@Ice: We barely had time to post the tweets last night, so linking them here was just a bridge too far. Hopefully, anyone who was interested in what we had to say was following us there anyway.
Anyway, I have some time now, so I thought I’d share my personal opinions of the first night. I fully expect the event to change over the next few weeks, as the actors get comfortable with their parts, house teams gel, and setup is completed.
Since staffing has already been raised, I‘ll start there. While I agree that the terror-tories were understaffed, the houses were full of actors. In fact, the mazes had more performers than I have seen in years. Moreover, despite its being opening day, a lot of them were already providing creative, interesting scares.
We took the HOS Behind the Scenes tour today and it made me feel even more strongly that they need to stop staffing the paths. I know this is an unpopular opinion. According to our tour guide, the best scare actors are put in the terror-torie, because those positions require the performer to use a larger space, function alone, and deal creatively with a more dynamic and chaotic environment. Even Halloween Horror Nights essentially turns its scare zones into photo ops and party zones. SWO last year came the closest for me to providing an interesting and scary experience on the paths. Perhaps the problem is the crowd sizes at BGW? There are just too many people for individual actors to be able to have any impact on how scary a path is. So, if even their best actors can’t make terror-tories work, perhaps it just isn’t reasonable to try to have path scares at BGW.
To me, the paths just need to be able to sustain the tension and fear as guests travel from house to house. That can be done with atmospherics alone. Well designed lighting, sound, music, props, etc can make a space incredibly creepy. I do not need people in costumes or wielding chainsaws to maintain a level of anxiety around the park. So, since scare zones really don’t seem to work at BGW, I really wish they would just stop wasting their best actors on the paths.
I know it was the first day so, I am not willing to draw any real conclusions about the houses. That said, I do have some initial thoughts, which I will put in the individual house threads. Overall, here is my opening night ranking, from best to worst:
1. Killarney Diner
2. Nevermore Chapter 2
3. Death Water Bayou
4. Inferno
5. Witch of the Woods
We didn’t have enough time after dark to experience all of the terro-tories fully. I do, however, have a few initial thoughts.
Scary Tale Road was really well done and the actors were fantastic. I loved the design and how much of an effort everyone was making.
Gorgon Gardens, however, was incredibly frustrating. It is such a fantastic concept: a Greco-Roman monster fits perfectly in the area and using a classical myth is just brilliant. The execution the first night just failed, unfortunately. There was virtually no theming or placemaking. We saw only two gorgons. And there was zero storytelling. It could have been just as good as Ripper Row, if they had used Medusa’s story. Where was Perseus? Why wasn’t the garden decorated with sets? Why were people able to walk right past the terror-tory without noticing it’s existence? I wanted to be immersed in an ancient myth.
buschgardens.com
