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KJM10 said:
I go to howl o scream every year but I've never been to kings dominion's Halloween show. I was thinking about going this weekend but I am unsure now. I probably still will. With low expectations.

Give Haunt a shot. I've never gone and came out having a bad time. I can pretty much guarantee what'll happen.

You'll have two or three houses that are amazing (probably two of No Vacancy, Zombie High, or Doll Factory). A bunch that are decent fun, a "meh" maze and one absolute dud (Tollway Terror if you decide to do it). That's how it always goes and how I imagine it is at Howl o Scream. With so many mazes, one or two are bound to suck. The scare zones can be pretty cool, though the area around Necropolis is getting messed up thanks to the Unstrung show, which is a shame. Feary Tales tends to be my personal favorite, but we'll see when I go in a couple weeks.

Overall, I've never had a bad time. Even in weaker mazes, I tend to have fun just because of watching my group get scared or the actors doing funny things. The actors are almost always great, so they're rarely a big concern. They love what they do and it shows.

If it's any reassurance, I've seen multiple tweets and posts from people saying they had a blast opening weekend. Nicole has also said she had a good time. Opening weekend tends to be the weakest weekend anyway, as they tend to make tweaks to the event the first couple weeks. Go in with an open mind and have some fun. It's a bunch of people running around in clown costumes, bloody Alice in Wonderland, vampires, zombies, cannibals, evil dolls, etc. Kinda hard not to enjoy that.
 
The event is definitely still worth experiencing. Highly recommend you stick with your plans to try it out. If absolutely nothing else, you'll get to see a few really, really neat houses (No Vacancy, Zombie High, Club Blood, CornStalkers, and Doll Factory). Even when they're not performing, they are very cool houses to see.
 
Zachary said:
The event is definitely still worth experiencing. Highly recommend you stick with your plans to try it out. If absolutely nothing else, you'll get to see a few really, really neat houses (No Vacancy, Zombie High, Club Blood, CornStalkers, and Doll Factory). Even when they're not performing, they are very cool houses to see.

Im glad to hear you telling ppl to still give it a shot. Its too early to be completely out. I always tell anyone who deals with haunts,that there is truly no BAD haunts. Even for people with a basic eye (meaning not knowing what to look for industry wise) There are always going to be houses that have MILES to go in the scary sense, but most of them you can walk out seeing something cool.Or their attempt at trying something you can perfect. There are positives to be found in each crappy one. For example, people have said that @ BGW Deadline is pardon the pun..... dead but its a beautiful set to look at.
 
Yeah originally the plan was they were not to be allowed in mazes with them on. But that was changed for some reason. I agree though that they would be annoying in mazes. They are definitely more appropriate in scare zones when you can walk through whenever you want unlike mazes
 
Just sort of glossing over posts, since I'm bored. And considering I probably won't be going back to KD for a long time, my opinion is probably not all that wanted. But...

The No Boo lanyards. As Glaze said that they would be good for the scarezones. Except, aren't all the scarezones at KD in like select paths, with very obvious walk-arounds? They're pretty much all the same from last year right? What would the point even be. You can easily go around the scarezones and avoid pretty much all of them. (Unlike BG where there is no walk around as the Terror-Tories are all in the Hamlets.)

And even more so, almost all of them are 100% visible from the walk around. So if you were just trying to show a child "Hey look it's just a person in a costume. It's not real." you could just sit down at one location or another and just watch them from a safe distance. The actors really can't leave their scarezones outside to go on break, so messing with somebody who clearly isn't in the scarezone wouldn't really be a thing. The only one that would pose a problem with that is The Lair, which is covered up. In which case the child you're trying to teach is probably more afraid of the dark than anything else.

Idk, it's just my two cents.
 
Great. I'll definitely give it a shot this weekend, or the next if the weather is TOO bad this weekend.my day at Busch was already kind of soggy I want to pick clear days for the next trips. I'll post my thoughts after I go!
 
Anyone planning on going this weekend? I'll be at another haunted house in MD, but going to Haunt next weekend. I'm a little bitter they closed last weekend, since that is one less weekend for them to work out the kinks, but oh well. Looking forward to more pictures and reviews from this weekend.
 
A new archway for Cleaver Brothers found near the Carousel and Americana.
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The stage for Overlord's Scaremony is set up.
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Also, I recommend taking a look at the last rule.
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Some thoughts, majority of the house were running pretty solid even though they were heavily under-staffed. No Boo needs to go. I asked several vendors about any chance of No Boo not returning in 2016 and they all said yes sadly. Majority of the Scarezones were doing great, even in the rain. Unstrung kills the atmosphere of Old Virginia and is a really bad show. My group thought Killarney Kommtion was better as did I, ouch. Skaraoke kills that whole section of Candy Apple Grove creepy vibe and replaces it with a party atmosphere. Also, why was the only non-alcoholic beverage Monster? I know it's supposed to be for adults but what about those aren't really in to soda? Overall, I would still recommend Haunt and I thought this year was better than last year mainly because they experimented with some ideas. Haunt hasn't really taken a step backwards, their just slowly tying new things.
 
I will do a breakdown of individual aspects later, but for now I will say that Haunt was very solid last night for my group of 10. We did all mazes and zones with nite rides in between on all of the big coasters. I had just as much fun this year as I did last year and the only understaffed maze we encountered was Club Blood at 11:45pm. The fog was awesome after the short rain storm!
 
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