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Best Mazes (The 2010 Edition)


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Of HHN Hollywood 2010:

Friday the 13th: Kill, Jason, Kill!

Nightmare on Elm Street: Never Sleep Again!

Saw: Game On!

Vampyre: Castle of the Undead

House of 1000 Corpses

Of the year (for me, this is just HHN & Knotts; feel free to include other Haunts):

Friday the 13th: Kill, Jason, Kill!

Nightmare on Elm Street: Never Sleep Again!

Saw: Game On!

Cornstalkers

Vampyre: Castle of the Undead

Virus Z

Fallout Shelter

Sleepy Hollow Mountain

The Doll Factory

Slaughterhouse

Uncle Bobo's Bigtop of the Bizarre

House of 1000 Corpses

Terror of London

Lockdown: The Asylum

Club Blood

Dia De Los Muertos

Black Widow's Cavern

Post-Hiatus:

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Back in Business [07, 08]

Halloween: The Life and Crimes of Michael Myers [09]

Saw: Game Over! [09]

Friday the 13th: Kill, Jason, Kill! [10]

Nightmare on Elm Street: Never Sleep Again [10]

Saw: Game On! [10]

Friday the 13th: Camp Blood [07, 08]

Vampyre: Castle of the Undead [10]

Chucky's Playhouse [09]

Nightmare on Elm Street: Home Sweet Hell [08]

Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses: in 3D Zombievision [10]

Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy's Nightmares [07]

My Bloody Valentine: Be Mine 4 Ever [09]

Edited by DTH316
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In descending order:

* House of 1,000 Corpses

* Nightmare on Elm Street: Never Sleep Again

* Friday the 13th: Kill Jason, Kill!

* Saw: Game On

* Vampyres

I had so much fun and already cannot wait for next year. <3 We all may have had our opinions about the maze choices when they were initially released, but you know loads of fun was imminent! I enjoyed this year thoroughly.

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Sure, I'll chime in... what the heck. From favorite to least favorite:

1. Friday the 13th: Kill, Jason, Kill

2. A Nightmare on Elm Street: Never Sleep Again

3. Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses

4. Saw: Game On!

5. Vampyre: Castle of the Undead

True that, Anu. They're not the mazes I would have chosen but it still was TONS of fun! And, for me, the originality of Freakz and Lunaticz helped me get over the repeating of themes in the mazes. I'm just hoping that, because people still showed up in droves, Universal doesn't walk away with the attitude that "See? We can keep repeating ourselves and these suckers will still line up like cattle." Bring us more NEW!!! That is all ;)

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Here's my list (including HHN Orlando, HHN Hollywood, and Knotts):

1. Hallowed Past (O)

2. Zombiegeddon (O)

3. Legendary Truth (O)

4. House of 1000 Corpses (H)

5. Chaos: Dogs of War (O)

6. Terror of London (K)

7. Virus Z (K)

8. Psychoscerapy (O)

9. Catacombs (O) (easily the most popular in Orlando, but I didn't get it)

10. Orfanage (O)

11. Fallout Shelter (K)

12. Doll Factory (K)

13. Sleepy Hollow (K)

14. Black Widow Cavern (K)

15. Kill Jason (Please, kill Jason!) (H)

16. Lockdown (K)

17. Uncle Bobo (K)

18. Cornstaklers (K)

19. NOES (H)

20. Hades (O) (loved by tons of people, but lost on me)

21. Slaughterhouse (K)

22. Saw (H)

23. Labyrinth (K)

24. Vampyres (H)

25. De Los Muertos (K)

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I'm just hoping that, because people still showed up in droves, Universal doesn't walk away with the attitude that "See? We can keep repeating ourselves and these suckers will still line up like cattle." Bring us more NEW!!! That is all ;)

Management will see 2010 as a thundering success, and will treat Juhn Murdy as the messiah. After all, they sold out on just about every non-peak night, and quite a few of the peak nights. Unfortunately, the reality is that they sold out the non-peak nights solely because of the ultra-cheap Killer Deal season pass - not because of their content.

Knotts and HHN have been playing a game of "see who can give the deepest discount". When I go to HHN Orlando every year, I pay the full price. They limit the deals pretty much just to FL residents. Unless you know a resident, you're not going to get a discount. Over here, anyone who pays full price is the real sucker.

Over here, the merchandise is cheaper, the food is cheaper, even the parking is cheaper. L.A. has a much higher cost of living than Orlando, yet they get away with charging 25% more for everything at their HHN. It really doesn't make sense, either. Yeah, we've got three competing theme parks 30-50 miles away, but they do, too. And Disney isn't lowering their prices for anyone. HHN Hollywood needs to pretend that Six Flags and Knotts doesn't exist, and steeply increase their prices. This would lead to much bigger budgets.

What I'm trying to say is - sold out doesn't necessarily equate to a good event. But USH management will simply see the bottom line and won't care what they gave up to get there. Sadly, the GP in So Cal has been trained to not expect variety from these places.

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Zombieman-

I totally agree about demanding more from HHN Hollywood. Every year, I fly out to Orlando to go to the event at least two nights there. It's worth every penny for me and, every year, it makes me sad that I have to come back to Hollywood's pale imitation.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who didn't understand the appeal of Catacombs in Orlando. Everyone on these boards has raved about it saying "those plague doctors were awesome and so creepy" but I really thought they were laughable. And the random rooms in the house where it suddenly seemed like you were in a museum because the room was empty and had some plaque with information on it. Were we realy supposed to stop and read them? Weird. I actually counted that as my least favorite house out there this year.

Sounds like you had a bad run-through of Hades, which is a shame. I loved it.

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Sounds like you had a bad run-through of Hades, which is a shame. I loved it.

Don't know if you got to go to the UTH tour, but it included a walk through Hades. The backstory provided raised my interest level a lot, and I'm really amazed at how much thought goes into the backstory (a hell of a lot more than your typical HHN Hollywood maze).

Remember that big yellow ladder leaning against the wall of the Psychoscerapy facade? I saw that and thought "Jeez! The A&D crew should have really cleaned up better." I had no idea it was all part of the backstory of a group of kids breaking into the old asylum. I wish they would tell that backstory on the website. That would really whet my appetite even more and make me look for more clues as to the story ince inside.

It's like last year in the Dracula and Frankenstein mazes - as good as they were, the backstory provided the glue that was missing from the houses.

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Kinda hard for me to take that list seriously considering how high Black Widow's Cavern is on it lmao

I hear you - and seeing it again a week later, I have to ask myself "Was Black Widow Cavern really better than most of the mazes at USH?" I'll admit - I've got a real chip on my shoulder regarding USH this year. That's evident in most of my posts about this year's event. I firmly believe they have ripped off their customers with blatant repeats of houses while swearing up and down that everything is "All New!" If the houses were, in fact, all new, then they would be on the high-side of my list, competing with USO (as they did in the past). As it stands, USH has decided that if Knott's can repeat, they can too - it's just that they are going to lie to their customers about it. That automatically pushes them down to the basement, along with their credibility. This is the Murdy Media Machine at work, and it's making a total mess of that event.

So, yeah, Black Widow Cavern (even with the main spider having suffered a snapped cable) kicked major ass over retreads of Freddy, Jason, and Jigsaw. Yeah, BWC was unchanged from last year, but they didn't falsely claim it had changed, either. And anyhow, the energy level of the actors in BWC was unusually high during my trip. Maybe they had a Red Bull break, but they "got me" at least three times, which is three more times than they have ever gotten me before. I have to give them props for that. In the past, the mine ride has been a real yawner.

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I wouldn't blame what the media puts out on Murdy. In fact, I think he's just another puppet in Universal's regime. He's only repeating what they tell him to. I honestly don't believe that it was his choice to do these mazes this year, aside from HOTC. I think it might've been a toss and trade. "If you and Zombie get to do HOTC and an original maze, we get to repeat Saw, bring NOES up because it was most demanded and F13 along for the ride so we don't have to do go to anymore studios." And that's, what I'm pretty sure, happened. Murdy is a big fan of (the real) "all new" term that he posed in 09 and you can tell he was excited to stick on that bandwagon after 08 (another year I think the theme park forced them to repeat but he got the trade of "can I at least change some things up that didn't work so well?). He acted like he was going to stick to it and not until about April-ish of this year, he stopped acting like HHN-Hollywood would be all about that, probably because he lost the fight and just did what the park wanted in sake of business but nonetheless, with what he had, he STILL did a kickass event. So I know Murdy is still all about the fans and I don't think it was ultimately up to him.

And zombie, I ask you this, if they were upfront and said "returning characters, new mazes!" would that bad blood still be sticking? I have to say, the proof is in the pudding. They could've SAID it was one thing and been some totally different anyway and the fact of the matter is, to me, that it's still a good product. For example, and I think this is a perfect example. Coke Zero claims it is the same taste as original Coke. This is far from the fact. I think it tastes disgusting, probably even worse than Diet Coke. Would Coke Zero still be nasty if it didn't claim it was the same taste? Definitely.

Edited by DTH316
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Management will see 2010 as a thundering success, and will treat Juhn Murdy as the messiah. After all, they sold out on just about every non-peak night, and quite a few of the peak nights. Unfortunately, the reality is that they sold out the non-peak nights solely because of the ultra-cheap Killer Deal season pass - not because of their content.

Knotts and HHN have been playing a game of "see who can give the deepest discount". When I go to HHN Orlando every year, I pay the full price. They limit the deals pretty much just to FL residents. Unless you know a resident, you're not going to get a discount. Over here, anyone who pays full price is the real sucker.

Over here, the merchandise is cheaper, the food is cheaper, even the parking is cheaper. L.A. has a much higher cost of living than Orlando, yet they get away with charging 25% more for everything at their HHN. It really doesn't make sense, either. Yeah, we've got three competing theme parks 30-50 miles away, but they do, too. And Disney isn't lowering their prices for anyone. HHN Hollywood needs to pretend that Six Flags and Knotts doesn't exist, and steeply increase their prices. This would lead to much bigger budgets.

What I'm trying to say is - sold out doesn't necessarily equate to a good event. But USH management will simply see the bottom line and won't care what they gave up to get there. Sadly, the GP in So Cal has been trained to not expect variety from these places.

As broke as I am, I do agree with raising ticket prices for a higher budget range and better quality. The thing is, the GP is now used to lower ticket prices- the GP, including me, is now quite spoiled when it comes to ticket prices. You should have seen how happy I was when I saw that the Killer Night Deal Pass was only $60 bucks compared to last year's $75 dollar price, though 3 nights were sacrificed this year.

Question is, how can HHN earn more revenue without upsetting the public? Methinks Universal should ask Disney for tips. Like you said, Disneyland isn't lowering ticket prices for anybody; The biggest discount they've ever had was going into Disneyland free on your BIRTHDAY! And in my memory, this was only done for one year. Even if you enter the park free, your wallet may still empty quickly because of how pricey everything is. The happiest place on Earth still creates the emptiest wallets on Earth with no intent to change that. :lol:

This year was noted to be the most successful HHN ever, especially with it's multiple sold out nights. Perhaps Universal has reached an equilibrium when it comes to revenue, guest attendance, and ticket price? I really wouldn't want the ticket price to lower any more, though it would make my wallet happier. I'm semi-content with the price raising for the sake of HHN's budget, but I definitely do not believe the price should lower any further. Leave that to Knotts.

Quality > Quantity

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I wouldn't blame what the media puts out on Murdy. In fact, I think he's just another puppet in Universal's regime. He's only repeating what they tell him to. I honestly don't believe that it was his choice to do these mazes this year, aside from HOTC. I think it might've been a toss and trade. "If you and Zombie get to do HOTC and an original maze, we get to repeat Saw, bring NOES up because it was most demanded and F13 along for the ride so we don't have to do go to anymore studios." And that's, what I'm pretty sure, happened. Murdy is a big fan of (the real) "all new" term that he posed in 09 and you can tell he was excited to stick on that bandwagon after 08 (another year I think the theme park forced them to repeat but he got the trade of "can I at least change some things up that didn't work so well?). He acted like he was going to stick to it and not until about April-ish of this year, he stopped acting like HHN-Hollywood would be all about that, probably because he lost the fight and just did what the park wanted in sake of business but nonetheless, with what he had, he STILL did a kickass event. So I know Murdy is still all about the fans and I don't think it was ultimately up to him.

Agreed. Though he is the creative director, ultimately, the bigwigs decide the fate of HHN in the end. He basically forms the ideas and makes the magic happen with what he's got.

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Don't know if you got to go to the UTH tour, but it included a walk through Hades. The backstory provided raised my interest level a lot, and I'm really amazed at how much thought goes into the backstory (a hell of a lot more than your typical HHN Hollywood maze).

Remember that big yellow ladder leaning against the wall of the Psychoscerapy facade? I saw that and thought "Jeez! The A&D crew should have really cleaned up better." I had no idea it was all part of the backstory of a group of kids breaking into the old asylum. I wish they would tell that backstory on the website. That would really whet my appetite even more and make me look for more clues as to the story ince inside.

It's like last year in the Dracula and Frankenstein mazes - as good as they were, the backstory provided the glue that was missing from the houses.

Yeah- the stories really make a huge difference in enjoying the mazes on a whole different level. Like this year with Zombiegeddon. I went through and I got the concept and I knew "something" went wrong but it was never clear as to WHAT went wrong. Then someone on these boards explained that the float from Zombie Gras had crashed into the building setting the zombies loose. What a great concept! But it was totally unclear, just by walking through, that that's what had happened.

I've always been surprised that they don't call out the stories in more detail on the guidemap. I mean, people have plenty of time in line to read it. In years past, the queue videos have always helped with the stories too but we know those have mostly gone away.

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