Pufferfish

Tonight was a really bad night. I am going to hold off on really giving this year's event the full review until after my next visit, but I just thought I'd share with you guys a few of my thoughts on it. First off, I have to say that with no scarezones, no central theme, and no icon to hold it together, this year feels very in-cohesive and the park itself feels like it's not the real thing, not the real Horror Nights experience we have come to love. Some areas of the park, especially around Simpsons feels just empty. I'm hoping the other nights will prove me wrong on my feelings so far as there was one issue with tonight, being that it rained for almost 5 hours straight. None of the hordes even came out until about 9:00 when the rain died down a bit. On the positive side of things, most of the houses are pretty high quality this year. I'm not a fan of Walking Dead or New'kd Vegas, but the others I got to experience tonight(especially Silent Hill) proved quite good. As I said, I am holding off full judgement of this year's event until I can experience it on a regular day that doesn't have water falling from the sky and flooding the paths. I didn't get to see 20 Penny Circus or Bill and Ted tonight either.

Friday is just around the corner, and I seriously could not be more excited for this year's Horror Nights if I tried. As a fan of the Silent Hill franchise, some of those preview pictures make me feel almost giddy. Universal better not let me down with this one, they have been pushing all my buttons lately(that's a rant for another time though). You know I'm there

Are the Qbots going to be used as a perhaps cheaper option to their current unlimited Express? If so this is even more exciting than just the fact a Florida park is getting Qbots!

I wonder how many lost articles they found when they drained out that pond for the construction. I'm kind of sad that the "once a lake" is now becoming even smaller, but hey another big guest drawing attraction at this park is only a good thing in my mind. Still waiting for that frisbee though.

I'm seriously going to miss getting Mountain Dew, but hey if some awesome Freestyle machines are in the near future for the parks I will be very happy. Vault will easily replace Mountain Dew for me.

Just joined, this is an awesome idea! Can't wait for the fun to start.

Have to give a nice shout-out to my personal favorite in the Carolinas, Woods of Terror: http://www.woodsofterror.com/source/index.html#/index This is their 20th year of operation and has some amazing sets and very talented actors. Seriously the best haunt the Carolinas has to offer, even being better than Carowinds' Haunt, and it has been rated for the past few years as one of America's Best Haunts. If you get a chance, I seriously recommend checking it out.

First Trip Report! I will do my best to avoid any real spoilers. Last night I was given the great opportunity to experience HHN during the employee preview (thanks to doublestufforeo). There was a rather large turn out for the event, but I still managed to squeeze in a walk through of every house at least once, three of them I got in twice. A couple of the houses were rather bland, but 4 of them immediately stand out as being some of the best houses I've seen. Can't talk about the attractions without first giving my input on the event itself. Universal once again managed to give every inch of the park an amazing atmosphere that just oozes terror. They cut back a bit on fog this year as compared to last, but it doesn't really detract much from anything. The level of detail they put into everything is Universal's usual extravagance with sets and special effects that left my jaw on the floor. This was only the employee preview though so some of the effects in some houses and scarezones were not working yet, but even with these small detraction, my overall opinion of the event is that it is better than last year and I can't wait for my next visit. Now, onto the houses. I will list them in the order I visited them. Winter's Night: Winter's Night is one of the three houses in the soundstages and right off the bat it blows you away. Walking in you have an amazingly beautiful set showing the entrance of the cemetary, also sporting a real snow maker (not the soap stuff you get everywhere). This house is gorgeous all around with some of the best set designs this year. It might not have the best overall scares, but it is worth checking out for the sets alone. Warning, it is cold in there! I think they have it set around 55 degrees. Not something you'd want to view if you are soaking from rain or another attraction. Overall this is one of my top 4 for the event and earns a solid 8/10. Nightingales: Nightingales is another of the three houses in the soundstages, with the last one being The Thing. This house is amazing. Everything is pretty much flawless with some really effective scares, brilliant set design, and a few awesome special effects. This house throws you directly into the trenches of WWI, and I mean it really feels like you are there. I don't want to say much more about this house as this is probably going to be the underdog hit of the event and I would hate to spoil it. A perfect 10/10. The Thing: The Thing really disappointed me. How can you take an idea as awesome and creative as The Thing and create something so bland and somewhat boring? The sets are rather boring minus the entrance which uses a snow maker just like Winter's Night, and the space ship which only takes like 2 minutes to walk through. Also the ending of it is very anticlimactic. I really feel they dropped the ball with this one. One of the weakest of the event 4/10. Holidays of Horror: The comedy maze for this year, Holidays of Horror, is quite effective at giving comedy, or at least I laughed a lot through it. The idea is great and quite humorous in and of itself, but I wish it had been explored better, having only a small room for each of the holidays presented and no real scares to be found. I can't help but say this is the event's other weak maze, 4/10. Nevermore: Awesome set designs and great material to work off of made this one a very fun house. I am a big fan of Edgar Allen Poe, so walking through these scenes and trying to figure out which scene eluded to which of his stories was a lot of fun. Sadly this maze feels rather short and doesn't include many of his works, so the potential is there, but it falls just short of glory 7/10. The In Between: As far as 3D mazes go, this is a good one. Very disorienting and with a couple good scares along the way. Some of the rooms seem rather cheesy though or are lacking in decoration. Overall it's just fun 7/10. The Forsaken: One word is best to describe this house, EPIC. The sounds, the effects, and the sets all add up to what is the most epic maze I've experienced. It is of a very large scale with details a plenty. Seriously one of the best of the event, 9/10. (It lost one point because of the conga line it forms that likes to come to a dead stop, killing several of the scares.) Saws and Steam: Once a scarezone, now a house, and a bloody good one at that. Walking in, only one thing popped to my mind, "Holy crap it's Bioshock!" Seriously, the theme of this maze is probably the closest we will end up getting to having a Bioshock themed house. This house had some of the best props and effects out of any of the houses, some of which were quite gruesome. This is in my opinion the best house they have this year and everyone should check it out! Perfect 10/10. I'm not really going to talk about the scarezones as I was only able to check out three of them while the actors were still in place, but Grown Evil has a really cool theme to it and is just fun to walk through. Acid Assault had a really cool effect to it that made it stand out, but once again, no spoilers . The last thing really for me to talk about is this year's Bill and Ted. It's hilarious! They have some better material to work with this year over last and some real guts in the jokes they present. There were a few jokes that I could tell were intended solely for the employee preview, but the majority of the really good ones should still be present during the normal run. An integral part of the HHN experience and definitely worth a watch.

^Whoever told you that about the buses was extremely exaggerating. The longest bus route you can take on Disney property is from the Animal Kingdom area to the Magic Kingdom area being a 30-45 minute bus ride. Also we schedule the buses so that one arrives at each stop at least every 30 minutes. About the Extra Magic Hours, they are really best for if you get your tickets with the park hopper option, allowing you to spend the majority of your day in one park and then show up for just the extra magic hours later. During the time you will be showing up though is one of Disney's slowest periods of the year, so you really should have no worries about crowds in any aspect, save for Downtown Disney which always pulls a large crowd on Fridays and Saturdays, bringing out all the locals. As for what you can do on your free day when at Disney, it is a pretty short ride down 192 to Old Town and Fun Spot where you can pick up 4 credits. Also Fun Spot is home to the awesome 300ft skycoaster, that is totally worth it if you like that type of ride. Disney obviously doesn't offer transportation to it, but it would be a fairly short drive/taxi ride over to it. If you would prefer to stay on property so you don't have to pay for the ride over, you could always do one of the water parks. It can get fairly chilly that time of year, highs in the mid 60s, but if you can brave the cold Typhoon and Blizzard are excellent options to spend a day. Finally, food wise, there are a LOT of good places to eat around here, especially in the i-drive area. Seriously, my recommendation is to just go around, and if it looks good, eat it. When you are at Disney though, it might would be a good idea to pick up the Disney Dining Plan, can save you upwards of 40% off of what you would normally spend on the restaurants in the resort, and gives you the chance to try out a few places you might would skip otherwise due to pricing. Anyways, glad you're deciding to come down here for a visit and I hope all this helps you out with planning

Before I continue in this off-topic discussion, these are some really awesome photos! Pure eye candy really, thank you so much for posting these. Now to the poster above me ^, Carowinds was a special case with this. It was the first time we were ever doing a single rider line for anything and so basically no one had any idea what it was. We would always have a greeter, every day of the week, and they told every person going into that line what it was and what it did, and that still didn't help. People were always using it thinking it was a "get on the ride quick" line. No one ever payed attention to the fact that when the line was half full, when running full capacity, was only a 15 minute wait. Everyone would see the sheer volume of the line and immediately jump into the single rider line, sometimes whole parties upwards of 10 people would jump in it! Also, what you said about using multiple single riders together may work for Disney because of how quickly the crowds flow through at Everest, but for Carowinds we couldn't do that because people started complaining if the group before them got to sit together but then they'd have to be split up. Seriously, the entire line set up at Intimidator was ghastly to say the least and I still think it needs a change up. Grouping was an utter nightmare...

^I can answer a few of those. Deja Vu was in fact where the newly renamed whistle stop park, previously Thoma Town, is now located. I do not know about a second gate, maybe someone else can answer that one. Viper was on the hill where Goliath now sits and it was removed for Goliath's construction (so long as I have my facts straight). Z-Force was around the area Ninja now sits, don't remember the exact location. This picture should help: picture credit rcdb.com

Visited the park today, not too awfully crowded. First thing in the morning Cheetah Hunt was packing a 90 minute wait, but as the day progressed the guests dispersed and it held between 30 and 45 minutes until closing. Montu was down for a very good majority of the day so I didn't manage any rides on it this trip. Now, onto the real reason for me posting this, Kinetix, what did I think? Holy crap it is AWESOME! Sadly due to some mechanical issue with the ceiling lowering/raising mechanism they were unable to perform the seesaw act, but everything else was presented. First thing I have to comment on is the music. The live band they have for this show is actually really good at making these almost rock covers of the pop songs, to the point where they sound better than the original version. Also, the sound system on this stage is incredibly powerful, almost felt like I was back at Warped tour . Now, onto the acrobatics, the bread and butter of this show if you will. The acts presented are a hulahoop act which includes balancing and juggling, a BMX act, a cube twirling act, and a jump rope act. Out of these I saw tonight the best were definitely the hulahoop act and the jump rope act. The jump rope act was actually so amazing and insane I'd say it's better than the new act that was put into La Nouba! This show was also surprisingly long, the shortened version I watched was well over 40 minutes in length! Overall this is an extremely good show and something I will definitely be watching again (need to see the seesaw act!). If you are in the area or are planing to be, do not miss this show!

^Or it could also mean that they might not have picked up full rights to some items within the museum and as such cannot permit people to photograph these items for reason of infringement. Or it could also be that they have photo albums, DVDs, etc detailing the museum and several of the items within it and letting people take pictures would cut back on merchandise sales (this is the usual reason at least). Anyways, thanks for the report on the museum as this is a place I will eventually go see. Just need a reason to go to CA first.

Yay! You were finally able to update the thread! Anyways, a lot of these pictures did turn out really good, that camera you have is beast.

I wish I could get a free donut for waiting in line for my local Krispy Kreme. This just doesn't seem fair, though the 35 minute wait is a bit extreme. Anyways, this jealous boy is jealous. Hope you are all enjoying your trip and can't wait to hear more about it. I will make it on the next one of these, oh yes, I will...