Dead Line: Best house in the park theming wise, I think it's a crime to not offer a lights on walk through just to be able to see the detail they put into that house. I love the monitors they put up at one part of it as well as the effort they made. You can really see the small things that were put into it. The acting was spotty at best, funny at worst. There's a part where a girl is cutting her wrists (the wrong way even, everybody knows you go across the street for attention and down the road to get somewhere) and she offers you some glass, what does suicide have to do with zombies? Not even the rabies people from 28 days/weeks later (They're alive, they're not zombies) tried to kill themselves.
13: I have mixed feelings about this house. I'd say that the first rooms of the maze were well done, but once you got to the phobias that don't involve people (snakes, spiders, ect), things fell apart. For example, the snake room had hissing, and a random dude eating a human body part. I will also say that the maze was difficult to navigate at times. The very first room had no apparent exit and I ended up looking behind random coverings until it was pointed out to me. There are also places where it gets so dark you don't know where to go or see anything. When this happens, my instinct is to put my arms in front of me to make sure I don't run into anything, but I'm afraid I might grab somebody on accident. Not knowing where to go also backs up the line, which I hate doing. Small bits of darkness is fine as long as you know what direction to head. The acting was on game though, I really like that they had a priest at the end, great touch. I also liked the gore level, very nice change of pace for BG.
Catacombs: This has always been a great house, and they did a good job by making it longer. The actors were totally into it, one at the front did a neat thing by sticking his hand out of the entrance to signal us to come in. No major complaints here.
Bitten: The only thing I noticed that was new was that some of the outfits showed a bit more cleavage than before (not to Nurse level, mind you). This has always been a "meh" house to me and it did not fail to "meh" me this year.
Fear Fair: I feel sad for this house, it has so much potential but it just can't perform if there's no actors. I think the house itself was great in props and design, but with no actors there it just kind of stagnates. The people riding the chickens were cool, I'm glad they returned.
Unleashed: Nothing much to say about this one, werewolves scaring people.
Stichen Time: Once again, I'm glad BG upped the gore this year, the outfits were great.
Widow Makers: This one is broken to me, your supposed to have killer spiders and lumberjacks, but only lumberjacks attack you (one did get me good, no thanks to PageyMoon
). Fix the theme to make the lumberjacks the central characters instead of the spiders and your golden. I like increased gore, but the amount and location of blood made them look more like butchers than lumberjacks.
Grin and Bare it: This one was actually refreshing to see. What I like about it is that the clowns interact with the guests in ways besides jumping at you, getting in your face, ect. There was one girl who was talking nonsense in a very creepy way that was perfect for the clowns, she needs to be moved to Fear Fair.
Scavengers: These guys were pros, I know all the tricks to avoid being jumped and they still managed to get me, scenery was great too.
Fiends: We all know about this, I'm not going into any detail about it.
MSR: I didn't think it was that bad, the zombie tap dance was great. I will say that the leads can't sing Michael Jackson, they were good up until that point. I will say that I think the sexual content in that show was worse than Fiends, but that will probably cause more debate.
Jack is Back: If any of the shows offended me, it was this one. They played the worse pop music they could find, which was torture on my brain. Well danced for a kid's show though.
Other notes:
Where was The Lady of the Garden?! She was so cool and there's only a statue of her.
The HoS cupcakes were epic, I encourage everybody to get one.
I felt that there was a majority of the park that wasn't decorated that well this year compared to others, maybe that's just me though.
While I appreciate that the Scare Zones are marked well and not as spread out for young kids, they could be bigger. The bridge between Festa and San Marco is not big enough to be a scare zone IMO. It would be really easy to turn a section of Festa into a SZ while giving kids access to the train and kiddy rides.
