Mini-Review:
Went last night and I feel alot of these reviews are highly exaggerated. Maybe it's because HHN is in it's worst year, but I wouldn't say this is KSF's best year. And even KSF's best year is hard to match HHN's worst year in quality and professional scareactors. Maybe I'm a fanboy, I don't know, but keep in mind that KSF was my first love.
I did do Ghost Rider first thing, which ate away my 7PM-8PM time slot. The next 45-60 minutes were wasted waiting for more friends to enter the park (which I usually NEVER do) and letting everyone get snacks. I think I would've been fine doing Ghost Rider but that next hour really screwed me over in missing a maze (we'll get to that in a bit).
Pumpkin-Eater -- LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! First maze of the night and it was easily the scariest in terms of tone, sets, and the monsters were super aggressive. Plus it felt like the maze had someone at every corner. Favorite of the year, by far. Nothing lived up to this for the rest of night.
Dark Ride was EXTREMELY weak. The sets were amazing, but the tone doesn't help it be scary, and worst of all, this was some of the laziest talent I saw all night. They hardly went for anyone. I loved the idea, dark rides are a passion of mine, and this failed me. My friends said "that was the least scary maze I've EVER been in."
Shadowlands is still a pretty good maze. Don't see much of the point of the pre-show being moved a bit. I think they could get rid of it, it does nothing to add to the maze.
Red Barn had such a long wait and by God, was it not worth it at all. Not to mention, I didn't see the supposed "letting people in small groups" thing come into effect. It was a conga line like always. I saw SOME show elements. Worst of the year, just like it was last year. I think we waited 50 minutes and I felt so ripped off and I could've used that time doing some rides or something. I don't care what revamps they do to this maze in upcoming years, I will avoid it like the plague if the line is anything more than 5 minutes.
Paranormal Inc is still rocking pretty hard, which is impressive they've kept the momentum going this long.
The Tooth Fairy was decent. A lot of the effects don't work anymore. I don't see why they haven't added anything to this maze to make it better. All of my complaints from year one are still present. And they got rid of the cool ending they had this year for a small room with a guy on stilts. Oh well.
Got in line for Trick-or-Treat around 11:40 and it was moving fairly steadily, but after about 20 minutes, we gave up. It was going to be at least 2 hours, and the park closed at 1, and I really wanted to do Infected and the Log Ride instead, because I knew those would at the very least be fun. Even if this maze was the best of the year, it would not be worth the wait. An amazing Knotts maze is worth a 45 minute wait at best, while I'm open to waiting maybe 90 minutes for HHN maze if I know it'll be good. My girlfriend got to do Voodoo while we waited in line for Trick-or-Treat, so I can't personally say how that maze was, but that maze has been super underwhelming for me every year, so I had no desire to even see it.
Log Ride Halloween Hootenany was fun, but the monsters didn't come out as aggressive in years past. I counted 4 of them and I know there used to be at least 8-12. Why tone it down so much?
Infected was pretty fun, as much fun as last year, but they toned down some of the scares from what I could tell. But also it was the end of the night and maybe they were just tired.
Scarezone wise, I loved Ghost Town as always. Best scarezone in the planet. However, it seemed oddly empty at points. The Hollow was FANTASTIC. Loved that one as well. Carnevil seemed... extremely empty. Not sure what happened there. Maybe it was the construction hindering things.
In my opinion, it was a slightly above average year at KSF. Nothing extraordinary. Just the usual.