Cody

Adamthewoo finally goes too far tying to sneak backstage at Universal.

That's completely impossible. The stage was a custom design featuring multiple levels and entrances, a large video screen (with all the wiring that entails), a full lighting and pyro rig, and a covered backstage area; it's not just a box of scaffolding and plywood. Every part of it needs to be inspected and signed off to absolutely remove any chance of structural failure. Even if they were to 100% duplicate their original design, they would need to purchase all of the pieces to actually build it and ensure that everything was transported to the site in perfect order and still get it fully inspected before they let anyone dance on it. There is not a single circumstance where this park could have snapped their fingers and completely redone weeks of work over a single weekend. The fact that they put up a temporary stage and allowed AoV to create a new 10 minute show within a few days and have already begun work on a new stage that should at least be able to perform an abbreviated form of Afterlife a week after opening is proof enough that they're dedicated to making sure the troupe stays busy and doesn't have to throw out all their hard work.

It's definitely getting better. We've got the big set piece (though still nothing happening with it, and it clearly has space meant for actors) and some torchlit entryways.

Why would you set up poles in the zone and then not hire girls who can actually pole dance?

Buy some jello and vodka for your hotel room. You now have jello shots for less cost.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The very first corpse in the house is wearing chain mail, is holding a sword, and has long blonde hair. There's nobody else it could be. There's also some later bodies that have noticeably been set up to look like their wings were ripped off.

The track may have multiple songs on it. Also, this house has the best mirror gag I've ever seen.

I saw a good deal of aggression on Sunday. The aliens spent a lot of time messing around and being funny, but they can be fast as hell when it comes to sneaking up on people. The soldiers are especially aggressive, since their whole character is being panicked. There's one or two people on each cast who have very bulky alien "brute" costumes, but the majority of the aliens are "Greys" wearing simple rubber masks and silver jumpsuits. Their biggest issue seems to be the limited dexterity of their gloves, which have extremely long, probing fingers. Emphasis on probing.

Things that occurred last night: * Aliens playing with the horn on an ECV and turning into an impromptu dance in the middle of the zone. * My friend (and fellow scareactor) Michelle being forced to dance at gunpoint and having to explain all the items in her purse to the aliens, including at one point them accidentally finding a nude sketch in her notebook and being absolutely mortified. * An alien taking Michelle's purse and doing a runway walk. * Michelle being "killed" by a raygun. * A soldier doing the "ALIENS" meme as a scare, complete with the hands. * A soldier sprinting full tilt into the former Earthquake/Disaster photo studio, screaming the whole way. * Michelle nearly making out with an alien until I cockblocked her.

The temporary show (if it's still up this coming weekend, which it hopefully won't) was a completely different show from the actual Afterlife. It's the final dance sequence from House of Fear, one or two sequences that appear to be from Afterlife, and a dance battle sequence that seems unrelated and uses audience plants. It has nothing to do with Afterlife apart from potentially recycling some content and one actor's makeup, so I would view it completely apart from that context.

Yeah, I kinda hate this zone. It's got a tiny number of actors (I want to say a dozen at best?) that quickly get swallowed up by the crowd. There's practically no set pieces and it quickly turns into a photo op. It's an absolute waste of space.

I know the second one is air cannons and the third is a horn. I don't know what the first does (if anything), and it's styled very differently from the two big glowing red buttons. This house was eh. It wasn't really an improvement over the original apart from the sets.

I didn't think this house was bad on its own. I do think they missed the grand scale of the film and its sets and has a crappy finale, but by itself it wasn't really unenjoyable. And the terrible hairlines are nothing compared to Hollywood's use of rubber masks.

Honestly? Not a bad house. A lot of the actors were trying just as hard as the original Insidious house to scare hard and often, and the house really nails the sensory overload aspect. My biggest gripe is that they bothered including The Purge. It's badly over-represented (two scarezones and a house in the same year, after getting a scarezone and a house prior) to the point where it feels like it may become the new Walking Dead, and yet it's nothing but a single room and a hallway. If you're going to fill the event with Purge, at least do it well.

I've only heard secondhand, but supposedly the removal of the angels was due to a last minute panic about offending Christian guests by showing violence against them. I honestly don't mind drying out HHN. As much money as alcohol sales make, I've been to several other theme park Halloween events and many independent haunts (from small neighborhood houses to large "scare parks") and HHN Orlando has possibly the most violent crowd out of all of them, much of it alcohol-fueled.

I think the biggest change they made is replacing bag checks with scanners. They no longer need to check every pocket and argue with people who refuse to open up things for them, since the scanner just X-rays the whole thing in a few seconds. The Universal security is also worlds ahead of the yellow-shirted contracted company from prior years. They were poorly trained to profile people based on age and gender, which resulted in young men who didn't trip the metal detector and had no bags (like myself) having their entire waistbands checked and often given a pat-down in addition while older women who didn't seem like a threatening group wouldn't even get a thorough bag check and any metal detectors going off for them were ignored.

I hope you guys like beer, because the finale of this house has it.

The entrance and exit are both Kidzone. There's only one house entrance there this year, so no bouncing right into a tent after exiting.

Academy of Villains lives! A temporary stage and 10 minute show has been erected near their original stage. It's a mix of what appears to be old and new content created specifically for this space, including what may be at least one sequence from Afterlife.

Unfortunately the stage is still down.

If what you say is true about The Fallen, I'm incredibly disappointed. Angels vs. demons is a rarely seen concept for live horror like haunts, and Universal has the budget to pull it off spectacularly. It sounds like a panicked decision at the last minute has completely neutered A&D.

Well, a fallen angel is simply an angel who sinned. There are some interpretations where demons (or at least the original ones) are fallen angels. Others state that fallen angels are chained up in Hell until Judgement Day. It's perfectly possible for this interpretation to be that demons are fallen angels, and they're currently in a battle with the regular angels. There's no requirement that they have their wings clipped.

I think every house deserves at least one run. I wasn't really excited about Insidious, but it turned out to be one of the scariest houses of the entire event. The Purge house was a crappy reskinning of Scream but the actors still put a lot of work into trying to make up for it, and it ended up decent in spite of the poor scenery.

I don't have a whole lot of concerns. As Sheev said, Orlando is smack dab in the middle of the state and far from any flooding risk areas. The reason Harvey turned Houston into a flooded wasteland is because Houston is a low area on the coast, and Harvey spent so long sitting over the city (several days) that the flooding broke records...and levees. Orlando isn't reliant on levees to keep from flooding during normal seasons. The last time HHN had an issue with hurricanes was the triple blow of 2004. The event still went off without a hitch, and from what I recall the only noticeable issue was that the Field of Screams had to resort to fake corn to replace what got blown away.

Academy of Villains is probably the first show at HHN to actually draw serious attention away from the houses. Everything I know about the dancers (from scareactors who shared break space with them) says that they're great people who are just happy to be here, and they deserve to be back more than anyone.