My HHN Hollywood 2012 Review

[Kreepshowtosh]

Now, before I get to my dissection of this year's event, I am here to inform you that this is coming from a HHN fan who's been going to this event since 2007 and I'm pretty sure you will know what will come down to when it comes to that. So, here it is:

So I went to HHN on the 5th of October and got my FOL pass and got to the front gate and was let in first before the general. After the opening ceremony, I started with the new mazes in the front of the park first (Alice Cooper Goes to Hell and then The Walking Dead), before heading down to the Lower Lot for Silent Hill & Texas Chainsaw Massacre.) This worked well as we were able to get through those 4 mazes, in approximately 40 minutes, without using my pass, which was useful for revisiting the mazes later on that evening.

So here’s my review of HHN Hollywood 2012. I will be sharing some highlights and my overall opinions from my own experiences. Also, having been to HHN multiple times over the past few years, I had quite a few expectations.

ALICE COOPER GOES TO HELL 3D:

As an Alice Cooper fan myself, I really LOVED Welcome to My Nightmare and it turned out it was big hit (Yay Alice!) So this year, I had expectations for this new maze since it was an actual sequel haunted house. Of course, I liked what they were going for with this house going through the levels of Hell themed to the Seven Deadly Sins, inspired by the poem, Dante's Inferno and each room exhibited each sin. Now, after I been through the fiery abyss, I found Alice's nightmare to be scarier then his Hell. There were too many scenes with the actors acting out the sins and there a few shocks. And it seemed like they toned down the setting quite a bit (there were black walls) just for the visual 3D effects.

3/10

THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD INSIDE:

“Season Premiere, Sunday, Oct 14th on AMC” This became obvious since they done this haunted house to promote the 3rd season (which they promoted that property like HELL!) It's been a while since we had a house based on a television show since Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it was Universal's first time to actually do a zombie-based haunted house. Of course, the setting took me to the post-apocalyptic world of The Walking Dead TV show, recognized some of the scenes and the characters. And then I noticed that a few set pieces were reused from previous mazes such as The Thing and Friday the 13th. I was kind of a bit worried that they would be using the same“strobe-and-sound startle” scare effect for this one, which I felt it kind of ruined the experience of actually being in the middle of a zombie apocalypse scenario and the scares then became predictable. I mean, that type of scare makes sense for a haunted house based off a serial killer such as Michael Myers, but for zombies, it just doesn't. But I would have to give credit for HHN's makeup. And another plus I can give was that I got to see Norman Reedus outside of the facade, enough said.

8/10

WELCOME TO SILENT HILL:

I have played the games and seen the movie and since I missed the chance of experiencing the maze that Sinister Pointe did back in 2009, I thought it would be good chance to go through HHN's take on that property. The house begins by crossing through the portal of pain from Fog World to Otherworld, which stayed true to the Silent Hill mythos. There were some cool effects such as the appearing and disappearing Alessa and seeing the recognizable characters such the Nurses, the Bogeyman, Colin the Janitor, Robbie the Rabbit, and of course, Pyramid Head. There were some interesting special effects used, such as the flashlight effect. Now, here is my criticism: it seems they got carried away using the sh!t smell effect throughout the entire haunted house. It also felt like the scenes were repeated over and over, which felt like being stuck on the same level of the games. And they did tone quite a bit with the setting, especially for Robbie the Rabbit. It didn't have any feel of being in the amusement park besides the scent of cotton candy and, well, Robbie the Rabbit. And also, Pyramid Head is not a pop out scare, he's more of a "Oh crap, he's coming slowly towards me with his Great Knife!" He walks slowly because of the weight of his helmet and his Knife. I could tell that the scareacters who played Pyramid Head were probably old scareacters from the previous haunted houses the previous years.

7/10

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE SAW IS THE LAW:

"God I hate that tag line." Anyways, so they brought back Texas Chainsaw Massacre but this time, based on the Tobe Hooper original. It was made for the sake of promoting the new film that's coming out next year (which I found it pretty iffy that they brought it back this year instead of next year.) Now, when it comes to the original film, it is a gritty and disturbing piece of cinema with a very realistic tone and it's challenging to keeping that same tone for a haunted house because the 70s was different back then in the days of those grainy films. It was visually a great tribute to the original, with some of the recognizable scenes and characters such as Old Man (Drayton), the Hitchhiker, Grandpa, and of course, Leatherface, who wore different grotesque masks. There was only one scene that wasn't featured and that one was the girl hanging from a meat hook. Also, the scare actors seem to be busy exhibiting the terrible things they're doing to others instead of scaring the guests. I remember when TCM first hit Horror Nights back in 2007, and THAT one was a was an intense experience. There was just a constant feeling of threat and menace in the maze which unfortunately was not replicated in this version (which I already knew from the beginning.) Here, it seemed to be a display of horror, rather than an experience of it. So, it was cool visually, but just not that scary in my opinion.

6/10

LA LLORONA: LA CAZADORA DE NINOS:

This house was another repeat that I was kind of worried about, pretty skeptical of how much they changed it and how different it could be from last year. While there were some portions of the house were used from last year, there were some good additions to make it feel like a fresh experience. This years "La Llorona" explores what it would be like to enter the nightmare of a child and the creative team decides to use big props for this one. Of course, some of the big puppeteer costumes were reused from The Thing last year. This maze pretty much cranked up another level and made the Weeping Woman angrier and scarier.

8/10

UNIVERSAL MONSTERS REMIX:

I really hated this idea when it was first announced. Classic Monsters meets modern music (Dubstep)? I wasn't quite sure how it was going to work, but at least Universal tried something different and I can give them that. Once I went through, it wasn't as bad as I anticipated (but it still wasn't that great.) The maze is still nothing more than an overlay of the year round daytime attraction, the House of Horrors. Inside the maze, it felt like one huge club environment which almost feels like as if the Classic Monsters were having a Halloween rave party. But due to the “club” lighting, it’s very hard for the scareactors to hide, and the scares in this maze are also predictable. I wasn't impressed or scared by this maze, but I'd still give it a plus for the Go-Go dancing Bride of Frankenstein (who looks like Lily Munster) - lol.

2/10

TERROR TRAM: INVADED BY THE WALKING DEAD:

For old HHN stalkers (like myself), the Terror Tram has become a flatlined attraction. Despite having different themes, the Terror Tram always ends up being the exact same experience and being in the same location year after year. It felt like I was in line again - 2 times (at the Bates Motel & near the Psycho House) - just like back in the line area at the park. Give coming straight to the point: it sucked.. enough said.

1/10

SCARE ZONES:

None of these were memorable or scary. They seemed to be more of an afterthought for this year. They could've done alot with a few of the scare zones such as Silent Hill. They could've added more monsters/characters from Silent Hill and incorporated that into the zone but instead, all there was was Pyramid Head, a few Nurses and the Bogeyman, and there just little to no wisps of fog, which barely qualifies as a "zone." As for Klownz, they could've packed up their big top and hit the road to some other town and have The Walking Dead invade the street (which would've been a good transition from the house to the scare zone. You could've done alot with the WD property.)

1/10

OVERALL

This was fun year for HHN, but just not the best one in my opinion. HHN Hollywood still offers high-quality mazes, with lighting, music, props, and special effects. It kind of feels as if they placed new titles on some of the old mazes. This year was a 'baby step better,' and what I mean by that is that we had something different down the Mummy queue (since that property has been known for houses with scenes of people being tortured, body parts and blood splatters), a video game based haunted house, a sequel house, and a zombie house. My main concern is that as the years go on, HHN will become more and more of the same with recurring themes, scenery, and scares. I'm getting so used to the formula that Hollywood has been using, which is the distraction scare, "sound-and-strobe light" scare, that it just becomes predictable and it seems to being the typical monster popping out of a dark corner and the hanging bodies don't do anything to me anymore, it's just "whatever." And I also notice the same gags that they have done such as a person being cut in half or seeing someone having the face peeled off and I'm not kidding, I seen them do those gags every, single year. I really hope that in the next coming years, HHN becomes more innovative with their scare tactics and try something different for a change and not overuse a scent for the entire house (Man, TCM smelled awful in there because of that.)

Also, what I notice is that HHN never creates a complete atmosphere of their haunt across the park as the scare zones are isolated to certain areas of the park and they don't put any effort into dressing them up and there are certain areas where it just felt empty.

So that's my review of HHN Hollywood 2012 and I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for your time.

Edited October 29, 2012 by Kreepshowtosh

[DTH316]

Few things:

- You forgot some grades to these mazes! Some I'm not entirely sure if you liked or not haha, other than TT, which is obvious you hated haha

- I've been going to HHN since 2007 as well but I don't know if I'd call myself a veteran. Even going to Knotts since 2000 and it doesn't seem right saying I'm a veteran to that haunt yet either considering the many amount of years prior to that I haven't seen. I guess it depends. I see a HHN veteran as someone who's gone to at least one pre-hiatus year and 2006. Some may see something early as 07/08 as a post-hiatus veteran, which isn't a very long time, but if that were the case, I suppose 2007 would qualify. In two years, I'll think about calling myself an HHN veteran. As for Knotts, I don't think I'll even care to have that title anymore considering how I've sadly given up hope on it. This is all not a knock to you personally, but just something I've noticed fans in the Haunt community saying, so I thought I'd bring it up here.

- I too have noticed the same gags HHN has been doing for the last 6 years but in no way would I say that's a negative thing considering Knotts has been doing the same thing for the last 13, that I know of, and probably longer. In the long span of things, we have to remember that 7 years since restarting makes HHN still a baby/child. I mean, in 20 years, I doubt I'll be thinking, "gee, 20 years ago they did the same thing over and over again!" Instead, I'm sure I'll be thinking, "I remember when HHN was just starting out and was learning their groove with some tactics over and over again, which we don't see anymore." Or at least I hope I'll be saying that haha

- There was a hanging meat hook scene. It was the scene where the girl was in the freezer and Leatherface was cutting up someone on a table. The girl was a lame animatronic, but it was there nonetheless.

Anywho, a lot of things I gotta agree with you on and overall, this was a very good review!

[Kreepshowtosh]

Alright, here you go, here are the grades I can give.

Edited October 23, 2012 by Kreepshowtosh

[Arsik_22]

Don't think going since 07' qualifies as a veteran, but besides that good review. lol

And also, in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre maze, they do have the scene with the girl hanging from the meat hook.

[Kreepshowtosh]

Alright, I'll change the word "veteran" to "fan." I hope that makes you happy. Here you go, I just changed it. ^