Oysterhead00 Posted October 3, 2016 Share Posted October 3, 2016 Just got home after getting up at 4am to catch our flight so it's going to be a random and spoiler free review. First statement that many will disagree with: The houses were BETTER this year than last year. Scarezones looked pretty good this year, but were a bit lacking. American Horror Story. I didn't start watching it until we week before we left so only made it through like 10 episodes of Freakhouse but the house was AMAZING. Tons of Scares throughout. By far my favorite house of the event. Consistently awesome all 4 times we went through it and it was the overwhelming favorite of everybody in my group. Tomb of the Ancients. Just a really cool cramped house....yank the vines/ropes in the beginning. Ghost Town. AMAZING sets, but a little lacking on the scares. And those rumors about no guns in the houses this year? Not so much. Halloween II. There are a shit ton of Michael Myers in this house! At least 40 regular ones, plus ones with unique names....just based on seeing signs for the boo holes with character names like "Michael Myers #29 & #30" on the tour. That might be for both casts so it could be half the number...or it could be a dual scare area and counts as 2. Not sure. But even if the numbers were cut in half, there are at least 25. I was soooooo underwhelmed by this house the first time through, but my 2 friends (others hadn't flown in yet) LOVED it. I just missed all the scares. The following 3 times through were great. TCM. Visually stunning, the Leatherfaces are HUGE and great! The other scares are a bit weak/generic. The ending of the house is AMAZING with the "window" and other stuff I won't get into to keep this spoiler free. Krampus. Loved the house even though it didn't come close to meeting my expectations. From the UTH Tour we learned A&D wanted to have the front facade have the snowmen and Krampus on the roof of the house, but it just couldn't be done in Shrek. You walk in and the house is only like 5-10 feet in front of you so your viewing perspective is too narrow to do much. Oh, and the gingerbread men have little asses on them. Also, the tour was amazing since there is a RIDICULOUS amount of detail that you couldn't possibly see in the dark even if you went through the house 100 times. Chance. I LOVE 3D houses, but this was pretty boring. The 3D effects are much better this year, but it wasn't all that interesting...until Sat night. For whatever reason, we missed most of the scares every other time and there were only like 2 or 3 Chances at the end of the house. But Sat night, it seemed like there were twice the scareactors as other nights and it was actually quite enjoyable. Exorcist. This house was great...but lacked scares or we just missed them. Also, from the UTH Tour we learned that something was supposed to be moving during the events, but it was just stationary each time we saw it. It was good, but lacked the scares. That's not in the order of preference, just in the order they came to my head. Also, heard a LOT of people bad mouthing Bill & Ted this year which shocked me. I LOVED it! The last few years I've only gotten like 25-50% of the pop culture references (I'm 42 so I know that's the reason why, not that the references were bad or anything) but I got 95% of them this year (didn't know who the hell the weird sunglasses / goggle guy was) and thought it was great. A fair amount of cursing and some pretty risque jokes had it feeling like it did when we first started going almost 15 years ago. Last but not least, THANK GOD they took the flashlights away from the ushers! I think we only saw one the whole event. My friend even went the wrong way at one turn and a scareactor just told him "GET OUT!". Ha ha ha. Part of this might be due to the crowds...the lines seemed REALLY short this year. AHS and TWD get ridiculous, but with express we never waited more than 20min even when AHS was 120 minutes. Some houses we literally walked right in when the waits were between 15-40 min. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
criticalanalysis Posted October 3, 2016 Share Posted October 3, 2016 THANK GOD they took the flashlights away from the ushers! I definitely saw one. They had a cast change that took a bit so we were the first group to go through the house when it re-started. Felt like cattle being ushered through and one guy was waving the light way too much. Good review! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oysterhead00 Posted October 4, 2016 Author Share Posted October 4, 2016 Oops, just realized I forgot TWD. It was actually quite good this year. Lots of good scares and the set pieces were awesome. It wasn't just a rehash like everybody thought it was, but a "retelling" and it really worked. The house was a bit on the darkside so I completely missed a whole room the first time through...it was a cool set piece with a zombie but it was just too damn dark. Saw it the 2 other times we went through though. Seemed like it had more traditional boo scares this year and less of the wandering around zombies that would periodically scare random people. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts