So, having done numerous nights at HHN this year.......I concluded this isn’t our favourite year.
We always have the Rush of Fear with Express Pass. It’s a fabulous buy for folks like us who can go many nights. We could have gone 17 nights this year, but we didn’t. We did go around 11 nights for varying amounts of time.
We never take advantage of Stay and Scream as we can go so many nights, but it is ideal if you only have one or two nights for the event. The hotel guest entrance saves you going through a long line at certain times. It was always quiet whenever we used it.
Some houses are done really well, but like every year there’s always one or maybe two that just don't work for us, and this year was no different.
Scare zones were a disappointment.
Anarch-Cade was poor. I just didn’t get this zone.....if the whole theme had been 1980’s, maybe. But......nah. No scares.
Zombieland was just not scary........someone coming up and rattling something in your face isn’t what we want. Good costumes and make up though.
Vikings was decent-ish......no scares and sometimes it was too foggy to make them out. The scenes to the side of the path were excellent though. And some good SA interactions.
Vanity Ball.......well. It was funny for about the first 2 minutes. Good interactions but not great. After Anarch-Cade this was the quietest scare zone we saw over many nights.
Hellbilly Deluxe.......this was better than I expected, Tom actually got a scare which was funny.......I liked some elements of this zone......the undead girl was good.
One thing we did notice this year and others said the same thing.....for the first time we saw SA passing the time chatting to each other and to security......not pointing out bad behaviour, just chatting. We’ve never seen that ever before. The chainsaw folks were among the worst and the SA from Vanity Ball. Mentioned it to some TM at the hotel and a few said they noticed it too. Very unusual.
The houses........well, in reverse order........we did go through all the houses numerous times over many nights. Most we were lucky with the SA and had good experiences.......but, some were just poor.
10......Depths of Fear.
This reminded me of the rather poor Alien scare zone they had a few years back........I think they reused the costumes. This house disappointed on so many levels and no real scares.
9........Stranger Things.
We watched the show so could understand what they were trying to do in this one. But it fell flat for us, mainly because they used dummies where they could have used real SA. We just didn’t enjoy this any of the nights we did it, and eventually decided even with having EP, this wasn’t worth a 15 minute wait.
8........Killer Klowns.
I did like it better than I thought I would, but overall.......it’s just not scary.
7........US.
This was decent and I had a few good jumps with this one.....knowing the film does help with this one.
6.........House of 1000 corpses.
I really don’t know Zombie’s works at all, except the unforgivable remakes he did of Halloween! But, I had heard the theme of this was particularly unpleasant. However, it just looked like a regular gory HHN house......it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I’d read. I did get a good scare a couple of times in this house.
5........Nightingales Blood Pit.
This was a strange one. I don’t remember much of it, but Tom says I enjoyed it.
4........Ghostbusters.
We did really enjoy this house. It was full of everything you knew from the film and they did it well.....it was fun and the actors playing the characters were brilliant.......Janine was fabulous, she often Insulted folks walking through or asked a question.......good interactions. I got a high five from “Venkman” twice......this house consistently improved a lot from the first night. But.......it’s not scary......you can’t make Ghostbusters scary. But, it is an excellent house.
3.........Yeti...Terror of the Yukon.
Before the event, I had decided this would be one we wouldn’t like. We loved it!! It is an incredibly cool house and the SA are phenomenal......and the Yetis were always massively cheered by the waiting crowds from both houses in that area as the SA changed..something I’ve never seen before......this was one of the houses we did every night except once when we just concentrated on the rear of the park.......but good scares and visually it is beautiful.
2.........Graveyard Games.
This was almost a joint #1. This house had it all......excellent theme and it is so well done. It is quite eerie in parts and the scares were fabulous. The guy at the end who kind of crawls out at you....he is freaky!!! I never saw him the first three times, then he got me good!!!! We were so lucky with our walk throughs in most houses, but this and Classic Monsters we always seemed to hit it perfectly.
1........Classic Monsters.
Absolutely brilliant.
We got almost every scare going every single night. The SA were perfect and their make up, was as always quite spectacular. We liked how each monster had their own little zone, and it was clearly defined. This for us was a stand out house this year along with Graveyard Games.
But, although there were some amazing houses this year, really our top 3 were where we found the best scares. Too many of the houses just weren’t scary.......I want HHN to be scared witless and be terrified in the houses.
They need to bring back an icon for the event.......and a definite theme.....this year was all over the place with one thing and another.
The water show especially for HHN was really enjoyable. We only watched this once and it was a lot of fun. I wish we’d seen it once more, but I’m glad we did catch it.
AOV........I wish I enjoyed this more. But, it’s just not a priority for us. Once is enough. I got a bit bored by it.
We didn’t have any food this year, nothing really appealed to us. And for the first time we didn’t buy the HHN cocktail.......last few years it’s just been like sugared Water.
Overall, we do love the event. Some houses were spectacular and some were just ok. I really hope for the 30th Anniversary they make it go with a huge bang......it should be truly spectacular........
There was something missing for us this year, good scares in a few of the houses being one of them.
We wouldn’t do the event without Express Pass.....as some regular lines were downright scary some nights. But with Express we usually waited a very short time, sometimes houses were complete walk ons.
I also wish they would ban babies and toddlers. We again, many times saw strollers and twice we saw babies around 7 months old being carried in arms. Toddlers crying, upset and looking a little bewildered. Not nice to see.
But, it’s still a fun thing to do and we did enjoy it.......but they need to go back to being primarily one thing .......scary!!
This is how it works, right? 
Tell me if you have any experience as a solo traveler to HHN or private RIP tours what you think.
