PleaseAndThankYou

They do? I would think it would be the other way around, but now that you mention it, that makes sense. I know they have a "Wish List" (and voodoo was on it) ... Do the just get the IPs before everything else and then fill in with.... A 44,000-sided die to pick which of the wishlist houses to use? LOL.

Is that a map of maps? Yo Dawg . . . I heard you like maps!

I see where you're coming from. Luckily he is a damn good actor and can pull it off (I thought so anyway).

First off, for absolutely no reason besides your handle, it takes a lot to not respond to your comment by saying "shutup Dan. You're stupid." For no other reason than your handle! Anyhow .. I qualified my statement. I crap all over them for doing TWD too many times, but really, isn't it a worse Sin - all things considered - to do a literal repeat of a house? Awil was like two years earlier, LOL. To address the others.. I don't normally put much stock in what's generally agreed upon, and I thought the RUN house was... Was. *nods* Purge house was clearly just Scream. I stand by everything I said except that there was no weak link. I looked at the map and my pix and everything again and, yeah, there were weak links. So. . . . TOUCHE, you stupid, stupid person (again, just based on your handle and my constitutional inability to help myself!) I felt compelled to not respond to your post at all, since I normally don't entertain people a) who call me stupid, seem to be entirely lacking in humor (seriously, I pictured you as the storyteller - topical HHN reference! - and even read it in my head in that voice), and c) aren't really paying much attention (did ... did you read the title of this review? what do you figure spinning something backwards means exactly, person who read my review on a HHN fan forum we both belong to? Do...do I need to put my tongue in your cheek? Cus that's gross. I'm a married man.) . . . However, I had to point out that : 1) You can't say "Why the hell would I spend almost a thousand dollars every year to experience this event if people in masks be they scarecrows or vampires, didn't get me in some capacity?" and then ask why I would think the event owed me something . . . Still, it made me laugh to beat the bends. Self-awareness is for suckers. 2) What did YOU think of Scary Tales 2, person who has only gone the past three years and definitely, absolutely, 100% positively didn't go through that house? Is that a rabbit hole you want to go down, really? 3) There is no 3. It's fake news. 4) Jump scares are cheap, and I don't think that's something that's in dispute. In fact, "jump scare" is pretty much synonymous with "cheap scare." There's a vast difference between "scared' and "startled." A vaast difference. Learn it. Live it. Love it. "Horror" != "startle response" ...... Don't look it up in a dictionary. Just take my word for it. I Am Right - I Promise. E) My internal logic is spotless. 5) I am amused at taking criticism on my opinions from people who have only been to the event 3 times. It's like talking to a child. Therefore, I'll move along and just end on this note: telling people their opinions are wrong and calling them stupid is unproductive. Why not turn that vitriol into something useful, like crocheting a scarf or ... I don't know, watching the Autopsy of Jane Doe. Or ... I mean... Really, a very long list of movies. If you ever want to know what horror actually is, I can give you a list. I'm all about making human connections, and I don't want you to hate me, random internet stranger whose name literally says you love the entire city but posted just a bunch of hate! <3 Hearts and Scarfs <3 I think you are literally the third person - out of tens of billions - who has agreed with me about aved. Tens of billions. I guess they just don't like rock music, deadites, Ash saying nonsense, disembodied heads, or finally - FINALLY! - making it to Jacksonville.

See, but, the joke here was that he's carrying the whole series on his back. The show would absolutely not be fine without him. Twere a joke. Only this, and nothing more.

Posted a more thorough review ... Though I wrote one up of UTH first that was also pretty substantial. I'm copying and pasting these longer ones from Notepad++ ... Formatting gets kinda wonky and I can't seem to correct it. All the ppl telling me to rewrite ..... Are youse guys talking about the format or the voice? If it's format, this stuff is all very much readable in Notepad++ (I do this for a living). Is this a different type of encoding maybe? Got an idea how I can clean this up? I'd be happy to resubmit if anybody cared to read what I had to say If it's voice ...... No. My voice is my voice. Take it, leave it, or drink some water. I recommend the third thing; it's important to remain hydrated. Nope, way longer than that. At some point I just mentioned that 25 was .. Well... Out of 25, 26, and 27, which do you think is the best?

"Stuff" in face. It's all the shit stuff they hang in your face. Usually it's fishing wire so it's invisible in the dark, but that's visible when light catches it, so they started using ..... Other stuff. Trade secret. In the Scarecrow house, though, they clearly use stuff that's just ... hanging there.. Think I inhaled part of one of those..... Idk what to call it... Netting? Gridding? Terrible-grade-giant-holed burlap?

I fully stand by my previous comment that if they did AHS cult next year, it would be Evan Peters just carrying the whole house around on his back. Especially after last night. And the previous night. And the night before. And - I'm just guessing here - next week. Can I award self-points for "Is the AHS Cult house just going to be Evan Peters carrying the whole thing on his back?" What do you think, Mods?

It just seems like it wouldv'e been easier to do something else with that one corner, and the next room, rather than back out and clearly Last-Minute-It-Up with The Purge. They could've done another few rooms on Sinister.... Without knowing the story going in, you'd not know the story at all going out. Granted, I may simply like to see bad fates befall Ethan Hawke, but that's just me.

Gotta say, our two screennames talking about something is awesome.

All Points Review HHN 27, 2017. I say All Points Review because ... Well, I'm considering all data points I have, including what I thought, what wifey thought, what friends and family thought, and what I've heard elsewhere, either here or in the park from people wandering around. Oh, and the UTH tour. I'm going to list stuff in the way we do them for our Grand Slam route. Don't walk into the park and go straight. I've done a stupid amount of nerd-calc on this. Oh, other note: We had FFP + Express, and everybody who went to see it with us had Express as well. First, Houses. ---------------------------- SAW ---------------------------- We saw this house once. I just list it here becuase we only did a full Grand Slam once this year. I don't have a legit reason we never did this house beyond wanting to get to Jacksonville as soon as possible and just... Not circling back. Last year, Krampus was here, and that was my favorite house of the year so we'd frequently circle back at the end to go see that, but that never happened this year. We started that One Grand Slam with Saw. I ... Don't know what to say. Common Consensus seems to be that this was exactly what people thought it would be, which is about the same as the consensus for reviews of every Saw movie right? I mean, I'm going to see Jigsaw this weekend (I think), but I don't expect to be surprised... There's another couple wifey and I tend to go with pretty frequently, and I'm pretty sure they went every night on the FFP (or tried to). If they didn't do every night, they were close. That'd be my friend Butt-Head and his wife Beavis (definitely their real names). This was Butt-Head's HOTY. That gives it a lot of weight that it may or may not deserve. UTH Tour Guide said this house was left off the tour because it was just a bunch of the same thing. I felt exactly the same on my way through. Sure there were GATs and that's fun but ... I ... Don't ... Think ... They did anything? Score: 4/10 with Butt-Head, 2/10 with me+UTH guide, SCORE UNKNOWN otherwise (not enough data) ---------------------------- ASH VS EVIL DEAD ---------------------------- House of the Year for me, hands down. I MADE IT TO JACKSONVILLE! UTH guide said this was left off the tour because "Nobody watches the show." Indeed, none of the people wifey and I went with watched the show. We did. It was still largely nonsense. Out of order, mixed between season 1 and 2, etc. etc. etc. In a word, absolutely perfect. If it were HHN Mexico, I'd give it two churros up. Now, that's not a racist thing - that's just a great dessert. Everything I say is now peppered with quotes from Ash Vs. Evil Dead, which I've learned is indistinguishible from nonsense. God I love this house. Only thing is (and Uni is aware of this) ... The line is STUPID. It's the same thing in and out! That's because of construction for Fast and Furious. Side note: THAT'S GOING TO BE .......... B....... Be. That's going to be. It will be. Score: 10/10, nobody else's opinion matters because I don't have time. Jacksonville awaits. (Side-side secret note: Pssst... If you haven't watched this show... WATCH THIS SHOW. ESPECIALLY if you are a Florida Person who knows about Jacksonville and ... how .... Uh... Kinda shit it is?) ---------------------------- SCARECROW ---------------------------- The facade of this house is amazing. I enjoy the fact that they planted real corn outside, then just stopped watering it a while before HHN. Mostly because I doubleplus enjoy the fact that the last time they did that in 2004 there was also a hurricane. There's apparently a progression in this house, but I didn't really get it. The story is that the 1920s dust bowl in the US had people farming land but basically ruining it in the process, so ... Nature.... got mad and.. Sent... Scarecrows. Yes that's the official story. A little ridiculous. Nearly everybody seems to think this is the scariest house of the year. Which brings me to a side note . . . And this is a Serious Note that People May Want To Consider ... Last year I had LASIK surgery toward the end of July. At HHN, I was completely disoriented in every room where there were strobe lights. It was especially bad when it was red and blue, like cop lights (they had those in Ash but no points deducted because JACKSONVILLE)... That was fine; I could just put my hand on my wife's shoulder and she could lead me through whatever room. There were two other things, though, that remained a problem. First, mirror rooms. They're supposed to be disorienting, but having been through one before and after the LASIK, I can attest that I can't do these rooms. Side note within side note: I get "scared" between 0-2 times in the year. I don't count noises making me jump, but if I did, it'd still be <5, even if we go 15 times. So when I say "I can't do these rooms," I don't mean they freak me out. I mean I need to literally close my eyes and have my wife blindly lead me through, even on the UTH tour (the mirror room in the Shining). So even with the lights on. Second, dark rooms. This is maybe a little bit of a stretch, but have you ever seen a dvd on a super high-res (yet still cheap) television, when the scene goes dark? And you can see like .. Pixellation? Like different levels of non-gradiated blackness? That's how dark rooms look to me now. That said, I do get Scared sometimes at HHN legitimately. Not "scared" where a scareactor "gets me," like I mentioned above, but where I am legitimately in fear for my safety. If there was a real Wet room in this house, I wouldn't go into it more than once. It's too dark and I lose my footing too quick. It's entirely from LASIK. Other changes since LASIK? That damn fog. I remember reading a while back that they use two kinds of fog at HHN depending whether it needed to go up or down, or catch light, or what. One of them used to mess my eyes up when I'd wear contacts. It'd last for days. Now they both do. My eyes are still messed up today from seeing fog last night. That stuff just gets in your eyes and it's super bad for you. By the end of the night the moon was really blurry and I was getting starbursts off every light I saw, exactly as if I were wearing contacts that got somehow ... Dirty.. The above is the reason I'm posting this to the world. Because I had questions about it myself, and I didn't see any good answers. Note that my results are not typical. I had a rough recovery from LASIK. It happens. Some people DO legitimately go back to work the next day - that's not a lie. I can attest to it because I've seen it personally. That didn't happen for me. Feel free to contact me if you want to know more. This house was legitimately frightening for me because I was For Real worried about my safety at points the first time around. If there was a wet room, I was going to fall, no doubt. It's like I've heard SCUBA divers describe when they get turned around and don't know which way Up is, except I can't blow bubbles to figure it out. And let me tell you something . . . ACTUALLY being FOR REAL scared at HHN... Is not fun, at all. The only thing that kept me going that first time was actually the scarecrows popping out putting an interruption in the pattern (I'm told divers have this experience too in deep waters where it's dark). Score: 9/10 with all sources considered (and on the second+ time), 1/10 if you can't see Side-Score for LASIK: 11/10. I regret nothing. When the moon isn't blurry because my eyes are covered in weird fog, I can see grey shapes on it. I didn't know that the moon was visible as anything but a white circle from earth before that. Seriously. I drive down Orange Avenue past the theater (Is that the Beacham...?) where there's a marquee outside. I can see the depth on the letters now. The depth on the letters. ---------------------------- HIVE ---------------------------- I'm not going to lie; this just clearly seemed like a contract-caused modified version of The Conjuring, like how the Purge house a few years back was clearly just the house from Scream, but modified because of contract stuff. Still, it was okay. That... That's really all. With the lights on you can see how much detail and hard work went into every inch of the place, but that's the case for every house I've ever been in. Thing is, whatever you can say about the event (I clearly thought this year was sub-par) or the marketing (not even close to previous years) or whatever else . . . The people building these houses are pouring their hearts into it. It's the ONE THING that drives them. And it shows. It absolutely shows. This house is awesome. The facade, as much as my UTH tour guide tried to make it sound like it was a legit thing, like "they wanted to make it look like a VHS tape from the 80s and show you there were vampires so you knew what you were getting into" ... Come on. This was thrown together. Still pretty effective. Score: 5/10 in the dark, 9/10 in the light ---------------------------- BLUMHOUSE ---------------------------- LOL. No, seriously. LOL. What is this? A general comment about this year: why are there so many houses that are a mashup of several things? Specific comment about this house: Aside from that, and aside from literally telling you on the walls which movies you were in (YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TO DO THAT - THAT MEANS IT'S NOT APPARENT! REDESIGN!), there was a bunch of stuff from Insidious 4. Yeah, those of you paying attention ... Know ... That... Insidious 4 isn't out yet. Even our UTH tour guide didn't know much. She wasn't withholding. She just didn't know. So what message does that send on a tour, when the tour guide is guessing just as much as you? No. Just no. Insidious has never worked for others (I thought the creepy scene with the smiling family from the first one was cool) ... But every single person I went with was sick of The Purge by this point, and they hadn't seen the other TWO (TWO!) places in the park where the Purge exists front and center. Score: 1/10 in the dark, 3/10 in the light (the first room out of Sinister was cool - they had a copy of the book he wrote and everything) ---------------------------- DEAD WATERS ---------------------------- This was awesome. It had an awesome facade and an awesome interior. I do feel like it may have blwon the budget on the facade and rested a litle bit too much on how aweseome it was. And the scareactor at the very beginning when you look at the facade? Apparently he "gets" lots of people. I didn't like that. They put SO much work into that damn sinking ship - let people enjoy it without making loud noises at them. There's just .. Tons of ... Stuff... I don't know even where to begin. There were mirrors on the floor to make it look like water, the ship sinking clearly put you in a disoriented state, and you even knew WHERE YOU WERE when you walked in. I expected this house to be like Garbage Gold Gulch from last year (I hated that stupid house). But even after I'd been through it once - when my expectations were no longer through the floor - it was still awesome, and it was STILL awesome with the lights on. Only complaint is that it felt short. Wifey's only additional complaint was that the scarification mask on the voodoo (hoodoo, I guess) queen was super-fake-looking, but I always got her hand in my face when I was walking in the room, which I thought was awesome. Also awesome is that everything in that room is made of pieces of the ship. I noticed that in the dark. And then confirmed it in the light. I love when I can SEE THINGS in the houses at night. This also makes a wonderful counter to its neighbor. This house is defintiely a water house. There's even a room that uses the rubber flooring they use in rooms where you get wet, but there's 0 water in the house. I wonder how the guy in the tilted hallway didn't get people falling on him constantly and I'm surprised he was still there at the end of the event, because I myself almost fell right into him and I was sober! This house is awesome. Only complaint is that it felt too short, but I felt like it was meant as a companion to Fallen. Only reason this doesn't beat out Ash for my HotY is that the boat sank before it got to Jacksonville. Score: 10. Just 10. Cut it any way you want. ---------------------------- FALLEN ---------------------------- As mentioned above, this is an awesome bookend to Dead End. This is definitely a fire house, where Dead Water is ... a .. Water.. House.. OHHHH! "DEAD WATER!" I GET IT NOW!! The official story of this house is that it's good vs. evil, but it's mostly just Hell. Wifey says they couldn't just outright say that because of potentially offending religious people. But the official story is that this is good vs. evil. LOL where was the good? Nah. When we went through on UTH, we learned that all the rooms were different, but it didn't seem like that going through during the event. Just seemed like hell. And, like I mentioned above, I think it's meant as a companion to Dead Waters. Both felt super short. But the END of this house, oh man! With the people flying overhead and toward you and falling down on you and ... Phew. Intense. The one guy falling straight down off the beam above you is one of the best effects I've seen at HHN, and even after seeing how it was done and having it explained to me, I have no idea how it was done. Score: 7/10 in the dark. 8/10 in the light. Last rooms, though, with the track effects? 10/10, light or dark. ---------------------------- SHINING ---------------------------- This was the last 15 mins of The Shining. On the first night, this was the only house we did. We got our FFPs Will Call, but the Will Call kiosk said "GFY! Wait in line!" so even though we were there at 6, we didn't get in until 8, and by then we were pissed off and just did this house because it was the one I was most excited to see. Because I had no idea how they'd do it. Make it the last 15 mins; that's how. The house ... I don't know. I can't write a non-boring review on this. It's exactly what it was supposed to be. It totally delivered. That... That's that. Score: 9/10 in the dark and the light ---------------------------- AHS ---------------------------- Same as the previous review, I don't know how to not-boringly review this. It was a bit of a muddled mess, but whatever. It was doing too much at once, and I don't know how they're going to continue this franchise next year. I think they should do one season at a time. They recreated scenes EXAAAAAAACTLY. But they also used stuff from the promo materials... So while I'll award Points for the creepiness of girls floating with their faces in the wall, those points are offset by the fact that the image is from promos. And . . .... Nope, nothing more useful to say. Score: 7/10 in the dark, 8/10 in the lights So, overall, the houses ... I don't know. My scale is skewed positive. Really I'd cut them in half to my own subjective feelings. Maybe after so many years I'm just kind of ... Over it? I know where every "scare" is now, and so does my wife, as do Beavis and Butt-head. It gets repetitive. And like... Seeing Hive and Scarecrow next to each other like that... It's just a creepy environment and people in masks. Makes me think of that South Park where there's a trailer for a movie that's like "They need to stop the ... Aliens.. or..government.. Or.. zombies... Or.. whatever! F YOU!" And... Scarezones, which I am renaming: ---------------------------- OMG METALLICA AND ... STRIPPERS.. AND... STILTWALKERS? ---------------------------- Metallica! I'm not rating scarezones. If they weren't Trick R Treat, they sucked. And just having the worst scarezone of all time means I can't rate them. Anyway this SZ was............ ....... Was. That's it. ---------------------------- YOUR NAME IS THURMAN MERMAN? ............ JESUS ---------------------------- Trick R Treat is awesome. Most people haven't seen it though, so they probably just thought this was a bunch of pumpkins in the trees. We learned on the UTH tour that all 350 pumpkins were hand-carved, and that the hurricane took out nearly none of them. Yet it destroyed the stage for the dancing-in-the-middle-of-the-park show. This was the best SZ of the year, but it's nothing new at all. Not even in the same location. ..... And Thurman Merman is here, so... cool. If you don't get that reference... I advise you to find out. ---------------------------- FRIGGIN CHAINSAW CLOWN MONSTER SIMPSONS WHATEVER ---------------------------- OH MY GOD WHY DO PEOPLE STILL LIKE THIS? CHAINSAWS! JUST LOUD NOISE! THAT'S ALL IT IS! Yet every time I walk through here, I hear someone at the beginning and the end say "this is my favorite part of the park!" I .. Don't get it. On opening night one of them came up to wifey and said "chainsaw noise." Like, out loud, in words. It was just as effective. Time to let this one go the way of The Walking Dead, Bill And Ted, and other annoying nonsense, in my opinion. But I recognize I'm alone. ---------------------------- APPROXIMATELY 2 METERS OF ALIENS WHO WANT TO RUIN YOUR PICTURES ---------------------------- I think my title here says it all. This is the SZ with the pix you're allowed to take that will actually show up. YEAH THAT'S RIGHT - They told me I'm not allowed to use flash photography in the scarezones this year. Not just the houses. I completely disobeyed that once that guy was gone. But you didn't need flash here. Yet the stupid aliend would walk up and interrupt your pictures. Look I get being in character and like ...ohhhhh aliens don't know what cameras are but....Come on. Don't screw with someone aiming a camera. One of these guys walked into me. Waited next to me til I had focus, then checked me like a shitty hockey army man. I have the effed-up picture to prove it. This scarezone needed ..... A lot of things. Let's leave it as that. ---------------------------- SERIOUSLY, THIS AGAIN? (Purge Edition) ---------------------------- Seriously, the Purge again? ---------------------------- SERIOUSLY, THIS AGAIN? (Definite Cost-cutting Measure Edition) ---------------------------- Seriously, this scarezone is just "Stuff from elsewhere in the park?" Just .. Like ... cast C (Or D where applicable I guess) ? And they won't stop and take pix? And they won't leave you alone if you're on the sidewalk looking in (this is the one and only cardinal sin for SZ scareactors, in my opinion - leave people alone if they're on the sidewalk or benches)? Score: -1,000,000 It's the only one I'm scoring. Because such a low number would break the curve and make all the other SZs score invalid numbers. Without this, though, I'd give the Purge SZ a -1,000,000 .................. BUT THE PURGE IS HERE TOO! AND IN THE STUPID PURGE SZ! AND IN THE BLUMHOUSEHOUSEHOUSE! DOES THAT SCARE ANYBODY????????????????????? /end that specific rant And finally, the shows: ---------------------------- DANCING ---------------------------- We accidentally fell upon this. We walked away when they went from "Paint it Black" to "Tootsie Roll" because. .. That was enough of that. I will, however, give these guys a lot of credit for adapting their show. Apparently what we saw that night was the EIGTH iteration of that show...... So, despite the unfortunate musical choice, that's impressive. ---------------------------- WILLIAM THEODORE OR SOMETHING ---------------------------- Oh is it the last year of Bill and Ted? Did they finally sit down and think "Wait, are Bill and Ted still relevant in 2017" ? I hated this stupid show every other time I saw it (YOU GAVE KURT COBAIN THE WRONG GUITAR) and only saw it by force. We realized we didn't see it yet when we went last night, but took one look at the line and just said....................... Nope. Plus, nearly everybody thinks this is as much of a farewell show as they believed Michael Jordan wouldn't come back. Is that reference too old? Bill and Ted is older. <3 the movies..... But this show was stupid, for 20 years. Just like "Oh look I'm in a John McCain Mask" "Oh look I'm a dancing Joker" "Oh look Sarah Palin was a thing" and I'm sitting in the audience like THAT WAS THREE YEARS AGO. But I (and everybody in every party I've ever been in) am the only one who feels that way so nevermind. Other Stray Thoughts: ---------------------------- IT SERIOUSLY SAYS "BAR" ---------------------------- No, but seriously. The bars don't serve real drinks, whatever, but did you have to punctuate it (literally) with bony hands around it saying "bar" as you serve up that sugary crap in the useless half-cups with the stupid straws that most people just threw on the ground? Don't ... Uh.. Don't do that next year. I can tell you with Alleged Almost Certainty that all you accomplished by not selling liquor at the bars was having people pre-load and get drunk in the garage. I don't want to walk into HHN drunk. That's supposed to happen in the park ---------------------------- NO PHOTOGRAPHY? LOL ---------------------------- Seriously, no photography in the scarezones? Plus the limited photography in the UTH tour? Seriously? FFP+Express+UTH for two people is enough effing money for us to be allowed to take pix. I took all the pix I wanted in the park as soon as the guy who told me not to was out of sight. UTH tour was a little different because I had a lens cap. But seriously, does Uni know how much of the people showing up are just there to take pix? Every time I've had to choose between HHN or UTH, I chose UTH. Why? Pix. Now? LOL. ---------------------------- MERCH ---------------------------- The merch was cool this year. There was a ton of it. They clearly split the 'houses on the back' shirt into two things this year so kinda forced people to buy more than one but ... I don't know. Capitalism. ... Yes. Capitalism. That's my summary in a word. Every year there's a new Eff You it seems. No pix! No drinks! No this no that no blah blah blah! Last year they told one of the people I was with that he was in a non-smoking area, but allowed to vape. And then later in a different place that he was allowed to smoke but not vape. It seemed like they were just screwing with him. Why don't the Capitalists just step out of the way and let the Artists make and share their Art? HHN is awesome, generally speaking, but they've got one more shot. This year was strike two with the "F You You'll Buy The Tix Anyway You Morons" nonsense. They underestimate their core audience.... I went again this year .... If I get the same bad taste in my mouth next year, there won't be another. And you know what? That breaks my heart. Because so much stuff goes into HHN. So much work, so much care, so much artistry .. And to have to miss it because of ancillary nonsense... ... That's the true horror, innit?

Let's see if I can do this without revealing who I am. Anonymity is important, you see. I can't go out no more. There's a man by the door In a raincoat Smoking a cigarette. (Ten points for naming the reference without Google). AAAANyway. . . Wifey and I did the UTH tour on Sunday. We did the six house tour. That was split as such: (0a) - Pre Show (0b) - Scarecrow facade 1- Hive 2- Blumhouse ["Lunch break"] 3- Dead Waters 4- The Fallen 5- The Shining 6- American Horror Story Let's one-by-one it, shall we? -------------------------- (0a) - Pre Show -------------------------- First off, let me say this: BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP WILL CALL KIOSKS! BLEEP THEM RIGHT IN THEIR BLEEPING BLEEPBLEEPBLEEP!!! We got the FFP + Express passes and showed up opening night to watch the gates open, but we had Will Call Kiosk tickets which promptly told us "Go F Yourself" (they phrased it more like "Go wait in line at the other window for hours, you jerk" or something like that). We were there at 6. We didn't get into the park until after 8. Total time spent in line: Like a hundred million hours. Total time spent at kiosk? About 4 seconds. Then we were in. Same thing happened here. I got the UTH tickets "will call" and they gave us that same "How about you GFY?" message. This time, though, I was smarter! Wiser! Better! And better equipped, too, because I knew that the UTH groups were limited, it was 11:30, and they were waiting on us. So I didn't spend another 35,928 hours in line. We just went right to Blue Man and they knew who we were. Okay, let me point something out here.... Going in through the Blue Man ... stage? Building? ... whatever - going in through that entrance felt extraordinarily cheap on behalf of Uni. Because all it did was mean that we were never dropped in the park! We couldn't have lunch in the park (more on that later) and we couldn't go wandering the park for the remaining hour-or-whatever it was open after the tour was over. It was one of just many things we wrote off as cheap. We're used to it by now. We boycotted last year beacuse it was a no-photo policy. It was different this year. Blah blah. Same story as everyone else. They were waiting on us, it seemed, because they knew our names when we got there and were waiting outside for us. This was literally at like 11:35, and we walked in and sat down, then got going. These tours start PROMPTLY. Anybody ever hear that bit Birbiglia does about On Time People? I am one of those people. Wifey ... Not so much. The most beautiful woman in the world, and she still has to spend so much time getting ready to go places. Still, it's a plus to me that it started promptly when it said it would (....Plus "the tour is at 11:30; check-in starts at 11" so... We were ... late. A lot.). ANOTHER plus ... Is that if we would've gotten there later (there were ppl who did), we would've been escorted to wherever we were. Cool. Everybody else is mentioning names, so I'll mention names. Our tour guide was Kelly, and I <3 Kelly. I'm almost 100% sure that she's had wifey and I in her group before. I am 100% sure she's had me in her group. She didn't recognize us, but I think once the tour started she may have recognized me, since I'm apparently the only other horror fan who takes this tour ON WE PLOW! -------------------------- (0b) - Scarecrow facade -------------------------- My picture of this facade is my desktop wallpaper, and is one of my favorite pictures I've ever taken, ever. And I've taken a LOT of pix in my day. I've even sold pix of HHN stuff. In color, b&w, tinted, whatever. I didn't need to run any of the pix of this facade through any kind of anything as far as graphics software goes. Just a straight-up awesome set of pix. Seriously, there are 0 duds in the bunch. I am not an Actual Pro, but I shoot for a 5% ratio - if I take 100 pix and 5 of them are good, I think that was a solid day. Anything above that I think is amazing. I've got like 20/20 good shots of the facade to this house. That isn't even just me - the facade is absolutely incredible. I like how they planted the corn themselves and - just like the last time they did that - a hurricane came and did ... Nearly no damage. I also like ... Well, everything about these pics. Even when I put them in black and white. For those In-The-Know about image-editing software.... When I look at the levels, these pix have a bell curve. This is not at all to do with my "skill" as a photographer. It was just a bright, cool day with direct sunlight and an amazing subject. That doesn't mean the rest of the pix suck. That just means I'm super happy Kelly let us stop and take pix so I didn't have to go guerilla. Side note: One of the reasons I <3 Kelly is that she's super honest. I immediately asked which six houses we were doing, ignored the answer, and asked why we weren't doing the other three. Those three: Scarecrow: It's WAY too dark (this is actually my problem with the house, but that's in other posts elsewhere). Ash vs. Evil Dead: "Nobody watches the show" (this is my favorite house of the year, and I think it might've secretly been Kelly's too, because we watch the show and this is everything we like about Halloween) Saw: "It would be the same thing over and over" (I totally agree. We only did that house one time, on our penultimate visit. Because what could it be besides people in reverse bear traps and ... pigs...?) Kelly's awesome, and she was spot-on. I think this group of 6 is the best, though I personally would've liked to have seen Ash vs. Evil Dead (any time I can make it to Jacksonville is a good time), most people have no idea what that house is "about." We've seen the show and even we don't know what it's about exactly. It's all jumbled and out of order and over-the-top and THAT'S HOW IT SHOULD BE. Legit actual reason I'm good with skipping Ash: It's relatively lit up anyway. Saw, yeah, same stuff over and over. "And in this room someone's in a death trap. And in THIS room someone's in a death trap. And ..." Scarecrow, I would've loved to have seen in the light, but it wasn't light apparently, and it really didn't lend itself to a tour because all the rooms were pretty narrow hallways. So I'm good with this set. ON WE PLOW! -------------------------- 1- Hive -------------------------- We went to Hive. There were vampires. That was as much as I could say before the tour ... On the tour, Kelly explained the actual story behind this house, and (just like every other time, and just like the reason I pay for this tour) ........ There's a legitimate story behind the house and within the house. See, all these houses are progressions through time, whether we realize it or not. A few years ago (i.e., back when they were using icons still) they'd do slow reveals of all the houses and tell you the whole story. Go to the halloweenhorrornights.com site right now and find the story of Hive. I'll wait. ... It's "there are vampires." There's actually a better retelling of the story on the Universal page itself. We were allowed to take pix, except in certain places where we weren't (wait, isn't that a tautology...?). One of the "weren't" rooms was the room with the dead babies. Probably because there were dead babies in the room. The other rooms - as will be a common theme here - made no sense. It built to the point of absurdity actually, but we'll get to that. Anyway, see, here's the thing ... I was walking through the dark... And I have this camera... Where it shoots out a light to illuminate if you press the button halfway... So I was using that to light my way through, because I'd keep falling behind the group just looking at ALL THE STUFF! SO MUCH STUFF (and we're not even at Dead Waters yet!). And sometimes I needed that light to get back ... And sometimes I'd fully depress that button... And sometimes I wasn't supposed to. I'm not sharing any of those pix with anybody anywhere. THEY ARE ABERRATIONS. Anyway, let's see if I can start an Ongoing Statement on the first house. BEST FACTOID: The KING VAMPIRE was originally designed to look like Jabba The Hutt, all melty and gross, sitting in a throne drinking out of a goblet, pieces of skin falling off him. Like he'd been sitting there for so long he just started falling apart. That didn't happen ON WE PLOW! -------------------------- 2- Blumhouse -------------------------- Why. That was the before-the-tour feeling. Honestly, that's still the feeling. Wifey and I Agree. I ramble about most of my problems with this house elsehwere. As far as the ongoing picture problems... We were allowed to take pix of the facade, pics of the first room (the "SINISTER" hallway and the room with the home movies), then of ... I think just the last room with all the curtains and crap on the walls.... But I still don't know why this house is A Thing. Nor do I know why they felt it necessary to put Purge People in three separate places in the park, but don't get me started on that. (Seriously, your headline scarezone is just "Other stuff from the park" ? ... AHHH!) BEST FACTOID: Basically all of Insidious is based on a movie that isn't out yet. Because I'm 90% sure this is a Troll House. ON WE PLOW! -------------------------- ["Lunch break"] -------------------------- We had the option at the beginning of the day to order like ... $38 pretzels. ... We had a half hour for lunch. We were told we could get in and out of Hard Rock if we sat at the bar and told them we had to get out in 20 minutes. We were flanked by other people on the tour. We all ordered... You know, salads, or whatever. BEST FACTOID: If you've never been in the Hard Rock Cafe (somehow after 20 years living in Orlando I didn't even realize this was actually a whole separate thing from the performing venue), it's awesome. We plan to return there At Some Point just to look at all the SOW. They use SIF to describe Stuff In Face in the HHN houses. SOW is Stuff On Wall ON WE PLOW! -------------------------- 3- Dead Waters -------------------------- I love this house so much. Could've been Ash and this house this year, no SZs or anything, and I would've thought it was pretty good. I ... I don't even know what to say about this house. You already know if you've been to the event. On the tour, you get to see JUST HOW MUCH STUFF THERE IS OMG. I have a Fancy Camera that can take pictures at a pretty good clip, but it needs to pause to write them to the SD card since I'm taking them at Awesome Resolution at Huge Size. Yeah, I got stopped about every three feet because of that. There were some places we weren't allowed to take pics in, but it didn't matter. They were just as arbitrary as all the others. MAN this house was good. Anything bad I have to say about it (first thing that comes to mind is that it's too short - a pretty good complaint to have, considering) is in my reviews elsewhere. BEST FACTOID: This house is more deserving of life than me. ON WE PLOW! -------------------------- 4- The Fallen -------------------------- So it's good vs. evil, right? I touch this in my review but... Where's ... the.. good? Besides getting brutally murdered? I don't know. Seeing it behind the scenes was awesome with the lights on and we got some good pics (though we weren't allowed to photograph the facade, like I can't do it event night?) .... But even with the lights on this just felt like muddled violence. Still pretty cool as a companion to Dead Waters. Going from a definitely-water-based house to a definitely-fire-based house is awesome, and unlike in some other years, that translated right down to the stuff in the house (this house seriously looks like it's on fire - that's not all lighting ... And vice-versa for water in Dead Waters). BEST FACTOID: Holy Effing Ess, the end of this house where all Heck breaks loose and people are flying over you and dropping on you and stuff .... IS COMPLICATED. I knew it was complicated from seeing it once in a previous UTH tour, but seeing three of them so close together, WOW. There was SO MUCH RIGGING above us. -------------------------- 5- The Shining -------------------------- You can take pix of the facade - including the maze - and you can take pix in the bathroom, but that's it. I ... Don't know what to say about this house. I think including it in the UTH tour really relies more on the house itself being so well-known and highly-anticipated and awesome. I will say one thing ... By this time I think Kelly recognized me, since I was the only one who knew the answers to most of her "Trivia" questions, so by this point I had shut up to see if I was a ridiculous person. She asked what drink Jack ordered at the bar, pointing out that he's sitting there with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and she waited (she looked at me a few times like HELP) before saying "I mean, I hear it's kind of the opposite, kinda, like to where ... Including this is a joke...Anyway...." OMG, REST OF TOUR GROUP! HE ORDERS A BOTTLE OF BOURBON, A GLASS, AND SOME ICE! BOURBON! AS IN.. NOT TENNESSEE WHISKEY!!! Sigh. Anyway, the other cool thing in that room (the bar) was an Easter Egg that I don't think anybody not on the UTH tour will see. It's mentioned elsewhere on these forums but ... It is .... Drumroll... A literal Easter Egg It's under one of the glasses. And like, then, the rest of the house. It was cool. But I'm a rabid fan of the movie and we'd been through the house a bunch of times, so there's not really much more to say beyond trivia you can definitely find elsewhere (the "twins" aren't identical in the house because they weren't identical in the movie, for instance). House is awesome, not taking pix is bogus, but I played along. BEST FACTOID: The *FLOORS* dude. THE FLOORS! First, the part toward the beginning where Halloran is on the floor and Jack pops out and drags his foot walking away after the scare... Floor is totally black. Okay, that makes sense. But... In the bar, one of the scareactors is apparently so active ... He wore the pattern off the floor. RIGHT OFF. That's crazy. ON WE PLOW! -------------------------- 6- American Horror Story -------------------------- Pix of sign and facade. Kelly asked the group if anybody had heard of the legend of Cropsey. I didn't say anything. Surely someone else had? There's even a movie about it! CALLED CROPSEY! Kelly, if you're out there, I'm sorry to have left you hanging. Of COURSE I've heard of Cropsey. I even grew up in Jersey. Anyway this house... I don't know how to write this as a UTH review. Same as the Shining, this seemed like it was more reliant on the popularity of the show/house and not so much on the details. Oh, and a lot of the stuff wasn't even from the show, but from the promo materials. Bloody-disgusting recently posted a bunch of high-res images of the AHS promotional materials, and they . . . are . . . awesome. Anyhow . . . After the facade . . In what I think may have been Kelly punishing me for not saying Jack's drink order in The Shining, we were allowed to take pix in the room with the Chen puppet, collapsed ceiling, and blood moon, but not of the puppet. That's like trying to take a pic of my whole head without getting the nose. Not geometrically possible, and it would just make my head hurt. BEST FACTOID: In the baby powder room, she told us about Smell Day, when the woman comes and installs the smell cannisters. She pointed one out. Now I go back over old UTH tours and I see them EVERYWHERE. HOW DO THESE THINGS WORK? Are they always on? They can't be! I guess maybe some of them are just stronger than others? Becuase that room definitely smelled like baby powder. They let us out through Blue Men, because they wouldn't want us to spend an hour in the park for free. In summary, the tour was a lights-on tour of six of the terrifying houses at Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights 27 at Universal Studios Orlando. Or whatever. And Jack's drink is bourbon. But he's the type of man likes to know who's buying his drinks, so be careful.

Yeah, that's the story we got from our tour guide on UTH. We didn't get to go into the house (it's apparently pitch black even in the day), but I asked specifically about the story. I thought I heard something about the progression of scarecrows through the house. Thought I read it here. The only thing that I thought of last time through was that they became more like animals as you go through the house. My brother thought the opposite. So maybe I was looking for something that wasn't there. I don't know. This house is awesome though. Makes me think of a theory I used to have that there was one Funny House and one Super Scary house every year. The funny thing holds up but not so much the Super Scary thing, I don't think. Came up with that idea because of Nightengales. Even on the UTH tour with the lights on, just being in that room I was like "omg get me out of here omg get me out of here omg get me out of here" lol

It's AWESOME with the lights on ... Apparently they're adding to this house constantly. Interesting tidbit from UTH tour ... the king vampire was originally conceived as sitting in a throne looking a little bit like Jabba The Hutt, but... Like, decaying. Like he'd been sitting there so long he was starting to fall apart. Clearly that didn't happen

We took the UTH tour today and when we got to Trick R Treat, she mentioned that there were 350 pumpkins (all hand-carved!!) in the trees in that sz and the hurricane didn't do barely anything to it, but that it essentially ruined the stage for this show. She said that between the hurricane and other changes, the size of the stage has changed 3 times. You hit it spot on with the adaptation thing . . . that's really, really impressive. Tour guide said that the show you see now is something like the 8th iteration