Pumpkin

This made me laugh a little, no lie, becuase I broke out a rather bold dress from the closet yesterday for the occasion. We shall have to wait and see. Last year, "sexy" meant being a bat with cleavage. lol

They harped on this big time. At the end of the audition, we were asked twice to confirm the sizes that we had written down on paper. Then right before we left, we were told that costumes were supposedly going to be made to order this year. We were also told that we'd have 4 more opportunities to change our numbers (seemed to imply multiple phone confirmations).

*thumbs up* For those doubting this year, try to channel the frustration you’re feeling into the thought that this is one big, invigorating makeover for the resort. If the parks and City Walk look great and appeal to a wide variety of people and the hotels look great too, then the chances of people visiting are higher, their length of stay and frequency of attendance increases, and frankly that means that they are more than likely going to attend HHN as well. If you're having a really good time somewhere, don't you typically try to find an excuse to stay a little longer? Or if you're a loyal regular at an establishment, don't you consider checking out events even if the content isn’t your forte? HHN is consistent; even at its “worst” for us fans it’s still winning Amusement Today’s Golden Ticket Award for Best Halloween Event in the country year after year. If you’ve got a lot of B and C rate attractions to fix, you probably aren’t going to worry too much about the ones that generally score an A with the general public and with your accounting books. HHN’s time is coming. Maybe not this year, but hopefully soon. I wouldn’t keep coming back for the abuse if I didn’t have faith in that.

That's a really good point that I didn't even think of. Issue 100 is due out by the end of the month, and Kirkman has hyped the fans up even more by stating that Daryl will be introduced into the comic book universe within that issue. I really hope they decide to hit all their bases and at least talk about the house a little.

They may theme the facades of the surrounding attractions for Halloween. Those plush Despicable Me Halloween Minions last year were pretty adorable. I could definitely see Universal playing that up this year with the opening of their new ride. Seperately, the great thing about fog and projections is that they become completely invisible during the day. They may not fill them with scar-actors, but Universal will make the streets feel spooky nonetheless.

One scarezone is very... interesting. Makes the Street of the Year competition easier, I guess. : P It'd be really nice if it had some special quality to it. Kinda' disapointing to think that we could end up with just a roaming chainsaw drill team for our one zone.

I'd be very, very miffed if I was in that group of cancelations. Things are getting down right unprofessional, at this point.

I think A&D could probably outfit two or more events, in their entirety, with all the shelved concepts they have. Would it be cohesive though? I don't know. Maybe buying rights is the concept this year, and the decision was made by an authority greater than Creative.

Thank you, Aaron. Thank you. lol If you've ever tried your hand at the arts, then you understand how very difficult it is to reinvent the wheel once, let alone multiple times. Regardless of whether or not you're aware, someone somewhere has more than likely beat you to an idea. It's just a matter of time, place, and press. Anyway, if we are "going Hollywood" this year, then maybe we'll slowly start getting direct reveals for IP houses on the actual HHN website, like Hollywood did last year with their houses?

If I heard correctly last year, only 3 auditions total (1 internal and 2 external) were needed to fill all the positions. We were told by a coordinator that the rest were pretty much canceled after that. They haven't needed 5 or 6 opened auditions for quite a few years now.

This is a pretty healthy attitude, in my opinion. Try to keep an opened mind, guys, until you get to walk through the houses and judge for yourselves. As for our clues and speculation, everyone involved in this community is here, volunterely, because they want to be. Those who know more than most are here to help dirrect our momentum and excitement in the right dirrection. They have just as much invested in the quality of the event as the rest of us, maybe even more since they're the ones actually bringing the yearly espionage straight to the fans, despite the risks. Now, like a few others have already said, I want to start hearing some theories about what'll be inside these seven supposed houses.

Posted this a few weeks ago, back on page 2.

Alright... After thinking about Dr. Jimmy's "Seven Cryptic Statements" and taking into account the recent developments regarding SS 44, this is what I've come to speculate... Original House Locations: Sprung Tent #1 Sprung Tent #2 SS 20A SS 20B SS 44 SS 22 Disaster SS 44 is now out, as far as we know, so we are down to 6 locations. Seven Cryptic Statements with Revisions: 1. "Vincent is an interesting name." 2. "I drink Dr. Pepper, and I'm proud." 2. "Pyramids." 3. "Winnebago." 4. "Sometime, when I'm joking, I'm actually being quite serious." 5. "Water Spouts." 6. "19th Century." 7. "Twins." 7. "Photograph." The original video was first mentioned in this thread on Jun 10th. The message was then revised on June 18th. Additional Clues: 1. "It appears one of my cryptic statements (won't say which one!) was based on my taking something a little different than it was intended... so pardon my language but that just sucks goats." This tells us that one of the original statements was incorrect. 2. "All I can say is don't expect to see any heroic twins, or feathered serpents this year, and that sucks goats. Which there won't be any of this year either." This tells us that an additional statement had to be changed after the demolition of SS 44. "I feel pretty good about half of this list too...." Walking Dead American Werewolf in London Hunchback of Notre Dame Phantom of the Opera The Shining Alice Cooper House My Conclusion: We were given 7 statements in the first message (before demolition) and 7 statements in the second message (after demolition). If we're down to 6 houses, what does this combined with the additional clues tell us? Possibly, one or more of these statements do not pertain to a house but to something else, or two of these statements now pertain to the same house (if you believe that these were and are individual clues for each of the 7 permits). This is what I believe... 1. "Vincent is an interesting name." This is the Alice Cooper house, as Alice Cooper's real name is Vincent Furnier and there's been heavy speculation that his Hollywood house from last year will be coming to Orlando this year. 2. "Pyramids." Plural, pyramids, makes me think it's cultural or structural somehow. If it were singular, I would have thought it was referring to a logo or maybe something metaphorical. Maybe Native American or Algonquian? It's technically a cone, but I think of tipis when I think of pyramids. Egypt just seems too easy to me, and I don't know if pyramids is a strong enough link to the Mayans specifically. 3. "Winnebago." The Walking Dead 4. "Sometimes, when I'm joking, I'm actually being quite serious." Something mentioned in the April Fools' Day videos is probably coming to fruition this year. This problem is, was it mentioned in this year's videos or last year's videos? 5. "Water Spouts." I really think this is a hint at a lagoon show or at Universal's Cinematic Spectacular. 6. "19th Century." My guess at this one is a stretch, but maybe H. P. Lovecraft or The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Lovecraft was born in 1890, although his writings were contemporary, and Hunchback was published in 1831, although the story is set in 1482. 7. "Photograph." I think this is referring to the photograph of construction materials being brought into SS 44. Plural, photographs, would have made me think of maybe a Dead Exposure sequel, but it's singular. I think that this was originally the clue for the Mayan house. "Twins," correlates with, "All I can say is don't expect to see any heroic twins, or feathered serpents this year." I think what happened was that Alice Cooper was originally slatted to be in SS 44, and due to contractual obligations something else had to be booted and/or moved in order for it to stay as planned. Maybe the Mayan house had to be dropped all together. If it was the dual-run house, maybe it had to be reduced to just a normal house in order to give Alice Cooper the room it needs. History says that a dual-run house would probably be planned for SS 22, given our options. Alice Cooper may very well be what's going to end up there. Maybe multiple houses had to be moved in order for it to stay. While this would more than likely require new permits to be filed, maybe they were able to find a way around it, or they just haven't submitted their changes yet. Another idea is that "I drink Dr. Pepper..." was in fact related to an American Werewolf in London, which has now been scrapped. I don't see any reason to have an American Werewolf in London House this year, but I can't think of anything else for that clue. And I have no idea what "... but that just sucks goats," was ever refering to. I still think that having a third Sprung Tent isn't out of the equation yet either.

In lieu of SS44, what about a 3rd Sprung Tent? There's a lot of back lot space near the Crossover/Blue Man Group, the back of MIB, and to the North of B79. The queue egress probably wouldn't be ideal, but it's not impossible. And while on the topic of back lot space, how easy would it be to do something like the Fright Yard from '04 as a substitute for a 7th house? If they’re really in a pinch, I doubt they’re only entertaining lateral solutions. With the Superstar Parade and all this construction, maybe some kind of alternative, like a back lot maze or scare zone, was already in place to compensate for less than the precedent (6 and 8). Separately, if the scare zones and houses are significantly changing, then I’d imagine the shows might be going through significant changes as well (beyond the usual Bill and Ted rewrite and the addition of Universal’s Cinematic Spectacular). “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” is all I can say for this early in one heck of a crazy game.

I'm aiming for Thursday, October 11th, but I won't know for sure until after auditions. If I get ABU, I'll definately have more to add.

I've never been to Universal Studios Hollywood, so, for those of you who have, would you say that SS44 is a fitting location for a Transformers ride?

Steven King has been working on a sequel to The Shining for quite some time, and apparently it's finally due to hit bookshelves in January of 2013. It's called Doctor Sleep. For those who have read anything by King before, particularly the source material in this case, you can see how different this book's tone and construct is going to be from its predecessor. Frankly, I don't see this book doing tremendously well with the general public, and I definitely don't see it translating into anything related to HHN. The Shining has been brought up numerous times on these boards over the past few years, usually in the Wishful Thinking threads, and the sentiment stated above is pretty accurate: The Shining has great potential, but King is never going to give his blessing to an entity like Universal to turn it into an attraction. As a side note, King greatly disliked Kubrick's film, and if you've seen the 1997 TV mini-series then you know King's greater involvement on that project didn't even make it comparable, let alone better, than Kubrick's adaptation. The only way I could see Steven King ever being affiliated with HHN would be through some unfortunate contractual loophole with a movie studio, and even that I don't think is entirely realistic.

Thanks, JWFearman! : )

I was starting to get my hopes up for a Silent Hill house, but it looks like Silent Hill: Revelation has no dirrect affiliation with NBC Universal, at least that I could find. After playing around in Paint, the o in "to" is in fact smaller than the o's in "too" and "soon." There's no way to know if they're capatialized alpha characters or numberic characters though without knowing the name of that font. Anyone happen to regonize it? it might just be a creepy CamelCase logo, but where's the fun in that? I do like the 00:00 time idea though as a teaser clue.

I really am hoping for a 2 Parks - 2 Icons theme. I'm more then likely going to have to request Active Backup this year (I'm getting married in October) and that theme just seems adventitious with my scaled back work capacity. I've never done ABU before, and I've never seen HHN outside of Universal Studios. It'd be a truly different change of pace for me. I, personally, don't want to see a 100 Years of Fear theme... Unless the year is 2090 (in which case I'll either be dead or the oldest employed Universal scare-actor to date) and we're celebrating the 100th anniversary of the event itself. I do agree that the momentum is right for it to happen this year and not next, but the jargon, the concept, and the content all go against the New Era of Darkness. Ripped from the Silver Screen and Twenty Years of Fear are still visible in our review mirrors, so to speak. It's simply too soon, in my opinion.

Pros Audio Track Ambiance Costume and Mask Design Cons Blocking Inconsistency Lighting Performance Direction Security Detail Set Design