KBrylczyk

They said that about Starbucks. Look who' laughing now. Definitely not the owners of American Dream, but Starbucks for sure. Edit - Also, who the hell decided Woodland Hills would be a prime location for a destination mall? Nobody I know that lives south of the hills ever visits the Valley unless it's life or death. You can't get someone from Hollywood to visit Encino even if you offered free tacos.

Haaaaaaaaahahahahahaha, this will never happen.

^ Nah, they'll just build a parking garage at some point and expand into the existing lots. That would free up a huge amount of real estate, almost enough to double the size of the park.

Drury is an excellent hotel brand, this is a great addition. Here's hoping the entrance road is named Drury Lane and there's a small Muffin Man shop.

It's a 75 minute show, 35 of which are just media on projection screens. I'm not exaggerating that number. When there were actual performers on the stage it was lackluster and unpleasant (there's a very long torture scene) and none of the action had a fast pace. The stunt work was on par with a low budget theme park stunt show. Just an awful, awful show.

^ Here's hoping the new show is more in line with Cirque's regular repertoire than R.U.N. at Luxor. Worst show I've ever seen, hands down.

^ Have you followed the construction of any Six Flags coaster in the past 5 years? I've got bad news.

It's what you said in the second paragraph. Those are unloaded vehicles returning to one of the loading bays. It looks like there's four loading bay garage doors plus an extra garage door in that first room that allows the empty vehicles in from the unload area.

In one of the vids I've seen it looks like there's a separate line once you're inside the star destroyer, before being broken up to the groups for the main ride. Perhaps there's the standby, singles, and fastpass lines out front, they all merge for the hologram room and transport, then fastpass gets a secondary bypass on the star destroyer while singles remain with standby. Then again, how about I shut up and let someone who's been there provide accurate information.

^

Yep, it's 100% immersive. Rides like Spidey, Transformers, etc, all depended on the high-sided cars to force your view to a certain area. This is all around you literally the entire experience. There are no black walls with projectors in the ceiling or behind you. It's unbelievable.

Sweet lawd baby jesus...

Super jealous that you guys get to ride Rise Of The Resistance. We have over a month to wait on this side of the country.

It'll be open just in time for Fright Fest, hence the Jersey Devil theme.

$289 and $489 for that place?! Those are Disney hotel prices! Doing a super quick search for hotel prices I'm seeing a range from $45 to $115 around Dutch Wonderland. Jump it to $200 max for downtown Lancaster, maybe.

So much for that Black Friday extravaganza, eh?

Did Dynamic Attractions have anything noteworthy? Possibly some info for the Ferrari World coaster that's been in development hell for three years?

^^ What's even more interesting about that list is Tao Asian Bistro at Venetian Las Vegas was the #1 spot year after year. This year, though? It didn't even break the top 100.

Remember a few yhears ago when IAAPA was full of awesome stuff, cool new concepts and all that? Recent years it's just been "here's a lead car for a new coaster, here's a lead car for an old coaster, here's a new topping for dippin dots." It's really gone downhill. Where's all the innovation we used to see?

I'm still having serious trouble believing that people will make the trek to the Meadowlands just to visit a friggin mall. I grew up in central Jersey, mall central. I had 5 malls within 10 miles of my front door. What I'm saying is, people aren't going to drive an hour or more just to visit this place. Sure, when the Giants or Jets have a game I'm sure people will check it out, but malls were always a local hangout in that area of the country. You didn't venture far to find a mall. This isn't the midwest where towns and cities are vast distances apart. Towns are stacked on top of each other with no clear borderlines and each town has its own mall (or malls). Take the King Of Prussia Mall, for example. It's huge, it was always #2 right behind Mall Of America in terms of total square footage. Does it do the business Mall Of America does? No, because the greater Philadelphia area has malls EVERYWHERE. The only reason I'd ever drive out there was when I wanted to check out an IMAX movie.

^ Retheme incoming.

OMG this makes me wish you had video of our Colossos ERT back in 2012 that was in the driving rain. The most painful yet most memorable and fun ERT session I've had. Edit - Also, that is an OBSCENE amount of water on Hakugei.

^^^ Thanks for the info, I wish I'd known that a few days ago, haha. That's another thing, the signage in Citywalk is almost nowhere to be found. I mean yeah, the vendors have signs at their location, but signs pointing towards the garages, the front gate, restrooms, and what vendors are where are very sparse.

TR from my trip to HHN last week, no pictures though, so skip if you want. I don't really care. I got to the parking garage around 4:45pm and wandered around Citywalk for a bit to kill some time. Having done the drive from Vegas straight through and having eaten only a bowl of Cheerios that morning I was hoping to grab a quick bite prior to going into the park, but much to my dismay I was hit with the reality that Citywalk has next to no quick or fast service dining options, only full service sit down restaurants or a popcorn place. Shame, but I wasn't going to waste my time at a restaurant when there's early entry to be had, so off to the front gate I went. Major shout out to one of the employees by the front gate who gave me some great advice when I walked up! I had purchased a standard ticket the day prior and I asked where I could go to upgrade to front of line access. She pointed towards the guest services windows but also told me not to waste my money. They were projecting an attendance of 10,000 guests that evening and told me that an average night is 22,000 guests, so I more than likely wouldn't need to upgrade. After confirming that there were locations once inside the park to upgrade I thanked her and sauntered on over to the entrance gates for early entry without an upgrade. Long story short, she was right, the place was nearly a ghost town most of the night, and I would have wasted $100. Good on you, random front plaza employee! So here I am at the front gate waiting for them to open and they make the announcement that select attractions would be open for early entry, but not all. We would have to download the Universal Studios App to see which attractions opened at what time. Huh, that's weird, but fine, I guess. Why can't they just place a sign by the entrance with that information? This would be my first reminder that Universal is now owned by Comcast and therefore they will do anything and everything in their power to make your life more difficult. Long story short (part 2: Electric Boogaloo) Stranger Things (lower lot), Frankenstein Vs. The Wolfman (backlot), and Us (tram lot) would be open at 5:30pm, followed by Ghostbusters (backlot) and Holidayz In Hell (upper lot) at 5:45pm, then Killer Klownz (lower lot) and House Of 1000 Corpses (front friggin entrance) at 6. The other haunts would open at 7. Obviously their timing of the various haunts were designed to make my route through the park an everlasting hell, so I said screw it, I'm heading to Stranger Things right off the bat, then the backlot, then working my way through the rest of the park hitting what I could, opening times be damned. Stranger Things - I went into this one not expecting a lot of scares. I've watched the series and I've never found it particularly scary but the style and creature designs certainly lent themselves to the event. This was the ONLY soundstage haunt, unfortunately. Every other haunt was housed in those black tents which really takes away from the scale of the haunts and the variety of the scares. You'll hear more about that later. Because this was the only soundstage haunt it also ended up being my favorite of the event. The sets were well done, the haunt was very long, there were a bunch of double-team scares, and I got the final scare targeted directly into my face, causing me to nearly fall over backwards (thanks, wall, for preventing that) and scream, "HOLY $&*@ WHAT THE #$ GAAAAAAAHHHHHH" as I ran out of the haunt like a fat kid running away from the gym (I can say that, I'm fat). It was a great way to start the evening! Frankie Vs. Wolfenstein - I like that Universal is trying to embrace their classic monsters recently, and this haunt had a few great sets and scares in it, but the consistency just isn't there. I came back through this haunt a few hours later after the actors had a chance to warm up but it didn't make much of a difference. Was it fun? Sure! I just wish it stuck with the immersion that the opening scenes had. Sets that fully surround you and have actors coming from all angles quickly give way to black hallways and sudden loud noises with a strobe light. There were also a few "late" scares where I would pass the actor only to hear the sound trigger, turn around and see someone in a mask standing there expecting me to jump. That approach would work if they were to silently creep up on you, but not the way it was presented here. Ghostbusters - Fun? Definitely. Scary? Not even a little bit, but that shouldn't be a surprise. This was the party haunt. Everyone inside (cast and guests) seemed to be having a blast playing these characters, especially Slimer. I had one of the Slimers waving his arms in a blacklight like he was at a party, so I started waving with him and he turned and gave me the double finger guns as if to say, "yeah, you get it, bro!" I do, Slimer, I do. Keep on rockin! I really hope this comes back in the future in a soundstage where it can really stretch out. Creepshow - Crap. Worst of the event. Let it die and never return. Nothing but black hallways with strobes and loud sounds. I'd rather be stuck on It's A Small World for an hour than go through this again. Killer Klownz - Water Gun: The Haunt. I'm pretty sure there wasn't a single scare in here that wasn't telegraphed five seconds in advance. I got blasted in the face with a Klown's water gun about 10 times. Decent sets, though, so hooray for that. Holidayz In Hell - Just like Frankie and Wolfman, this one starts great and then quickly fizzles out. The ideas for the holidays were decent but after the first few you could tell they ran out of space and/or budget because every scene was extremely short, especially the one for Halloween, which should have gotten the most love. At least they did a decent job of avoiding black hallways! Us - I loved this haunt. Like the movie it's slower paced. There aren't actors everywhere trying to get you. Instead you walk through large sets with one, maybe two actors, being creepy as hell. There are a few jump scares but mostly this haunt relied on putting you into very uncomfortable situations which resulted in very effective scares, in my opinion. The finale was also a fantastic use of a tried and true haunt staple. This is another one I want to come back! Pandora's Box - The storyline here is pretty damn loose as you're just moving between scenes of varying dead things, but there were some very effective scares (and some not-so-effective) and creative designs. I just wish is didn't rely 100% on blacklight. That gets old very fast, especially when there's already Killer Klownz overdoing it. House Of 1000 Corpses - Another victim of Frankenstein and Wolfman design. The first few sets were great but then it fell into black hallway after black hallway. Long stretches of the haunt with no actors, ineffective scares when they finally did show up, and a severe over-reliance on Captain Spaulding rather than the rest of the Firefly Family who, IMO, are far more terrifying. The Walking Dead Attraction - We're just going to pretend this abomination doesn't exist, OK? Cool. Transformers - Hoo boy, Universal, you need to get your act together. This ride is in ROUGH shape. The projections are all very washed out, the 3D isn't tuned properly anymore (tons of double images), most of the 4D effects weren't working, the audio was all over the place (most likely dead speakers or just awful volume control), just a sad shadow of its former self. I recall this ride being incredible five years ago. It's no Spider-Man but it was still a great use of the technology! Now? Yeesh. Justice League at Six Flags is more impressive. Universal, I beg you, put some cash into this ride immediately. Jurassic World - Some sick bastard decided to turn the water effects to max when it was 60 degrees out. Thanks, bud. Appreciate it. God this ride sucks so much compared to what it used to be. The Mummy - Hey look! This one hasn't gone too far downhill! A few of the dark ride section effects were janky but overall it's still a solid indoor coaster. Jabbawockeez - I wish I could rewind my life 25 minutes. I clearly got the B-crew for this show. Half of the dancers were out of sync with the others and the production design seemed hell-bent on blinding the audience with lights every chance they got. Bill & Ted died for this. I had a fun night but it'll probably be another five years before I bother with HHN again, especially when all of the local competition just does everything better and for a lower price.