SeventyOne Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 Thanks to some friends and the ADA, managed to see all the houses and B&T during preview night. Here are some first thoughts, roughly in the order I enjoyed the houses. • Winters Night: the cold/snow effects work very well here, great cast, top notch set design with a nice creepy Victorian atmosphere (kind of a “grown-up Haunted Mansion” feel). I’m surprised, but my favorite for house of the year. • Saws & Steam: Best Jaws house ever. Lot of scares from actors clearly enjoying their job, some very cool new effects. • Nevermore: A lot of people seemed to consider this their favorite, hard to disagree. Clever scenes, new design ideas, just an amazing house. The tents have come a long way. Speaking of which… • The In-Between: Biggest surprise of the night. Loved it, and I’m not a fan of 3D houses. The tunnel and the “floorless room” show how you can use 3D to make something unique and truly disorienting. • Nightengales: An intense house. Probably the most scares of the night. Still not entirely sure how the vampire nurses fit in, hoping there’s a queue video to explain a little more back story. • H.R. Bludengutz: Started off a bit slow for me, but by the time you get to the obscure holidays this house becomes inspired. Relies a little too heavily on TVs to set up each room, the sound was too low to really follow the story, but the escalating craziness is a lot of fun. • The Forsaken: I was really impressed with the sets, and the hurricane effect at the end is great. However, most of my group were not fans of this one. Two biggest complaints: lack of a coherent story (queue video may help this) and the glowing green eyes on the pirates give them away before they can scare anyone. Still, I’m anxious to give this one another go-round. • The Thing: Saw Winters Night first, so the cold/snow effect didn’t impress me like it might have otherwise. Ditto the gunfire, had just come from the war zone of Nightengales. Well-done, but nothing I haven’t seen before, I remember better creatures in the last Thing house. Could have used more actors as well, but it was late. Nowhere near the bottom 10 houses ever or anything like that, just not overly impressive in a year with three or four new classics. Bill & Ted was great, possibly the best since 2006. Back to basics, which the show needed. I was with a friend who knows the new writer, word is legal “cut a lot.” Legal is also the reason the show features a lot more real life celebrities rather than characters. Still, a ton of laughs (check out the fake ads in the preshow), and some interesting mash-ups in the dance numbers. Missed Death Drums, but the chatter was very positive. Loved Acid Rain projections, Canyon of Dark Souls worked better than I could've expected, the bat/bird one was quite good as well. Missed 7 because of the rain, didn't make it back in time, but love those stages. Only disappointing scare zone for me was Lady Luck--felt like a photo op where you couldn't actually take photos. Overall, a great year. Looking forward to returning almost every night I can with FFP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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