Demented Dimensions

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Nicole

Nicole

and Team / Co
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Jul 22, 2013
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From the BGW website:

Sterling Manor, a massive estate, is home to more than meets the eye and is sitting on unspeakable terror. The energies of a dimensional vortex have opened portals to dreadful realms where unearthly creatures reside and humans are at the bottom of the food chain. Each new portal takes guests deeper into the terror.
Welcome to Demented Dimensions™, where new worlds await. This new terror is one of three new Howl-O-Scream haunted houses at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Demented Dimensions opens up a world where humans are hunted by monsters, where aliens are in control and ancient evils live once more.
Demented Dimensions is located inside NewKastle in Oktoberfest next to FrostBite.
 
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The sets are cool, but in general I am not a fan or thisn maze at all. There is a total lack of cohesion or story and without that a maze falls apart in my mind. There's no external facade or speil hinting at what is happening prior to entering the maze and you only have one dude saying "This way" at the front. If Frostbite wasn't 50% empty this would have been the least favorite.
 
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I think this maze could actually end up being my favorite.

I love surrealistic houses, and this maze worked for me as a series of nightmarish vignettes. It could still use some fleshing out, but the concept is really cool, and not something we see a lot of in Virginia.

I am very much looking forward to seeing what BGW does to it this week.
 
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Just a heads up if you look to the left when you walk in the entrance to the house you can see the DK ride vehicles. This was a really fun maze but seemed short in comparison to other mazes such as circo sinistro, cornered, and lumberhack.
 
Pretzel Kaiser said:
The sets are cool, but in general I am not a fan or thisn maze at all. There is a total lack of cohesion or story and without that a maze falls apart in my mind. There's no external facade or speil hinting at what is happening prior to entering the maze and you only have one dude saying "This way" at the front. If Frostbite wasn't 50% empty this would have been the least favorite.
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there isnt supposed to be a lot of cohesion or story; the setup is you enter a manor that sits on a dimensional vortex causing each room to be completely different from the next. Outside of the setup/entrance, I wouldnt expect much of a story at all.
 
I've said it elsewhere already, but I'll say it again here: The story is asinine. The setting of the house isn't conveyed to guests at all—not even a little bit. Somehow Dystopia managed significantly better storytelling and world-building than Demented Dimensions (and that is a low bar).

That said, this was my favorite house last night by a longshot.

Yes, the world in which the house theoretically exists is a sloppy, lazy, intellectually-braindead mess (in its current state), but the structure, scares, and scenic that make-up this house are great.

So much of the house was built to facilitate perfect distraction and multi-part scares. Many of the hiding places seem to ping-pong off one another very, very cleanly. Actors hardly have to move from their original hiding place to get the scare and the retreat.

Spoilers ahead...

Furthermore, there are some really, really clever props and scares in here. In the upside-down house (best set at the event!), the guy who emerges from the wall seemingly-inverted is really, really excellent. Never seen anything that in Williamsburg before.

The Alice in Wonderland room is great too and the tea pot is going to get some great scares out of people.

The most "uhhhh..."-eliciting room in the house was the acupuncture room. It felt really out of place given the other areas of the house.
 
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Skip to the summary to avoid spoilers.

My favorite room was the tea party room. Overall, I'm glad that this isn't exactly like Tampa's, but some scenes have been scaled down drastically. I would have appreciated some outdoor signage or a facade, but I enjoyed that the Sterling Manor was placed inside. I am puzzled as to why the living room scene is gone or scaled back so much that I didn't notice it.

The set design was as good as it's ever been in Williamsburg, and I loved the surreal nightmare vibe, but the house lacked depth in anything not visual. I think there was only one soundtrack playing in the house, which cheapened every room. They could have made everything more believable by having some sound effects and audio cues. That would have brought me into another world with the level of detail in the house.

Summary:
With proper sound, this could be the best maze at the park in years. I wouldn't be surprised if this part wasn't complete since BGW often leaves audio and media for last.
 
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tursiops said:
I got to go through the maze last night with the lights on and hear about the story and idea of each room. Very impressive details. I really liked the library room and the London street sections.
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It would have been nice to get that inside the maze... Without a lights on tour...
 
tursiops said:
I got to go through the maze last night with the lights on and hear about the story and idea of each room. Very impressive details. I really liked the library room and the London street sections.
Click to expand...
Was this part of one of the tours that you can buy? I would have so many questions. Lol
 
I think I figured out the reason for what scenes we did and didn't receive. The scenes and props that were not brought over from Tampa were recycled from several houses past. The living room scene, for instance, was highly recycled from Nevermore and the original alien scene had a giant rat animatronic from Zombie Mortuary and sewer walls from another one.

I have always wanted Tampa to send Nevermore to Williamsburg, but I think that seems more unlikely now, considering.
 
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This house was in the top tier for house experiences for me despite its quick walkthrough which reflects the somewhat emptiness i felt from the event as a whole and i feel it was because this was one of two houses in the same building and due to that didnt recieve enough space to flesh it out more.
 
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In Tampa, they said that this house could have changes each year. I hope they will change it up a bit, instead of resting on it because it's a good house.
 
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