HHNManics Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 (edited) So I decided I would finally join HorrorNightNightmares. And can give my opinion on Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood 2016 last night! Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood 2016 (9/17) Review: Early Entry: So we arrived just a little bit early around 3pm and decided to hang out. They then let us in at 4pm. We decided we would just go get our Front of the Line Credentials and go eat. Waited in line to go to the backlot around 5pm. They let us in at 6pm. We did the everything in this order American Horror Story - Krampus - Freddy Vs Jason - The Exorcist - Halloween Hell Comes To Haddonfield - Eli Roth Presents Terror Tram - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Blood Brothers - Jabbawockeez - The Purge Gaunlet of Fear - The Walking Dead - Then Left. Got everything done with Front of the Line by 9:40pm. Okay so let's start. (Keep in mind also I will be rating this mazes in best to worst even if I loved each and every one of this mazes which I did I still feel as though giving a grade is apporiate). Mazes (Best To Least): 1. "The Exorcist" - So yeah I do very share a unpopular Opinion. But I think the negative reviews from employee preview night was because it wasn't opening. People will be very diversed on this maze. For me this was the best of the maze of the night and let me tell you why. I just loved every second of it. From the opening room to the last room it was fantastic. This truly has some of the best scares in my entire life and I don't consider myself a screamer but man it was terrifying! The Costume Design was fantastic! Pazuzu looked exactly like from the film. A lot of the bedroom scenes were great. Also it was also good that all of the effects were working when I went in. The Set Design is also really Amazing! Although it does have a lot of black walls I don't mind them if they are used in a good way and not randomly. Overall I really did love Exorcist it was a fantastic house and I can't wait to see what everyone else thinks of it! Maze Design: 5 Out Of 5 Costume Design: 5 Out of 5 Scare Rating: 5 Out of 5 Grade: A+ 2. "Freddy Vs Jason" - If I had one word to describe it would be energetic. This maze has a lot of energy. It is a very much fun maze with great scare actors. The Friday the 13th bit of the maze was really great! But I really just loved the "Nightmare on Elm Street" Portion of the maze. That was great! As I was saying it was energetic there are a ton of scare actors in the maze. Speaking of Scares the Scares in here absolutely Great! There is more of a Freddy maze than a Jason maze which I loved. The Sets are incredible! And look directly from the film. And the costumes is the icing on the top which are fantastic. These next few mazes may not deserve this grades but I had too much fun in this Maze! Maze Design: 5 Out of 5 Costume Design: 5 Out of 5 Scare Rating: 4.5 Out of 5 Grade: A+ 3. "Halloween Hell Comes To Haddonfield" - Let me tell you I was not expecting it to top last year's maze but it did! There are so many great moments in this maze that it is unbelievable. First off all of the Kills from "Halloween 2" are in the maze. All of them are Great! The Scares are off the charts as usual the scares are fantastic! The Set Design was really Amazing and it exactly like the film. The Costume Design doesn't look exactly like the Michael Myers Mask but it looks good! What really sells this maze to me is the ending. The Ending is amazing and the best from this year. The first room has all these neon pumpkins and has a slow motion version playing of "Mr Sandman" which was great! Then you enter a pumpkin and encounter Michael Myers one last time before exiting. The Smell of the maze is great which at the end smelt great because it smelt like Pumpkin Spice. Overall "Halloween Hell Comes To Haddonfield" is a achievement in Mazes and will be loved for the reminder of the event! Maze Design: 5 Out of 5 Scare Rating: 5 Out of 5 Costume Design: 4.5 Out of 5 Grade: A+ 4. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Blood Brothers" - Hearing about the rumors of "The Conjuring" originally suppose to be in this venue and got changed last minute by Tcm really worried me about the maze. But thankfully I was proven wrong. The Maze is Amazing! The Scares in here are absolutely Fantastic! While I didn't get scared it was quite entertaining to watch the group in front of us scream at every Scare. The Costume Design was also really fantastic as well! The Maze Design is really great! Although at a few scenes it didn't look the greatest it was good! But what sells this maze to me is the soundtrack. It has this weird trippy Soundtrack that really helps with the tone of the maze and is great! Overall "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Blood Brothers" was really fantastic! Maze Design: 4 Out of 5 Scare Rating: 5 Out of 5 Costume Design: 5 Out of 5 Grade: A+ 5. "Krampus" - Krampus was really amazing! But isn't one of the best or a favorite of mine but I still loved. With myself loving "Dark Christmas" Scare Zone I would wonder what they would do next with "Krampus" and so they decided to do a maze on the really good film. The Costume Design is amazing and looks directly from the film! The Maze Design is absolutely amazing as well and probably one of the visually best mazes this year! And the scares were Meh people didn't get scared and I didn't either. Overall "Krampus" isn't really all that Scary but everything kind of makes up for it. Maze Design: 5 Out of 5 Scare Rating: 3 Out of 5 Costume Design: 5 Out of 5 Grade: A 6. "American Horror Story" - Look I love "American Horror Story" and these maze has great moments but was one of the more weaker ones. If you are a fan of the show you will love this maze because it has scenes you remember and little easter eggs that are cool to seek. The Maze Design is also one of the best this year it is fantastic! The Costume Design is also really Amazing as well. The Scares are good not great but good. However the flaws I have are 2 the facade which is the most lazy and frustrating facades I have ever seen in my entire life. And the Freak Show segment being the best one but also being way too short. Overall "American Horror Story" was amazing and was a great maze but has its flaws. Maze Design: 5 Out of 5 Costume Design: 4 Out of 5 Scare Rating: 3.5 Out of 5 Grade: A- 7. "The Walking Dead" - Yes I am including this and I know this is kind of a easy target but I really do like this Maze and I think it is good. It's kind of the same old and same old with new scares and darker lighting. It was a nice addition to the attraction making the scares pretty great! The Costume Design looks good at times and also looks kind of poor at times. The Set Design is pretty amazing! It still does face the issue of being short and compared to the other mazes it doesn't hold up. But Overall "The Walking Dead" is still a great maze that is worth checking out! Maze Design: 4 Out of 5 Scare Rating: 4 Out of 5 Costume Design: 3 Out of 5 Grade: B+ Scare Zone: The Purge Election Year - At the start I had high hopes for this Scare Zone since all the other Purge Scare Zones in the past have been getting better each and every year. And to be honest this is basically a very large park round "Dark Christmas" Quality Scare Zone. Really it was astounding! The Costume Design was Fantastic! With a lot of creativity put into the costumes! The Scares Rating is really amazing all of the scare actors are great! The Set Design is really also Amazing! Same with Costumes a lot of creativity was put into this props and sets. They even had a short mini maze in the Parsian Courtyard titled "The Purge Gaunlet of Fear" which is kind of a preview of what "The Purge" would look like as a maze. Which was fantastic and was more of a mixture between the first film and "Anarchy" than all three films. So yes I'm very happy to say that the Scare zone was amazing! And Overall "The Purge Election Year" is amazing! Set Design: 5 Out of 5 Scare Rating: 4.5 Out of 5 Costume Design: 5 Out of 5 Grade: A+ Show: "Jabbawockeez" - Say what you will about last year's show but I was one of the few that I actually liked it. It has flaws and isn't great. But was pretty good last year as a first year show. This year beats last year's show a lot and is pretty great! I'm happy to say that they were able to improve what they could! The Show is a bit more horror based at the start but loses it quickly unfortunately but glad it was there. The Soundtrack and Songs were a lot better than last year with none of them bothering me. The Plot is a bit more straightforward but again loses track every once and a while also unfortunately. But actually had some pretty cool narration going on this year. There was actually more humor in this year's show and to my surprise a lot of it was crude humor! I was really happy to see Crude Humor at HHN again because we haven't seen it since 2013. You have to realize that they are slowly growing at HHN so yeah it will have some flaws. So Overall "Jabbawockeez" was pretty Great and was an improvement over last year's show! Grade: A- Terror Tram: "Eli Roth Presents Terror Tram" - So we can say that the Terror Tram for 2011 - 2015 wasn't a good time for HHN. Having no plot, no real changes, and no scares made the terror tram stale in those years. I'm happy to say that trend didn't continue to this year and Terror Tram was pretty Fantastic. The Scares are Really Great! The Costume Design had creativity and was amazing! The Set Design was also Amazing! This year had a much more straight forward plot with some really interesting things happening. The Small Scenes of Scare actors doing things to people (which I believe started last year) improved greatly! The Terror Tram avoided the dirt tram making it more short but different. My only flaw is that there are some scenes that are quite dull or stale. But Overall "Eli Roth Presents Terror Tram" was pretty Fantastic and a massive improvement over previous years! Set Design: 5 Out of 5 Scare Rating: 4.5 Out of 5 Costume Design: 4.5 Out of 5 Grade: A Overall Review: So Overall this is probably the best year of HHN I have ever been to! With every single house being on a scale of "Great - Masterpiece" there was something pretty for everyone. I loved HHN 2016 and it truly cannot be missed! It may not deserve this grade but in my books it does. Grade: A+ Edited September 18, 2016 by HHNManics 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HailtotheKingBaby Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 Thanks for the review Daydreamer! We are going next Saturday night and are really excited. I saw from previous posts that the regular lines were super long last night, but looks like the FOL worked out well. What is the average wait on those? Another question, did they actually let you in the park at 4 via Early entry before making you go down to the lower lot and lining up? I so, could you actually do some rides while waiting? I appreciate the details - we are coming from Kansas and have only 1 shot so I want to master all the tips/tricks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HHNManics Posted September 18, 2016 Author Share Posted September 18, 2016 9 minutes ago, HailtotheKingBaby said: I saw from previous posts that the regular lines were super long last night, but looks like the FOL worked out well. What is the average wait on those? Another question, did they actually let you in the park at 4 via Early entry before making you go down to the lower lot and lining up? I so, could you actually do some rides while waiting? I Recommend going to the backlot doing "American Horror Story" first and doing everything else in whatever order you want in the backlot. Then coming back from the backlot to do "The Exorcist". I'm not even sure if they were supposed to let us in at 3 or 4pm Lol! We got in you go to the big tower near "The Walking Dead" they do guest relations there and you give them your FOL printed out ticket and they give you your Credentials. You don't have to go to the backlot or lower lot they don't force you but it is your choice. You can do some rides while waiting for them to open the gates to let in people but I would recommend doing rides once you are doing everything that is Exclusive to HHN 2016 such as the Mazes, Shows, and Terror Tram. I would just recommend lining up near "Exorcist" at 5pm. Once 5:15pm or 5:30pm they let you in and you have the choice of going right to "The Exorcist" and to go in either General Admission line or FOL line. Or you go left and you wait to go through the tunnel to go the backlot. The longest I had to in a FoL was 3 Minutes Lol! The Average for FoL is 1-3 Minutes. Yeah but I had fun that's my recommendation hope you have fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HailtotheKingBaby Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 Thanks so much for the info! We have gone the last 2 years and bought day/night tickets then leveraged early entry to get everything in. However, it was a Sunday night both times and this year we can only go on a Saturday night. After seeing those wait times and learning that the day/night tix don't let you in until 2pm, I'm really thinking about getting the FOL tix and getting there as early as possible. So, what did you do to get in that early? Were they letting everyone in the Early entry line go in or did you just show your FOL printed tix at one of the gates and say you needed your credentials? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HHNManics Posted September 18, 2016 Author Share Posted September 18, 2016 18 minutes ago, HailtotheKingBaby said: So, what did you do to get in that early? Were they letting everyone in the Early entry line go in or did you just show your FOL printed tix at one of the gates and say you needed your credentials? We got there around 3:20pm and waited in line near by the main gate. They gave us wristbands and let us in. I'm not sure about everyone else. But no I didn't show them the printed ticket but I did ask them where we can get our Credentials. They give you orange wristbands to go in early at 4pm and then you go to the big tower near "The Walking Dead" with Guest Relations and you show them you tickets and they give you your Credentials. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTH316 Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 We essentially had the same opinion on every maze! Haha 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AsylumSB Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 Nice review and great synopses for each attraction. I have seen at least three different depictions of early entry with yours being similar to what I encountered last year. Saturday cannot come soon enough! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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