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HHN Hollywood X Wishful Thinking


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  • 1 month later...

I would love to see

Scream

Devils rejects (rob zombie sequel to hotc)

Incidious

Maybe an original maze

Thinking about jeepers creepers

by the way devils rejects is probably going to be there. 3dn = 3 dog night 3 dog night has a song in devils rejects. I hope it is.

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  • 1 month later...

Im not really familiar with the term "pepper ghost" gags used in mazes would you mind feeling me in ? :D

There was a pepper's ghost effect used in the old 13 Axe Murder Manor maze. It basically served as "bait" for a pop scare. Haven't seen one at Knott's since that maze was replaced by Terror of London a couple years ago. Peppers ghosts are cool and yes, easy to pull off, but they always seem somewhat underwhelming in mazes, especially considering the fact that HHN tends to utilize much more advanced effects and Disney pretty much already took the effect to it's logical extreme back in '69.

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There was a pepper's ghost effect used in the old 13 Axe Murder Manor maze. It basically served as "bait" for a pop scare. Haven't seen one at Knott's since that maze was replaced by Terror of London a couple years ago. Peppers ghosts are cool and yes, easy to pull off, but they always seem somewhat underwhelming in mazes, especially considering the fact that HHN tends to utilize much more advanced effects and Disney pretty much already took the effect to it's logical extreme back in '69.

1st off welcome to the forums mike ! glad to have you here :D but on another note im very intrested to see hhn utilize this effect. i actually remember going through terror of london last year

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Thanks everybody! Glad to be here. 13 Axe Murder Manor was a maze that enjoyed a long run at Knotts and a lot of popularity. It was basically a very traditional "haunted house" themed maze with a backstory of mass murder that was loosely based on the legend of Lizzie Borden. The facade of the house itself was amazing and the maze contained a lot of stunning scenes and set pieces including an elaborate dining room/banquet, a haunted library and a memorable bedroom scene featuring a corpse who's intestines had appeared to have exploded all over the room. It still stands out as one of Knotts' all time best mazes with it's only weakness being a fairly anticlimactic ending (after leaving the house proper and entering the grounds).

Terror of London, which relpaced it, is a pretty nice maze with a lot of impressive sets and attention to detail (as well as spot-on sound design) but falls short due to a serious lack of thematic continuity. Had they stuck to the maze's main theme of Jack the Ripper (and a sort of homage to the film version of Alan Moore's From Hell) istead of veering off into wildly out of place pastiches of Jeckyl/Hyde and Frankenstein, Terror could have truly been a great maze instead of just a visually impressive one.

At any rate, I feel that a pepper's ghost effect (unless it was done on the scale of disney - but scarier) would just get lost in a HHN maze. They are cool and nostalgic but the elaborate gore gags that Uni usually implements are much more impressive IMO.

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I think you'll be glad to hear that Terror of London's ending is being revamped so it'll no longer include the madness it had at the end. Instead, the Jack the Ripper story will be extended this year, which sounds like a good idea to me because like you said, the ending was kinda like "uh, what?"

I think HHN can do a pepper ghost effectively. They had Freddy hiding behind scrims last year so I'm sure they can find a way to work them in.

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Presumably HHN could work anything into their mazes. I would love to see a really rad pepper's ghost effect where it seemed as if the ghost was coming at you fast and then dissappears right at the last second. Could be very cool. My main point was that they are mainly used as decoration (the one at Knotts was static) and are more atmospheric than intense.

That is great to hear about the slight revamp of Terror of London. Hopefully that maze will finally live up to it's amazing potential this year.

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A weak second half has always been the problem with the Mystery Lodge maze, from Blood Bayou's Snake Hallway, to 13 Murder's Burlap Mile. Its because there is not much room between the Mystery Lodge building and the employee eatery (Crew's Nest) so its always required the transition from big show scenes to a narrow hallway before opening back up to a big final scene.

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Oh, I didn't know that Trevler! Thanks for a behind the scenes explanation on that. Certainly makes sense now. However, I still LOVE that location as all the mazes there have been INCREDIBLE so far.

Truth! The unfortunate "burlap mile" section notwithstanding, the mystery lodge location has always been home to the best mazes at Knotts. Also, it should be noted that this type of maze design, whether geographically nessessary or not, is probably the biggest problem with Knotts mazes in general. I love their DIY, rough around the edges feel (even when compared to Uni's far more polished product) but the Uni mazes tend to be shorter, more detailed and narrative driven, and much more intense (with almost every scare meticulously planned into the maze itself). Knotts' mazes tend to meander through lengthy sections of monster-less halls, as the actors there seem to have a litte more freedom, resulting in less tight scares and therefore less intensity overall.

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Back to wishful thinking, I hope they make the scarezones better. We already know the mazes are going to be top-notch this year so I think the scarezones will as well. What I'm hoping they do is have some boo-holes in the scarezones this year sort of like what Orlando did with the Coven last year. Since the park is smaller, it would have a far more dramatic effect.

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Always happy to talk about the mystery lodge maze (thats where I was back in the day!) To tie it in to wish full thinking- I sure wish Universal would do a version of Blood Bayou.

If you think about it, the TCM mazes were kind of like if you mixed parts of Blood Bayou with elements of The Slaughterhouse. At the end of the day the Slaughterhouse is basically TCM with an original story and a little less 'character'. It would be awesome to see Uni do a voodoo type maze and/or scare zone but clearly that isn't happening this year.

On that note it seems as if this wishfull thinking thread is now kind of moot since we basically know what we're getting at this point and most speculation/wishfull thinking is now being discussed in the seprate attraction topics. Maybe we should just turn this one into a Knotts/Uni deal, eh Trevler? Haha!

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I fully believe that Slaughterhouse was Knott's attempt to combat TCM. They really dropped the ball with that one too. TOO MUCH HUMOR. It was a perfect chance to do a dark, scary, gore maze and they made it funny. Makes me cry.

Agreed. Was never a fan of Slaughterhouse. Maze doesn't have nearly enough focus either. It seems all over the place to me.

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