Bowie

I imagine that if the train remained open it would work pretty much the same as it will during the day. During the day, you will need a park-to-park ticket to ride the train to the other park. During HHN, you would need a valid IoA ticket to ride one way and a valid HHN ticket to ride the other way. My guess is that during HHN, the train ride will close to avoid the logistical issues of having yet another entrance into the park. I would expect the Gringotts coaster to be open.

I can't imagine them not having the new ride open. They always have their newest rides running during HHN.

What's the controversy about? It seems like a perfect fit to me. They could even do a HP themed scarezone or house. Plenty of material: dementors, giant spiders, ogres, ghosts, thestrals (the freaky invisible horses), etc. You could even use the centaurs and house elves for some scares.

It was done that way to match up with the movie. In the movie, you see those scenes cut in with scenes of him reading the words from the book. I do agree that they could have done a bit more with all that empty space at the beginning.

I haven't heard anything like that. The Express lines seemed to work the same as always when I was there last week.

That's strange. As far as I could tell, it was basically just a canvas cylinder. I can understand them having problems with the mechanism that turns it, but what could have gone so badly wrong that they had to remove it completely?

What do you mean by "gone"? Is it just not spinning, or did they take it out completely?

I think It is a combination of things. 1) It is based on a 13-year old video game, 2) It is a fairly short house, 3) The sets are not all that interesting to someone not familiar with the games, 4) It is completely overshadowed by the houses based on more current/popular IPs (CITW, ED, WD, and AWIL)

I did feel like I missed some scares, but it was still fun.

I did the tour on Thursday and our guide said that they have been tweaking that scene. Both Thursday and Friday nights, it was a prop with a constant trickle of water. Maybe they changed it to the interval effect for Saturday. That would probably work better. I didn't think the trickle of water was very effective.

Anyone else manage to get a solo walkthrough of one of the houses? On Friday, my second house during SaS was Resident Evil. I walked through the line and when I got to the entrance, there was no one else there and there was no one in line behind me either. I walked through the entire house on my own. Kind of cool being able to walk through at my own pace and not have to deal with the conga line. That's never happened to me before. The closest I've come was a couple of years ago when I was stopped at the entrance to a house for a couple of minutes and then got to be at the head of the line going in.

I was there this Thursday and Friday and I thought the crowds were actually a bit lower on Friday for some reason -- especially early in the night. Maybe it had something to do with the AP party soaking up some of the early crowd. I did 7 houses without express, did all 8 again with express, saw Rocky Horror, and rode Mummy. I probably could have done at least one more house, but I decided to listen to my sore legs and feet and head back to the hotel instead.

I didn't care for the streets this year. I like creativity and imagination in my horror movies and the same goes for the scare zones and houses. After a while, it was just "oh, more zombies..." The little sketches that I heard about (where a zombie would attack a survivor) sounded like a neat idea, but the reality is that despite spending 2 days at the parks, I never saw any of them. Probably because I didn't spend any time hanging around in the streets. Too focused on getting in line for the next house! I would bet that if you took a survey of guests, 75% of them (if not more) would not have seen anything other than the standard zombies wandering around. I really hope they go back to having different themes for the scare zones next year. I really miss well-themed scarezones like Asylum in Wonderland, Containment, Zombie Gras, Canyon of Lost Souls, and "7" (yea, Zombie Gras was more zombies, but at least they were interesting zombies).

2 nights Cabin in the woods: 3 Resident Evil: 4 American Werewolf in London: 5 Evil Dead: 3 Walking Dead: 2 La Llorona: 4 Afterlife: 3 Havoc: 2 Bill & Ted: 1 Rocky Horror: 1

Never been a big fan of the Blue Moon song. Now if they'd played Bad Moon Rising... Hope you got your thing together. Hope you are quite prepared to die.