Final Thoughts on HHN22

[foREVer56]

SO, i was able to attend the event 6 times this year, more than i've ever been able to go in one year( most i've done prior is 2). As the event rolled out, i came to appreciate some things more than i first did, some less. What appeared to be a pretty "meh" year at first turned out pretty damn fun. Not the best HHN i've been to (last year takes the cake), but definitely not the worst (07-09 are the holders of that position). Not a throw-away year, even with the excessive amount of IPs and the TWD overload.

Houses(in order of favorite to least favorite)

1. Gothic (original placement: 1) My first visit through the Cathedral left my jaw dropping and a huge smile on my face. my last visit wasn't any less spectacular either. Absolutely AWESOME house. Some amazing set design in here. The scares were always there and consistent and i only saw people either laughing and smiling coming out of this house or on the verge of tears (no joke. i saw a few people come out of here all but sobbing). The music and sound effects played throughout the house set a great tone for the setting and that mixed with the lighting made it the most Atmospheric house for me this year. Noteworthy scenes:

-Opening scene- both SAs in this room got excellent scares all 10 of my run throughs. the one on the right got me a few times as there was 2 or 3 slots in-between(pun intended) the sheets and i had forgotten which one he was in O.o the one on the left use his e-prompt to his advantage and got some damn good scares.

-Bell Tower- 2 Quasimodos in here did a great job of being intimidating and made a few people book it out of here on some of my visits. not really a great hiding spot for the one on the right behind the bell, but he made it work.

-Candles- The flying one in here made for a great distraction for the air puff at the end to scare the shit out of people. He also got some scares himself. i LOVE the effect in this room. When the gargoyle would start to fly to the other side, the candles began to dim from the back of the room forward, and when it reached the end, the air cannon went off. Real neat.

-Stilt/dropdoor scene- Stilt actor was real cool looking and scared a good amount of people. TALL. The dropdoor and the one adjacent to him always sent people charging out of here. One runthough had a group of 4 teen girls stop moving for almost a minute then they just booked it through the next 3 scenes. loved it. did the dropdoor break or something? cuz halfway through the event, the actor would just sit in the opening.

-Cathedral-one of my all time favorite scenes in HHN history. The cathedral looked incredible and it really looked like it was down 30 ft below you. The SA in the hole on the right scared almost everyone as they were distracted by the breathtaking view "below" them. That damn ceiling actor at the end of the room is my favorite in the house. scared EVERYONE including me most of the times. He even gave me a pat on my back my last runthough .

-Star room- I love the Flying gargoyle in here. How it looks like he flies through the night sky is awesome. the grounded one got a lot of scares due to this distraction.

-bungee/finale- love the bungee effect. it goes pitch black and all of a sudden the gargoyle's in your face. the one adjacent with the 2 holes on either side of the curtain made a great way to end the house.

All in all an amazing experience and a true classic.

runs: 10

Original Grade: A+. New grade: A+

2. Penn and Teller Newkd Las Vegas(original placement: 2) real fun house to walk through that had a great blend of scares and fun rooms. Loved the videos of Penn talking throughout the house and the queue video was AWESOME. Glad i finally got to catch it my last run of the house. I like how they made the 3D glasses pertain to the storyline of the house, saying their "radiation shields" (MUCH more stylish than a big old hazmat suit). Memorable scenes:

-Poker Chip-scare on the right was greatly placed and the showgirl on the right was....interesting .

-Seizure Palace- SAs in here always got me(might've been partially due to me trying to find the non-existent GATs on the slot machines, but still ). The arches at the end of the room looked really cool.

-Christmas lights of terror- first reaction by every single person i brought through this house: Holy Shit. probaly the coolest and most disorienting rooms i've seen at the event. and its such a simple room on top of that! just Christmas lights and mirrors! VERY effective scares in here, with the actors blending to the lights with the costumes, even while having different colored lights. it was hard to identify them.

-buffet- The effects didn't really work at scaring anyone since they were nonstop, but they were a great distraction for the amazing chef at the end of the hallway that got some damn good scares out of me.

-finale clowns- real funny effect to it. If you hit it right, it got an awesome scare out of you.

Great, fun house. Probably my favorite humor house to date.

runs: 7

Original Grade: A. New Grade: A.

3. Universal's House of Horrors(original Placement: 6) wow. I was majorly impressed at how this house improved and progressed as the event went on. Turned into the scariest house of the event. The actors weren't given much and they made it work damn well with what they had to start with. blacklight effect worked real well in getting scares and it was dark enough to hide the actors until they were in your face. Memorable scenes:

-Wolfman- great scare in here. they would sit behind the tree at the end while it was dark and then use their lighting effect to haul ass over to the other side and scare the shit out of the people entering the room. then they'd scare the rest on the way back to their reset spot. got some awesome scares out of me.

-Bride of Dracula- the Brides went in and out of each hole so fast it was hard to tell where they would be next (no pun intende-well, maybe slightly intended). Their husband's hallway that followed led to a great scare at the end with Dracula himself. Loved how the end of the hallway made it look like it kept going on.

-Mummy Tunnel- not effective scare-wise, but fun to be able to duck through a tunnel, which we've never done at HHN before. The mummy at the end, however, got some great ones.

Charging Frankonly got to see the full scene 3 times, but it was friggin AWESOME. favorite scene for scares this year. one sceond he's behind the wood plank and the next he's right in your damn face. made for some great scares.

-finale-favorite finale this year. Nice scares from both sides by all monsters. i even got lost once lol.

Real scary house and turned out to be one of the better ones, even after only having 2-3 weeks to build/setup.

runs: 8

Original Grade: B-. New Grade: A

4. Dead End(original placement: 4) The house is incredibly well designed and definitely has the most detail out of all the houses, but it wasn't very memorable for me. It was great and a pleasure to walk through, but i didn't have the desire to go through again a little to quickly. Very creepy feeling house. Felt old and run down. Some great scares throughout. Memorable scenes:

-staircase scene- great scare here and it looked real cool.

-bathroom- Great scare behind the tub and the mirror in front of the sink.

-bookshelf- flying books above were real neat and the hands reaching in got some good scares.

-pepper's ghost effect- REAL neat effect that got me good a few times.

-Wrong Side of The Bed- while i find the room itself pointless, the scare under the bed got me and my sister good a few times.

I don't remember too much about this house unfortunately. This can somewhat be blamed on the fact i only did the house 3 times, but i remember stuff from houses i've only done once or twice. It was fun to walk through and it felt really creepy and there were some great scares throughout the house.

runs: 3

Original Grade: A. New Grade: A-

5. Alice Cooper: Welcome To My Nightmare(original placement: 7) while this house was never really great, it was always fun to walk through. Never got any scares, however. I never liked how this house was set up. The actors are way too out in the open to do any thing and most rooms are pointless.

X-ray scene-out in the open nurse hanging over a dead body. Felt very Hollywood in terms of scare design and not very effective to me.

Stripper scene-Nice to have the stripper as a great distraction to the scare on the righ- oh wait, THERE IS NONE. what's the point of having the stripper if she's not a distraction?! Sure the ceiling scare afterwards is good, but the actual room was pointless.

Kitchen- Mom just walking back and forth doing nothing. The dad gets a good scare at the end, but the actual kitchen has nothing to scare you.

Morgue The same setup as X-Ray accept with Alice. The scene was stupid the first time. Why bring it back?

Now, The No More Mister Nice Guy hallway, School's Out and Finale were all great scenes, however. Overall, a fun house to walk through, but fails in design(like 2 of the other IPs)

runs: 5

Original Grade: C- New Grade: C

6. The Walking Dead(original placement: 5) my real good runthough my first time was sadly the only great run i had all season. Scares really lacked after that first run, and even then they weren't very strong. While the house looked nice and recreated the scenes nicely from the show, definitely could've and should've been better than it was. i never really liked zombies to begin with, but HOS proved that zombies can definitely be scary with Zombie Mortuary. This house wasn't. While there's a few rooms that stand out (sheriff and one adjacent doors, rooftop), most lacked real bad:

-dept. store- nowhere for either zombie to hide. even for a small room it was too open for the SAs to do any kind of scaring.

The part with 2-3 zombies just eating a dead corpse was stupid. No one was scaring and they didn't serve as a distraction.

-Barn- major fail. no chance of anyone scaring and they didn't do much to try and scare anyone either.

-gauntlet- all SAs were completely visible before you got to the hole, so they didn't get many scares. while i like the idea behind it, it failed in execution.

Overall, not a very great, memorable house and a MAJOR disappointment for being the flagship of the event.

runs: 4

Original Grade: B. New Grade: C-

7. Welcome To Silent Hill(original placement: 4) This house felt...different to me. I don't know how i can describe it. It was fun to walk through and there were good scares throughout, but something about this house just feels peculiar to me. It doesn't feel like a normal HHN house to me for some reason. The smell is probably my favorite part of this house. Some nicely designed rooms, but plenty of crap rooms:

Nurse room of Fail biggest gripe about this house is the Nurse room. such a big, open room with 1. single. actor. what even. there's 3-4 nurse mannequins and The Alessa mannequin on top of the staircase. For what reason? there should've been 3-4 actors in there with that big of a room and they shouldn't be pushed to the side like the 1 actor in there.

Opening Scene the monster on the right just moves around without any real opportunity to scare anyone until the cop comes along, and even that isn't very successful

Second bathroom-such a big room with that one actor on the left in a box and no other actor up there to scare along with him. The ones on the left do fine, but the giant bathroom with a single actor distraction is pretty pointless.

Pyramid Head(including sword hallway)-first off, sword effect. While real cool when you do catch it, a good 90% of the people that went through that house probably never saw it, as it's incredible easy to just walk past as its so high and out of clear sight. Now the actual PHead room(s). They had one walking back and forth between 2 rather large rooms and is somewhat easy to miss. Not to mention he's not holding his sword, like he should have been. There also definitely should've been more than just one. the actors adjacent to PHead got some good scares, but were too far away from the conga and too easily visible to get great scares consistently.

Toy room-scares seriously lacked here as well. can't really scare someone when they can see you're hiding behind an open door in plain sight too far back from the conga line to do anything.

the only scene i really enjoyed was the finale. It gave some great scares from the nurses, but i really wished Robbie the Rabbit was an actor, as that would've been an awesome, creepy as hell scare(although him just standing there was still creepy). Overall, not horrible, but not great.

runs: 6

Original Grade: A. New Grade: C-

Original House rankings:

1. Gothic

2. P&T

3. DE

4. SH

5. TWD

6. HoH

7. AC

New House rankings:

1. Gothic

2. P&T

3. HoH

4. DE

5. AC

6. TWD

7. SH

Original Event Grade: B+ New Grade: B+

Edited November 4, 2012 by foREVer56

[WESKER69]

5. Alice Cooper: Welcome To My Nightmare(original placement: 7) while this house was never really great, it was always fun to walk through. Never got any scares, however. I never liked how this house was set up. The actors are way too out in the open to do any thing and most rooms are pointless.

X-ray scene-out in the open nurse hanging over a dead body. Felt very Hollywood in terms of scare design and not very effective to me.

Stripper scene-Nice to have the stripper as a great distraction to the scare on the righ- oh wait, THERE IS NONE. what's the point of having the stripper if she's not a distraction?! Sure the ceiling scare afterwards is good, but the actual room was pointless.

Kitchen- Mom just walking back and forth doing nothing. The dad gets a good scare at the end, but the actual kitchen has nothing to scare you.

Morgue The same setup as X-Ray accept with Alice. The scene was stupid the first time. Why bring it back?

Now, The No More Mister Nice Guy hallway, School's Out and Finale were all great scenes, however. Overall, a fun house to walk through, but fails in design(like 2 of the other IPs)

runs: 5

Original Grade: C- New Grade: C

okay... time to make corrections & point things out to you...

1- X-Ray is "scene 1" with the straight jacket wearing Stevens. The nurse was in the medical room which is Scene 2. As for her being behind the body, thats not exactly a Hollywood-esque "scare". We've had plenty of those type of scenes in the past. Would it have been better if she could pace back-n-forth between the doorway & the body? of course. And since the song playing in Scene 2 is "Poison", you could say that the syringe stuck in the Nurse's victim is a lethal injection.

2 - Steven's mother did more than just walk back & forth. She had an eprom, when triggered she'd turn around quickly for her scare and also reveal the Showman Alice outside the kitchen window.

3 - The Morgue (was similar to scene 2, not scene 1) was not stupid. If you paid attention to the scene, Alice was ripping out the heart of his victim... and he also had the ability to spray you with blood/bodily fluids. I've seen both Morgue guys get pretty aggressive with lunging at people or shoving the heart towards people. of course Cast A's Alice preferred to spray me most of the time.

While "Feed My Frankenstein" is such a dirty song, part of the lyrics say "hungry for love"... so one could interpret that as why Alice is removing his victim's heart... not the best interpretation, but it works.

[JDW]

7. Welcome To Silent Hill(original placement: 4) This house felt...different to me. I don't know how i can describe it. It was fun to walk through and there were good scares throughout, but something about this house just feels peculiar to me. It doesn't feel like a normal HHN house to me for some reason.

Very Much Agree. i had such high hopes for this one and it just felt... lacking... Yet I can't really point to anything in th house that makes it overall fail... Unless its the lighting. Way too freaking light in the house.

[foREVer56]

okay... time to make corrections & point things out to you...

1- X-Ray is "scene 1" with the straight jacket wearing Stevens. The nurse was in the medical room which is Scene 2. As for her being behind the body, thats not exactly a Hollywood-esque "scare". We've had plenty of those type of scenes in the past. Would it have been better if she could pace back-n-forth between the doorway & the body? of course. And since the song playing in Scene 2 is "Poison", you could say that the syringe stuck in the Nurse's victim is a lethal injection.

2 - Steven's mother did more than just walk back & forth. She had an eprom, when triggered she'd turn around quickly for her scare and also reveal the Showman Alice outside the kitchen window.

3 - The Morgue (was similar to scene 2, not scene 1) was not stupid. If you paid attention to the scene, Alice was ripping out the heart of his victim... and he also had the ability to spray you with blood/bodily fluids. I've seen both Morgue guys get pretty aggressive with lunging at people or shoving the heart towards people. of course Cast A's Alice preferred to spray me most of the time.

While "Feed My Frankenstein" is such a dirty song, part of the lyrics say "hungry for love"... so one could interpret that as why Alice is removing his victim's heart... not the best interpretation, but it works.

1. Woops lol. It didnt work real well whenever i went through as she only stood there just looking at people.

2. I never saw her use a eprom or go for a scare period.

3. Same feelings as scene 2.

Obviously with your 40+ runs and my 5, youve seen a LOT more than i have. But in my runs, i didnt really favor those particular scenes very much.

Very Much Agree. i had such high hopes for this one and it just felt... lacking... Yet I can't really point to anything in th house that makes it overall fail... Unless its the lighting. Way too freaking light in the house.

I enjoyed walking through it for the feel of the house. It was still fun to walk through, but there was way too many scenes that didnt do much and were designed pretty badly that hinders my opinion on it.

But yes, WAY too damn light.