Good place to eat is at Mel's Drive In or at HHN Mel's D I E In because it's close to three scarezones so you can still be seeing scareactors scaring and hearing people screaming...
If you are only going on Oct 8 highly suggest Express because it's the best way to go to all the houses and multiple times if you want and enough time for the shows/attractions.
Go to the Sprung Tents(2),Parade Building,Jaws Que,Disaster Que,and lastly SS(3)because it will be less crowded as most people i see go to the SS first thing and continue there on and because its not night yet so i highly doubt you want to go to Jaws when you can still see the sun and theirs past problems going their first (In SAW there was not enough light as i hit 3 scareactors and hardly see anything and for F13 you could saw all the scareactors hiding spots)IMHO.
Get there an hour before the gates open to be the first 50 people in the park.
Well check the bars for their speciality drinks (like last year's Hair of Wolf and the year's before Scary Mary) or the jello shot blood bags to be in the spirit of things.