FINALLY got to go to the event last weekend, so here are my thoughts on it:
First off, the RIP experience: Loved it. The food was GREAT and I ate so much that I could hardly walk afterwards (paying $300 for a buffet, I'm gonna eat as much as I can). My group stayed with our guide the whole time and in retrospect I wish we hadn't. Our guide was great, but by the time that we were done with our tour around 10:30 after TOTT, we were tired enough that I didn't get to do everything as many times as I initially wanted because we followed the group. Didn't even find it in me to catch the Jabbawockeez show, and I've actually enjoyed it in previous years.
Onto the mazes: AHS and The Shining were my favorites. People on here were saying that The Chens from Roanoke weren't in the maze, but they definitely were. There's a scene right after the basement where the two daughters are contorted in the walls. Overall, I really liked the maze. I loved the season of the show more than any other, and the maze captured it really well. It was also just overall scarier than last year's. Shining was beautiful and I had a lot of fun in it. I also actually liked Ash a lot. Everyone here has been bashing it non-stop, band yes the black walls were overabundant, but I think I got lucky and got just about every scare. It also follows the show more closely than people here let on, but it's still missing a lot of things shown in the trailer.
Saw was as disappointing as everyone here says, but the traps are still kinda fun to look at, especially since I never did any of the previous Saw mazes. Terror Tram was nothing special, but we got lucky and the crowds weren't bad, so we walked right through a lot of it without stopping. Blumhouse would've been great if the Happy Death Day section didn't drag it down so much. There's just nothing interesting happening in that section of the maze at all, and its finale with all the killers was so cramped and there were so few of them that it wasn't nearly as effective as the trick in previous years. Purge was fun and Sinister worked really well.
ToT was fun, but I didn't love it as much as everyone else. It just kind of felt like worse versions of what we got from FvJ and TCM last year. I didn't love it.
The scare zones I liked a lot (well, Toxic Tunnel tried), and their costumes were all really great.
Overall, definitely not as good as last year's, but not nearly as horrible as I've heard, but that could come with me coming later in the season. I did notice that TWDA did have some additional walkers in it than the regular version, and I know those weren't present the first weekend. I still liked it more than Knott's this year, and I'm a big fan of Knott';s, but I still got far more scares out of HHN.