clipper6

I have a feeling Sabrina will end up at HMH.

https://abc7.com/queen-mary-shuttle-chaos-bus-driver-says-he-was-simply-lost/4605306/

Great review Zombieman. I agree with you that this is a good event and I hope they expand without trying to emulate the other haunts too much. My group all preferred the mazes at WB over the ones at HHN and we did them both the same night. However, HHN had a better energy to us. Part of that I think is just the larger crowd, but also HHN is just more fun at this point. WB just currently doesn’t have enough to do and after a few hours I think the most popular attraction was the Conjuring beer garden. If they want to continue charging what they charge, there needs to be enough to do to fill up a full night without having to rely on the museum, which is admittedly awesome, but will have less and less repeat value in coming years. I think they should keep a high price point which also has the added benefit of attracting a slightly more mature crowd. They need probably 2-3 more mazes/attractions to spread the crowds out so something unique like The Conjuring doesn’t get slammed. Maybe bring in some carnival games with fun prizes. They had one of those high striker games this year, but there weren’t any prizes on display and I think if you wanted to play you had to buy tickets in the gift shop. Bring in a fun house or carnival dark ride (no way I was going on a drop tower after 3 drinks in Fangtasia). Have food that is actually fun instead of boring pizza and burgers (Reagan’s pea soup was a nice touch). I think with the lower number of tickets they’re purposefully selling they can do some unique things that would be harder for a larger event. Maybe a gun maze like Knott’s Spec Ops or the Resident Evil one that Universal Japan did (actually might be kind of fun if HHN tried this with a Purge theme). They could even do an escape room lite similar to the Saw attraction in Las Vegas. Someone on another site posted a survey from WB asking for opinions on a number of IPs they’re considering for next year. I got the same survey yesterday. They’re looking at I Am Legend, Westworld, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Castle Rock. If I had to guess, I’d say Sabrina is almost a lock as long as the show is successful and Westworld seems likely. There was a limited time Sabrina experience in LA similar to how IT was originally a limited time experience on Hollywood Blvd. I can see them expanding upon that and bringing Sabrina to the event next year. Westworld had a good off site experience at San Diego Comic Con that I can see being adapted for HMH and the concept of the show lends itself so well to this type of event. Don’t really want to see I Am Legend unless they somehow do an awesome superhouse that represents Vincent Price, Charlton Heston, and Will Smith versions. I’m not familiar at all with Castle Rock. The DC and Harry Potter areas of the museum were off limits during this event. I wonder if that was cost cutting or if it was a contractual issue with Six Flags and Universal respectively as they license the theme park rights for those IPs. They’re ok in the daytime when WB is a guided tour and not a themed attraction. Arkham Asylum might have been ok as it is based on the game.

For a first (or second depending on how you look at it) year event this was decent. People forget how little there was to do at HHN in 2006. I think if the cost was lower, it wouldn’t be getting trashed online as bad as it has been. WB is currently involved in a dispute for hiring non-union construction workers. This has caused a lot of their social media to be flooded with bad reviews so I wonder if this may also be the source of some of extremely negative reviews. There’s a decent number of scareactors wandering around the lot, but due to the lack of a dedicated scarezone, they felt spread thin. Aside from a Georgie and some bullies from It, they were mostly generic clowns. This was kind of disappointing as the videos from the media preview showed Pennywise, Freddy, Jason, and some Batman villains mingling with the crowd and posing for pictures. Either we missed them all or they’ve cut back. The DJ was mostly ignored and the Lost Boys arcade was tiny and not every game inside was 80s. Love tester machine stole my quarter. Food didn’t look appetizing mostly because there didn’t look like there was anywhere to sit down and eat. I would have liked to try the soup in a bread bowl, but who wants to walk around this type of event with a bowl of soup. We did have multiple drinks in Fangtasia and that was good, although oddly when you pay with a card there wasn’t an option to tip your bartender. One thing they did get right was a lot of great photo ops. This is something I’ve wondered why other attractions (aside from Disney) haven’t focused more on. It’s so hard to get good photos at a lot of these events due to low lighting and the fact that the characters don’t stick around. I would have paid really good money to have had a picture with Sam at HHN this year, for example. WB has a ton of great photo ops. Lots of people were buying. Places like Universal and Knotts already have the infrastructure in place to do this, so I don’t understand why they don’t make it more of a focus. Now on to the maze/attraction reviews. Devil’s Drop Tower - There was no line all night. They sent workers around to the other lines trying to talk people into riding it. We skipped it. Just thought I’d mention it. The Conjuring - Half hour line with Losers Club VIP. I actually had a lot of fun in this house and got some good scares. That said, I would absolutely sacrifice the guided tour aspect to alleviate the long lines. 30 minute VIP line and 2+ hour standby is crazy for this event. There was nothing that would not have worked as a standard walkthrough maze except for the finale which could easily have been moved to the beginning and run as a preshow like Knotts does for many of its mazes. The Conjuring doesn’t deserve the hate it’s gotten in some reviews, but should have been a regular maze. Nightmare on Camp Crystal Lake - Being a movie buff, I kind of liked that they did a mini tour of the sets you drove by. I remember when Universal kind of talked a bit about the studios’ history on Terror Tram before giving up and just playing a theme video each year. I think our first tour guide just wasn’t into it. The guy that drove us back was great. The maze itself was fun and given the small number of people per tram, you really felt alone and exposed in the forest. Scareactors were OK interacting and posing for photos. Not sure where I read it, but on another review someone said this was what they wished Terror Tram would be and I agree. The one scare a lot of people hyped up was not there when we went through though. Jason is my favorite slasher so I’m likely super biased. We spent around 45 minutes in the museum afterwards. IT - If this was at HHN, people would be calling it the best maze of the year. It’s a great maze. My only complaint is that all the guys playing Pennywise must have called in sick. The only Pennywises we saw were projections or mannequins. There were generic clowns inside, but no Pennywise. I’m wondering if the actors didn’t show up and they grabbed some of the generic clowns from outside and stuck them in the maze. Arkham Asylum - Guys taking your mugshot at the entrance we’re kind of rude. Not sure if they were in character or just rude. Best actors of the event worked this house. It was fun, but very light on scares. This could have worked and been a great way for WB to differentiate themselves from other haunts, but the very anti-climatic ending was a let-down. Exorcist - The crowd reacted very well to this. As it was ending I was hearing a lot of people commenting that they were surprised how well the movie has held up. For me, most of the scares were just from being able to watch scenes from a well-made movie. Everything else was kind of disappointing for me, but probably awesome of the people sitting next to the effects. Try and get within the first few rows for this. Absolutely nothing happened near us in the back, but I could see how some of the effects that happened in the front would have been terrifying up close. Overall, I liked the event, but I’m not sure I’d do it again in the near future unless they either added much more to do or slashed the price dramatically. While there is plenty they can improve on, I do not understand some of the negativity towards the set design and costumes. Those were the two stronger aspects of the event in my opinion. They need to decide what they want to be. If they want to compete with HHN, they need to add a whole lot more to do and become more like a traditional haunt. If they truly want to be an alternative, they still should add some more, but also play to their strengths. They could go fully immersive, have longer mazes, add escape room elements to some of the mazes, branching paths, and do other stuff that Universal and Knotts (which have to revert back to family friendly theme park during the day) can’t do. Make this the event for people that don’t like huge crowds and techno music.

From the videos I’ve seen, the sets and costumes look amazing, but there aren’t too many scares. I’ll be there in a few weeks to see for myself.