Guys, going to Haunt on a Friday and going to Haunt on a Saturday is like night and day.
Saturdays are swamped, period. The crowds don't allow you to get the best experience in the mazes and the scare-zones can be bumper to bumper with people.
The mazes allow large groups of people inside at at time to try to get long lines moving; with very little spacing between groups. As you know, that causes the scaractors to be exposed and they cannot always get back to hide/reset themselves for the next bunch of folks coming through.
If you want a more intimate Haunt experience, you have to go on a Friday or Sunday evening when the crowds are 30% to 50% of the numbers of folks that attend on a Saturday. Yes, the hours are a little shorter, 7-midnight on Fridays and 6-7 to 10 pm on Sundays (staggered maze openings like on Saturdays). But, you can get through 100% of the Haunt attractions with careful planning and focus on just the Haunt stuff. The crowds are less, the groups going through the mazes are much smaller and are spaced much farther apart. This allows the maze actors to reset/hide and give you a better chance of being scared/startled.
It did not help that the park is down one maze this year. Plus, they struggle to find folks who want to work during Haunt.
The problems we were seeing last night cannot be entirely explained away by the size of the crowds.
And Jonquil, I hope your comments about Zachary were meant as a joke. He actually prefers Haunt to HOS. Furthermore I cannot imagine how anyone who has read his posts for more than a month could possibly believe that his wanting to go to HOS vice Haunt is a "forgone conclusion." I would actually have expected the opposite. Also, despite my tendency to disagree with some of his approach to the parks, I would NEVER doubt his integrity.
Remember also that Haunt has only been open for 2 weekends now. And for some of the monsters, last night was the first time they experienced working a Congo line (open door, let everyone in). They have to learn how to pace themselves better. It's all a learning phase.
I'll be going tonight and yes, I have very high expectations. But since it's a school night I'm staying t'ill 8:30-9:00. Any recommendation on how to get the most in? We're arriving at around 6 and hope to hit a house or two before 7. Also do the Spiders have any friends in the houses? Thanks for the info!
If I were to recommend three houses you have to see they would be No Vacancy, Doll Factory, and Zombie High. No Vacancy was top of its game last night. I was wildly impressed. Other two are typically solid houses whenever you experience them. Doll Factory was very weak last night but I'm going to pray that was a fluke.
Doll Factory has always been really strong, so I'm leaning towards fluke. I'm curious about exactly what went wrong yesterday. That's very unlike Haunt.
Thanks for the info Zach! What crowds should I expect? I know it's not gonna be packed like a Saturday but will it be lighter than a Friday? Oh and I'll try to get a picture of the Oktoberfest event.
We took Nora to Planet Spooky yesterday and Trick or treated with the dinos. No rides, No Haunt, just good fun for our sweety. Sounds like I may have had more fun than you guys and I only got to ride Lucy's Tugboat! For what it's worth, The kiddie Haunt event was quite fantastic! I'll post some pictures later in the appropriate thread. And yes there are 2 spiders. (Just backing up Nicole) We sat at Cornstalkers and laughed at the thing popping out of the barn while we pet the pigs. Yes, KD had animals on display!
And Jonquil, I hope your comments about Zachary were meant as a joke. He actually prefers Haunt to HOS. Furthermore I cannot imagine how anyone who has read his posts for more than a month could possibly believe that his wanting to go to HOS vice Haunt is a "forgone conclusion." I would actually have expected the opposite. Also, despite my tendency to disagree with some of his approach to the parks, I would NEVER doubt his integrity.
Well, Doll Factory in particular was wildly understaffed. The entire first half of the house felt completely empty. As for the actors in the second half, many of them, despite the fact that we were the only guests in sight, didn't even make any small attempt to scare us. So WILDLY uncharacteristic for Doll Factory. Incredibly disappointed.
Slaughter House didn't try. Club Blood felt vacant. Zombie High had stacking issues. CornStalkers knocked it out of the park for the first half and then was destroyed by the stop-and-go Conga line that started halfway in. Maze of Madness is still an absolute disaster.
I'd add that Outbreak was the only house that left me tense last night. I loved it again. That said it was terrible for Zachary and Rebecca and left Zach angry.
Cornstalkers was better for Zachary and Rebecca than for me. It was good, but I wasn't as scared as they were.
Again, most all of the actors aren't even trying and the ones who are seem to be targeting herds 13 year-old of girls exclusively and ignoring everyone else. Also, Feary Tales, the best scarezone last weekend, has been destroyed by the addition of more path lighting.
The Lair has lights now as well. Super bright, I-can-see-every-last-thing-in-this-god-damned-scarezone lighting. It's bad.
^^ I just noticed because Evan also wrote "Congo line" a few comments back
I bet KD's legal counsel and/or Safety Department is responsible for upping the light levels. It's really a shame how fear of litigation ruins things. Brightly-lit horror only works if you're Stanley Kubrick.
So for the most part Zach and Nicole have basically covered everything I really had to say.
We started out on a rather high note. No Vacancy was doing really well. And while I was scared through the house, I could clearly see that they were trying. Not to mention the decor was amazing. I thought it was extremely well done.
The next one we did was Zombie High. Which was also incredibly themed and there were plenty of staff. However, to me they really didn't seem to be making too much of an effort. And then we caught up with the group in front of us, who had nobody in front of them. And they decided they wanted to take their sweet time walking through, which created the conga line effect behind us.
After Zombie High, we did Club Blood. Which compared to the first two houses, was super understaffed. I didn't find it particularly frightening either. Signs written in Chinese and cage dancers aren't frightening. It also probably didn't help that we were behind two females who also had Fright Lane passes, and they got all the scares. Even with trying to space ourselves out from them. (they did apologize to us for taking all the scares though.)
After that was Slaughter House. I can't appreciate it. I wasn't sure what angle they were going for, and I really didn't see much in the way of decorations. The actors made an attempt, but it just didn't work for me. Also, their chainsaw is incredibly subdued. It felt more like a toy chainsaw than a real one. I did appreciate the fact that it didn't smell like gasoline fumes though.
From Slaughter House we hit Maze of Madness. I'm not sure why pill bottles and ping-pong balls are floating. Because if you have floating pill bottles and ping-pong balls you should probably seek help. Which I guess that was the point, but it still confused me greatly. I also didn't understand why there was a fat man, who's skin looked like a puddle in the corner of the house. What does that have to do with an asylum? Also, their makeup wasn't holding up very well. It was peeling already,and not in a good way. This was still relatively early in the night.
We hit Outbreak next. Outbreak, Zach and I got rather confused in part of the house. As we ended up going the wrong way. And once we got back on the right path, nobody really made an attempt to scare us. They targeted Nicole, and seemingly only Nicole. And I totally understand that they were trying to go for somebody who has given them a reaction, and knows that they'll prolly continue to give them a reaction. But you can't ignore everyone else. That's just not how things should work. On top of that, since I really wanted this to be a surprise, I really hadn't read anything about the houses. So I had no idea what their backstory was. And Outbreak confused me greatly. Outbreak sounds like some sort of disease is spreading, but I really didn't see anything that would suggest that this was happening. In fact I really didn't see much at all in the way of decorations. And at the very end I was very confused as to why there was a Xenomorph. I left the house very disappointed, and as mentioned early it made Zach extremely angry.
After a break, we went to Doll Factory. This is the house I was looking forward to the most. I don't find dolls frightening, as I collect them. But I love the concept behind a doll based house, and being able to go through and not being able to tell if something is real or not. And man, this house severely dropped the ball. The theming was amazing. There were a lot of people in there that I couldn't tell if they were real or not. But, nobody really tried. They just stood there or sat there. The beginning of the house was basically empty. And the only ones who tried were just making comments about my bag. (which looks like a stuft animal unicorn.)
The last house we hit was CornStalkers. CornStalkers was my absolute favorite house of the night. We did the skeleton key room, since we had heard that it changed. (spoilers for skeleton key room below)
For the skeleton key room, you entered the house one at a time, and do a small maze through some black sheets, alone. I don't like being alone when doing something like this so this instantly got my anxiety high. And to be honest, I almost didn't do it. The only problem with this room is, is there is nobody in there. You have the one actor who lets you in an asks a question. (In my case was "Which way did he die?") and then that's it. There's nobody lurking behind a curtain. Nothing. Which part of me is extremely glad for. Because I wasn't doing too well being by myself, and probably would have just fell to the ground and cried, until the next person came through found me.
Once done with the skeleton key room. (Which thank you Zach for waiting for me.) The first part of the house was amazing. And Zach can vouch for the fact that I was legitimately terrified. It's the only house that got me that wound up. That being said. Once we caught up to the group in front of us, it was a stop and go conga line. Which I felt was hard for the actors to try and do anything. Because we actually were stopped and not moving for a few minutes at a time.
And those were the houses. I won't get into a lot of the scare zones. To me they just looked like they gave up come 8 o'clock.
Feary Tales was super bright. Miss Muffet's spider looks like two monster hands glued to a body. And she was the only one who seemed to be really trying?? I felt really bad for the tree actor. Because his costume drags on the ground and it's extremely easy to step on.
Cleaver Brother's, was severely under staffed for an area that large. Their makeup was alright, but the few who had wigs... yeesh. Those wigs have been murdered. (This is the same as Planet Spooky's costume wigs.)
I thought Necropolis was doing the best. However, that was the first time I went through, which was before going into No Vacancy. When we walked back through later, they really didn't do much.
Primevil just annoyed me with the amount of small children I had hitting my legs. And when I say small children, I mean like this child can't be older than 3.
We didn't do Blue Ridge Bloodbath, as the line looked ridiculous.
I expected crowds. It's was a Saturday after all. I knew crowds were going to be a bad thing. However, the amount of strollers, and small children there was on par or even more so than BG. It was absolutely ridiculous.
So that was my very first experience with Haunt. And I'm super disappointed. I do feel like it was just a bad night for everyone, but it's hard to judge when all you have is word of mouth saying that this is supposed to be so much better, when it was this underwhelming. If given the chance to go again, I absolutely would. But, the chances of me getting up there again for Haunt are extremely slim. So, this being my first impression, it's not a very good one at all.
Gosh, sounds like Haunt was acting pretty sucky last night. It seems like a lot of issues were with staffing (a recurring theme at KD), but it's disappointing to hear that many actors weren't trying. What I've always liked about Haunt is that the actors typically do more than just jump out and yell "boo." Hopefully this was just a fluke, because Haunt has much more potential than what you just described. Were your experiences with the park in general, during the day, any better?
Thanks for taking the time to write that all out; it sure sucks that you had a crappy experience. I'm curious, though, how would you compare Haunt to HOS?
I just found this weird Kings Dominion Gold Pass in my wallet. Wonder were that came from, since I would never go to the park that is closer to my house.
