arrowfanman

Yea...depite the low quantity of things to do, I would definitely say there was high QUALITY. As far as sheer VALUE is concerned, this event is definitely worth a visit. -Jahan

Hey folks! Today, I happened to stop by the park, as I was a stupid moron and picked Magic Mountain over Disney...but I was quite surprised by what I saw! Orient Express and Circus Wheel were OPEN! AND Colossus was racing. I dont know why, but I made a stupid video, if anyone is bored... -Jahan Update .wmv

Honestly, while 45 on, 15 off, isn't a true marathon, its still quite an accomplishment in my opinion. If I rode it more than 5 times, I would be feeling like shit! So congrats to all who actually participated and expirimented with human edurance.

At least she looks less like a man! Even if she has a Michael Jackson nose now. -Jahan

Thanks for all of your awesome responses. The event is by itself, $49 at the door. If its a non-peak day, you can purchase your tickets online for only $34, which what I did, and is definitely a good deal. And if its a peak-day, you can purchase your tickets online for only $39...still a great deal. This event is definitely worth $39. -Jahan

Not trying to turn this into a shameless plug, but I have some good photos of the event in my new photo TR!... http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29930&start=30 -Jahan

Alright guys! Enough of Six Flags Magic Mountain….there’s a new kid on the block!... Ooohhh…Pretty. Park 2: Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights That’s right folks…yesterday was Friday the 13th, and to celebrate, me, Mike, Robb, and Elissa headed down to the new Halloween Horror Nights event at Universal Studios Hollywood! Elissa’s obligatory camera pose/facial expression…..ok, ok…I’ll go die. Mike, VERY excited to miss work for a real park. Grrr….stupid traffic! This is almost as bad as queuing for the Mummy! I don’t know why I included this picture. But I did, and your going to like it! Taadaa! We’re here…Universal Studios Hollywood, in case you didn’t read the sign. Elissa, Mike, and I got there about fifteen minutes before Robb, so we just chilled for a bit. I thought I would go check out the lines for the event. Holy Crap! Actually to be quite honest, this wasn’t that many people. These were just the people that were forced to come, as they purchased their ticket online….grrr. (The forecast was rainy today) So this is what it would feel like if we waited in line! Once Robb got there, it was time to go inside….the pimp way! I’m totally on a red carpet in Hollywood! Its so awesome, that apparently it even tastes good! So basically we waited around for about twenty minutes, when it started to rain. I felt sort of bad for Universal, as it was evident that they had set up an outside-performance to kick off the event, which involved pyro, lighting, and everything….which ultimately had to be called off on account of rain. So they moved everybody inside, where we got little cheeseburgers and everything! Their cameras are all bigger than mine. Awwww….how cute. The gruesome-twosome sharing a press event with one another. While the not-so-exciting “Graduation” performance was going on, I thought I would walk around and check out the cool sets that they had set up for the press. Cool. Cooler. Even cooler. Yet again, Jahan manages to get a chick in the tub! Dude…she’s totally cute too! Finally the little show thingy was over, and we were let loose into the park at 7:30. Keep in mind, that the guests have had access to the park for 30 minutes now, which I thought was lame, as there were already lines by the time we were allowed out. Walked right out into a scare zone. While some weren’t impressed by the scare zones, I was thoroughly impressed! Albeit they were small, but they had awesome scare actors, with superb costumes, and were totally in character and everything! Since I’ve only been to SFMM and Knott’s events before, I was totally pleased with the level of detail to be seen. Mmmmm…I love me my bacon! This guy ran into a Minute Man squadron. At this point, we decided to go check out the Terror Tram attraction. We were waiting outside the front of the attraction, which didn’t open until 8:00 pm…as soon as the clock hit 8:00 pm, the LED sign depicting the wait-time changed to “60 minutes”. No f***in way! Totally ridiculous! We decided that perhaps it would be best to try and hit up the mazes first, and see if the tram line would go down….it wouldn’t. The evil board of wait times! The Asylum, utilizing the Shrek 4D queue….ironically, “The Asylum” is my nickname for Shrek 4D. At this point, the wait for The Asylum was only 5 minutes, if that! (Later on it would be posted at 75 minutes!) Now, this is the first Universal Maze that I have ever encountered in my short and pathetic life. And personally, I absolutely LOVED it. While I didn’t get any immediate scares, I for sure was totally involved in the custom, scary atmosphere! The level of detail, the character and persistence of the scare actors totally surpassed what I have previously encountered at Six Flags Magic Mountain, or even Knotts. And in this particular attraction, we didn’t encounter a single shaker-can! After that, it was decided that we would just hit up the other maze…you know, get them over with. This maze cant make up what it wants to be…unlike ME Robb! The other maze was Universal’s House of Horrors, located inside of the Van Helsing: Fortress Dracula attraction. We only queued about 15-20 minutes for it…not unbearable. Its location at the immediate front of the park causes it to have LONG lines at opening, and shorter lines at the end. Definitely get to the Asylum earlier (as its entrance FACES the back of the park…so some guests don’t realize its there) and the House of Horror’s later. Universal’s House of Horrors was also much fun. While we did think that it was lame that they were merely utilizing the Van Helsing attraction for the maze, there were many more scare actors, all resembling the various Universal scares of the past. And I admit, I actually got scared in this maze, which would be a first for me. So congrats to the scare actors! After the mazes, we sorta pulled the classic look at each other and say “Now what?” It was decided we would go down to the lower lot and check out the rides. The Mutaytor show. I wasn’t really paying attention to the performance…just the freaking awesome fireballs! Super-Xtreme escalator credit shot!!!!!! They had some neat scare actors in the lower-lot too! Time to try our luck with Mummy! I’m such a mummys-boy. Sweet! I’m totally excited about the fact that we will only have to wait a mere, short, 10 minute wait for this borefest of a ride! No Robb! Don’t touch! You’ll… …poor Robb. You couldn’t wait until January! Well, despite a 10 minute posted wait, we waited a good 15 minutes before we realized that there was still a good 30 minutes more to wait! Hell no! I would rather be on the 405 than wait 45 minutes for the Mummy! Booo! I guess it just sucked because it didn’t have its wonder-worker to save the day! Well, maybe we will have better luck with Jurassic Park: In the Dark. Anything with fire is cool with me! We get in line to a 5 minute wait, only to hear that the ride broke down about a minute into our wait! What the hell!?! By the way…did you guys know that Jurassic Park is a Vekoma? Hmmm…you learn something new every day. Anyway…. they were able to get the ride up and running in a few minutes, and finally we boarded. The ride was MUCH lamer in the dark. You couldn’t see any of the animatronics! I mean, I thought SFMM’s “Park in the dark” was lame, but this was sort of just boring and weird. At least the drop was cool, as usual. Do I really need a caption for this one? Do I really need a caption for this one? So after finishing up the lower lot, we decided to hurry back up to the top of the hill, to see if we could catch a show. Huh? Whoops! Yea…Mummy was posted at 15 minutes when we got out of Jurassic, and that is DEFINITELY a little over an hour wait! At least at the Riddler’s Revenge, we were nice enough to overshoot the times, like they do at Space Mountain….its usually always set to “2 hours”, or somewhere between that and 2 ½ hours. Alright, so we got to the top of the hill, and decided to hit the Fear Factor show. Oh…its “Fear Factor Live…I’m sorry! Now, I’m not going to say that we had “high expectations” for this show, but I would say that we had “high hopes” for this show. The show is hosted by Heckles and Twitch, the comedic clown duo that has worked Six Flags Magic Mountain’s Fright Fest the past few years, but hopped over to Universal Studios this year. Both Mike and I were familiar with the clowns, and so we were hoping for some good stuff from them. Robb and Elissa, who weren’t familiar with the clowns, were told by someone that the show should be sort of like a “Bill and Ted concept”. So I think we all walked into the show with at least “high hopes”. What we saw was rather disappointing. And that isn’t just me being a picky little fart. I dearly wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I’m not going to lie to you…. ONE HALF of the audience left mid-performance….eventually including us. The show is essentially supposed to be a Fear Factor Live: Celebrity Edition gone wrong. Here…I’ll just post the pictures… Heckles and Twitch hijacking the show from Mr. Host Guy. Bringing in the celebrity contestants…from left to right: Howard Stern Saddam Hussein, Satan, Michael Jackson, Brittany Spears, and Paris Hilton. No show would be complete without the obligatory Bush jokes. A snuck a picture of them, and you can just see the pain in their faces….seriously! The show was very disappointing, as there was so much misguided potential. The entire “Fear Factor” element of the show weighted it down, in my opinion. It was shrouded in humor entirely dependant upon “shock value”, which in and of itself didn’t have enough real content to carry a show this long. That’s the thing—if we thought it was close to ending, we would have stayed…but this was just dragging on, and there was no end in sight, so we sort of just had to leave. At this point, we didn’t know what to do. The next batch of shows weren’t scheduled to start for a bit, and the Terror Tram was still posted at 75 minutes! It was at this point that we started asking around and calling numbers, and lets just say that we got a little help on getting onto the Terror Tram right away! Finally!!! Robb, mad, because once again Jahan is “cramping his style with the ladies”. Its alright Elissa…you know I’ll always be there for you. January could not come any sooner, unfortunately. …and on a side note, if I hear “Sue Carpenter?!” from a particular Magic employee one more time, I’m going to freaking kill him. I don’t know what’s more exciting to them…finally being on the Tram, or shooting off “Jahan’s sexuality” jokes….grr. Our cute, foreign tram guide. Our not-so-cute, foreign director, who coincidentally looks a lot like Wes. Again, we were totally dumbfounded by the stuff that was coming out of the tram guide’s mouths! Between getting the tram excited about getting drunk, to how she would screw the director, to even a black dildo joke, it was amazing…they were totally pushing even the “PG-13” self-rating. Regardless, the Terror Tram was definitely the highlight of my night. It wasn’t even the elaborate scares and wonderful scare actors, but simply the mere walking along the Bates Motel, Psycho House, and War of the Worlds set, which was what made it cool, in my sole opinion. Alright…here’s your pictures galore… Understandable, but it was unfortunate that they had chosen this location for all of their telecasts. Yesssss x 10 ^ kajillionth! Does that make you randy baby, yea! Sweet! *sigh*…I’m going to stay true to my promise about no old-lady jokes, so you BETTER be nice to me! I love it. Any park that has a crazy Texan dude skinning “beef jerkey” off of the faces of park guests…is a cool park to me! This guy was so awesome, that he ACTUALLY censored himself! That gave us a good laugh. I certainly need to refine my taste in women. Duude. This is awesome. They even had a really great Norman Bates character! Onward, to the War of the Worlds set! At this point, we meet back up with a tram, and reboard. Only to go into some cheesy “layover” of the Mummy-tunnel, where you “encounter the director” (…or not.). And like that, the Terror Tram is over. It was an EXCELLENT main attraction for the event, albeit a bit short, but was definitely great. I suppose the fact we didn’t have to wait 75 minutes may have played into that! I definitely hope they have this attraction in future events…possibly even extending walk-though portion. I totally approve of the Terror Tram…effectively blinding me for the next 30 seconds! Lastly, to finish of the night, we took Mike to go see T2:3D. Was the picture necessary? T2 was the same as always…..which was disappointing, as we had read that it should be different. Oh well…maybe next year. After all, Arnold is going to win in November. And with that, the night was over. We exited the show exactly at park closing. Overall, I think that this was a good “first event” for Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights. I’m glad to have gone, and I hope to do it again in years to come. A few things… One, there really isn’t enough to do, in relation to the amount of guests the event was digesting. Two mazes, two rides, the Terror Tram, and a few shows. Yesterday saw massive crowds, and the wait times reflected that by the end of the evening…Terror Tram never dropping below 75 minutes, and you all saw that Mummy line. Of the two mazes, House of Horrors opened with a 50 minute wait! (for a maze!). And the Asylum, while having a uber-short line at the beginning, would get a 75 minute wait by 11:00 pm! That’s crazy for a walk-through attraction that lasts about 4 minutes! Two, it was completely obvious that Universal wasn’t expecting that many people to show up! It was the first day of the event, a Friday, with rainy weather forecasted, and potentially weak pre-sales. This low turnout prediction ended up seriously hurting operations, as they really weren’t ready to handle the crowds of this magnitude. Somebody underestimated the marketing draw of “Friday the 13th”! Lastly, I was a bit surprised at exactly how much of the “PG-13” humor there actually was. Now I wouldn’t consider myself a prude…as a matter of fact, I praise a park that’s actually willing to show some balls! But anyone who knows the proper anatomy knows that there’s only supposed to be two balls! And this, my friends, was a crap load more than just 2 balls! As they said in Kung Pow, “That’s a lot of nuts!” Point being, is that had so much of the “crude humor”, for the mere sake of having the “crude humor”. They relied solely on “shock value”, frequently not having any real content to the jokes. So once that “shock value” wore off, I sat there kind of confused as to what the hell I was exactly seeing! It was almost as confusing as the blatant “Full Throttle” plugs. But perhaps that was just me. Regardless, in the end I had an amazingly awesome time and I will definitely be back for the years to come. If they could add at least two more mazes for next years event, give their shows a major rethink, turn Jurassic’s lights back on, and demolish Mummy and replace it with a Riddler’s Revenge clone, next years event will be even more amazing, and they will have officially stuck their foot in the door of Halloween events! Well folks, thanks for reading my photo trip report! I KNOW it was long, but I thank you for putting up with me yet again! Feel free to post questions, comments, concerns, or as always, praise. -Jahan

Alright guys! Enough of Six Flags Magic Mountain….there’s a new kid on the block!... Ooohhh…Pretty. Park 2: Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights That’s right folks…yesterday was Friday the 13th, and to celebrate, me, Mike, Robb, and Elissa headed down to the new Halloween Horror Nights event at Universal Studios Hollywood! Elissa’s obligatory camera pose/facial expression…..ok, ok…I’ll go die. Mike, VERY excited to miss work for a real park. Grrr….stupid traffic! This is almost as bad as queuing for the Mummy! I don’t know why I included this picture. But I did, and your going to like it! Taadaa! We’re here…Universal Studios Hollywood, in case you didn’t read the sign. Elissa, Mike, and I got there about fifteen minutes before Robb, so we just chilled for a bit. I thought I would go check out the lines for the event. Holy Crap! Actually to be quite honest, this wasn’t that many people. These were just the people that were forced to come, as they purchased their ticket online….grrr. (The forecast was rainy today) So this is what it would feel like if we waited in line! Once Robb got there, it was time to go inside….the pimp way! I’m totally on a red carpet in Hollywood! Its so awesome, that apparently it even tastes good! So basically we waited around for about twenty minutes, when it started to rain. I felt sort of bad for Universal, as it was evident that they had set up an outside-performance to kick off the event, which involved pyro, lighting, and everything….which ultimately had to be called off on account of rain. So they moved everybody inside, where we got little cheeseburgers and everything! Their cameras are all bigger than mine. Awwww….how cute. The gruesome-twosome sharing a press event with one another. While the not-so-exciting “Graduation” performance was going on, I thought I would walk around and check out the cool sets that they had set up for the press. Cool. Cooler. Even cooler. Yet again, Jahan manages to get a chick in the tub! Dude…she’s totally cute too! Finally the little show thingy was over, and we were let loose into the park at 7:30. Keep in mind, that the guests have had access to the park for 30 minutes now, which I thought was lame, as there were already lines by the time we were allowed out. Walked right out into a scare zone. While some weren’t impressed by the scare zones, I was thoroughly impressed! Albeit they were small, but they had awesome scare actors, with superb costumes, and were totally in character and everything! Since I’ve only been to SFMM and Knott’s events before, I was totally pleased with the level of detail to be seen. Mmmmm…I love me my bacon! This guy ran into a Minute Man squadron. At this point, we decided to go check out the Terror Tram attraction. We were waiting outside the front of the attraction, which didn’t open until 8:00 pm…as soon as the clock hit 8:00 pm, the LED sign depicting the wait-time changed to “60 minutes”. No f***in way! Totally ridiculous! We decided that perhaps it would be best to try and hit up the mazes first, and see if the tram line would go down….it wouldn’t. The evil board of wait times! The Asylum, utilizing the Shrek 4D queue….ironically, “The Asylum” is my nickname for Shrek 4D. At this point, the wait for The Asylum was only 5 minutes, if that! (Later on it would be posted at 75 minutes!) Now, this is the first Universal Maze that I have ever encountered in my short and pathetic life. And personally, I absolutely LOVED it. While I didn’t get any immediate scares, I for sure was totally involved in the custom, scary atmosphere! The level of detail, the character and persistence of the scare actors totally surpassed what I have previously encountered at Six Flags Magic Mountain, or even Knotts. And in this particular attraction, we didn’t encounter a single shaker-can! After that, it was decided that we would just hit up the other maze…you know, get them over with. This maze cant make up what it wants to be…unlike ME Robb! The other maze was Universal’s House of Horrors, located inside of the Van Helsing: Fortress Dracula attraction. We only queued about 15-20 minutes for it…not unbearable. Its location at the immediate front of the park causes it to have LONG lines at opening, and shorter lines at the end. Definitely get to the Asylum earlier (as its entrance FACES the back of the park…so some guests don’t realize its there) and the House of Horror’s later. Universal’s House of Horrors was also much fun. While we did think that it was lame that they were merely utilizing the Van Helsing attraction for the maze, there were many more scare actors, all resembling the various Universal scares of the past. And I admit, I actually got scared in this maze, which would be a first for me. So congrats to the scare actors! After the mazes, we sorta pulled the classic look at each other and say “Now what?” It was decided we would go down to the lower lot and check out the rides. The Mutaytor show. I wasn’t really paying attention to the performance…just the freaking awesome fireballs! Super-Xtreme escalator credit shot!!!!!! They had some neat scare actors in the lower-lot too! Time to try our luck with Mummy! I’m such a mummys-boy. Sweet! I’m totally excited about the fact that we will only have to wait a mere, short, 10 minute wait for this borefest of a ride! No Robb! Don’t touch! You’ll… …poor Robb. You couldn’t wait until January! Well, despite a 10 minute posted wait, we waited a good 15 minutes before we realized that there was still a good 30 minutes more to wait! Hell no! I would rather be on the 405 than wait 45 minutes for the Mummy! Booo! I guess it just sucked because it didn’t have its wonder-worker to save the day! Well, maybe we will have better luck with Jurassic Park: In the Dark. Anything with fire is cool with me! We get in line to a 5 minute wait, only to hear that the ride broke down about a minute into our wait! What the hell!?! By the way…did you guys know that Jurassic Park is a Vekoma? Hmmm…you learn something new every day. Anyway…. they were able to get the ride up and running in a few minutes, and finally we boarded. The ride was MUCH lamer in the dark. You couldn’t see any of the animatronics! I mean, I thought SFMM’s “Park in the dark” was lame, but this was sort of just boring and weird. At least the drop was cool, as usual. Do I really need a caption for this one? Do I really need a caption for this one? So after finishing up the lower lot, we decided to hurry back up to the top of the hill, to see if we could catch a show. Huh? Whoops! Yea…Mummy was posted at 15 minutes when we got out of Jurassic, and that is DEFINITELY a little over an hour wait! At least at the Riddler’s Revenge, we were nice enough to overshoot the times, like they do at Space Mountain….its usually always set to “2 hours”, or somewhere between that and 2 ½ hours. Alright, so we got to the top of the hill, and decided to hit the Fear Factor show. Oh…its “Fear Factor Live…I’m sorry! Now, I’m not going to say that we had “high expectations” for this show, but I would say that we had “high hopes” for this show. The show is hosted by Heckles and Twitch, the comedic clown duo that has worked Six Flags Magic Mountain’s Fright Fest the past few years, but hopped over to Universal Studios this year. Both Mike and I were familiar with the clowns, and so we were hoping for some good stuff from them. Robb and Elissa, who weren’t familiar with the clowns, were told by someone that the show should be sort of like a “Bill and Ted concept”. So I think we all walked into the show with at least “high hopes”. What we saw was rather disappointing. And that isn’t just me being a picky little fart. I dearly wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I’m not going to lie to you…. ONE HALF of the audience left mid-performance….eventually including us. The show is essentially supposed to be a Fear Factor Live: Celebrity Edition gone wrong. Here…I’ll just post the pictures… Heckles and Twitch hijacking the show from Mr. Host Guy. Bringing in the celebrity contestants…from left to right: Howard Stern Saddam Hussein, Satan, Michael Jackson, Brittany Spears, and Paris Hilton. No show would be complete without the obligatory Bush jokes. A snuck a picture of them, and you can just see the pain in their faces….seriously! The show was very disappointing, as there was so much misguided potential. The entire “Fear Factor” element of the show weighted it down, in my opinion. It was shrouded in humor entirely dependant upon “shock value”, which in and of itself didn’t have enough real content to carry a show this long. That’s the thing—if we thought it was close to ending, we would have stayed…but this was just dragging on, and there was no end in sight, so we sort of just had to leave. At this point, we didn’t know what to do. The next batch of shows weren’t scheduled to start for a bit, and the Terror Tram was still posted at 75 minutes! It was at this point that we started asking around and calling numbers, and lets just say that we got a little help on getting onto the Terror Tram right away! Finally!!! Robb, mad, because once again Jahan is “cramping his style with the ladies”. Its alright Elissa…you know I’ll always be there for you. January could not come any sooner, unfortunately. …and on a side note, if I hear “Sue Carpenter?!” from a particular Magic employee one more time, I’m going to freaking kill him. I don’t know what’s more exciting to them…finally being on the Tram, or shooting off “Jahan’s sexuality” jokes….grr. Our cute, foreign tram guide. Our not-so-cute, foreign director, who coincidentally looks a lot like Wes. Again, we were totally dumbfounded by the stuff that was coming out of the tram guide’s mouths! Between getting the tram excited about getting drunk, to how she would screw the director, to even a black dildo joke, it was amazing…they were totally pushing even the “PG-13” self-rating. Regardless, the Terror Tram was definitely the highlight of my night. It wasn’t even the elaborate scares and wonderful scare actors, but simply the mere walking along the Bates Motel, Psycho House, and War of the Worlds set, which was what made it cool, in my sole opinion. Alright…here’s your pictures galore… Understandable, but it was unfortunate that they had chosen this location for all of their telecasts. Yesssss x 10 ^ kajillionth! Does that make you randy baby, yea! Sweet! *sigh*…I’m going to stay true to my promise about no old-lady jokes, so you BETTER be nice to me! I love it. Any park that has a crazy Texan dude skinning “beef jerkey” off of the faces of park guests…is a cool park to me! This guy was so awesome, that he ACTUALLY censored himself! That gave us a good laugh. I certainly need to refine my taste in women. Duude. This is awesome. They even had a really great Norman Bates character! Onward, to the War of the Worlds set! At this point, we meet back up with a tram, and reboard. Only to go into some cheesy “layover” of the Mummy-tunnel, where you “encounter the director” (…or not.). And like that, the Terror Tram is over. It was an EXCELLENT main attraction for the event, albeit a bit short, but was definitely great. I suppose the fact we didn’t have to wait 75 minutes may have played into that! I definitely hope they have this attraction in future events…possibly even extending walk-though portion. I totally approve of the Terror Tram…effectively blinding me for the next 30 seconds! Lastly, to finish of the night, we took Mike to go see T2:3D. Was the picture necessary? T2 was the same as always…..which was disappointing, as we had read that it should be different. Oh well…maybe next year. After all, Arnold is going to win in November. And with that, the night was over. We exited the show exactly at park closing. Overall, I think that this was a good “first event” for Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights. I’m glad to have gone, and I hope to do it again in years to come. A few things… One, there really isn’t enough to do, in relation to the amount of guests the event was digesting. Two mazes, two rides, the Terror Tram, and a few shows. Yesterday saw massive crowds, and the wait times reflected that by the end of the evening…Terror Tram never dropping below 75 minutes, and you all saw that Mummy line. Of the two mazes, House of Horrors opened with a 50 minute wait! (for a maze!). And the Asylum, while having a uber-short line at the beginning, would get a 75 minute wait by 11:00 pm! That’s crazy for a walk-through attraction that lasts about 4 minutes! Two, it was completely obvious that Universal wasn’t expecting that many people to show up! It was the first day of the event, a Friday, with rainy weather forecasted, and potentially weak pre-sales. This low turnout prediction ended up seriously hurting operations, as they really weren’t ready to handle the crowds of this magnitude. Somebody underestimated the marketing draw of “Friday the 13th”! Lastly, I was a bit surprised at exactly how much of the “PG-13” humor there actually was. Now I wouldn’t consider myself a prude…as a matter of fact, I praise a park that’s actually willing to show some balls! But anyone who knows the proper anatomy knows that there’s only supposed to be two balls! And this, my friends, was a crap load more than just 2 balls! As they said in Kung Pow, “That’s a lot of nuts!” Point being, is that had so much of the “crude humor”, for the mere sake of having the “crude humor”. They relied solely on “shock value”, frequently not having any real content to the jokes. So once that “shock value” wore off, I sat there kind of confused as to what the hell I was exactly seeing! It was almost as confusing as the blatant “Full Throttle” plugs. But perhaps that was just me. Regardless, in the end I had an amazingly awesome time and I will definitely be back for the years to come. If they could add at least two more mazes for next years event, give their shows a major rethink, turn Jurassic’s lights back on, and demolish Mummy and replace it with a Riddler’s Revenge clone, next years event will be even more amazing, and they will have officially stuck their foot in the door of Halloween events! Well folks, thanks for reading my photo trip report! I KNOW it was long, but I thank you for putting up with me yet again! Feel free to post questions, comments, concerns, or as always, praise. -Jahan

No. ...well, I suppose I can, but dont be surprised if the box is opened when you get back. I have always dreamed of playing with your Wii. And a grin with a "huh?" for topless-jewish-mario guys! -Jahan

^ Jesus Christ! I was trying to take a picture of the parade, and he jumped in my face, and I fabricated a cheesy caption in an attempt to yeild a tad of laughter from the situation. No need to be such a serious turd about it! Anyway, thanks to everyone who posted! Much appreciated! Well...everyone except for Elissa, who discriminates against Photobucket. And CD, I'm afraid I wont make it to SFMW this year. Maybe next year, for sure. -Jahan

Dude! Awesome trip report man! You almost make Fresno seem like fun in this one! Even if your ferris wheel doors wont lock. Your Derek impersonation is flawless! Great job on that one! And congradulations on your news-caster poundage! -Jahan

^ You know, I expected the transition to be a bit bumpy, but I'm finding I'm making it as a stupid guest just fine. Thanks for the comments everyone. -Jahan

Good evening folks, and welcome to Jahan’s Super Sweet October Trip-Trip Report! That’s right—this October, I have decided to visit a coincidental 13 parks, during this every-exciting Halloween season! But no need for me to keep blabbering on…let us start with the first of 13 parks! Table of Contents Park 1: Six Flags Magic Mountain (Fright Fest) Park 2: Universal Studios Hollywood (Halloween Horror Nights) Park 3: Disney's Animal Kingdom Park 4: Disney-MGM Studios and Illuminations Park 5: Islands of Adventure Park 6: Universal Studios Orlando (Halloween Horror Nights) Park 7: Epcot Park 8: The Magic Kingdom (MNSSHP) Park 8 1/2: Cypress Gardens Park 10: Busch Gardens Africa (Howl O Scream) Bonus Photos!: Florida, Day 5, Park Hopping at WDW! Park 11: Knott's Berry Farm (Halloween Haunt) Park 12: Disney's California Adventure (Disney's HalloweenTime) Park 13: Disneyland (Disney's HalloweenTime) Park 1: Six Flags Magic Mountain Fright Fest Well, I got a call from TJ, saying he was driving home to the SCV for the weekend, and so we then decided to hit up Magic Mountain. We got there around 4:30, argued with security about me bringing in a tripod, and then went straight for our free FlashPasses. I had totally not realized this, but we get both the FlashPasses AND the FrightPasses (for the mazes) for free with the Xtreme Playpass. What a pleasant surprise! Isn’t it beautiful. This meant no waits all night long. After I took me some update shots of the Orient Express (which is still closed, but is looking beautiful), we cut through Revy’s exit, and hit up Tatsu, of course. Why did this ride have to be so damn photogenic! Of course, it wouldn’t be Tatsu without a 30 minute FlashPass wait! Yea…Tatsu operations still suck major dragon balls. But on the bright side, they were actually running 3-train, 2-station operation, and have made some necessary lead-changes at the ride. I hope we have seen the ride hit rock-bottom, as it can only get better. Can it? Please tell me it can! Anyway, Tatsu was uber-fun, as always (I even saw a Razr phone fall out of someone’s pocket, on the pretzel!). After Tatsu, we headed up towards Ninja. At this time, it was about 5:25. There was a sign outside of the maze “Willoughby’s Mansion”, saying it would open at 5:30. “Sweet!” we thought, so we hopped in the FrightPass line and waited….. …..and waited some more….. ……and then waited some more….. …..yea, we’re still waiting….. TJ’s getting impatient. Truth be told, I was a bit more impatient. FINALLY at 6:05, they decided to actually open the damn maze! Lucky for us, they didn’t yet have a “splitter”, so we effectively cut infront of everybody in line, without having to give up any FrightPass tickets. Score! This “Willoughby” character is one messed up dude! The maze was all and all “ok”. I have only been it once before and yet I totally remembered where everything was. I think its time SFMM had an update! Well…other than my updates. Heh. Not funny? Ok, lets continue then. We both left the maze feeling rather confused. Huh? I don’t know if it was that we were baffled by what we just saw, or if we were amused by how long we waited for that random house of bore, but either way, we put it behind us. After the maze, we headed down the hill. I wanted to check out Freefall, while there was still sunlight. After all, it was rumored to be open and all. …much to one Jew’s disappointment, it wasn’t. Don’t worry Joey…I know a hotline you can call. While we were over there, we heard somebody at Riddler’s hit a “ride stop”, effectively shutting down the ride. Somebody’s got some esplaining to do! Well, it was still light out, so we thought we’d kill time by grabbing some grub at Eduardo’s Grill. Sure, my Chicken Ranchero Burrito tasted more like chicken noodle soup, but at least I got it right away! Eating it, I kept being reminded of those lame-ass chickens, in the Foster Farms commercials. Anyway, after I had scarfed down my chicken-noodle-soup-burrito, we decided to hit up Colossus backwards. By this point, it was starting to get dark, so we stopped yet again to catch the end of the “Road Kill Kitchen” show. Yea…it really gets lamer with each year. Some of these are actually pretty funny! Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if Six Flags is being serious on this one. OMGF!!!.... *drools* Both sides were open! There is a God! That’s right folks, the left side was cycling 2 trains backwards as the right side cycled one forwards. And if the dispatches ever neared one another, they would actually race them! I was so giddy I had a joygasm! Unfortunately with my luck, as soon as we got in line, the ride broke down. *sigh* Why exactly is it broken down right now? Hahaha! Some dude’s restraint wont open! We decided to leave, and come back later. It was then that we ran into the “Procession of the Dead” parade. It was actually alright. Nothing special though. Hearse #1…its not old yet. This guy tried to scare me, so I flashed the camera, effectively blinding him for the next 30 seconds. Didn’t see THAT one coming, did you! Hearse #2, driven by some Mark Twain impersonator or something. This was similar to the “Chainsaw Drill Team” idea…just they couldn’t afford chainsaws, so they used shovels…lol. Hearse #3…more overkill than the crappy Road Kill Kitchen show! Next, we used the FrightPasses to skip to the front of the Brutal Planet line. Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. This maze always has the longest lines, and yet its always so disappointing to me! You just zig-zag back and forth, staring at the same aging scenery, watching effects reset themselves, and confusing the scare-actors with the “event staff” people, who look like they just got out of jail themselves! Me, totally confused, after two employees walked up to ME, and asked ME where the nearest bathroom was! Employees! After Lame-o Planet, we decided to see if they had gotten Colossus back up and running yet. Our quest had been fulfilled, as it was. This is going to be painful! Ouch! …and this is just the lift hill! Oh CRAP! Real men can cry…as their manhood is being pounded into jelly. Actually, in all honesty, the ride wasn’t that bumpy! I personally preferred it to my forwards ride on it, a week earlier! I was pleasantly surprised! Although, I definitely couldn’t last 45 minutes to an hour on it, let alone 13 consecutive hours! My prayers go to the testicles of whoever is participating. May they not be squished into Knuts Berry Farm Jam. I was also pleasantly surprised at the fairly efficient Colossus crew. They were loading and cycling a good 3-4 trains in the time it would take the Tatsu crew to do one! LOL…they just taped off the row where the guy got stuck! Dude! It’s the same guy that does the park opening show! …actually, I’m pretty sure that it involved getting hit by a car. Next up, it was time to use our FrightPasses on Carnage E. Hall! Oooooh….spooky. You know, of all of the mazes that SFMM offers, I personally most like this one…Carnage E. Hall. It’s the same exact thing they do every year, but the mere fact that it actually involves a plot line, characters, and rather in-depth (for SFMM) show effects, makes it a rather fresh and fun experience, every time I go in it. Thumbs up for Carnage E. Hall, while we grab a quick ride on Goliath! Lets just say my pants weren’t clean after letting that one rip! After a rather quick ride on Goliath (it seems that they havn’t yet forgotten me at SFMM ), we headed out towards the Jokester’s Hideout 3D maze. This maze needs some desparate TLC. The timing was much better than last year, but I cant say that the maze impressed me, only by the fact that it is beginning to show its age. The SFX are pretty weak and that little pneumatic clown didn’t even pop out at the end! The box opened up and everything, but the little clown (which is supposed to slowly rise up) was nowhere to be found. The whole room was all “WTF?!…mate.” Anyway, now that we had made it to the front of the park, we were unsure of what next to do, but we decided to make another round, and hit whatever we missed. What the hell!...I thought they were supposed to shut off the lights! Maybe they realized that nobody gives a crap! LOL…I’m totally digging the “thanks”. Time to take a stroll through the new and improved Monster Alley See! I love DaWomen, and the women love me. I feel we would make a real awesome couple. And I feel like Stephen Colbert in this pic! ….. “See, and here’s a picture of me with my dead friend.” Finally, we had made it over to Tidal Wave, for our last maze, Deadman’s Bog. Which was pretty dead tonight…less than a 5 minute wait. For those of you who don’t know, this maze is simply Tidal Wave’s queue, with camo-mesh over it and random scare-actors. I will admit that it was better executed than last year, however…TJ and I had a full blown conversation as we walked through it. Just goes to show how scary a queue line can be. Yea, this one can get a big “LAME” stamp too. Wow…“Thunderbumpers” a.k.a. Sandblasters hasn’t seen this many fans since…well, since I operated it! This is the lead member for “Bang”, a self proclaimed “punk-Rock STOMP” band. Yea…he looks pretty weirded out in this pic. If I knew more about drugs, I’d totally crack a drugs joke here….but I wont. Anyway, that was pretty much it. After a stroll through Gotham City, we were pretty much all “now what?”, and just decided to leave. We had our fix. All and all, I had a fairly good time at SFMM tonight. I was rather pleased. Perhaps just because its something “different”, compared to the other 11 months of the year. Nice to get “different” when I go so often. The mazes could use a lot of TLC and perhaps a whole re-do all together, but whenever I’m in doubt, I just remind myself that Fright Fest is a FREE event provided in your cost of admission, and I tend to go a bit easier on the park. I will say, however, that without “Bloodsaw Falls” or whatever the Log Jammer layover was, Fright Fest didn’t feel “complete”. Perhaps that’s why we left feeling so unsatisfied. This cop car in the parking lot was playing the theme to “Halloween”. I’m glad even the authorities are joining in on the festivities! Welp folks, that’s it! Yes folks, the caption said it—that’s it! Thanks for reading my first installment of Jahan’s Super Sweet October Trip-Trip Report! Check in later for further additions. Feel free to add your questions, comments, concerns, and as always, praise. -Jahan

Thought I would clear some things up... 1) My name is Jahan. 2) My quest is to find the holy grail. 3) My favorite color is green. 4) I do not love a "DaCock...yup!" 5) I am one sexed up mother f**ker! -Jahan

I'm sick. I had a ton of stuff to do today, and I didn't do any of it, because I am sick. This sucks. This is not how I wanted to spend my first day of freedom--my ACE Membership expired yesterday. -Jahan

Who is this jerk? I'll kill him! I'm pissed, because I have to go pee, but the bathroom is all the way on the other side of the hallway! -Jahan

Eh...I just am not feeling this one. Its just too much. The Pirates-ride updates were done well. But after Pirateizing 2 shops, 2 restaruants, staging a pirate show in NOS, pirate walk around characters, pirates hijacking the columbia....Pirates have their fingers on enough, IMO. This one is just too much of a stretch to be a natural redo. I mean, New Orleans Square has a loose historical pirates connection--but the island is surrounded by the Rivers of America. It is supposed to be the frontier of America. To retheme the island to Pirates or the Caribbean, and the area would lose the ability to cohesivly tie in 3 separate themed lands. And if Elissa makes fun of me for that, I'm going to kill her. -Jahan [/code]

Hey Guy, Thanks for yet another awesome PTR! All and all, the event looks pretty good this year. I'll definitely have to make a drop by in a week or two! Say "hi" to that ubersexy, fashionable, brain surgeon, crime fighting, trash novel writing, cool ass & hot ass Alana for me! -Jahan

Happy birthday old man--er, Derek! -Jahan

Hey old man, You have a wife...no need to date yourself. XD -Jahan

Me eating my sourdough soup bowl on the floor of Main Street, waiting for my fireworks show! A very "MySpace"-esque photo, I know. What can I say!... I am very passionate about my Sourdough!

^ Anyway, I was at the park Saturday, and we noticed a little brown spot on the mountain...using an optical and digital zoom, we were able to tell that it was, what I think was, a piece of track that has been cut! I didn't quite realise that the work was that heavy duty! Usually my attention to detail goes on overload at Disneyland, so I'm suprised I noticed this! -Jahan

Dude....Goldrusher is a hottie!

I have no problem with PETA raising a concern or complaint, or even a peaceful protest. It is their right to, as much as it is anybody elses. Now if the park decides to cancel the event as a result of this...thats when I will be mad--and I'll be mad at Six Flags for giving into this. Heh. -Jahan

I love Knotts. Especially on "Rainbow" night.