Might as well finish the job and put the last 3 in here. The green light to allow guests into all of the remaining mazes was given on Thursday, so they made it just in time for everything to be open on the first operating day of October.
Stranger Things - Wow! This is a fantastic maze. A perfect transition from a high school setting to the Upside Down, great flow, action at every single turn, scare actors that look and behave just like characters from the series, good looking props, well executed lighting changes, and nice projection decisions (spiders crawling out of an air vent was a highlight). For being confined a relatively small building, it's filled to the brim with scenery. Virtually no dead zones between scenes. Even the queue has a little bit of extra theming. I got in line for a second go round of this one almost immediately and saw a lot of smiles on people's faces as they exited. A home run.
(It also seems like the building for this could be here for a while, since the park went through the trouble of creating a fully paved sidewalk from the exit door rather than using a gravel path)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre - A nice addition that keeps its "Victims" on their toes. This took the place of my beloved Bloodshed trail from last year, so it had a lot to live up to. Bloodshed had a great corn maze section in open air after the initial walk through its starting area, and an imposing chainsaw scare actor waiting within. With this maze being fully contained in an indoor setting, there was no opportunity for utilization of a legitimate gas powered chainsaw, which was a bit of a bummer. There were plenty of revving noises piped in throughout the maze making it difficult to anticipate when actors might jump out, which did add to the thrill. One rather macabre scene made to look like the interior of a bus stood out as especially well done.
Trick 'r Treat - A smaller but action packed maze. Just the right amount of actors and charming (while still spooky) scenery choices. Scare actors were well placed and involved. I didn't really know what to expect from this one but was pleased with the setup.
I was able to repeat some of the other trails as well. I'm happy to say that my second go round for The Conjuring was much better. It made a big difference when the group traveled together. Scare actors were very good and one of them in particular had what could very well be the best form of concealment I've ever witnessed in a haunt - it was so good that, despite watching that same actor reset when I walked through this maze last week, I looked right at their hiding spot and was convinced that they weren't there.
The Asylum seemed to have more scare actors in addition to the animatronics and has a great halfway hanging prop that I neglected to mention in my initial review.
During the path split in Saw, I would recommend taking the right-hand path if not directed to do otherwise, as I thought it had quite a bit more to offer. While Saw unfortunately suffers a bit from some blatantly unhidden electronic controllers on its walls and has a handful of fairly long corridors with nothing going on, the actors in there do a great job. Several of them have to depict torturous actions perpetuated by Jigsaw and they all acted convincingly in accordance with those depictions - not a single one showed signs of burnout from the repetitious movements. Hats off to them for their performances.
Speaking of performances, a change was made to the third act of Unleashed when I saw it on Friday. Don't get me wrong, it was still very good, and the replacement acrobats displayed immense skill while carrying out their difficult routine... It just wasn't the death-defying spectacle that I gushed about in my earlier post about the show. I hope the regular performers are alright, and one of them was just a little under the weather that day or something (their routine requires precision to the point where if somebody so much as coughs or hiccups, it could be catastrophic). Hopefully I can report the return of the original cast the next time I go to see the show.
