Corpses definitely deserved the love, for me, as the cast has been absolutely wild. Spaulding and Otis in particular have really shown how much they care for their roles and how much they appreciate the guests for coming by; some houses feel a little like the scareactors are going through the motions and that’s it. There’s not really anything wrong with that, because it’s a job, after all, but the human connection isn’t there. I feel like this about Yeti even though I adore the design and so many of the concepts and their executions. Ghostbusters suffered heavily from this, obviously. If we’re talking just numbers determining HotY, though, Corpses
did draw in a lot of crowds and I can recall only seeing one different Otis that must have been a reserve and I personally know of another reserve that you wouldn’t have even noticed if you were there. Few callouts/dropouts, and they gave stellar, fun performances all throughout the season.
Anarch-cade leaves me baffled, but if we think that those deciding these things read guest responses on these forums...
- Zombieland has gotten so, so, so much flack on here. The stage show may have horrendous dialogue, but some of those scareactors are very cute and fun. If anyone’s seen the jogger, while he’s not necessarily in character as a zombie that’s actively exercising/leading group exercises, these kinds of interactive, fun performers are loved. That’s just one example. But there’s been heavy critique of Zombieland seeming like the worst scarezone ever, so maybe that has to do with it.
- Vikings has nothing standout and forms a severe, frustrating bottleneck in Central Park. There isn’t a lot else to say.
- Assuming CDT doesn’t count as a real scarezone. If it did, that has the best cast in terms of interactivity between scareactors and pure joy. It just doesn’t have a lot to give beyond those people.
- Hellbilly is probably similar to Vikings and what you guys have said. It’s a bad congestion zone and I’m certain that the sexiness made a lot of people dislike it. I know that it’s a replication of the music video content and that HHN has used female sex appeal since the beginning, but it feels nice when an area doesn’t think to include sex and instead focus on the scares. Frightening women in the streets might have made up for it, but every female role was sex-charged, and I’m sure a lot of guests didn’t vibe well with that.
- Vanity Ball had many, many flaws. Great concept, but sort of lackluster execution. Two types of scares (getting in front of you or throwing something at your face and making a high-pitched startle noise) made for a lack of variety among the scareactors. Again, if this forum is read, management has probably read about all that the people have had to say about the scareactors walking and talking with their friends instead of even trying to scare. I don’t know if anyone got talked to, but I saw that up until the last night, even between the nurses and the victims, which you can’t even stretch to make sense.
So that brings us to Anarch-cade. I don’t have anything to say about it. Photo op zone, good guest flow, and I have to give the ground scareactors credit for being aggressive and clever with their scares. There really isn’t anything standout, but there aren’t negatives. To me, it’s a harmless, safe zone to bank on for SotY without drawing controversy. None of this is to say that they don’t deserve it, but it’s possible that the extreme positives and negatives of the other zones led to this one getting pushed up.