zombieman

Can someone explain where the Periodic Table picture even come from? I don't see it on FB. Is there some other social media site I need to be following to get clues? I miss the old days when the website doled out the clues...

Legacy, I think the sound-change WAS the game you were hoping for. Wasn't that fun? Maybe next they'll misspell something, to see who catches it first! On the bright side, at least the Hollywood guys can finally say that their website is as good as Orlando's.

Where is the survey? I looked all over the HHN site... EDIT: Hmmm.... I had to click on the main logo a few times and it came up

It's definitely a valid concern now that Hollywood is running the show for both coasts. If Hollywood's mentality is that it's okey dokey to repeat houses for three years in a row (because that's what people "want"), how is that not something to worry about for the future of HHN Orlando? Believe me - if it was the other way around and Orlando was running the show in Hollywood, I'd be doing cartwheels.

Using that mentality, Hollywood's HHN shows must be far superior to Orlando's - because, well, it's Hollywood. Except that their shows blow compared to Orlando's. So let's please drop the notion that Hollywood does some things better because it's Hollywood... I have been going to both coasts' events for 7 years and I wouldn't want to bring a single idea from the Hollywood event over to Orlando - which is why I have the least enthusiasm I can remember ever for either event. Every aspect of HHN Orlando has consistently been better than Hollywood's - shows, ticket options, lack of house repeats, website, house sizes. Other than the weather, Orlando always offered the better event. Clearly money is the motivator for making the events more similar, and clearly the better product was costing more money. I have never been a fan of movie houses - ever. I am still waiting for someone to explain to me why it is in any way fun to walk through a house for the first time knowing exactly what you are going to see - because you've already seen the movie. The contracts that come with IP take the potential for creativity (and any chance for originality) out of the equation. Which is why I make the surely controversial statement that I'd take an original generic Orlando zombie house over The Walking Dead house. Will I have enjoy TWD over Zombiegeddon? We shall see...because I loved Zombiegeddon, but I've already seen every episode of TWD. We all know that many great Orlando houses borrowed from movies, but the ones that were very successful were not constrained by an IP contract. There's no way a contract was needed to do The Forsaken or Demon Cantina. The hugely popular Frankenstein presented an old idea in a fresh and clever way - again not constrained by a contract. Clearly not all of Orlando's original ideas have been winners, but man, so many have. I hear a lot of people wishing for the best (and I am, too), but if we find out that 2013 brings the west-coast mentality of repeat houses, there's going to be a chorus of complaints. Believe me - you will really get tired of seeing Silent Hill three years in a row, no matter how much management promises it will be "all new"... Until then, I'm going cross my fingers and hope that the opposite happens - that Hollywood will pick up some of Orlando's good qualities, like no repeat houses, or adding behind the scenes tours.

For me, 2008 was by far the best year for websites. The way they built up the tension with each new reveal was amazing. Didn't the Vault have the most people in its history logged in at one time that August evening when the full site went up? I recall it being 250+ users logged in With corporate Hollywood running the show, I'm seriously wondering if Orlando will even have an icon this year. Jeez, you think there will even be an Orlando-quality press gift?

You are 100% correct. Most people have heard a lot of his music, but never matched the person with the songs. I didn't really discover Alice until around 2004. I was in Vegas (going to one of their haunts) and saw that Alice Cooper was playing at Sunset Station. I thought "why not?" and bought a ticket. Throughout the concert I was stunned that I knew about half the songs and had no idea he wrote them. The other songs were so good, I bought a few CDs the next day and listened to them on the drive home. I've since become a major fan and got to meet him backstage. By the way - even at his age, his concerts are about the best you will ever see. I highly recommend catching his tour later this year. The Hollywood house last year could have been picked up and moved to an Orlando Soundstage. Although each room was based (loosely) on a different song, the music was subtle, letting the house be the main attraction. If you hate his music, they won't be punishing you by blasting you with it. The only downside was that it was short - about the length of Saws & Steam. And don't be sad that Orlando's is not 3D. If the theme remains much the same, then 3D just doesn't fit.

The more I think about a P&T house, the more I feel that (as other have suggested) we will not be seeing P&T in the house - at least not as scareactors - but rather it will be a P&T Presents type of house. We have grown used to seeing illusions in houses, and these are often the highlight of the house. The catwalk in Dead Silence comes to mind, as do the Pepper's Ghosts we are used to seeing. I can see how P&T could integrate some illusions we have all seen in magic shows but never in a haunted attraction to really up the ante. And as great as house designers can be with misdirection, who better to misdirect than magicians? I would expect to see P&T appearing throughout the entire queue video, though. I could imagine them setting up a couple of tricks in the video where you will find the answer inside the house - along the lines of forcing a card in the video and seeing your card revealed at the end of the house. While that might sound lame and out of place in a haunted attraction (it sounds lame as I am typing it), these guys can make it cool.

My guy over at Screamscape tells me there will be one large upcharge house that actually roams around the park, along with 15 scarezones. So this talk of 7 houses and 8 zones is pretty surprising, since that site is usually so accurate.

^ Looks to me like they are creating an "end of the world" SZ for us, complete with open pits. One can hope.

As much as I love Penn & Teller, I cannot imagine for a moment a house based on them. And as much as I love TWD, I really don't need to see any more movie or TV based houses; I respect the design team's ability to generate original content. But if you asked me last July what I thought of a humorous-house based on a TV schlockfest host, I'd have said "please drop it". And if they had, we'd have missed one of the most well-received houses of the past few years. So, at this point I'd be happy to keep all of "Dr. Jimmy's houses" (as they seem to now be proclaimed) knowing they are in capable hands.

I posted this in the Hollywood section, but since most Orlando readers don't browse it, I thought I'd post it here: Those of you who know me know I don't spread rumors, and really dislike people who claim to be "in the know" who claim to know everything about the event. Not to sound like one of those people, but I just spoke to someone who works at Universal Hollywood. Lower management, but in corporate nonetheless. This was at a party setting. Halloween came up and I was fascinated at this person's background, coming from the major theme park haunts. Among the nuggets I heard - Universal (now owned by Comcast) would be doing more "IP sharing" between Orlando and Hollywood, in order to save money. This means that we should expect to see more parallel mazes between the two parks (like they did last year with The Thing, and more to the point, like they did with the Big Three). The "IP" referred to is the licensing agreements with studios. This means that they will get a better deal if they license a film franchise across both parks instead of just one. While both parks would still have independent design teams, it means that Orlando should expect to see more movie-based houses, along with their original ones. This is a bummer for people like me to go to both parks every year to see something new (and escape the movie houses in Hollywood). Now, since The Walking Dead seems all but a certainty for HHN Orlando, I am going to put 2 and 2 together and suggest that we should expect to see TWD in Hollywood as well. The Orlando HHN boards are also strongly predicting that Orlando will present an Alice Cooper house this year, which gives further credence the notion that they are sharing IP. I was also told that even now, they are trying to finalize contracts for identical properties in both parks. This was a week ago, and supposedly it was imminent then. In Hollywood last year, even when some houses were well underway, the rug was pulled out on some major enhancements they had for the Terror Tram. And this year, the big surprise was to be TWO additional houses (in a soundstage no less), but that, too, was scrubbed about a week ago because the SS was signed at the last minute for shooting 1313 Mockingbird Ln. So when we are now reading rumors of last-minute changes at HHN Orlando, it makes you wonder if this is what is really going on behind the scenes.

Most amazing effect was the bottomless pit at Erebus in Michigan just a couple of years ago. It was very much like the string room in last year's In-Between, but on a grand scale. Make a mirrored floor and cover it with plexiglass. Then use a sander to buff a narrow path along the plexi. When properly lit, the sanded path will appear to be a very narrow bridge over an endless chasm. I was freaked out in that room, trying to hold on to anything I could find. Instant vertigo. Scary as hell and no actors required. Runner up effect was at HHN Hollywood around 1998. In a house designed by Clive Barker, I remember a room that shrunk around you. I don't mean just a side wall that came toward you. Both walls closed in, then the ceiling and wall behind you. That's the way I remember it, but we all tend to recall scares much more elaborately than they actually happened. To me, the worst scares are those that involve shaker cans or people screaming for no reason like they do at Howl O Scream. Jeez, I don't recall any of the cave-in from Ghost Town, either.

If Universal does a tenth of what they did in the Silent Hill house in Brea, Ca a few years ago, then it should be incredible. I never saw the movie or played the game before going to the Brea house, so I had no idea what to expect. I left there dragging my jaw behind me, and immediately rented the movie. They were very true to the fllm, and each of the odd creatures from it was in the movie. The only thing they excluded was the climax - which would have required a massive room. At one point you entered a small closed room and the Giant Knife shot out of the wall and waved in all directions about a foot from your face. They built a huge robotic arm that made it look like someone was shoving the knife into the room from the other side of the wall, and blindly trying to stab at people. This thing was about 12 feet long. Amazing. So why am I going into such detail? Well, the Brea house also did Saw a couple of years earlier and the designer of both met with Universal back then and many of the Saw props and sets you saw in Orlando came directly from the Brea house. So perhaps some of the Silent Hill sets were shipped over.... Unfortunately, I know for a fact that the robotic arm for the Great Knife was sold to the Queen Mary, and is now used there to float a demon out over a swimming pool.

I second that. I go to both coasts every year, and trust me when I say that Hollywood presented two houses last year that could have been teleported to Orlando and fit in perfectly - Alice Cooper was one of them. Drop whatever preconceived notions you have about a house based on an aged rocker. The house was nothing like what you would have expected. Very interestingly, his music was not the focus - it was very subtle in fact.

I'm very glad the Rush of Fear is back. Now just waiting for the Express add on, and I'll book my flights

To me, Vincent must be an Alice Cooper house. Given the popularity in Hollywood last year, I don't see how this can be anything but a WTMN house.

Wait a sec. How do we know that RV isn't for a Breaking Bad house? Who among us hasn't been longing for a meth lab scare?

Did anyone else get the planning survey from Universal today? It was quite short, asking what years you attended and then offered a bunch of ticketing scenarios. For each scenario, they showed you four different ticket options. Here were the rules: Halloween Horror Nights Ticket Exercise (Last Section!) In this last section of the survey, we want to understand what is important to you when purchasing a Halloween Horror Nights ticket. To do that, we are going to show you different ticket options and have you pick which ticket option is the most appealing to you. The Picture below is just an Example: In the example above, there are 4 different tickets to choose from. What we'd like you to do is consider the features of each ticket and decide which of the four tickets you'd prefer most. The tickets we are going to ask you about cover the following features: 1. Ticket Type (single night ticket or event pass) 2. Advance Purchase Savings (discount for purchasing in advance rather than buying from the front gate) 3. Valid Time Period (when during the event you can use the ticket, first week, Halloween week etc.) 4. Ticket Price (pre-tax price of a ticket) To select an option, click on the radio button below the features, then answer the question Given the following ticket options, would you really buy the Halloween Horror Nights ticket you chose above? Yes or No and then press the "Arrow". The tickets listed did NOT involve Express options. They were base tickets (singly night entries), mixed with various types of multi-night tickets (Rush of Fear, Frequent Fear, etc). To me, it seemed to be the same options over and over, but I'm sure they had reasons behind each scenario. The ticket price varied from scenario to scenario. For me (a visitor from CA who visits for a week), the Rush of Fear is the no-brainer option, letting me go for the first 10 nights (when it is least crowded). Interestingly, they had some new ticket types, such as a Frequent Fear pass that is good for one week in mid-October, or another good only the week of Halloween. Strange. For me, the priority was as follows: 1) Options (must be good any night during period - peak and non-peak) 2) Dates (must be good early October) 3) Price (least important, since I am traveling so far) I went to take the survey again with a different E-mail address, and they presented me with different ticketing scenarios (honestly, they looked to be randomly generated). Based on the seeming randomness of the options, and the fact that some people will care more about price, others about options, and others about the dates, I don't understand what they are trying to gain from this survey. Here are examples of scenarios (they were in tabular format, and when I pasted them, they got all messed up. You will be reading them a column at a time (four ticket types, four advance savings, four valid times periods, and four prices. Very hard to follow this way....sorry). Here's an example of how to read the first option of the first scenario: Ticket Type: Rush of Fear (first 10 nights only) Advance savings: $60 Valid: First 3 weeks Price: $60.99 Scenario #1 Ticket Type Rush of Fear Pass 1st 10 nights only Frequent Fear Pass Good Sun-Thurs Frequent Fear PLUS Pass Good Sun-Fri SaturdayTicket Single Night Ticket Advance Purchase Savings $60 $30 None - Same Price as Front Gate $15 Valid Time Period First 3 weeks of HHN Halloween Week Only Midldle October Good for Any Week During HHN Ticket Price (pre-tax) $60.99 $90.99 $100.99 $49.99 Scenario #2 Ticket Type SaturdayTicket Single Night Ticket Rush of Fear Pass 1st 10 nights only Weekday Ticket (Sun.-Thur) Single Night Ticket Frequent Fear Pass Good Sun-Thurs Advance Purchase Savings None - Same Price as Front Gate $45 $30 $60 Valid Time Period Midldle October First 3 weeks of HHN Good for Any Week During HHN Halloween Week Only Ticket Price (pre-tax) $79.99 $50.99 $39.99 $80.99 Scenario #3 Ticket Type Frequent Fear PLUS Pass Good Sun-Fri Weekday Ticket (Sun.-Thur) Single Night Ticket Friday Ticket Single Night Ticket SaturdayTicket Single Night Ticket Advance Purchase Savings $45 None - Same Price as Front Gate $15 $30 Valid Time Period Good for Any Week During HHN Halloween Week Only First 3 weeks of HHN Midldle October Ticket Price (pre-tax) $100.99 $39.99 $69.99 $49.99 Scenario #4 Ticket Type Frequent Fear Pass Good Sun-Thurs Friday Ticket Single Night Ticket Frequent Fear PLUS Pass Good Sun-Fri Weekday Ticket (Sun.-Thur) Single Night Ticket Advance Purchase Savings $15 $45 $60 $30 Valid Time Period Good for Any Week During HHN Halloween Week Only First 3 weeks of HHN Midldle October Ticket Price (pre-tax) $90.99 $49.99 $80.99 $49.99 Scenario #5 Ticket Type Frequent Fear Pass Good Sun-Thurs Frequent Fear PLUS Pass Good Sun-Fri Friday Ticket Single Night Ticket Rush of Fear Pass 1st 10 nights only Advance Purchase Savings $60 $15 $45 None - Same Price as Front Gate Valid Time Period Good for Any Week During HHN Halloween Week Only Midldle October First 3 weeks of HHN Ticket Price (pre-tax) $70.99 $80.99 $59.99 $80.99 Scenario #6 Ticket Type Friday Ticket Single Night Ticket Frequent Fear Pass Good Sun-Thurs Frequent Fear PLUS Pass Good Sun-Fri SaturdayTicket Single Night Ticket Advance Purchase Savings $60 $45 None - Same Price as Front Gate $30 Valid Time Period Good for Any Week During HHN Midldle October Halloween Week Only First 3 weeks of HHN Ticket Price (pre-tax) $69.99 $60.99 $90.99 $69.99 Scenario #7 Ticket Type Friday Ticket Single Night Ticket Rush of Fear Pass 1st 10 nights only Weekday Ticket (Sun.-Thur) Single Night Ticket SaturdayTicket Single Night Ticket Advance Purchase Savings $45 $15 $30 $60 Valid Time Period Halloween Week Only First 3 weeks of HHN Good for Any Week During HHN Midldle October Ticket Price (pre-tax) $49.99 $70.99 $29.99 $79.99 Scenario #8 Ticket Type Rush of Fear Pass 1st 10 nights only Frequent Fear Pass Good Sun-Thurs SaturdayTicket Single Night Ticket Frequent Fear PLUS Pass Good Sun-Fri Advance Purchase Savings None - Same Price as Front Gate $45 $15 $30 Valid Time Period First 3 weeks of HHN Midldle October Good for Any Week During HHN Halloween Week Only Ticket Price (pre-tax) $50.99 $70.99 $69.99 $110.99

Three year arc sounds like an excuse to reuse themes. I don't see this happening at HHN Orlando. We suffered through three years of Freddy at HHN Hollywood and the customers were revolting. (And they were unhappy, as well.)

So I read the first post and think "Definitely Body Collectors", because they were from the ultra-creepy Buffy episode "Hush". But then as I'm reading the posts, someone brings up Caretaker and then I'm thinking "Yeah, definitely Caretaker". Then someone brings up Jack...and the list goes on. So where do I stand at this moment? Definitely the Skool kids. So let me try something here... How about Chance? I've always found her to be equal parts of creepy and sexy, and I'd really like to see her have her day at HHN.

For those of you who are Googly challenged http://unofficialuniversalorlando.podbean.com/ I'm afraid you're still going to have to scroll down the page to find the podcast....

I love HHN Orlando for the reason that they don't repeat a house. Even when they repeat a theme, they take it in a completely different direction (as they did with Psychoscareapy). That having been said, if there is one house I wish I could have gone through, it would be SS Frightanic. I'd love to see that theme return in more than just a single room of a tribute house.

Hey all, I ran across a couple of very neat interviews on "100% Unofficial Universal Studios Podcast". Specifically, Episode 15 and 16. Episode 15 has an interview with Ron Schneider (not to be confused with the unfunny comedian). He was very involved with Fright Nights, and talks about how that first year, there were pretty much no rules for the designers. It's a great listen to hear what that year was like. Episode 16 has an interview with J. Michael Roddy (who now works for Disney). Anyone who has gone to HHN knows who he is. They don't talk about the split with Universal, but he does talk quite a bit about the years he ran it. I think you'll enjoy the other interview a little more. While still professional, he does come across a bit bitter about the split; you get the feeling he won't be attending HHN anytime soon. The interviews happen toward the end of the podcast. I couldn't get the podcasts to play from my PC, but they were easily found on iTunes. Enjoy!

<deleted> Didn't realize I double-posted...