I would just like to back Sheila up on this one. It HAS gone down hill. I went to HHN last night, a Thursday, and it was PACKED. We only saw 3 houses and the Bill & Ted Show. Bill & Ted was great as usual.
The first house we went in was Disorientorium, or whatever, and honestly - the Girl Scouts had a better haunted house. It was just a lot of bad effects. I only saw a handful of scarers. And may I mention that one of them came up to me, and I swear was grinding his.. uh.. you know... against my arm. That was the creepiest thing in there. BTW 45 + minute wait for that.
Next was Ghost Town - said 30 minute wait - actual wait was 57 minutes. It was a great theme, but again, was not that scary. Very predictable. The scarers makeup was very bad, they looked more like bad clowns than dead frontier folk.
Last house, end of the night, was Demontroplis. Wait time was 30 minutes, which was very good. Out of the 3 houses I went in, this was probably the best. Maybe it was just me, or did it seem kinda short? It had good effects and better scarers than the others.
Wait times at the other houses were just too long.
I thought the corn field scare zone was pretty good, but it was the only one I saw. I KNOW we walked through other scare zones, but there was NO ONE there. Did everyone go on break at once? In previous years you couldn't walk 50 feet without seeing someone.
And I realize that it is an adult event, but what's with all the alcohol? I don't mind having a few bars around, but I don't see the need to have shot girls every 200 feet, people walking around with coolers on their backs, bars in the queue lines, and bars on every street corner. You're just encouraging people to get sloshed out of their mind and have everyone endure their drunken frat boy antics. This really ruined the "scary" atmosphere. I am not frightened by 20 year old girls dressed as sexy witches on stilts peddling shots.
At first, I thought it was a good idea to have both parks, but you spend so much time walking that it really eats up the 5 hours quickly. They should just keep it at one or the other. Or have seperate HHNs at each - and definitely limit the number of people who can enter. No one wants to wait in line for over an hour. Over 2 hours on weekends.
That's my 2 cents. In a nutshell, Demontropolis was the best house that I got to see, but I would have felt very ripped off if it weren't for Bill & Ted.