HHNU was at opening night yesterday and we’re ready to roll out our first reviews of the event, starting with three houses and a show….
Ghost Town ★★★★☆
With beautiful scenery throughout, Ghost Town: The Curse of Lightning Gulch is a sight to behold. There are plenty of actors throughout the whole house, and great lighting effects. It’a also raining in some of the scenes, so beware: You will get wet.
The actors are covered in blue and grey tones of paint to look like ghosts. Most of the walls and furnishings are also these same tones, so they tend to blend into the surroundings. When walking through this maze, also take the time to look up and around, as there are some cool things to see up there as well.
The characters all speak in the way you would expect prospects of the olden times to speak, saying phrases like “That’s me gold!” or “Don’t be touchin’ mah riches!” in mildly humorous accents.
I give this haunted house 4 stars for its incredible attention to detail, density of props and decorations, and lighting design and effects. A really great house to look at if not get a scare or two.
Tomb of the Ancients ★★★★★
Jam packed full of incredibly effective scares, this very enclosed space of a haunted house is HHN original content at it’s finest. The house is frightening from the get go, when you are immediately presented with a claustrophobic hallway with multiple windows on either side full of scary stuff and a dropping effect in the floor that also makes a very very loud noise.
The house is full of various characters from Egyptian history, as well as mummies and some monsters. The story behind the house is that an expedition into an Egyptian tomb went wrong and released the wrath of “The Ancient Ones,” an evil group of monsters from hell. Expect to see many Egyptian characters, as well as some things you wouldn’t expect to see in an ancient tomb. Without spoiling anything, there is a scare right near the end of the house that is so unexpected and out of place that it is super terrifying. It scared the bejesus out of me!
I give this house a full 5 stars for its incredible amount of scares, actors, stuff to look at, length, and the overall close proximity of it all. This is definitely a house you can visit multiple times and still get scared.
Lunatics Playground ★★✮☆☆
This house is a direct sequel to the events that took place during last year’s show “The Carnage Returns.” The queue video displayed on the house’s facade shows that Chance gets arrested in a backstage area of Horror Nights for the murder of Amanda at the end of the show. You can tell it takes place at Horror Nights because the physical confrontation that ensues is on a chain link fence with green tarp, same kind as seen at many of the house queue lines. She is also wearing the same outfit from last year, implying it was right after the show.
She gets arrested by the police officers and then admitted to Shadybrook Asylum. Jack’s box is seen throughout the video. She gets interviewed by the Asylum’s psychiatrist and is asked “tell me about what happened at the end of the show?” and Chance answered by saying “That was just the beginning.”
The house itself was lacking in real scares, but I feel this is a trend with 3D houses. It was essentially a series of scenes of Chance killing orderlies and security officers of the ShadyBrook Asylum in various ways. Some of them are in real life colors and others are in bright fluorescent colors that create the 3D effects. The scenes in reality versus scenes “in Chance’s mind” are differentiated by the sounds within them; alarms in the reality scenes and music box tunes in the “mind” scenes.
I give this house 2 and a half stars for lack of scares and the 3D effects are minimal. I would rather go through the house without the glasses on. It was just overall a bit crude and kinda lame. I would prefer Asylum In Wonderland over this one.
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure ★★★☆☆
This year’s Bill and Ted show was rather decent. It wasn’t the barrel of laughs that we have seen in previous years, but I can definitely confidentially say it is an improvement over the last few years. It takes place around a Red Box machine and Kylo Ren. The stand out joke for me was what the Warcraft character said as he ran off stage, but unfortunately not all audience members got that. Nothing was too offensive or off the charts this time around, but the Avatar Nahvi character made their return for the third year in a row.
I give the show 3 stars because it wasn’t a constant laugh as we have seen in previous years, but I feel there have been years that fell more flat than this year.
BONUS PHOTOS OF SOME ROAMING HORDE ACTORS!
We encountered all four of the roaming hordes in the park last night, and took some photos of the cheerleaders and the scarecrows. Keep following our site for more photos of these hordes as the event progresses.
The “Demented Cheerleaders” are wearing HHN shirts, apparently cheering on the event itself, and are very mean girls. They call guests idiots and to shut up when spoken to, especially when they are barked at or cat called to.
Some of the Scarecrows walk around and some of them stand completely still and strike with their chainsaws at random. Their costumes are varying, but they all have a scarecrow feel to them one way or another.
Keep following our site for more house reviews throughout this weekend, and we will see you tonight at HHN26 night two!
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