duh1011
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Posts posted by duh1011
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I take back my initial gripes with what we got about this house. Im really looking forward to this one!
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Okay damn, the Hive actually has my attention. Didn't think vamps could ever do that to me but I should've given big mean ol corporate Mike more credit! I love the looks of all the originals now and cant wait to bring my girlfriend to her first horror event (even tho it cost me over $300..
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20 minutes ago, criticalanalysis said:I'm going away from this forum until I return from my trip. I already spoiled the Dead Water facade and one piece of Scarecrow's and saw a little to much of Invasion, so I want to keep the rest out of my eyes/ears/mind. Will come back with a negative review as expected
See you, space cowboy
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7 minutes ago, Dog67 said:
So so brace yourself for more IPs, less creativity, more selfie stages, less horror, more 3D sh$t houses and whatever the flavour of the day is.
Well that's not quite true since there's already no 3d houses this year. While HHN might be a bit more of a corporate event than before, I don't think that means it's as stifling to the creativity as you think. I don't see any reason to believe there's less horror, and less creativity than the most recent years. Heck, I think this year's original houses are some of the more creative ones we've heard about in recent times (except the vampire one but that still leaves 3). I'd say it's too soon to say that they lost a lot of their creative edge when we haven't seen the event itself yet.
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Where can I stream this show? I loved the original movie, and I hear the show is really dang good
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here's the best pic i could find while browsing twitter
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Just going to leave this piece of art here.
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lmao purge again, oops
On the bright side, I finally have a house I can skip without feeling bad about doing so; I was getting worried that all the houses this year would be a little TOO interesting!
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Maybe at some point we could meet up on the 22nd? I tend to play this stuff by ear, and let people know what I'm wearing before I go; I don't like to restrict myself to a certain place at a certain time, but if everything works out (and we both use this site during the event) then I bet we could meet up at some point, and maybe even do a house together!
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September... 15th... Boy do I hope that insider birdie is wrong
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Scare Zones:
1. Trick r' Treat: Fun movie, so much room for variety, and I love the sets so far
2. Invasion!: Vamp '55 was fun as hell, and if this is as cheesy as that was then I'll have a good time again. The location is my least favorite for scarezones, however :T
3. Festival of the Deadliest: Concept art was neat but I haven't seen anything else about it to get me hyped, so.. could jump up my list later on.
4, 5 and 6. Purge, that other one and roaming hordes: Yawn. Don't care about another purge zone, I strongly despise the photo op zones, and roaming hordes are always forgettable.
Houses:
1. The Fallen: Every time I hear more about it I get more excited. It has so much potential to be amazing
2. Hive: Used to be near the bottom of the list. Now I know it's nosferatu-inspired vampires instead of dracula-kind, and I am now very interested.
3. Ash vs Evil Dead: Started watching this show and I love it. There's a lot of room here for great gags and good gore.
4. Dead Waters: Crazy ambitious sets. Voodoo lady sacrifices. Yes.
5. Scarecrows: Cool idea, and while the scarecrow design shown off does seem neat, I don't know just how scary these things can be. I've never been too into them, and I'm not a crow, so idk just how spooky it can get
6. AHS: I think this show sucks, but it does have a ton of inspired themes and could be pretty great. It's also long, so thats a plus
7. Saw: Finally forced myself through all the movies, and while the scenes can be gory and cool, I doubt it has much room for actual scares. Bonus points tho if we have to crawl through the wire maze, since that could be pretty harrowing
8. The Shining: Didn't care for the movie at all, and I feel like it can't be too scary. Cool sets are all it has imo
9. Blumhouse: Purge and Insidious again. Don't care for Sinister. Welp.
Food:
1. Giant pink frosted sprinkle donut: I eat a whole one every time at HHN. It's a tradition. It sometimes hurts but is always worth it. 10/10 would have indigestion again
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duh1011 + gf: E
September 22nd only -
2 minutes ago, Midnight Detective said:
Would you mind listing said haunts or making a thread listing them? The only ones I'm aware of are HNN, HoS and recently The Shallow Grave
I know of one in Tampa that looks pretty interesting called Scream-A-Geddon. Pretty lame name, could be a lame event, but it has potential! I am probably going there later in the haunt season, and might post a review of it.
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Just now, DraculaTeeth said:
Honestly I hope that there's a small portion of the HHN team working on 28 already, if only to insure (as best as they can from now) that next year won't have as many issues with whatever IP's they're trying to use.
The team tends to start their planning in November; it's always possible that they started thinking about it, but based off the info we have to go off of it's very unlikely any actual plans are being made just yet.
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Existing IPs? You mean how Insidious 4 was planned, even though that movie isn't released?
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Personally never liked any of the Purge scarezones, nor the house. It's feeling like TWD to me with all this repetition. I do wonder if they'll do anything to make this one feel different than the previous ones, aside from just including more from the new movie?
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Just now, criticalanalysis said:
The only redeeming things this year are three of the four original houses and one scare zone.
I gotta ask; which original house are you not looking forward to? Personally I'm interested in each one of them, so I'd like to see what you think
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Just saw this movie last night, and I'm really excited! Something that seems interesting to me is it looks as if it will be pretty well-lit in this scarezone; there's the lamps with faces on them, plenty of jack-o-lanterns and at least SOME should be lit up, and even some more lighting in the bushes and whatnot. It will be a very pleasant change for the Central Park scarezone this year to not be a dark mess, if indeed that does turn out to be the case
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GDI. Just put down over $300 just for tickets and express passes for a ""cheap"" night for two, saw the insidious house reveal and got excited... and now I see it was just for Hollywood. And I've been lurking here for a while so I understand that we are getting a full Blumhouse house (if everything goes well), so this SHOULDN'T have gotten me confused or upset. However, I'm also getting sick of waiting and just wished that Orlando would just announce everything already.
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Sorry for the really long review, but I felt like posting a more in-depth one and there's nothing I would take out of it. I might organize it better when I'm not on my phone at work, and I left a tl;dr at the bottom
Well you read the title, as I describe my night there will be some VERY unpopular opinions. Not only that but there will be spoilers so that I can give as good of a review as possible, and I'm not gonna give anything a numerical rating. Im just gonna say how I felt about the event.
Went thursday the 29th, and it wasn't too crowded. No weather issues, and the crowd didn't seem too rowdy this time around. We got to the hotel entrance a little before 6 and they were already letting people in! So we skipped over scarezones that had only a few actors (cuz it was early) to run right to:
Halloween 2: Hell Comes to Haddonfield
Two years ago the halloween house frightened me. The Michaels were all over and they were intense as hell. This time? Started off with the end of the first movie which I loved, and all the sets inside the hospital were fantastic! I really liked all of the iconic kills from this movie, and that finale. Holy mother of Hades was that an explosive finale! If this house was sets and costumes only it would be fantastic, but alas, I have to talk about the scareactors. When entering the hospital the first few scenes had some of the laziest actors I've witnessed, with one of them even just casually stepping out and waving a hammer by his face. The scares did get better, but it still killed a lot of the immersion for me. Overall, I still liked it for the sets and costumes, and for a Halloween house they managed to have just enough variety for me costume-wise too!
After this we were right by Tomb of the Ancients, so one giant flat tire and a longer-than-it-shouldve-been wait, we went into that one. I had to do this house a second time around, so I'll reserve most judgement for that time. I only got one scare by that really tall guy when I rounded the corner, and I missed half the house bc I forgot to bring shades and my eyes didn't adjust well
This house spat us right outside of TCM which was an advertised 20 minute wait but was actually 7. Wow. I've never seen the movie before, except the first five minutes, but this house was still fantastic. The smell was gross, the people were terrifying, and the camera rooms. This house scared me the most due largely to the camera flashes, since the scareactors would come out during the flash so I didn't see it coming. This worked way better than a plain old strobe. Speaking of unexpected, I did not know there would be not one, but TWO leatherfaces at the end! The second one got me so good! In short, despite having never seen this movie, I loved the house and it scared the daylights out of me
Which was perfect timing since when we arrived at Lunatic's, the sun was setting. Posted wait was 15 minutes but it was actually 4, and this is another house I repeated so I'll give a more detailed review further down.
Dead Man's Wharf was next, and I'm going to talk about it now since it almost never got better. Loved the atmosphere and the sets, the costumes were out of this world, but scare-wise? Were they supposed to scare people? With the exception of this one actor who did a FANTASTIC job scaring people left and right on my last walk through this zone, I saw maybe three scares total. I stayed here for a while and went through multiple times, but not unlike Halloween 2, the actors were just kinda there. They shambled around, they moaned here and there, but I almost never saw them go for people. SCARE-zone my ass.
Next up was the Apocalypse: Survive or Die SZ, which had some great parts and not-so-great parts. My only real complaint with this zone is that it is WAY too large for its own good. Half of it is only used as a track for the car to go around (which was a badass car don't get me wrong), and by the monster cafe fhey set up those tunnels that were deserted too. More than half of this scarezone overall was empty. What wasn't empty was really great however! The sets were neat and I love seeing the fire and collapsing buildings, and the platforms for the various clans were awesome. The barkers on each one were so full of energy, and never ran out of things to say... especially when smack-talking the other clans. The actors had great presence, and acted differently depending on which side they were on too. I especially liked this one girl that I had a loooong chat with about joining her side, so now I answer to Mother
Next house was Ghost Town which I did three times this night, so more about it later "40" minute wait was 25 minutes in actuality.
Went to the Exorcist, and here comes my first unpopular opinion: I did not like the Exorcist (movie) at all. It honestly bored me the whole time. However, even with that prior experience I like this house quite a bit, although there were a couple things in particular that held it back from being fantastic. For one thing, they had not one but TWO hallways that were all black and only had this wall that moved in both. No actors or anything. Along with that, I got tired of seeing Reagan near the end of the house, since she is most of all the scares. Those were pretty big letdowns, but there's a pretty big list of things that made up for it. The first room with the fake walls was genius. The barf room was disgusting and with the wet mattresses in your face and getting barfed on by reagan it felt just horrifically gross (in the best way possible). The levitating reagan scene. The finale with the hand-grates and that one demon guy. The demon guy actually saying bitch (:000000). The reagans did do a great of scaring too, even if it got old before the house ended. Overall this house could have been spectacular if only a couple things didn't hold it back.
Something to note, AHS and TWD throughout almost the whole night was 60 minutes +.
We were gonna try one of those around now, but meh. Too long. Went instead through A Chance in Hell-this scarezone had a fantastic cast and an okay cast. One of the casts did a side-splittingly hilarious and oftentimes scary job, whereas the other one was just kinda standard. However, props to the one guy who brushed past me holding up his costume saying "sorryyy~ prINCESS COMING THROUGH!" And then the girl scareactors around him all yelling at me and getting in my face to bow down to him. That intimidated me and made me laugh a ton, so I gave him a damn good bow. The stages were super detailed here, and each Chance was very, very fun. This scarezone was pretty good, which is surprising since the ones located there have been flops lately.
After going through here we arrived at Krampus, my most anticipated house. Loved the movie, and I can tell Creative does too. The gingerbread man room especially was so much fun to go through, and the attic scene was pretty great. BUT there are things I have to complain about. The house was mostly elves, which was sad since they could have done so much more. There was almost no Krampus in areas that would have been amazing to have Krampus in. The snowmen were underwhelming, as was the jack-in-the-box. Hollywood's Krampus house made the perfect Krampus house, but I gotta say I still enjoyed this one a bit. When they did do more than just "room with elves" it was great, and the smells were fantastic.
Vamp '55. This scarezone. I might need a whole separate review just for this one scarezone. I spent a good amount of time here, came around multiple times, and I had a TON of fun each and every single time. I won't ramble here about some of my specific experiences since that would take too much time (I'll post it in the thread for that later), but to put it simply, this was my favorite thing in the whole event. The scareactors had chemistry, they sometimes got people from multiple angles for some great scares, and the stuff they improvised for either comedic or horrific effect was always a riot. I loved both casts just as much as the other, and I am so glad the actors went as all-out as they did. The music was great, the floats were neat, but the acting was some of the best, if not the best, I've seen out of this event.
Now to (sadly) move on to Lair of the Banshees. This was a scarezone? Just like in Dead Man's Wharf, I saw almost no scares. The boo holes were almost never used, although at the end of the event one actress was using the curtain on the closed gift shop to surprise people. Some costumes were cool, like the stilt ghoul and that one that was just teeth. But still, ??? ? It wasnt scary, there was no ambiance, and it mostly just served to clutter the street with big, unused props and a stupid-looking string puppet. I hope next year we get a new zone at this location, since theyve all seemed to be almost the same the past few years.
Here I split up with my party so they could see BnT, and I did Ghost Town twice. First time said 15, was almost a walk on. Second time said 25 and wtf it actually was right about that? This house, if I had to pick favorites, would be my favorite. The outdoor effects for each outdoor scene blew me away (get it?). The sets were beautiful, and some of the actors got me really good. They were snappy and intense. Their costumes were great, and they reflected how their corpse died too, which was an AWESOME touch. Really did a ton for the immersion. I have nothing bad to say except the mirrors for the cave scene need to be cleaned if I'm to look down and be amazed, all i saw were dirty mirrors. Also, best line of the night was "THATS MAH GOLD!!" Great house, great scares, great sets, great everything.
Then we redid Tomb cuz I missed half of it the first time around and this house was also really good. It starts genuinely eerie as you go through some of the tombs, and once you hit the room with the mummies and spider webs it got a bit creepy. The tall guy halfway through always gets me around the corner, and then everything gets chaotic in that house. The human dossection was great, the room with the lit-up runes on the walls jad SO MANY ACTORS IT WAS TERRIFYING, and the lion-croc at the end was so great. Also, pulled on the GAT both times but nothing happened
This house was close to Ghost Town for being my favorite, but so was TCM and the next and final house I'm gonna talk about, but first some notes
A. Another unpopular opinion-I don't like AHS. I tried multiple times and multiple seasons to get into the show, but it never did anything for me. It wasnt scary and it bored me a lot. So because of this, we skipped over this house that had the longest wait the whole time.
B. Didnt do twd since its twd and I've done it three times already.
C. The "roaming" "hordes" had one-to-three actors each, and they did the best with what they had, which wasnt much. Can't really say anything too bad about what is essentially an extra thing, and the chainsaw cheerleaders actually did a very good job.
D. Skipped BnT since it was complete crap last year, and while I couldn't see myself sitting down through a whole dance routine what I did see of Academy of Villains was spectacular. They were together, they were wild, and they were so so full of energy. The choreography was stunning, so kudos to them and if they come back next year maybe I'll give their full show a shot.
Now, onto the final house and probably the most unpopular opinion in this review (although the other two aren't gonna be liked either)
Lunatics Playground: 3D (if thats what its called idk) I thought was a really great house. I enjoyed the hell out of it. The vortex room was actually trippy as hell this year. While some costumes were dumb, others were great and some ingenous like the guy that blended into the wall (if that even was a real guy). All the police corpses were fun to see, and a couple had neat effects. And the Chances. They were actually pretty interactive, they made jokes about you along with executing their scenes. They had such a prescense that it made the rooms with her really stand out. Every chance, both in the house and on the streets, was fantastic and really sold their role as our crazy mascot this year. Now I understand this house wasn't terribly scary, and I bet if I went through the In-Between (I think that's what it's called) I would think differently, but for me 3d houses are fun houses. They made a great break from everything else, and always entertained me. The only big gripe I had was one key stuck out near the end and, me being a tall dude, hit mt head on the thing. I wish that in a trippy house like that they didn't habe something stick out so close to you when you enter a room. But still, I enjoyed this house both times I did it, and the other two in my party thought it was their favorite thing at the event. Oh, it helped that both times we never waited 15 minutes or more for this one, since the queue video had clips that ranged from kinda good to obnoxiously bad. Rest in piece, queue videos.
Then we did Krampus again and we were the last ones in the house, but it was the same experience the second time through.
Overall, this year was spectacular. All the houses were great, and while not every scarezone lived up to their full potentials, Vamp '55 managed to be my all-time favorite bar none. Also, the music in the park was your standard horror fare so they certainly changed it after opening weekend. I wish I could have seen AHS since I hear that house was pretty great, but what I did experience was still awesome.
Also sorry for the long review, here's a tl;dr
Halloween 2: Great sets, some bad acting tho
Tomb: Great everything, some really unnerving areas
TCM: SUPER scary, and some clever scare set-ups
Lunatic's: Fun house, loved all the Chances
Ghost Town: Favorite house, amazing effects, sets, and scares, ntm "THATS MAH GOLD!!"
Exorcist: Great but also has its big flaws
Krampus: Same opinion as Exorcist
Dead Man's Wharf: Some truly mind-blowing costumes and atmosphere, terribly lazy acting
Apocalypse: Fun in areas with actors but too big for its own good
Chance in Hell: One great cast, one okay cast, all Chances are fantastic and the stages were creepily realistic
Vamp '55: My favorite thing tonight, so much fun and the actors have fantastic synergy
Lair of the Banshees: ??????
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17 hours ago, Tich0las said:
Worst thing I saw this year: woman behind me in Tomb of the Ancients hitting the scare actors with a half full bottle of water.
What the actual fuck.Did she get kicked out at least? That's so messed up, and it sounds like it wasn't just one scareactor either. People like this don't deserve to be at the event.-
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Would this mean the hotel entrance will take longer potentially? We will be taking advantage of that annual passholder deal for $119 per person for Cabana Bay and tickets, and I think that the line there still has the old security measures. Can anyone shed more light on this situation?
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4 minutes ago, Oysterhead00 said:
Well, they kinda don't have many choices for roaming hoards since they don't have any props to hide behind or heavy fog to surprise you from. A few years ago when they had the guys with the "bang cane" things, they were still too little of a noise to really scare you even when they snuck up on you. They really need something as loud and sudden as the chainsaws to startle you. Can't think of any thing that a scarecrow would legitimately have access to that could pull that off (yes, a shotgun for the scare crows...but we all know that wasn't an option for this year).
Would be cool for them to have some kind of system where the scareactors had speakers "hidden" in their costumes and a way to trigger a LOUD sound for their scares. But the logistics of constantly charging, wiring, rain issues, etc, etc, etc limits it to having to be something like a chainsaw that just needs gas every few hours.
I see what you're saying, and I get why they did it. It's hard to scare someone that isn't looking at you without touch or sound, and the former is most certainly not allowed at this event. However, it doesn't change my disappointment any. I guess it's still better than having completely dead zones like in years past, but I wish that they came up with better ideas to work with chainsaws than these awesome ideas that go together with chainsaws like oil and water.
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I'm pretty disappointed that the roaming hordes all are chainsaw-based. That ruins the theming of most of them and honestly I'm sad that Uni felt the need to stick chainsaws on everything. Scarecrows and geishas with chainsaws? Come on. They were so close to making the hordes really special this year.
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Browsing through twitter and I saw a photo of this facade and, wow. It may not be huge like some others have been at that tent, but damn does it ooze with atmosphere. I'm now getting way more excited for this house!
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The Fallen
in Haunted Houses
Posted
Honestly, while this is my most anticipated house, I don't think I care for flying scareactors. In the past what that meant was a couple of them would jump from point a to point b held up by very visible wires :T Aside from that, however, I looove everything else about what this house could bring to the table. Awesome demonic designs and hopefully some pretty dark angel costumes. The scenery has so much potential for variation and all the areas I can think of would be breathtaking. I'm thinking a gothic cathedral, going to hell or a war-torn heavenly area. I really hope that Creative delivers on the potential of this house