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In retrospect, anyone think this year was weak?


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Absolutely. My friends and I felt this way at the end of last season. I've been going ten years and 24 was easily the most underwhelming in terms of houses. Halloween deserves the praise it has received and I loved it as well (although I wonder if it's greatness was exaggerated due to the fact that it had no competition...nah, it was that good!) The fact that my brother and I have to really stop and think to remember what houses were last year, when I can easily remember houses from three-four years ago, says something about the weak lineup that was 24.

Although i will say that going into 24 we expected this, and I'm sure others had similar thoughts, thinking that A&D was probably saving their good ideas for 25.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I definitely thought the event was better than it was while it was still going on last year, but yes, I've come to think it wasn't as good as I originally thought. I don't think it was weak, as I enjoyed all the houses and loved The Purge and MASKerade, but my biggest issue was that outside of Halloween, the event was aggressively NOT scary. I mean, the event's never been terrifying; but I only legit jumped in ONE house. FDTD was a lot of fun, TWD was great but bored me out really quickly due to the excessive use of zombies, AvP is the biggest disappointment in HHN history imo, Drac had nice sets but not much merit, Giggles was a lot of fun, Dollhouse was my favorite as it was incredibly creepy and decent on scares, and Roanoke was a great campy house-but that's not what it was meant to be. Halloween was SCARY. It was a phenomenal house.

B&T last year is one of my favorites ever, alongside Hollywood's impeccable 2012 show. The final B&T last year had me literally tearing up from laughter. So I'll agree scarewise, it was probably the weakest year I've seen in the past 11 years. But overall, I still really enjoyed the event. It does seem like they listened and upped the ante scare wise this year, which is great.

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Halloween and Dollhouse of the Damned were great. Halloween is my current favorite house of all time. I thought last year's Bill & Ted was better than this year. I think The Purge was a great scare zone and Bayou of Blood had potential ruined by the event's sissification. However the middle houses were just okay, AVP was a major disappointment to me because the Xenomorphs are so terrifying to me but the house wasn't scary. It was cool as hell, but not scary. From Dusk Till Dawn was one of my least favorite houses of all time.

In general, HHN24 was a solid year and it was a step in the right direction for the event. Actual scare zones alone made it a good step forward.

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I definitely thought it was weak. In some respects, I think it was actually worse than 23.

23 at least had some ambition with the whole "What Evil Has Taken Root?" thing that got stomped on by Marketing at the last minute. 24 basically gave me the feeling that A&D just gave up and bowed before the higher-ups. Plus, I would say that overall 23 had slightly better houses. AWIL, Cabin, and Evil Dead I thought were all great, and La Llorona was good as well. In 24, Halloween was the only house that really "wow'd" me, with AVP and Dollhouse also being enjoyable. Everything else was either mediocre or terrible.

Sure 24 gave us real scare zones again, but how good were they really? Maskerade had good atmosphere, but not really any scares or guest interactions, and I'd say the same thing for Bayou. The Purge, while good, was certainly no Island Under Siege. And I've seen episodes of Dora the Explorer that were scarier than Face/Off. 

I was pretty much ready to jump ship after 24, but thankfully 25 reignited my interest. While not a complete return-to-form, it was a step in the right direction that I hope they'll keep walking in for next year, as it blew away the past three years easily.

 

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I was pretty much ready to jump ship after 24, but thankfully 25 reignited my interest. While not a complete return-to-form, it was a step in the right direction that I hope they'll keep walking in for next year, as it blew away the past three years easily.

Completely agree. If this year wasn't good I would not have gone to 26. I'll go next year and am curious how it will be. It's not a special year, zombies are even more dead to everyone, they acknowledged the event was softer, etc. By the way, what's your favorite house  and scarezone ever? You've gone six more years than me!

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Completely agree. If this year wasn't good I would not have gone to 26. I'll go next year and am curious how it will be. It's not a special year, zombies are even more dead to everyone, they acknowledged the event was softer, etc. By the way, what's your favorite house  and scarezone ever? You've gone six more years than me!

How did I not notice this post until right now? whoopsie... 

It's kinda hard to narrow it down to just one; but when I think of my favorites, the first things that come to mind are the original versions of Screamhouse, Body Collectors, PsychoScareapy, Castle Vampyr, RUN, as well as Frightanic, Scary Tales III, Dead Exposure, AWIL, the 1999 Psycho house, and The Thing: Assimilation.

As for scarezones, probably Fright Yard, Cemetery Mines, Island Under Siege, War of the Living Dead, Asylum in Wonderland, and Midway of the Bizarre (any version of it) - all scarezones that took an already neat concept and executed it flawlessly. 

 

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are the original versions of Screamhouse

I saw a walkthrough video on YouTube (not the documentary one) and it felt like a Howl-o-Scream house, which is a complement now to HHN I think. There weren't as many people, it wasn't blaringly loud, it was way more intimate and detailed (though less theatrical). Actors weren't relying on triggers like they do now. Add in a creepy atmosphere, queue video, and a genuinely great icon - that's a hell of a combination for a house. Shame they cannot emulate it.

I'd really like to see a house that wasn't as loud. I love loud houses, enjoy the triggers, etc. But something should be said about letting the natural sounds come from it. More ambient sounds.

 Island Under Siege

What did you like about it?  Carnage was in the zone, that would've ruined it for me. Isn't Blood Thunder Alley a better execution of the same concept?

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I saw a walkthrough video on YouTube (not the documentary one) and it felt like a Howl-o-Scream house, which is a complement now to HHN I think. There weren't as many people, it wasn't blaringly loud, it was way more intimate and detailed (though less theatrical). Actors weren't relying on triggers like they do now. Add in a creepy atmosphere, queue video, and a genuinely great icon - that's a hell of a combination for a house. Shame they cannot emulate it.

It certainly made up for the absolutely god-awful Fear Factor house from that same year, lol. As you said, it was definitely a house that relied more on setting the scene and creating build-up. Extremely gruesome imagery, really creative forms of misdirection (that mirror scare...*shudders*), a fantastic and immersive facade, super-intense finale...it was one of the few houses that had me feeling genuinely terrified. Even today there's still a lot of aspects of it that have stuck with me.

What did you like about it?  Carnage was in the zone, that would've ruined it for me. Isn't Blood Thunder Alley a better execution of the same concept?

Not exactly. Blood Thunder Alley was basically just themed as a town ruled by criminals with no opposition; whereas Island Under Siege was a full-out war zone, as the idea of it was that all of the superheroes were killed and the police along with the surviving fragments of SHIELD were all that was left to oppose the villains.

IUS essentially put you right in the middle of a battle that was obviously being lost. Between the crashed police cars, mutilated policemen, flamethrowers, sounds of laser battles in the sky and of the police failing to control the situation, it was pretty dang intense and really gave off a sense of hopelessness that I don't think any other zone has given me in quite the same way. Plus, the scareactors were REALLY on the mark. Really really on the mark.

Carnage I felt was actually pretty well implemented; his kinda cheap-looking costume aside, he gave off an intimidating presence and drove home the idea that good has fallen.  They also made the great decision of using extremely obscure villains in the zone, as otherwise it would've been a big photo-op area which would've ruined the mood.

IUS was altogether an excellent example of taking something that in the wrong hands would've come off as cheesy, and instead making it into a super in-your-face kind of experience that at the same time gave off a chillingly bleak mood. It took the concept of a comic book gone horribly wrong and really ran with it.

2002 overall was probably one of the best years for scarezones, along with 2004, 2005, and 2008. It got really innovative with the idea of doing flipping each of the islands to the exact opposite "evil" versions of themselves; heck, even without using any scareactors they managed to make Seuss unsettling. Plus, it offered a lot of variety in each of its zones, not a single one feeling the same. It's just sad that the houses weren't as well-done that year (Screamhouse and Scary Tales II aside).

 

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