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After the part 1 houses, there’s a bit of a falling off point for the rest. The next 3 are virtually tied in my book but each is a completely different house, and the ranking order could pretty much changed on a nightly basis for me.
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6. Puppet Theatre 7/10
I had no real interest in this house, but it was a lot of fun! The façade was absolutely stunning. One bummer about having express is your line doesn’t pass in front of the façade so wasn’t able to get a good/head on view of it lit up at night.
Scares: 5 The scares were a mixed bag. A lot of “look what happened to this poor person before you got here” stuff as well as some humorous shenanigans by the scareactors before they jumped to the side and did a proper scare.
Plexi: 3 There was a lot of it, but shockingly didn’t seem to affect the house much. There weren’t very many of the “closet door scares” that happen as you walk by and see something in your peripheral vision, or hear a sound cue to make you look. So while there’s a lot of it present, it doesn’t impact the scares all that much.
UTH: 8 This was pretty fun on the tour, there were a couple rooms that you couldn’t take pictures and they seemed to be odd choices. One was the externally built hallway before you entered the tent (maaaaybe concerned about the movie poster owners?) and the marionette hallway (they mentioned them being bought from Pakistan or Prauge or something, and maybe concerned about the owners being pissed they were used in a gory house?) After you go through the main stage room (seen all over the peacock video) each of the following rooms has that red curtain in it, somewhere, to orient you where you are in relation to the stage. Like the room with the piano and the hole in the ceiling, if you look up through the hole (in the dark) you can (allegedly) see the curtain as you’re in the orchestra pit. Stuff like that, I NEVER notice…maybe some people do.
7. Revenge of the Tooth Fairy 7/10
I was REALLY looking forward to this house and it was a bit of a let down. I LOVED the Popup Book Façade and the house was incredibly violent. For some reason, it just didn’t work for me.
Scares: 5 The drill made me cringe
Plexi: 9 This house, more than any other, was killed by the plexi in my book. There were some big rooms that didn’t have any which was great, but soooo many of the other scares are the ones where the scareactors would normally step/reach/lunge through the doorway and they were unable to do it.
UTH: N/A Not on our tour
8. Haunting of Hill House 7/10
This was at the bottom of my hype list from the beginning. I couldn’t get into the show (tried to watch it a few times and got bored), not a fan of ghost stories, etc. Then I saw the breathtaking façade and got a little bit excited. Then heard a rumor that there were 100+ ghosts in the show and many are hidden in the house (not true…our UTH guide didn’t point out a single hidden ghost) and it started to creep up my hype list. But the house just wasn’t that great. Visually, it was really nice, but the scares just weren’t there for me. The whisper hall is 12’ long, the one in Graveyard games was only 3’ long. When it was working, that was AMAZING. Our last run through something was off with the sound and it was disappointing.
Scares: 6 I understand the source material is a slow burn with bursts of scares, guess the house was the same.
Plexi: 1 I really don’t recall any plexi issues in this house. I could be forgetting something though.
UTH: 5 This was really disappointing, especially as someone who didn’t watch (or care about) the show. The tour was basically, “This is the part of the show where XYZ happens and you find out ABC.” It was like a DVD commentary track where the director is just explaining what’s on the screen. Pictures were really limited as well. Have to go back through my pics to try to remember what was allowed, but what I remember is façade, entryway, red door room, first half of the dumbwaiter room, and that’s about it. “A certain themepark down the road has stringent rules that their mouse can never be more than one place at a time…we’re obviously against that rationale but this house totally flies against that. The Bent Neck Lady is the star of the show and key to our marketing, everybody goes into this house expecting to see her. So in this room, the (effect) happens to the right, then about 10-15sec later, happens on the left. Then, at the end of the room, you get an (effect) straight ahead. This is so that as many people as possible can see her in the house and not be disappointed.” That’s paraphrasing what our guide said and that was pretty cool to try to make sure people who waited in line for 2 hours get to see the “star of the show.” The other cool tidbit from the tour was, “The first tall man you encounter is, well, a tall man. The second one you encounter, is on 1x/1 step (not familiar with industry terms for stilts, so might have this wrong) stilts like Fear. The third one, is on 2x/2step stilts and is really freaking tall.”
9. Welcome to SCarey 6/10
This was probably my least favorite house. It’s only ranked above Beetlejuice because I didn’t expect much from it, so I wasn’t so disappointed. It’s a true mashup where you enter through a water treatment facility, go through the sewers, then magically go somewhere else, then at the end you just see a big legendary truth sign. The HR Bloodnguts scareactor mask was TERRIBLE.
Scares: 6 Nothing really stood out other than the Meaty Meetz scare.
Plexi: 3 A little impact, but nothing too bad.
UTH: 8 I think we were pretty much allowed to take pics wherever we wanted. I enjoyed the tour more than actually walking through the house, think that's the first time that's ever happened and I've done the tours at least 10 times. The story is that you are travelling through Carey, OH and you start out through the sewer and then make your way through or something. This was our last house and was dragging ass a bit so didn’t pay complete attention. Got some good info in each room like the HR Bloodngutz shelf of VHS tapes has the tapes named as the “codenames” for each room of the original maze. Got some other cool tidbits like that.
10. Beetlejuice 4/10
What a disappointment! I love the movie so much, but this house was a letdown. It was a “fun” house, don’t get me wrong. It was one of the first we did and I had a blast in it…but throughout our stay, it steadily went downhill from there. Our first pass through, the vortex tunnel worked. The next 3 or 4 times through, it wasn’t spinning. The Beetlejuice barker in the façade was such a let down. The actor clearly wasn’t doing the voice and that really hurt it. He pointed directly at me at one point and the pre-recorded message was something really stupid and irrelevant like “so, you wanna marry me?” or something. If he was just spouting out stuff like, “I’m the ghost with the most!” that would have been great. IP quotes would have been great. Or, if he was miced up and could comment on stuff like a girl wearing a huge balloon hat thing from Margaritaville that would have been great. Instead, it was just irrelevant stuff. We got hung up on the switchback into the house once and he was making comments while pointing at people that made no sense. It was a missed opportunity to have a Chucky-style interaction or to use lines from the movie.
Not to go into details, but as soon as you enter the house proper the first two characters is the old smoking lady (who doesn’t have smoke coming out of her neck) standing behind plexiglass casually talking. Not even an attempted scare. Then it’s the flat guy on the line…who doesn’t move. He’s on a line and should slide back and forth or something, but was just completely stationary. The house was like that a lot, just disappointing and static/boring. The worm and big head gags were the highlights. Something as simple as putting the shrunken head on a swivel with a servo would have improved the house. Too static.
Scares: 1 The biggest scare I got was the "bed sheet over the guy" gag. Wasn't expecting it and it gave me a good jump. That tells you how unscary the house was.
Plexi: 9 Hey, look, it's Beetlejuice dancing a jig behind a plastic wall. Wow, scary and and awesome.
UTH: N/A Would have liked to have seen this with the lights on.
Zones. All were pretty boring. Gorewood was too crowded to be anything too great, Seek & Destroy was boring. 30 Years, 30 Fears was just a confusing collection of random things. Eddie’s Revenge was OK. CryptTV I had no interest in, but was probably the most interesting zone as there was stuff to watch and interesting set pieces. The masks were awesome in the zone.
Shows:
Carnage Factory was both amazing and a let down. The fountain effects are a step up from 29, the water project effects were a giant leap above 29. The “generic hard rock music” hurt. Obviously they wouldn’t have anything as iconic as the Ghostbusters, Killer Klowns and Stranger Things themes, but the music was just underwhelming and hurt the show. However, it was still AMAZING, the only letdown on my part was it wasn’t as great as last year. REALLY enjoyed it though.
Nightmare Fuel was awesome. Sexiest show I’ve ever seen at HHN, but was a bit odd. You had the “trick” Legacy posted from the British TV show at the very beginning and then that guy is just kinda running around doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the show until he goes back to bed. The fire dancing stuff was INSANE, especially the guys when they got the big things of fire going. Music was really good and the crowd was totally into it.