Phew. So I think I may have finally recovered. I'm gonna apologize in advance for this incredibly lengthy post.
Yesterday was an absolute blast. My group got to CityWalk early, so we decided to watch The Visit while we waited for Early Entry to start. Weird movie, but great maze material..!
Anyway, as for the event itself, I had a great time. While the more popular mazes did end up reaching 2-hour waits at some points, I was still able to follow the plan of navigating the park in reverse. The Walking Dead was first, and it was actually genuinely scary. I didn't notice that it was much longer than any of the other mazes, but it was certainly longer than last year's TWD maze, and there were some great scare actors in there. Some parts of the maze were incredibly dark, which wasn't my cup of tea, but I still enjoyed it.
Insidious was also fantastic, and it tied all three movies in perfectly. There were some fantastic effects in that maze, but I won't spoil them. I don't think I had a single gripe with this maze. The sets, characters, and scenes were all amazing.
Next, we did This Is The End. This was probably my least favorite maze of the event. The scenes just didn't flow well together, and I walked out feeling like they could've done more with it. While there were a few good spooks here and there, it wasn't very scary for the most part. I think I'm mostly glad that Emma Watson came at me with an axe yelling, "I'm not f*cking around."
We hit the Metro sets after that, and started off with Crimson Peak. Awesome maze. The sets were impeccable, and unlike past movie tie-in mazes, I wasn't utterly confused as I walked through. You're practically following the story as you enter each room, and you can tell just how closely they worked on this maze with Guillermo del Toro.
After that was AVP. I wasn't super excited for this maze considering it's essentially a carbon copy of last year's rendition, but I was pleasantly surprised by a few new additions and a seemingly improved set of performances put on by this year's scare actors.
Next, we did Terror Tram. Err, the Purge Party. This isn't something to write home about, but I think the concept for this year's Terror Tram was decent. I didn't find it to be that scary, and the flow was a bit of a mess at times (as it is every year), but I think there were some pretty cool scenes here and there.
Lastly, Halloween. This maze, along with TWD, harbored the longest waits of the night. My group nearly skipped it this year after seeing the sign that read, "Wait time: 120 mins", but we decided to come back after checking out some scare zones. Our wait time easily dropped by doing so. This very well may have been my favorite maze this year. It was brilliantly terrifying, and made great use of the Parisian Courtyard venue. I only had one complaint about the maze, regarding a certain scene that was discussed by Murdy at ScareLA, but I was thrilled aside from that.
In retrospect, I think this may be one of the best years of the event yet. I loved nearly every maze, and I even got a good scare out of my least favorites. I think the addition of the Jabbawockeez show definitely helped with some wait times over the course of the night, as well. If you haven't purchased your tickets yet, do it now! This isn't a year you want to miss.