot real fast? I don't get it), but I don't think it matters. I realized that tonight while rocking out to The Beautiful People - regardless of whether they represent a single sin, this zone is AWESOME. I'm still unsure about the transformations though - I've only seen two versions of the costuming. What are the three steps..? Anyway I spent a ridiculous amount of time shoooting in 7 because it also happens to be a BEAUTIFULLY lit area - perhaps the best lit scarezone I've seen, for photo purposes. I got a shot that I think I might actually print and mount and add to my portfolio from standing behind Wrath. The way the light breaks up by the points on the set piece is fantastic. I really hope one of those shots came out as good as it looked. I haven't reviewed any of my pics/vids from tonight yet. Ridiculous time spent there, and I was moving around like crazy trying to see everything. Once I left there, I was sweaty, so much so that the bartender I went to told me I looked like I was drunk. I was like "No I'm really sweaty from chasing around what .. I ... think ... may have been the male representations of Sloth ........ hm." I'd already shot tons of photos in Grown Evil so I didn't spend too much time there. I got really lucky photographing one of the statues at the entrance to the zone (are those griffins?) because I happened to take the shot while another person's flash hit it from a different direction! I think that picture's going to be really cool and really REALLY eeire. One thing about Grown Evil still bugs me though: NO camera seems to be able to capture the purpley color properly. I've tried through probably six or seven of them with all kinds of configurations. What gives? Canyon is impossible to shoot in, and I'd already done a lot of shooting around it, but I still spent a little bit of time trying to get cool stuff here. I got lucky and caught the cast change with all the Tall Folks leaving. I got a couple snaps of them before one of their replacements came up and .... I don't remember what he said, if he "boo"d at me or growled or what, but it was basically like "don't do that please" so I left. hen like a jackass I stood there trying to take a picture of the flame in the lake. I do that every year. I haven't caught it yet. Bummer. THENNN.... Acid Assault. GOD I LOVE THIS ZONE. It actually competes with 7 for beautiful photo ops! The whole plan going in, too, was to take video on all three cameras of the buildings collapsing and see what the differences are between them. Can't wait to see those - there's no way they can look bad. The cool part about this zone is that it's deceptively large, and it stretches around a corner. Every time I go through I see something new. Plus I've got some awesome shots of the schoolbus as a silouhette against the buildings with the disgusting yellow foggy light. ....You really can't take a bad picture in this zone.... I had to be home at 11:30 to get a project wrapped up by midnight, and since I didn't get into the park until 645-7, I was about out of time at this point. I went seeking the Holy Grail - a picture I should've taken when I had the chance(s) of the Night Maze scareactor with the big circular .... .... ... thing. From the ramp next to the scarezone, at just the right angle the light hits him/her and it's absolutely beautiful ... My mind took a picture of it. I stood there with my dead cameras, turning them on and trying to get the shot real quick before they turned off, til finally they both stopped turning on. On my way out (like I said above) I went to 7 again. I'm hoping I can find a way to pull still frames out of the mp4s I shot with the flipcam, since that's all I had left at that point. This year's event is so photocool that I didn't even really get to play around with Nightmaze (I am determined to get a picture that captures this zone - it's a challenge), and I didn't go into Sting Alley at all, though I've always kind of felt weird taking pictures in Sting Alley anyway. Like a tourist or something Oh and also I didn't go in any houses tonight, though I did notice that the times varied WILDLY. HR's house (the one I was going to go into tonight if the wait was short enough that it wouldn't take away from Picture Night) went from 30 minutes to 90 minutes to 60 minutes to 90 minutes to 75 minutes and then back up to 90 minutes. All within the span of 5-10 minutes. I also managed to get a whole bunch of shots of that coaster I'm so hungry to ride... Just because I think the pics look cool ... I'll shoot anything I like, I don't care. Scareactors are only the focus in maybe half of my shots. So, now that it's only Sunday and Halloween left, and I don't know if I want to go both days but I'm pretty sure I want to go on Halloween, I have the following goals: -Get a picture that captures Nightmaze at all (unless I got lucky tonight) -FINALLY GET A SHOT OF THE DAMN FLAME IN THE LAKE (not bloody likely) -Go into every house at least one more time -Make sure to go into Saws N Steam, since I am actually starting to think I never did go through it ... -Revisit Bloodengutz as many times as I can, since it sounds like there's something to miss in every single room -Revisit The Thing if I didn't catch the ending -Ditto The In Between -Keep going through the damn Nighengales house until the banshees don't freak me out anymore (....I'll do this after I get that shot of the flame in the lake....) -Get photos of the Changed 7 girls (possibly photos of the two levels of change, if there are actually 3 separate costumes) -Hopefully shoot enough pictures to kill my cameras again -Remember to save enough battery in my phone so I can find out where I parked!!!! -Don't get stuck in Acid Assault for the entire night -Eat the other leg of the dinosaur whose first leg I ate on visit #3 -Don't get stuck in 7 the entire night -In case this is 5 years ago, go see Bill and Ted. If not, feel old because I don't know anything about pop culture, to such an extent that I know I'd think the show was lame -Don't go on the MIB ride (but it's just so much FUN!) -Don't go on the Simpsons ride (I've made the mistake THREE times of riding this ride and having the seasickness ruin my night) -Possibly go on the rollercoaster? I'm undecided on this. It always seems to be a five billion hour wait. Finally . .. To relate this to my recent post in the photo thread, I'll point this out: I shot about 700 pictures tonight. That was about 2 hours of shooting the way I like to do it (ie, not trying to talk nicely to a dead camera) plus another 90 minutes or so of piddling. It also includes a whole lotta walking and dead time. In other words, I shot 700 pictures in about 3.5 hours and that is VERY VERY LOW for me. I have a total of about 1100 shots from this year's event, and tonight is the only night I dedicated solely to photography. Judging on past experiences, I expect to get maybe 3-4 dozen good pictures out of that, and hopefully around half a dozen great ones. This is from an artistic standpoint .... From a 'snapshot' standpoint, my success rates are much higher (ie, getting a shot of something cool in focus). I'll also point this out in relation to the same post: I got video of me walking through every one of these scarezones. I actually have a video of me walking through 7 four times in a row. Nobody stopped me, nobody said anything, nobody turned away. I did this for the explicit purpose of testing what other people have said about having problems recording and shooting pics. I've got none for neither - the closest is today in Canyon during the shift change, and I may've just misinterpreted that. Okay, so there's my thoughts on tonight. To sum it up from an overall Event Review status, O-M-G the scareactors in the scarezones have REALLY pulled it together. I didn't think there was much promise in most of these zones, but my videos are all almost entirely filled with screams. There are SO many stars I can't even point them all out. I could stand there and watch just about any of them all day long. Special shout-out to the ladies in 7, most of whom realized I was shooting them for quite some time and were sweet enough to give me great poses, like waving at me or winking or just looking at me creepily. You girls rule. And the minions. My god the minions - how the *hell* do you keep that up all night long? I was sweating like a pig just from watching! So.. yeah. that's that What are we doing about the remaining FFP days, guys and gals!?

I was definitely there tonight but I missed the meeting I set up myself -oops. Got there around 6. And nobody texted me to tell me where the group was, or if there was a group, or to solicit my advice on stock trading. Wahhh! I did, however, encounter three separate people who were wearing Horror Night Nightmares t-shirts. I did these folks the Keen Favor of tagging them with one of my blue pieces of tape that says "MARCH" on it (I had one on either sleeve, then one on the front of my shirt and one on the back). If you were one of those lucky few to be tagged, take a close look at what got stuck to you. If it is gold, you have won a tour of my candy factory! Ferreal, though, in case any of you are out there and had tape stuck to you.... You've met me now. Or seen me move past you swiftly. All three of you were in groups, so you can tell all your friends what that was all about too. And if you got the Golden Label, they can come to my candy factor too! .... Since the whole idea of posting here about where I'll be and when and then wearing 360 degrees of name tags is to meet new people I suppose I should've stuck around and/or said "HI" or something but ... Hindsight is always 20/20. I didn't want to impose. I'm scared of human germs. I was on the phone. I had to go to the bathroom. I don't know, choose an excuse. That said I think we should throw together a massive gathering to beat the CRAP out of HHN on Halloween!! I plan to go that day. As far as a group event, I'll let somebody else do the organizing this time - I'm not even special enough to get my name listed in the post on the first page - wahhhh!!

I too plan to attend tonight (27th), I'm also pretty dead-set on going on Halloween, and I may even go on the 30th. So you can put me down for today (10/27) and Halloween (10/31). 10/30 is a "maybe" for me, which I know you're not listing. I've got a couple better ideas for identifying ourselves, since I'm probably gonna be wearing an HHN shirt from this year. Though I will probably also have a black bandanna with the Jolly Roger on it sticking out of my pocket. And if it's chilly, a mid-thigh length leather jacket. As far as meeting spot ... Simplest is easiest - my dad told me that in the air force if you're supposed to meet someone and can't find them, go to the nearest flagpole. In our case, I think that would be the Universal ball out front (big spinny globe that says Universal and spits at you). However, I think it might make things even easier if we met at a "flagpole" inside the park. I'm not familiar with the places around Citiwalk people usually go for drinks or what have you beforehand, so it might be best to do that. I am open to suggestion ...But I think that the store to your right when you walk in the park is a good place to meet. And again, my phone is sixfoursix threetwotwo sixoneohnine - text me if you want to meet up! I don't know about anybody else but I plan to be there pretty early - I'd like to be in line at 6ish.. My goal is to make it through every house at least once (and I really want to see Bloodengutz more than once;)....... Perhaps we can meet at the store inside Uni at 545-6ish? The after 6 whoever is therecan be on their merry way to Forsaken and any stragglers can contact me and I'll fill you in. Now then .. about identifying ourselves...Howsabout this - I'll put blue painters tape with HNN written on it in Sharpie on both my sleeves, the back of my shirt, and the front of my shirt. Plus the bandanna. Plus (possibly) the leather jacket. And the motorcycle boots. I'm a pretty easy dude to spot I also plan to go on H'ween and I propose the same as above. What do you all think? Oh, one last thing - my screenname is PinkFuzzimanXIII on AIM (ask me if you want to know why). So shoot me an IM today if you want to meet up tonight or on 'ween!

I feel the need to weigh in here just to share what methodologies I've developed for shooting in areas like this. First, I'd like to say that I think if you are blocked from taking a picture, you are Doing It Wrong. I've never ever ever been blocked, reprimanded, turned away from, or otherwise ha anything bad happen while I was taking a picture. That is because while I am taking a picture, me and my camera are invisible. Treat your camera like a gun and your photospace like a war zone. Shoot shoot shoot shoot, then get the heck out of there. If you are blocked from taking a picture, you were spotted. If you were spotted, you were standing still in the middle of traffic. Don't do that. If you don't want to think of the photospace as a warzone, think of it as a city street. If you are in midtown Manhattan at like noon on a Wednesday and you decide to take a picture of a skyscraper by standing in one spot in the middle of the sidewalk, then taking your sweet time to worry about angle and composition and lighting and trying to get the perfect shot, you are going to get pushed out of the way for acting like an idiot. The world doesn't start and stop at your whim because you're carrying a camera. There is a very easy way to deal with that issue. Take more shots. Before digital cameras, I used to abide by the general rule that if I get one good shot out of a roll of film, I did great. And that was for times when I wasn't in an extremely crowded area taking pictures of something moving rapidly. Back then the only reason not to keep shooting was that film cost money, as did developing. Now that we have digital cameras, there's no reason not to shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot. If you shoot lots and lots of pictures, you'll get good ones. Even if you go and you shoot constantly and you come out of it with five good shots, I can almost guarantee you those five good shots will be better than any good shots you would get by carefully calculating and aiming and whatnot. A skill worth learning in using my method is shooting blindly. It goes against any habit a reasonable photographer develops in shooting real photos in the real world..... But it's a necessity if you want to collect good action shots at HHN while still being there. It's one lesson I've learned through mistake after mistake: you don't want to live your life through a viewfinder. Best to spend the night at the event enjoying yourself even if you get no good shots at all than to watch the whole thing a step removed. You'd be surprised how quickly you can develop the skill. It's even easier if you've got a digital camera with a screen. If you spend more than a second looking at your camera, you're Doing It Wrong. A tip to complement that one: do as the snipers do and hold your breath when you shoot. It makes the camera move less, which is important when every little jitter gets magnified. If you learn to do this and shoot between heartbeats, you can lessen your reliance on your flash and become even more invisible. Flash is the easiest way to get spotted, but it's also the biggest annoyance to the people being photographed. You are interfering with the scene if you are shining light at it. Don't do that. The bigger problem, though, is evident and well known to anybody who has been on the other side of the cameras and has tried to perform while having flashes go off everywhere: it's annoying and it breaks your focus over and over and over again. This explains a phenomenon that I've seen year after year on the HHN forums: specific scareactors getting singled out for being anti-photo. The reason for this is almost always because a loss of concentration can be devastating. This year, the bats seem to be getting singled out a lot, and this happens every year. I'll tell you why they don't want you taking pictures of them: because they're walking around on stilts!! Every year people fail to realize this somehow. The stilt walkers always get picked on as not playing along. Well, of course not! If you're walking around on stilts and you lose your focus or get disoriented even for a 60th of a second, you could end up with broken bones. Other people that get mentioned over and over as non-photo-friendly always have a reason too. A lot of the time it's because they need to stay in the Zone and keep moving - keeping the energy up is the only way to sell a lot of the scares. Some creatures are scary if they move or not, but some of them are only scary because of the kinetics that the scareactor puts into them. If they're moving too fast for you to get a good shot of them, don't try to stop them, and don't flash them. Give up or learn to lead a moving target - shoot the place where they're *going* to be. No matter what you do, it's on you. It's not their responsibility to help you get a good picture. I will say that again because it needs to be emphasized. It's not a matter of what Uni's policymakers say or what the scareactors are told to do. It's a rule of photography. It's your responsibility to get a good picture. Not the scareactors. Not anybody else's. The best way to help yourself get good pics is, again, to be invisible. Best practice number two: take lots of shots. These two strategies are complementary and will work for you with a bit of practice. Remember that no matter what if you are planning and plotting and calculating your shot and I fire off my camera six times in the time it takes for you to shoot once, I'm going to come out ahead at the end of the night every time. And that 'six times' isn't an exaggeration - that's what I've found to be my ideal number of shots to catch a good one of a rapidly moving target. The example that comes to mind right away from this year are the minions in 7. They are absolutely fantastic photo subjects. But if you stopped them and put your arm around them and got a posed picture with both of you giving a thumbs up, it would be 'meh' because the whole awesomeness is in their kinetics: those minions move constantly. If I shoot one six times, I'm going to get something I like. Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes the better pictures are the ones that show off the movement instead of negating it... If you're in control of your exposure time you know exactly what I mean. A shot of one of those crazy minions swirling about all over the frame is actually a better representation than a still shot. It takes more practice than you'd think but you're likely to get one of those, at least, just by shooting a six-shot. Another lesson pulled from the gun world: never do less than a double tap. In the gun world, that usually means a shot to the head and a shot to the chest to ensure that what goes down stays down. In the photo world, it's insurance against all sorts of random events. It's a safe bet to always assume that when you shoot, you miss. There's no "worst thing that could happen" here because "you end up taking too many pictures" is no longer a viable problem since most people are shooting digital. You should *always* take too many pictures. Now, all of this isn't to say you shouldn't ever plan out your pictures.. I'm only talking about the pictures of action. Pictures in the midst of what's going on. I have another set of tactics I use at HHN that have served me much better than those - truth told, I rarely take action shots at HHN. I take a whole lot more mood shots - pictures of light (photo-graphs, if you will). These are more composed, calculated, and sensitive and they take a lot more time to shoot. The main rule is the same: don't be in a position where anybody will stop you from shooting and you won't be stopped. If you're trying to take a shot of a spotlight shining on some set piece, step out of the flow of traffic. You'd be surprised just how little space you have to put between you and the flow of traffic to be entirely alone. Nobody is going to stop you from shooting pictures from way outside on the sidelines. This is partly because nobody should know you're there in the first place, partly because you should be out of there quickly, but mostly because there's no reason to stop you. If you are routinely getting stopped from taking pictures, it logically follows that there's a reason to stop you. Nobody's Against You or trying to Ruin Your Time or even trying to prevent you from taking pictures. They're just trying to stop a disruption. A disruption is the exact opposite of what you want to be to get good pictures in this environment. There's artistic reasons for that and many other Lofty Theoretical reasons I could yammer on about, but the biggest reason that should concern you is that you are being a bad guest if you are causing a disruption. Don't you hate it when other people interfere with your HHN experience? In any way? Don't be That Guy. Have you ever been walking through HHN and someone in front of you decides to suddenly stop to take a picture and they are completely unaware of just how close you came to tripping over them? Don't be That Guy. Be considerate and as invisible as you can be and nobody will stop you from taking pictures because nobody will know you are there. If all else fails and you still suck at being invisible.......I don't know, dress in all black or something. It's not hard to be hidden in a huge crowd at night. Figure it out. Also, you shouldn't need to use your flash more than 25% of the time. But that's another story entirely.

So I did take the Meet the Fear Makers tour on 10/19 then hung out for the event itself, and I've posted that review in a separate post. I decided to come back the next day though with my Lady because she still wanted to see everything, since we didn't see half of them last time. She also really wanted to go through the SuperScary House. Its pretty well known that HHN has a campy "joke" house every year, but I also think that they have the opposite every year too: the Really Really Scary house that really sets out to scare, and that's it. I think it's the sole goal of only one house every year (others rely on ... makeup, or lighting, or whatever other cool thing.) Examples since 08: 2008: Joke house: Creatures, Superscary house: Dead Exposure 2009: HR's house was blatantly admitted to be the campy funny house this year (though I personally think the elves are creepier than the Ugly Lady Lucks, who seem to be wearing the same masks;)) ..... And this year I think Nightengales is the pee-yourself house, hands down. More on that later, since I actually got to tlak to someone else after going through to see if they agreed (My Lady, and she did). Yeah, more on that when we get there. I'm going to go in order, which is the same order I did the day before and the same super complicate ProTip order I've gotten elsewhere (Start at Forsaken, go counterclockwise). Also I'm not gonna bother assigning scores. Or saying as much since everythings just rehash basically........ So here we go! FORSAKEN Where the heck is the guy with the red eyes that the guide in the Youtube video promised? Wah! ....Also, the one room where you walk along a tilted walkway - as awesome as it is - I think may be a mistake.... I tripped on it this time through, and two people in front of me did as well. INBETWEEN Lady didn't really want to go in but ... It was a five minute wait. Still awesome. I don't think it's ever not going to be awesome. POE Though I can't get over how much I hate the inaccuracy of the Red Death room, as well as other inaccuracies ...... This house is still awesome. To the general public who aren't Poe-obsessed like me it is Superawesome. Or even to Poe-obsessed people who are better at making their thoughts go away. SAWS Again, seriously don't remember this. My Lady thinks we may have skipped it because it was right after a Bill and Ted show then never went back .. that sounds about right, I guess... BLOODENGUTZ As others have said, I want to watch the videos between the rooms!!! Other than that this house is easily my favorite campy joke house I've been through. And after the second time throgh on this trip, my favorite room hands down is the Arbor Day room..... It was one of my favorites before I even saw the house just because...Arbor day?! ... But now, yeah. Awesome. THE THING Convinced Lady not to bother. Sad, really. NIGHTENGALES This was the one Lady really wanted to see the most ..... I already have ranted and raved at how crazyawesome this house is but I wanted to talk here about what I mean by the 'superscary' house idea I mentioned before: every single thing in this house is designed to scare you. Sure there's cool stuff in there but its not Cool Just To Be Cool. Like when the Horrible Horrible Creatures were jumping over you (we only saw one this night, I think I remember seeing like 4 the previous night - there were either actually 4 jumpers that night, I imagined it, or the one jumper that night was REALLY FAST somehow): they're designed to freak you out, then also to distract you by making you look up, so that when you look back down you damn near walk right into another one of them.... And on Wednesday night with 4 jumpers, that happened twice in a row to the girl in front of me. Now, sure that's cool but it's not there to be cool. The end of the Werewolf's house a couple years ago where they shoot the wolf after he scares the bejeebus out of you was sorta there to scare you but ... really? It was there because it was so cool .. . Anyhow the Nightengales house is fuuulllll of stuff like that and you don't need more than the description to know that: right off the bat you know that you're not only in a warzone but that you're actually in the TRENCHES, which means just about everything is going to be happening above you, and what happens on your level is going to be in the dark and you're almost certainly not going to be looking at it (again maybe its my vision or my glasses but I can't navigate through there without looking up a little to get some reflected light). .. The rest is the same as the night before. This house scares me just to think about. So that's the houses. My Lady isn't anywhere near the HHN freak I am and doesn't even particularly like going into the same thing twice so this time we didn't do anything in scarezones except walk through them pretty quickly on the way to the next house to ensure it'd be a five minute wait. So, scarezones..... I'm not even going to bother reviewing again. See my review of Wednesday's visit. Now! To update my totals! This accounts for everything I've seen/done/read/heard/imagined so far. Sunday Visits: 2 Monday Visits: 0 Wednesday visits: 1 Thursday Visits: 1 Total Time: ... Lots of it Total Giant Animal Limbs Eaten: About 0.8 - still working on the one from last nite! Houses: Forsaken: 2 In-Between: 4 Nevermore: 3 Saws N Steam : ? Bloodengutz: 3 The Thing: 1 Nightengales: 3 Winters Night: 3 The rest of the counts I'm not bothering with... Too much typing is bad for the kidneys!

I went on the Face the Fear Makers tour on 10/19/11. I am actually glad I planned this out in advance (I don’t plan any of my regular HHN visits out in advance except that I try to be there on Halloween). I’ll back up a bit to explain why: My father was a Teamster in NYC and worked in the movie business. He was also a really bright guy and quite handy, so he helped come up with a lot of effects in films, both special effects and simple things that were to save the director’s butt. Example of latter: there was one movie where two characters were outside talking in the “summer” but it was actually the middle of winter, so their breath was very visible on camera. They were about to shut down the shoot and prolong… well, everything… but my dad suggested that they both be smoking cigarettes (duh). Done! Example of the former is more impressive since so many people know it: the scene in The Godfather where the guy is lying face down and he gets shot through the eye (and his glasses) was an effect my dad created because nobody in the effects department could figure it out. As a Teamster, he did a lot of hanging around on filmsets and he was drawn to makeup and effects departments. So he’d seen a lot of tricks and such and he’d screw around with them with me and my brother. On top of that, my mom has a ridiculous talent for applying Halloween makeup (we have no idea where that came from – I like to think she’s a superhero with a particularly lame super power). She did all our Halloween makeups until I started doing them all around age 10 or something. Point is, I’ve been around movie makeup forever, and it’s what I’ve wanted to do since I was a little kid. I have the Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video on a VHS that is barely watchable from me watching it over and over! So I have this dream. Back in 09 me and my Lady went on the Behind the Screams tour and loved it – it’s easily one of the best HHN experiences I’ve ever had and I recommend it to anybody. The only people I wouldn’t recommend it to are people who would go through it and think that the awesomeness of that tour couldn’t possibly be topped by the event… You know, ‘cus they’d be wrong? =) I didn’t have the money to go last year, but now that I’m unemployed and at a bit of a crossroads in life, I decided I’d not only go this year, but that I’d go to the tour where you sit down with people from A&D and ask a ton of questions. I wanted to know how to do what they do. Money be damned. Like I said, I’m unemployed, and even though I have two bachelors’ degrees, I’m going back to school at Seminole State so that I can get the loans to help me live…. Since I’m unemployed (living off student loans and generosity) I don’t have much money to throw around, but every time my student loan money comes in the first thing I do is buy my FFP. It came time where this was fast approaching and I kept beating myself up over the ticket – it was going to be $100 that I don’t have…. But I got an email reminder from Universal, and suddenly I remembered that I already bought the ticket, based on the very very small chance that it could get me a job I might actually like! So… Woohoo! I don’t really know what to say about the tour itself.. Which is why I’m posting this here and not in the thread on the tour… If you want to know what the tour is like, go check it out on Youtube – there are videos of the walkthrough of all three houses ( Forsaken, Nevermore and Hawthorn ). The only different part was the Q&A session afterward, which was interesting but I didn’t really get a satisfactory answer to my question, since the answer was basically “you want to get to where I’m at and do what I do? Okay step 1 – be me.” And to be honest I was so enthralled in the conversation I didn’t even take notes like I was going to. So …. It was awesome, but that’s all I’ve got to say! Sorry! Anyhow when we walked out of the tour, there was already a line at the gate to get in to Uni. I thought that was great – I brought a sketchbook and everything thinking I was going to have to kill time. It was also great too because it would be the first time I’d get into the park at 630 for HHN (I think my previous record was 730, a whole hour later). I was still itching to try out the “You can see everything!” stuff that I talked about in my last post … And I wanted to see what the crowd looks like on a Wednesday. Then an interesting thing happened, and it kept happening! Somehow, even though I was just quietly standing there staring off into space, people started asking me questions about the event! Lots of them! As if they knew that I was a ridiculous HHN geek! I *was* wearing a Friday the 13th shirt, but still – it was a little odd on Wed waiting to get in but it also happened while I was waiting to get in on Thurs (when I was with my Lady, not alone, and my Lady does *not* look like she knows HHN anywhere near as much as I do…. She looks normal and sane. =) People were even asking me questions on lines to go into the houses about really specific stuff. I have no idea how someone behind me in line at the Poe house asked me where the sprinklers were – if there were any, nor do I have any idea if he really figured I would know (…which, uh, I did). That was Thursday night, too, so I wasn’t even wearing my Jason shirt – I’m wearing a Big Lebowski shirt! Strange. Anyway this nice guy started talking to me about the park and asking me what the best way was to handle it and stuff … I told him what I thought the online strategies boiled down to (“Start at Forsaken, go counterclockwise”) and then started giving him other little tips (“Don’t go into Saws when Bill and Ted gets out”) and just kept talking and such and finally I was like “you know, I’m not here with anybody, why don’t you just follow me? I have that map in my head.” And he did! He followed me, then two other people from the line decided to follow us (they were listening in on what I was telling him), so when I got in I was already in a party of four. I won’ t mention where when or how or anything since I honestly don’t remember so clearly, but over the course of the night at least 10 people came and went from the “Follow This Guy” party. Maybe it was because I had “March of Progress” written on a giant piece of blue tape on my back, hoping someone from here would recognize me It was interesting. So, on to the event itself… As a refresher, I had only been in the In Between and Winter’s Night before (on my first visit, since on my second visit-in-two-parts : I didn’t go into the park at all for part a and for part b we didn’t go into any houses) . So there was a lot to see… And as promised I followed the Incredibly Overcomplicated “go counter clockwise” plan I’d seen elsewhere, since other people have said they were able to see everything. Also I have so much faith in the sources that I told all three of the people following me not to use their Express passes until I told them to. Given what I’d read and what I was seeing as far as the Wednesday Night Crowd, I figured they wouldn’t need them at all. They all had to wander off before I told them to use the Express Passes but I told them that they could probably finish everything without it and that they shouldn’t use it at all until afterward to go back to see their favorites again. FORSAKEN, WHICH IS A BOAT OR A SCENE OUT OF “THEY LIVE” We got to Forsaken and the In Between and both signs said 5 minutes. I couldn’t believe it! I’d never ever seen a number that low! We got to go through it at a good speed too, and since I’d seen the house in the lights on preview earlier in the day, I even knew what I was looking at and everything. It’s worth taking a second to elaborate on that for anyone who thought like I did. I held off on going on the lights-on tour until this week because I figured I would’ve seen all the houses by then with the lights out. I think that’s not really right… I think it’s way better to see the lights on tour first. It doesn’t ruin anything at all – it only enhances the experience. I didn’t even have to consciously turn off my tendency to remember where every scare was going to come from because there were just always so many. You can’t remember them all. I figured that out within the first minute of the tour. Anyway Forsaken was really cool, and I think they may’ve changed it from the way it was earlier because I thought that the green eyes were terrific and the only time I saw the green eyes before a scare came was when we were walking on the deck above a bunch of them and they were sword fighting, so their eyes were really looking at each other, not at us. And it was very effective to have them stop fighting and freak us out – the scareactors down there were *relentless* and they must be completely exhausted by the end of their shift. And of course, +1 to stuff that’s been said over and over and over about how unbelievable the sets are and everything. This house is top notch, no doubt. Since I saw everything on this particular visit (we missed the Thing house and 7 when I went the next day), I am comfortable using a grading system here. Let me explain how I shall grade: I am under the impression that absolutely nobody goes on Halloween. So, I’ll be the only one in attendance, plus anybody who wanted to come with me. At max it’s looking like it might be me and the Lady, if that. We’ll just assume it’s me alone in the park. My rating system, then, is based on the number of times I think I’ll go through the house on Halloween when it’s just me and the scareactors. Now, this may LOOK like a 10-point scale but I assure you it is not. Got all that? : ) Forsaken : 10 THE IN BETWEEN(ers) Next stop counterclockwise … The inbetween. I think I did all the rambling I’m going to do about how much I love this house in my first review. I think it’s fantastic even though I don’t see a lot of the 3d effects. The next time I go I’m going to wear my contacts specifically for this house so that I don’t have to wrassle the question of whether I put the 3d glasses on behind or In front of mine…. In Between : 9, expected to be a 10 when I go through with my contacts, and even if nothing seems to change then I’m going to bump it up to a 10 anyway when I go through with my contacts because the tunnel is that awesome. NEVERMORE Wish I knew on my first visit that the In Between’s exit drops you way the hell off in Baltimore … Just saying. Anyhow this house is awweesommmmeee. E. .e. e. And I think the designers put a lot more Poe references in there than either tour guide mentioned (by “either” I mean the one I had and the one in the Youtube videos). Right away I noticed how many Oval Portraits there were. Also right away I noticed the large Gold Bug on the desk. People may say that’s coincidence (especially the presence of a bajillion Oval Portraits), but uh – no. Nothing is coincidence when you’re building it from scratch. No oversights or mistakes…. Well….. there…was..that… one…. Really….. REALLY…. Big mistake…. Which I am so sad that I have to deduct a FULL visit off for. The Red Death room. WHY AREN’T THE DANCERS’ ROOMS DIFFERENT COLORS??? Color is by far the most important symbol in the story! If the title doesn’t convince you of that just read the story and compare how much of it is devoted to describing Prospero’s mansion and all the colors vs. how much is devoted to … well… ANYTHING else. Reading the story it seems like every other word is a color. And then… This too.. I have to deduct for. WHY WAS THE RED DEATH WEARING A SHINY RED ROBE? He’s supposed to show up dressed like a corpse (i.e., in black). I think the story even describes what he looks like and mentions his black clothes and skull ‘mask’ and says something along the lines of “and that would’ve been okay, except that the clothes and mask were dabbled in blood” – dabbled! He wasn’t wearing a shiny red robe! This ain’t no boxing match! One thing I would deduct a point for is that not one of the Ravens I saw was on a bust, pallid or otherwise. I won’t deduct though because I may have just missed it. Another that I could deduct for just because it upset me is that for some reason it seemed to slip the house-makers’ minds that Lenore went to Heaven. That poem sticks out in his collection so much that you almost want to tear the page out. It’s a happy ending! …. Sad poem… .but… Having a tortured Lenore? No. Why not pick one of the other bajillion Poe women that have horrible fates? Last Poe-Fanboy thing I’ll mention that I could deduct for but won’t because of how awesome the house was generally: uh, dude escapes the Pendulum. Just wanted to clear that up. Not-quite-fanboy thing I could but won’t deduct for: MORE friggin’ dudes dressed as birds?? Seriously?? If I haven’t made clear enough how silly I think that is I will shortly. Overall though, guess what? THIS: Nevermore: 9. Why 9 when I deducted so many points, you ask? ……. I told you it wasn’t out of 10! =) SAWS AND STEAM …I can write both my reviews for this house here…. I…frankly…don’t really remember going through this. I know I did. Twice. But… I don’t know, maybe it’s because I just get annoyed at loud noises and try to get away from them as quickly as possible …. But I really don’t remember this house – literally not at all. Saws n Steam: Guh? (that one is on a 1-10 scale) HR BLOODENGUTZ I barely want to say anything about this house because I love it so much and it’s all been said before. My review here and in my other review are going to be really short and sweet: I friggin love this house. … Actually, that’s the entirety of my review here! Bloodengutz: 11 THE THING After Bloodengutz I wanted to do Nightengales since I still didn’t want to go through the Thing yet without seeing the movie but the line was only five minutes for the thing and 20 for Nightengales (did I mention that all the lines this whole time were only 5 minutes?) … So we went through the Thing. This was the last house I went through with other people. And uh… Lame. Sorry. Maybe I just have a bad taste in my mouth from all the friggin military guys in Assimilation (which, by the way, caused this house to lose 2 points right off the bat even though it’s a different year and a different movie. I don’t care – they’re my arbitrary ratings and there WEREN’T ANY MILITARY GUYS WITH GUNS HANGING AROUND IN CARPENTER’S MOVIE….. ahem…), but I thought this was sorta … I don’t know… kid stuff. Amateurish. The kind of thing you’d see at a county fair… And I actually think I was probably going through during a shift change or something because there was… really not much going on in the house either …. So to explain why my score isn’t like -15 at such a poo house, I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt and assuming that when I go through it on Halloween when I’m the only one in the park, it will be cool. I’m basing that on past experience: I’ve never been through a house at HHN that outright SUCKED. I was seriously tempted to just walk out one of the exits in here. But like I said, I’m chalking that up to probable cast change. The Thing (tentative): 4 NIGHTENGALES Soooooo after that, as I said, I was now all alone, and staring my Big Fear right in the eye, since I’d pieced together that this house was the Superscary one, and since I knew it was going to be superscary because I hate those damn nasty big pointy teeth and I don’t like walking through really really deafeningly loud areas… Back up. Ok…. I thought HHN was “pretty cool, alright, kinda neat I guess” the first few times I went, but my love affair began in 07 when I got to go through Freddy’s House. I don’t say the Nightmare on Elm Street House, and I don’t even say 1412 Elm Street – I say Freddy’s House, knowing full well that Freddy didn’t live there in the movie. But in that House that year he sure did! That was another freakin’ dimension. That was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. I’ve rambled elsewhere enough about the couple crazy visceral scares I got in this house that had me literally so panicked I missed the fact that we walked through the boiler room. That was terrifying. Then, 08, Dead Exposure. ……. I know there are Dead Exposure haters out there (I have no idea how), but this house also scared the bejesus out of me. There have been others but those are my top two examples: houses that I wouldn’t even really want to go into again because of how terrifying they are. I didn’t have the FFP in 07 and I was there on a Saturday so going in again wasn’t really plausible (instead we went to the stupid Thing house, which I’ll get to in a sec)….. But I got invited into Dead Exposure probably 4 times more and …. Nope. Wouldn’t do it. Too much for me. The hanging bodies room? No thank you. I thought Nightengales was going to be this. And guess what? Uh, it was. But with a twist. This house was friggin’ terrifying too (doesn’t beat Freddy, but nothing ever will) but for some reason I had no problems going through it three times (one this night two the next) … I don’t know if I’ll do it again, since… its… you know, tarrying…. But… Yeah. Interesting house – it’s hard to toe that line. I mean I even got a scare (a *scare* not a startle – like a visceral feeling of “that’s creepy”) when I saw one of the creatures the first time and noticed the nurse’s outfit. I knew they were supposed to be nurses but just thinking about it is different than seeing it. Creepy juxtaposition. Also, I’m pretty sure this is the only house in HHN history that has given me a nightmare, because I “remember” seeing something in there that I’m not sure I actually saw. Is there a part in this house where there’s a guy standing there saying “Help me, help me” and then one of those horrible things runs up behind him and just starts eating him right in front of you? If I saw it I saw it the first time through - I dreamed it that night…. But then the second time through I didn’t see it (which is the whole reason I went through again). Crazy! By the way, anybody who’s reading this (First, why are you still reading this – I’m not even reading it anymore), the sounds aren’t really as loud as I imagined they’d be. I thought they’d be intolerable. I was ai’ight. Anyhow I’m giving this the only possible score: Nightengales : 11 (Well, that’s …. One louder, innit?) WINTERS NIGHT … Friggin awesome, what else would it be? Plus now that I know where Mary Shaw’s tombstone is, I can kick myself when I see it and wonder how the hell I could’ve possibly missed it? It’s HUGE and not at ALL hidden. Winters Night: 10 Those were the houses. I took the scarezones out of there (and will do so in the next review too) because I can’t ever keep straight when, exactly, I go through them. And I imagine my scarezone reviews will be quick since nothing seems to be changing. Also, I can’t give them scores on how many times I’ll go through them as the only person there on Halloween, so NO SCORES! Just …. Tweets, basically. 7: Actually only saw it once this visit: on the way in. They were still setting it up. Stupid garden: Seriously, there’s still just like a few people dressed as birds? Cmon. This was even lamer in the daylight. Didn’t think that was possible. Giant Skulls and Fire: Our path never took us through this zone ……. But I still hate the stupid smoke. I just did it from afar without being affected by it directly this time. Nightmaze: Ditto. Acid Assault: I love this place so much. I’m considering bringing a real chainsaw next time to take the damn “we ruin everything everywhere we go” chainsaw people out of the picture….. It’s like that Duchamp painting of the Mona Lisa where she’s got a mustache. Like QUIT RUINING ART AND THINKING YOURE AMAZING. God I hate chainsaws. But I love collapsing buildings. Also, +1 piece of the Triforce to the Acid Assault scareactor who stood next to me while I was filming one of the buildings collapsing – not to get a scare but to watch the video =) Ten Billion Lady Lucks Can’t Be Wrong!: Nope, they still are. And the elves in Bloodengutz who are wearing the same mask do it better. Just …. Sell this zone on Ebay. Srsly. To any scareactors who may be reading this who work in this zone: …. …. Uh, no, no different message. Sell that garbage on Ebay, srsly. So that’s my review from the tour day! Final Score/Tally I’ll put this in the next review since I’m gonna write it now.