Creeper06 Posted December 20, 2011 Share Posted December 20, 2011 My novel on the topic shall be out next fall to accommodate the "Alice Cooper doesn't belong at HHN.com" website that'll pop up in the summer. Just in time for them announce that Welcome to my Nightmare is coming back "by popular demand". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zombieman Posted December 20, 2011 Author Share Posted December 20, 2011 My novel on the topic shall be out next fall to accommodate the "Alice Cooper doesn't belong at HHN.com" website that'll pop up in the summer. Can I write the forward? I'd like to mention how the A.C. theme blew the doors off the fiasco that was Scream. Okay. I'm done. I'm at risk of sidelining my own thread, but I couldn't resist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTH316 Posted February 24, 2012 Share Posted February 24, 2012 Finally got around to reading this! Well, a good majority of it. Had to skip over the house explanations, although I did read the one on The Thing. The massive amounts of gun fights sounds uber lame, especially considering they use flame throwers in the movie (er... can't use those in a house...). The ticket options sound heavenly in comparison to what we have here. It's what I wished Hollywood would friggin do instead of act like they have no clue on how ticketing an event works. All they would have to do is look at their other coast to get it right. The detailed backstories, as much as I appreciate them, aren't for me. I think it's cool they even think of this though and it's way more effort than most haunts put into their mazes. I think tying everything together is a bit too much as well, but that's just me personally. Sometimes it's understandable that, "yeah, this is a Haunt and we're going to put a maze here because we can." If I had to even sort of know all this stuff to enjoy the maze, I'd be shit out of luck! A part of me enjoys the obsessive-must-know-all idea but another half of me just thinks, "can't I just walk in and not have to wonder what else there is to know?" More than likely, after exiting, I'd feel beyond curious and try to read up on it. How dare they! Anywho, AMAZING write up zombieman. BEYOND detailed and I think you should get an accolade of some sort from this site for such a massive post. I don't even know how you remembered all that stuff lmao Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freak Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Finally got around to reading this! Well, a good majority of it. Had to skip over the house explanations, although I did read the one on The Thing. The massive amounts of gun fights sounds uber lame, especially considering they use flame throwers in the movie (er... can't use those in a house...). The ticket options sound heavenly in comparison to what we have here. It's what I wished Hollywood would friggin do instead of act like they have no clue on how ticketing an event works. All they would have to do is look at their other coast to get it right. The detailed backstories, as much as I appreciate them, aren't for me. I think it's cool they even think of this though and it's way more effort than most haunts put into their mazes. I think tying everything together is a bit too much as well, but that's just me personally. Sometimes it's understandable that, "yeah, this is a Haunt and we're going to put a maze here because we can." If I had to even sort of know all this stuff to enjoy the maze, I'd be s*** out of luck! A part of me enjoys the obsessive-must-know-all idea but another half of me just thinks, "can't I just walk in and not have to wonder what else there is to know?" More than likely, after exiting, I'd feel beyond curious and try to read up on it. How dare they! For the Thing, I do see what they were trying to go for as they were supposed to put you in the middle of the action, but gun fights in haunted houses don't work. Period. I do agree that while I love the backstories and try to read up on them after I go into the house, I don't like having to do research on the internet or take a backstage tour to find out what it is to really understand what's going on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTH316 Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 For the Thing, I do see what they were trying to go for as they were supposed to put you in the middle of the action, but gun fights in haunted houses don't work. Period. I do agree that while I love the backstories and try to read up on them after I go into the house, I don't like having to do research on the internet or take a backstage tour to find out what it is to really understand what's going on. Invasion Beneath instantly comes to mind with the gun battles... LMFAO I think if any HHNH maze needed a backstory much like these Orlando ones this last year, it was Alice Cooper. That really would've benefited from some explaining. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freak Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Invasion Beneath instantly comes to mind with the gun battles... LMFAO I think if any HHNH maze needed a backstory much like these Orlando ones this last year, it was Alice Cooper. That really would've benefited from some explaining. Forgot about Inferior Beneath! Good idea, bad execution. Alice Cooper did technically have a simple back story, but it would only be familiar to you if you knew a bit of the story behind the actual Welcome to My Nightmare album. The story was about Steven, who's "Toys are broken" and is now "grown" to be a man-child. The whole haunted house revolves around his nightmare. The nightmare threw in all of the references to Alice Cooper's musical career event hough they had nothing to do with the original WTMN album. Since the whole basis of the house was a nightmare, that would explain why it didn't make much sense. It would've been nice to see a more consise story despite the setting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDW Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 I wasn't referring to the blinky cup, but rather the bigger one with the screw on lid - for regular drinks. They always do some sort of red or black HHN cup with the icons on it, but this year it was the same Universal Orlando they sell during the day. Very in depth article Sir! They had a big, pop top type cup with the "lucky 13" style lady luck design on it and it had the blood effect like last years cup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Creeper06 Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 The detailed backstories, as much as I appreciate them, aren't for me. I think it's cool they even think of this though and it's way more effort than most haunts put into their mazes. I think tying everything together is a bit too much as well, but that's just me personally. Sometimes it's understandable that, "yeah, this is a Haunt and we're going to put a maze here because we can." If I had to even sort of know all this stuff to enjoy the maze, I'd be shit out of luck! A part of me enjoys the obsessive-must-know-all idea but another half of me just thinks, "can't I just walk in and not have to wonder what else there is to know?" More than likely, after exiting, I'd feel beyond curious and try to read up on it. How dare they! If I could chime in on this for a second, the crazy detailed backstories are there for the hardcore fans but (99% of the time) are not necessary to enjoy the houses. For example, last year they had The Forsaken which had a detailed backstory about the 4th ship on Columbus' voyage and decisions of the captain and so on. But if you walked in just knowing "this is the house with ghost sailors" it made just as much sense. There have been exceptions (Reflections of Fear comes to mind) but for the most part, the backstories are just a nice bonus for the fans who can't get enough but A&D does a great job of presenting a concise description in the map that is all you really need to know to undertsand and enjoy the experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zombieman Posted March 23, 2012 Author Share Posted March 23, 2012 I do agree that while I love the backstories and try to read up on them after I go into the house, I don't like having to do research on the internet or take a backstage tour to find out what it is to really understand what's going on. I agree. Last year, I heard a teeny bit of the backstory for The Forsaken before I went through it. I thought it sounded cool, but when I went through, I was really, really underwhelmed. Beautiful sets - far, FAR beyond anything ever presented in Hollywood. But the story just didn't make any sense. And why did all the monsters have glowing green eyes? And then I went to the backstage tour, and learned the entire backstory and exactly why the green eyes. And the more I thought about it, the more I appreciated the house as a whole. It was the exact same thing that happened with The Catacombs a year earlier. But of course, this all leads to the very logical question: How good of an idea was it in the first place if you need a $50 guided tour to understand it? To the 99.99% of people who didn't go to the backstage tour, it was a mess of a theme, but was still a beautiful house. It's still great to know how much energy the designers put into the story behind the story - and this is really done for us, not the general public. In my opinion, it should be the job of the website to tell the backstory of the houses - not a 10-word blurb on a park map. Orlando did this so extremely well in 2005 and 2008, as they slowly revealed house backstories between August and September, whetting our appetite and getting us excited for the houses. I'm certain that John Murdy and Chris Williams had almost as intricate backstories for all of the houses they created. It's a shame that they don't use this to promote the event and build excitement. Because as we all know, the Hollywood HHN website has universally sucked (pun intended). If any of you have ever been to Animal Kingdom, then you've been to the land called Hester and Chester's Dinorama. Of all the Disney lands, it's easily the strangest, with seemingly no reason to exist. It sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the park, and makes almost no sense....unless you know the backstory. And once you hear the backstory, the land makes perfect sense, and turns out to have been master-planned all the way down to the cracks in the concrete streets. But it begs the question: If the backstory was that great, why did the designers do such a terrible job of letting the land tell the story itself? What I'm trying to say is that as good as HHN is, once people are told the story behind it, it takes it to a different level. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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