Spoiler Warning: I’ll be talking about details from each house below.
I went to Premium Scream Night, here’s my thoughts:
I’ll get to my reviews of the houses below, but I want to start with my review of the night as a whole. I had a really good time overall, but there were a few moments throughout the night where I got a bit frustrated and it did bring the experience down a bit.
While I knew that capacity was higher than last year and expected slightly longer lines, I think inconsistent operations with the pulsing inflated the wait times much further than they should have been. I was able to finish all the houses by 1am, but on a normal night with Express I’m usually finished and out of the park by 11. Granted, I made the mistake of starting with the houses at the front of the park. The app showed the waits for the houses in the back as 5 minutes each for the first couple hours of the event. I’d like to know if people who started there had a better/easier night. I would normally have started there, but given what was promised I had not put any energy into planning or strategizing as I had thought it wouldn’t matter.
It certainly wasn’t a bad experience overall (the storm was rough but that’s nobody’s fault), but knowing how much I had paid for it when Express provides a comparable experience made me feel like I had been ripped off a bit. The pulsing wasn’t worth it for me (with one exception, see my review of Dolls below) and I think if they had operated the houses normally, waits would have been significantly shorter.
Now, onto my review of the houses and zones:
This is an amazing year for me. Even the worst house is still better than average, and the best houses are some of the greatest ever done. One huge plus is that the actors were getting VERY close this year. The cast throughout the park is so aggressive and energetic, they’re incredible. Huge props to everyone involved. The zones are equally high in quality. I skipped last year but from what I’ve heard this is an impressive step up. My rankings may change as I give it more thought but these are my initial impressions.
1. El Artista
• This may be my favorite, FAVORITE house I’ve ever experienced at HHN. Everything about it feels perfect to me and suits my taste exactly. The haunted manor setting is so perfectly executed. I especially loved how at times you could see other parts of the house through a window, it really created a sense that this mansion was a real place you were exploring rather than a walkthrough attraction. The surreal and unsettling artwork also gave this an atmosphere that set it apart from a typical “haunted house” theme. It’s more spooky than it is scary, but personally I care more about atmosphere than jump scares.
2. Gálkn
• This house also had a beautiful setting, and the theme is really unique. I loved the designs of the creatures, and the finale was really cool and unexpected. I wish it had been a bit colder inside to really sell the setting, but that’s not something that impacted my overall enjoyment.
3. Hatchet & Chains
• Really excellent set design with some cool effects. I loved the concept of the train station effect, but I think the execution could have had a little more attention to detail. The projection in this effect has no breaks between train cars - it’s just one endless car. It’s such a small detail but I found it distracting (nobody else in my group noticed or cared lol). Really great use of puppets throughout as well.
4. Dolls
• This was the only house of the night that was properly pulsed, meaning my friend and I were completely alone through our run. We never even caught up to the group in front of us. I have to admit, this made the house WAY scarier than it would have been and was easily the scariest house of the night for me. It was super unnerving to be surrounded by all the dolls, since we were alone it really felt like there were a ton more characters in here than the other houses. I got one really great scare where a doll ran up behind me quickly, which never would have been possible in normal operations. The set design and costumes are really amazing too, they nailed the sense of scale. Only one screen seemed kind of out of place. I also wish the facade was a bit more detailed, it’s a shame that it’s really quite flat. A life-sized dollhouse facade would have been much more impressive.
5. Five Nights at Freddy’s
• I’m really shocked to be ranking this as highly as I am. As someone who isn’t the biggest fan of the IP, I had low expectations going in, but the amount of care and detail put into this house won me over. The very first scene was everything I imagine a FNAF fan would dream of. This is a very puppet/animatronic heavy house, and as such it’s going to be very prone to technical issues. I wish a few more effects had been working as intended, but for the most part everything was running great.
6. Fallout
• As my most anticipated IP ever, I truly loved this house. Don’t let it’s lower ranking fool you, it’s still a great house, probably the best you could hope for from an IP that’s incredibly difficult to condense into one house. I’m really satisfied with what we got, though it honestly could have leaned more into the humor and wacky tone at some moments. I know it’s based on the show so it focused on recreating specific moments, but the games are known for environmental storytelling, and the house could have made better use of that style of vignette. The tease at the end has me so excited for next year, if they plan on bringing it back. A New Vegas house would be an actual dream come true.
7. Jason
• Easily the best house that’s been in the F&F space, and there’s no contest. They really nailed the summer camp aesthetic, though it did get a bit repetitive. I also wasn’t a fan of the long hallway at the end, it felt like it went on forever and was an anticlimactic ending. Still had a good time inside.
8. Terrifier
• Gore usually doesn’t do much for me, so this wasn’t my favorite. I’m a much bigger fan of eerie and unnerving horror than of pure shock value body horror, but I’ll admit that a lot of care was put into this one. The smell in the bathroom scene was nauseating and I had to hold my breath, so I didn’t love that part. I chose the wet path at the end, which didn’t bother me since it was still storming outside and I was already soaked lol. You definitely get pretty wet, warm water pours on you from above, but it’s not enough to soak your shoes. If you go on a normal night you should dry off pretty quickly.
9. WWE
• There’s a huge amount of detail in here and a ton of what are clearly Easter eggs and references for fans, but as someone who doesn’t know a single thing about WWE, I was confused from start to finish. I had fun but I can’t say I really enjoyed it to its fullest. Without knowing the source material it felt really disjointed and incoherent, but was still high quality.
10. Grave of Flesh
• This was the only house I felt a little disappointed in, though don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed it. The designs of the puppets and costumes were awesome, but it was incredibly repetitive and felt underbaked or rushed. There’s a lot of ideas in here that seem like if they had been developed further, they could have been something incredible and unique. I LOVED the idea that the underworld is this liminal, MC Escher-esque hellscape, rather than the typical pits of fire and such. I just wish they had played with the sense of space more, it doesn’t feel like the concept was explored to its fullest. Aside from a couple of cool scenes, the rest of the house ends up being a bunch of dirt tunnels, which wasn’t too exciting.
Zones:
1. The Cat Lady of Crooked Lane
• I love this scare zone so much. It has a classic Halloween vibe that I think is so necessary for this event. It’s awesome that they tried to create a narrative within a zone, with the children becoming more cat-like as you approach the house. However, I did walk through the zone the wrong way, so I didn’t really experience this effect to its fullest. I also thought that the full cat costumes were really silly, but it works in a campy fun kind of way, and the actors were bringing the perfect energy and sass to make this zone fun.
2. Masquerade: Dance with Death
• This zone was really beautiful. It actually reminded me a lot of Phantom of the Opera with the big chandelier set piece. I think the soundtrack was a bit too upbeat to fit the creepy atmosphere though.
3. Origins of Horror
• Really good for an entrance zone, I actually really liked that there are some big props that block the path a bit. It creates more of a closed in feel in places that this area typically lacks.
4. Toxic Twenties
• I love the aesthetic of this zone, but I think it lacks some villain characters. It’s all victim characters, so it is kind of missing a scare factor.
Others:
Mel’s Die-In
• This is a great addition, it really brings some life (or death?) to this corner. The makeup wasn’t the style I was expecting but it’s definitely fun.
Club Horror
• …What? This is the biggest weak point this year. Who is this for? It’s a lose-lose scenario. Either A) nobody likes it enough to spend any time there and you end up with an awkward DJ set that has no crowd (this was the case on Premium night), or B) it’s actually popular and people hang out here, creating a huge road block in an area that’s notoriously problematic for being a huge bottleneck. I have a feeling this area is going to be a massive issue on crowded nights.