As
@yulilin3 said, the RIP Tour is great! This post is only allowing me to add 10 pics so I'll add the rest in another post.
We were let into the VIP building area around 5:30. We checked in and went upstairs to relax. There was a balcony that overlooked all the crowds waiting to get in. They had a TV playing HHN promos.
We met our tour guide and got exclusive tour lanyards. We headed over to Cafe La Bamba to relax before we started. They had appetizers, desserts and drinks.
We were able to stay there as long as we wanted. There was a cash bar, but other than that there was tea, coffee, lemonade and pop that was complimentary.
It felt a little weird to not be in a stay and scream getting ready to rush to houses but I quickly got over that.
Throughout our breaks during the night there would be random scare actors in the building who would interact and take pictures with you.
We all had a lot of food and desserts and were finally ready to go. We started off at Halloween, since it was the closest house. It was pretty nice bypassing the lines, especially express. Sorry not sorry express, I watched you guys walk past me for the past three event dates.
We walked through the Killer Klowns scare zone on our way to the front of the park. The way we did the scare zones was that our tour guide slowly walked through with his raised light up stick. You could stick with him or take your time going through the scare zone. He waited at the end of the scare zone for everyone to catch up then moved on.
There were basically 3 areas of houses. Halloween was off by itself in the middle of the park, then the front of the park we could get to 4 houses within a matter of minutes, Stranger Things, Carnivale Graveyard, Scary Tales and Poltergeist. We did all 4 of those and repeated Poltergeist then headed out and went through some scare zones.
We took another break at Cafe La Bamba, the food was still out at this point.
You basically take as many breaks as the group wants, plus one mandatory half hour break.
A few of the attractions close before the park closes at 11 pm. Gringotts is one of them so we headed there next. We were back doored onto the ride (this means you skip all the queue area including pre-shows) and decided to immediately ride a second time. We chose this time for our mandatory half hour break so those of us who wanted butterbeer or to enjoy Diagon Alley could do so.
After this we headed to the long walk houses of Trick R Treat and Seeds of Extinction. We only did these once, I probably would have requested a second go round but it had been a long trip and my feet were tired. Your tour guide will encourage you to do any repeats while there since these houses are a bit out of the way.
Then we went to Slaughter Sinema and Dead Exposure, we did both twice. Dead Exposure was much better to enter when it was already dark. The house is still super dark inside but I was able to see a bit better than when I entered in the daylight.
After that some of our group decided to call it a night. If you leave the tour early (you have the guide until the event closes), you can use your lanyard to gain express pass entry to all the open attractions for the rest of the night.
Since we were in the area we did MIB and also asked to do the Immigration Tour. The Immigration Tour is an event where you get to enter the big lobby/office in the queue area. We were allowed to sit at all the desks and chairs, we just couldn't touch the twins.
We did another break at Cafe La Bamba after that, surprisingly all the dessert items were still there. We were getting down to the wire at this point so we decided to do some more front of the park houses.
We repeated Halloween on the way, then did Stranger Things, Carnival Graveyard and Scary Tales again.
Pro tip, look for the two big red buttons in Carnival Graveyard and press them to experience some surprises.
We then lost some more members of the group and finished the night by riding the Mummy and Rip Ride Rocket.
Our guide stayed til the end and made sure that we all knew where we were going to get back to our hotels.
Overall a very great experience. The tour gets to set the pace of the night, though you should note that whoever's name is on the paperwork gets to make the final decision. Which was fine for us since we were all on the same page and wanted to mostly focus on the houses. Your guide will also get you VIP seating to the Academy of Villains show, but you have to go to the 9 pm showing and arrive at least half an hour early. Our group decided by consensus to skip the show, I think people were going to see it other nights. I was a little sad we didn't go, as I had seen it the night before and really liked it. But it would have taken a lot of time out of the night.
This is a great, if expensive, way to be able to experience all the houses numerous times. If we had wanted to we could have just done Stranger Things ten times in a row and only waited the amount of time it took us to walk from the exit back to the entrance.
I did mention the expense but it is completely worth it if you want a relaxing, no hassle way to experience multiple houses in the same party night.
