Back from opening night of HHN 19

[Metro West]

Well...another year of Halloween Horror Nights has begun and I wasn't disappointed too much. Let me say from the onset that I didn't get to the Chucky house and I didn't take any pics this time...sorry.

The evening started around 4:15pm when I arrived at CityWalk. It was hot and a little muggy. I saw Purvesal and the Mrs. standing in line for the passholder party. We chatted a bit and since they were waiting in the hot sun, I decided to go on in the park. After having a Grande Mocha Frappuccino from Starbucks I wandered over to the Stay & Scream holding area on Delancey Street. This year it's a lot more crowded since they still have the cars from the Fast & The Furious on display. It takes up one whole side. By about 5:30pm the holding area was pretty crowded. The tickets were scanned by the TM's to make sure everyone was legitimate. I was standing beside this women who was telling anyone in earshot about her cat's urinary tract infection! It was hard not to laugh at her. Anyway...around 5:50pm we were released into the park.

The S & S house this year is The Wolfman with Dracula opening very soon afterwards. I'll give you my opinions a bit later. This the order in which I did the houses: The Wolfman, Dracula, Leave It To Cleaver, Saw, The Spawning, Silver Screams and Frankenstein. In between I stopped for a hot dog and drink and to rest a bit...there is LOTS of walking at HHN and as I stated...it was pretty damned hot. After the last house, I decided to call it a night since I was tired and my feet were killing me. I got my t-shirt and tall shot glass...as I do every year and headed for home.

Here are my opinions on the houses this year. This will probably change as the month goes on but for now...here it is on first impressions:

The Wolfman - excellent themeing...very cold inside...good scares...I would rate this one as a 9 out of 10.

Dracula: Legacy In Blood - excellent themeing...again very cold inside...decent scares...I would rate this one as an 8 out of 10.

Leave It To Cleaver - excellent themeing...very hot since it was outside...corny masks were worn by the scareactors...lots of fun...I would rate this as a 7.5 out of 10.

Saw - decent themeing...very hot...outside house...not enough scares...I was a little let down by this one...I would rate this as a 7 out of 10.

The Spawning - themeing was not great...scareactors wore hokey costumes...decent scares...I won't do this one again. I would rate this as a 3 out of 10.

Silver Screams - decent themeing...decent scares...good storyline...short wait time...overall not bad. I would rate this as a 7 out of 10.

Frankenstein: Creation of the Damned - excellent themeing...decent scares...hokey costumes...freezing cold inside...decent overall. I would rate this as a 6 out of 10.

Here are some other observations on the scarezones: all were pretty weak again this year except for Battle of the Living Dead. Containment was stupid, Apocalypse nothing much going on, Horrorwood Drive in was dead and not in a good way...no one seemed to be doing much, Cirque du Freak was a waste of space and Lights Camera Hacktion was silly.

The Monster Cafe WAS open during HHN so those who were concerned, don't need to be.

Items of note:

The HR3 was running with passengers when I first arrived but then shut down for a while. When it opened back up again there were no passengers. I guess they were testing again.

I did NOT see anyone selling Express Plus passes and lanyards in the holding area this year so I didn't buy one.

I can't think of anything else right now.

If you have any questions, let me know.

BTW...I have a couple of extra maps if anyone needs one.

Thanks for reading!

 

[macraven]

i'm betting on wolfman as a great house this year.


i'm so glad left the light on for you metro so you could make it back here and give us the scoop for the opening night.


how bad were the crowds?
lengthy line waits?

thanks homie for giving us your thoughts on tonight's hhn.
everyone will appreciate your thread.

 

[Metro West]

how bad were the crowds? lengthy line waits?

It was fairly busy tonight but the longest wait I saw was about 50 minutes. I was just too tired and hot to continue so I took off.

 

[Purseval]

I'm also just back. As Metro stated earlier we met outside the entrance but since he was going to S&S and I was going to the Passholder's event we went our separate ways.

The Pasholder's event lets you bring in a guest so we brought in Donaldduck352's kids as our guests, which saved him the cost of the tickets for them They took us into the holding area over by ET. Listen up if you want to do this tomorrow or next weekend.

Just to the left of the Feivel Play Area is where they line up for Chucky, the first house that will open. While the other folks are milling about get yourself in line and wait, you will be right in front because most of the people didn't have a clue about what was going on.

When the line opens they will lead you to Chucky (one of our faves, btw). Proceed through the house then exit and head back towards the Feivel area again so you can line up for Silent scream, the second house to open. Being near the front is a huge advantage because the lines get very long, not because the place is particularly crowded but because there is noplace else for the people to go. Better to have them behind you than in front of you.

After you exit Silent Scream head over to the barriers that are closest to the Simpson Ride. Since you were in the front of the 2 houses you will have about a 30 minute wait before they let you go through. Head to The Spawning, which will be between the left side of The Simpsons and the right side of MIB. Again you will probably have to wait because they didn't open it until 6:30pm but you should be towards the front. This was our least favorite house.

If you follow my directions and have positioned yourselves so you are near the front, by the time you get out of The Spawning and head over to Saw there will be about a 15 minute line. This is short enough to allow you to go through Saw and still be out in time for the Passholder's preferred seating at the first showing of Bill and Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure, except that they decided (without telling ANYONE) to cancel that and make the passholders wait with everyone else. Because of that we skipped the show and headed to Leave It To Cleaver, which we thought was better than first reviews rated it.

We then went to Frankenstein, which exited closest to Wolfman, then finally to Dracula. We were through all 8 houses by 8:25pm The only one we probably won't visit again is The Spawning.

After we finished the houses we went to the B&TEHA show. We didn't enjoy it as much as last years show, mainly because there were a lot of movies my wife wasn't familiar with. The crowd as a whole seemed to really get into it.

We then went to ride Jaws in the dark, which not only was great fun ther was no line (no line for The Mummy either, not sure about Simpsons and HR3 wasn't open). We did a few Scarezones then headed out about 10:15pm because I had driven all night to get there and we want a fresh start for tomorrow. Tomorrow we will try S&S but, if you can swing it, I do recommend the Passholder's event. You have to register online and have a copy of your RSVP with you, they almost didn't let Donaldduck352 in because he didn't have his with him. We have pics to post but we have to wait until the morning because we need a USB cable to hook the camera up, my wife didn't realize I wanted to post pics ASAP. My Aunt will have one so it's just a matter of waiting until she wakes.

 

[macraven]

which houses had the longest line waits?

of course as the event continues, i'm sure tweaks will be made to get some of the houses up to the standard of wowing the guests.

 

[Metro West]

which houses had the longest line waits?

of course as the event continues, i'm sure tweaks will be made to get some of the houses up to the standard of wowing the guests.

The last time I looked the lines for The Wolfman, Dracula and Frankenstein were the longest. It was just a mass of people...as it usually is. But...the wait time for The Wolfman was 20 minutes according to the sign. I will say the lines seemed to move at a decent speed tonight for the most part.

 

[Purseval]

When we were going up to Bill and Ted the wait time for Saw was 75 minutes, the longest of any house. At 9:30 the waits were about 45 minutes for the other houses. We couldn't get into the 9:15 showing of the Rocky Horror Tribute because all of the seats were full, we will see that tomorrow.

 

[LoraJ]

Thanks for the reviews!!!

Which rides do they have open this year? Glad Jaws is running. It was closed last year.

ETA:
Never mind. I see the map on the site:
http://www.halloweenhorrornights.com/orlando/hhn09_map.html

hope HR3 is open when we are there.

 

[inkkognito]

Purseval do you mean you and your guest don't need a HHN ticket for AP, just the regular ap?

 

[Melisa1]

Great reviews!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't wait!

 

[schumigirl]

Thanks for a fab review. It does sound as though they do need to work a bit more on their scarezones.

Looking forward to hearing your opinions on Bill and Ted this year

 

[circelli]

Thanks for the reviews

HHN is going to be a blast again this year!!:banana:

 

[keishashadow]

oooh, sounds great...so how many nights do u think u'll visit this year?

 

[inkkognito]

I made some notes from my G1 phone last night while waiting for our car, so I'll do a little detail here now that I am halfway awake. The valet was literally the worst I have ever seen it. Truly the line had to be an hour...it snaked back and forth till it ran out of space. Thank goodness both DH and I have Premier, so I got the bright idea of offering someone at the front free parking in exchange for letting me do ours at the same time (usually I just do it for whoever is behind us with no obligation). Then it was around 45 mins. to get it. Whew!

We were at the media event, so that included an RIP tour after the Cirque du Freak stars presentation. We got to see Bill & Ted up front, and I got some nice pics. before they stopped me (which I didn't understand, as the announcement was only no FLASH photography and I wasn't using flash). Last year I was underwhelmed by it, but this year it was very funny. I liked the Starl Trek and Bruno stuff, and there were random Twilight sequences throughout before the gratuitious dancing finale.

My favorite house was Chucky, which was somewhat reminiscent of Scary Tales for me...just that same sort of feel, and LOTS of Chucky. The tunnel at the beginning is very disorienting, and I loved Machine Gun Chucky and the ball sacls. We did this one twice.

Second best was Saw, which had tons of scenes and captured the feel of the movie. I was impressed with how they used the space. We did this one twice.

Spawning has potential, although it didn't wow me yet. But one part is so disorienting with strobes that I got totally lost and confused.

The soundstages were good...lots of detail...but none stood out for me. They may grow on me more as time goes on. If I had to have a fave among those, right now it would be Frankenstein although the woods in Wolfman are impressive.

Leave it to Cleaver was disapointing because I was expecting something like Psychoscarapy: Home for the Holidays. It was a lot of gore and then an end scene that didn't really go with it. I know that's the point, but I dunno...I wanted more humor.

I won't judge Silver Screams yet because it seemed to have a lot of potential but just seemed off when we went through it. The facade is awesome; be sure to stand there and watch it before going in.

We managed to do an extra Chucky and Saw.

I'll see how my opinions change next week, as tonight we are doing Howloscream with Busch. We have Express so we should make it through everything there, including the coasters (sure wish Rockit had been running...odd how they literally ran it empty all night. I'll bet that drew tons of complaints).

 

[Metro West]

oooh, sounds great...so how many nights do u think u'll visit this year?

Not sure...maybe more than last year.

 

[Purseval]

Purseval do you mean you and your guest don't need a HHN ticket for AP, just the regular ap?

You need a HHN ticket. The big savings is for your guest because they don't need a ticket for Universal to get in early, like doing S&S without having to pay for the Stay part.

The wording about HHN for the passholders is kind of ambiguous, it's really hard to tell if you need a HHN ticket or not (it does state in the fine print that the guest needs a HHN ticket). Since we already had FFPs we didn't spend a lot of time mulling over it.

As for EP's, we didn't see anyone selling discounted ones like they did last year. We never buy them anyway but if we did we would have been able to stroll through each house twice. It was open until midnight and we were through all 8 houses before 8:30pm without an EP. With an EP we would have done the shows, the scarezones then gone back to the houses for a second round. Instead our second round will be tonight. I can see what Metro was talking about with the cars taking up a lot of S&S space so it's a bit of a quandry as to where we will go tonight. Either way you get an excellent house (Chucky for AP, Wolfman for S&S) and a good house. I'll have to look at the list to see what DISers are supposed to be coming tonight then decide. We are coming back for a week in October so we can always do S&S that visit.

For APers who may not realize it, there is also a checkin station inside the park so you can get there early, hit a few rides then walk over towards ET to check in for the AP event, basically like S&S in a different location.

 

[Cdn Friends of Pooh]

Thanks for the reviews everyone ...

The Monster Cafe WAS open during HHN so those who were concerned, don't need to be.

 

[macraven]

thanks purseval for your detailed report of last night.
i love reading how each person's night went, and i love spoilers.

 

[schumigirl]

thanks purseval for your detailed report of last night.
i love reading how each person's night went, and i love spoilers.

Totally agree. I`m like a sponge with these reports, can`t soak up enough info. So sad I`m not going

 

[donaldduck352]

I want to thank you again Purseval for last night..
I got to ask tho,do you run marathons?when they opened the gate we had to run to keep up with ya!!It was great meeting you and DW and thank you for waiting..

Of coarse we had to do A homie picture!!