Back to work after a long weekend of HHN (UtH, RIP Tour, Repository). I want to get a longer review in, but a couple of quick hits (and possible spoilers)
Unmasking The Horror Full Day Tour - Still no pics with the Intellectual Properties. That said, US offered a full refund before the tour, and the guides work hard to make sure we got value for our money. Knowing the details, backstory, and thought process behind each house before going through it makes the total experience immeasurably better. We skipped Chance, Walking Dead, and Tomb of the Ancients, but saw the rest. New change - Last time, two years ago, the group had lunch in Monster's Cafe and had about an hour. This time, we left from City Walk's Blue Man Group Theater. Lunch break was from there, and we had about 40 mins. It was enough time to grab something to go, but not a lot of time for lunch overall. We will always do this tour.
HHN Private RIP Tour - Wow! We had a public tour in the past. This time I was able to get a group of 8 to take the tour. Working at a relaxing pace, we did all nine houses twice, plus 3 of them a third time. That's 21 houses from 6:30 pm - 12:30 am, plus multiple breaks, and the Bill & Ted Show.
Top houses included:
* AHS - Did not expect to say that. I always love the premise of each show, but think they generally fall apart and throw too many things at the viewers at once. (Season two: It's an asylum. It's an alien. It's an Angel of Death. It's Man-made monsters. It's a serial killer. It's, it's, it's . . . .) The house, however, was fantastic. It was also the best use of characters we've seen at HHN.
* Exorcist - More creepy than scary, but well done.
* The Walking Dead - The 'best of' approach worked well. The last scene never failed to shine. It also helped that one of our 3 trips through the house was right after a shift change, so we went first with no one in front of us. Very cool experience.
* Halloween II - Lots of Michael Myers kept this house fresh and fun.
* Krampus - The fun house of the year.
The others weren't bad. Overall, a very solid year.
The Repository - What to say, what to say . . . Okay, it may not be worth $50 pp, but I really wanted to experience the first year of it. It was a fun experience, and has a TON of potential. Keeping the spoilers to a minimum:
* It is short. The whole thing was likely 30 mins
* There is about 1/3 VR, and 2/3 interactive haunt. It comes across as an extreme haunt, but really is just a more focused, interactive haunt.
* The pre-VR sections are awesomely well done. Great actors. However, there is really only one very basic puzzle pre-VR, and the actors pretty much did it for us.
* The VR is very cool. The VR is not very scary. There is one part of the VR that can make certain people uneasy, but overall it is nothing to be terrified over.
* As mentioned earlier, there is some very rushed, yelled instructions throughout.
* The endgame was not explained at all.
* That said, we won, with under 10 secs left. Woo hoo!
* I would look into doing it again, but would hope some changes are made and more puzzles are added.
* I'm still glad I did it, and recommend others try it. View it as a jumping off point for future haunts.
The Scare Zones -
* Had fun interacting with Chance's escapees from Shadybrook (although Chance herself didn't impress us much) and the Vamps from Homecoming 1955. Fun zones.
* Survive or Die and Banshee were very similar to past years. Dead Man's Wharf was great looking, but quite small.
Overall, a lot of fun packed into just a few nights.
Steve in Philly
Unmasking The Horror Full Day Tour - Still no pics with the Intellectual Properties. That said, US offered a full refund before the tour, and the guides work hard to make sure we got value for our money. Knowing the details, backstory, and thought process behind each house before going through it makes the total experience immeasurably better. We skipped Chance, Walking Dead, and Tomb of the Ancients, but saw the rest. New change - Last time, two years ago, the group had lunch in Monster's Cafe and had about an hour. This time, we left from City Walk's Blue Man Group Theater. Lunch break was from there, and we had about 40 mins. It was enough time to grab something to go, but not a lot of time for lunch overall. We will always do this tour.
HHN Private RIP Tour - Wow! We had a public tour in the past. This time I was able to get a group of 8 to take the tour. Working at a relaxing pace, we did all nine houses twice, plus 3 of them a third time. That's 21 houses from 6:30 pm - 12:30 am, plus multiple breaks, and the Bill & Ted Show.
Top houses included:
* AHS - Did not expect to say that. I always love the premise of each show, but think they generally fall apart and throw too many things at the viewers at once. (Season two: It's an asylum. It's an alien. It's an Angel of Death. It's Man-made monsters. It's a serial killer. It's, it's, it's . . . .) The house, however, was fantastic. It was also the best use of characters we've seen at HHN.
* Exorcist - More creepy than scary, but well done.
* The Walking Dead - The 'best of' approach worked well. The last scene never failed to shine. It also helped that one of our 3 trips through the house was right after a shift change, so we went first with no one in front of us. Very cool experience.
* Halloween II - Lots of Michael Myers kept this house fresh and fun.
* Krampus - The fun house of the year.
The others weren't bad. Overall, a very solid year.
The Repository - What to say, what to say . . . Okay, it may not be worth $50 pp, but I really wanted to experience the first year of it. It was a fun experience, and has a TON of potential. Keeping the spoilers to a minimum:
* It is short. The whole thing was likely 30 mins
* There is about 1/3 VR, and 2/3 interactive haunt. It comes across as an extreme haunt, but really is just a more focused, interactive haunt.
* The pre-VR sections are awesomely well done. Great actors. However, there is really only one very basic puzzle pre-VR, and the actors pretty much did it for us.
* The VR is very cool. The VR is not very scary. There is one part of the VR that can make certain people uneasy, but overall it is nothing to be terrified over.
* As mentioned earlier, there is some very rushed, yelled instructions throughout.
* The endgame was not explained at all.
* That said, we won, with under 10 secs left. Woo hoo!
* I would look into doing it again, but would hope some changes are made and more puzzles are added.
* I'm still glad I did it, and recommend others try it. View it as a jumping off point for future haunts.
The Scare Zones -
* Had fun interacting with Chance's escapees from Shadybrook (although Chance herself didn't impress us much) and the Vamps from Homecoming 1955. Fun zones.
* Survive or Die and Banshee were very similar to past years. Dead Man's Wharf was great looking, but quite small.
Overall, a lot of fun packed into just a few nights.
Steve in Philly
I guess we should have researched, but to see the cool sets and not see any governor or Negan was almost criminal to add on to the lack of scares. 
and will do-over next year.
