MY HOODIE IS AWESOME:

Halloween season is almost over. This means the Haunted Attraction reviews will be mostly done until next year. I’ll be at Fright Factory tonight, and I have Field of Screams, and Night of Terror next weekend. After that we’ll see the first ever Oni Haunts Haunted Attraction Awards.

For those of you wondering about the Steampunk Haunted House – it was RIDICULOUSLY GOOD. You have just tonight to see it! I wrote about it on NJ.com, and Harknell will be writing his take on it here later.

I’ll be livetweeting, going to, and posting a review later of The Steampunk Haunted House in NYC.

This is s different kind of haunted house – it’s a contemporary art haunted house. I have no idea what to expect!

This is their last weekend, so if you are near NYC you should check this out:

October 22, 28, 29, 30, 31 | $25
Students | $10 (walk up, day of only)

Harknell and I experienced Busch Gardens Tampa’s Howl O Scream on October 14, 2011. Full disclosure – we were comped into the event by BGT. (Separate post on this to come.)

Longtime readers know that this will not affect my honest opinion. I’ve paid to attend this event for years now, and you can just check my archives to see how much I already love what BGT does. In addition to that, the folks at BGT encouraged me to be blunt and truthful. They care about honesty as much as I do.

BGT’s theme this year was “The Dark Side of the Gardens: Zombies Live Here”. This year there is no icon and no defined scarezones. When BGT first announced this, I was concerned. I have been to large haunts without icons and scarezones. These are generally ones with poor end-user experience. Their marketing campaign is also similar to Busch Gardens Williamsburg’s Howl O Scream. BGW is another one of my favorite parks, but we unfortunately didn’t have the best experience at BGW’s 2010 Halloween event.

Yeah, I was nervous. BGT HoS is my favorite Halloween event. No way did I want to lose that.

Leave it to the crew at BGT to completely change my worldview. Not only did they put on one hell of an event – they proved to me that they can reinvent the concept of the scarezone. Let’s break it down:

Fright Feast:

This year was the first year we did Fright Feast. FF is a dinner buffet and show. The best part is that you also get early access to the houses with an additional limited “Express Pass” to give you front line access to the houses up until 8:30pm. The food served consisted of many salads, chicken, and pasta dishes. New this year was a taco bar. Desserts were also plentiful and varied – cakes of all kinds (including Red Velvet cupcakes). Pumpkin Cheesecake was also very good. There were a ton of dishes to choose from. They had more than I thought they would have, given the low price point ($25).

I found the food to be good and the price to be a really good value. The show was a pop culture-based comedy featuring characters based on Snooki, Sarah Palin, President Obama, Charlie Sheen, and others. It was funny, but the audio levels seemed a bit strange and hard to hear at times. (which we’ve since heard is an issue not limited to this particular show, but the venue itself)

Roaming Zombie Hordes:

Roaming zombie hordes replaced scarezones this year – I believe there were about 20 different hordes in the park (with many having over 15 people per horde). We saw child zombies, cheerleaders, construction workers, formally attired zombies, slider zombies…sooo many! No place was safe in the park. We were having a conversation with Jim Dean, the park President and a zombie attacked him! (Jim Dean seems like the coolest guy ever!)

I loved the zombie hordes. There were so many that losing the scarezones felt like a value. They still themed the park, and there was always something different around every corner. Ideally, I’d like to see a hybrid system next year that incorporated Hordes with a small stage show or photo op for each so that you can be sure to see them all.

The New for 2011 Houses and Alone:

Nevermore:

Nevermore was based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe. I enjoyed this one. We got to go through rooms based on his books. We passed a beating heart and a really cool pendulum room with great lighting effects! I wanted to do this one a second time to catch all the detail but it got so crowded we weren’t able to get back to it.

Zombie Mortuary:

They said that this house was like their idea of what “Zombie Fast Food” would be like. The zombies took over the mortuary to get easy meals. :) This house really creeped me out to an epic degree! It starts out in a funeral viewing room where people are weeping. I CANNOT TELL YOU WITH WORDS HOW DISTURBING THIS ROOM IS. It even smells like a funeral home in there! Zombies come at you in various mortuary situations until the final room where you are buried alive! ENOUGH SAID YOU GUYS THIS HOUSE OMG. Excellent.

Vampire Casino:

This house was also really well done. The concept was that vampires opened a casino to draw in and harvest humans. You go through a casino front toward the back area. There’s all kinds of immersive elements like clothing racks and things. There was an undead Elvis wedding back there. You get to a place where they are draining humans and the vampires chase you.

Alone House:

I paid my own cash moniez to go into Alone again this year. Alone is mostly the same as last year but with a new ending. I do know the house well enough now that I’ll probably skip next year without some additional changes. I also think the queue should be set up so that people can be chased out screaming. The final corridor when you exit has you just walking out. I won’t tell you the new ending, but we liked it a lot. It was definitely the right direction. Still, I hope for more next year. I’ll be emailing my suggestions directly to BGT, because I don’t want to spoil you and bore you with technical critiques of rooms you may not have ever been in. This Alone review I wrote last year still applies for the most part, but I did notice small changes and new ad-libs by the actors.

That said, this is still the best house I’ve ever been through. I feel sorry for you if you haven’t done this one.

Theme:

I would like to see an icon. They had a female zombie in some of their ads – even just a 3-4 line description would do it for me. They did a great event without an icon, but, I do prefer icons.

Merchandise:

If you want merch, don’t make a mistake like we did and wait till the end of the day to buy. The Shop of Horrors was so crowded that we couldn’t get in to buy anything. It seemed they were more crowded this year than ever before. I really think they should set up carts outside for people who can’t get into the store at the end of the event. (and maybe even put a shop outside the gate as well–they might have had these and I could have just missed it.)

Some examples of the 2011 merch in the Shop of Horrors:

Cute crane game inside the Shop of Horrors:

Sylvie’s Closet, a section of the store dedicated to last year’s merch:

Website:

I really don’t like the fact that they don’t have an iPhone-friendly site. I only take an iPhone and iPad with me on vacation. Also, it doesn’t appear that they have online merch sales, so I can’t order stuff like I had hoped.

General:

This year they have one less house than last year. The lines were long enough that I still didn’t get through my goal of going through everything twice, so it’s not like there is a lack of things to do here. I still hope they can bring back another house next year. I made the mistake of seeing Fiends, their other musical show. I had heard that Fiends is the show to skip, so I had skipped it for the last 2 years. Harknell convinced me that we should finally see it this year. It isn’t a bad show, but it’s just a bunch of comedy dance numbers. It was the reason I didn’t make it through the houses as many times as I wanted to and missed getting on any rides. Houses > Fiends. Oh well, that was my fault. I still had a ton of fun!

Conclusion:

The people who dismiss BGT HoS because they only had 3 new houses are really selling themselves short. Yes, they have 6 total houses and 3 were returning from last year. The key thing to understand is that they do make small changes to their strong existing houses and I feel the 3 new houses more than make up for it. I go for quality rather than quantity, and BGT HoS has that. BGT HoS is a big event done well that still retains a family feeling. The first thing I noticed (aside from how epic the houses were) was that the average BGT employee genuinely cares that you have a good time here. There is a reason I paid to come 1000 miles away from home to this event in 2009 and 2010. There is a reason I came back in 2011 and will come back in 2012.

If you saw a ninja standing by the side of the road with a sign that said “Fight me” and a sword laying by the sign, what would you do?

This was done by an improv group in Canada:

I now think I want to move to Canada because of this win I have just witnessed from Improv Toronto.

Harknell and I ventured out to our first and last time at Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party (AKA Mickey’s Halloween Party) at Orlando’s Walt Disney world Resort. Disney is trying to market this event as an all ages event.

“During Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, Guests of all ages are encouraged to dress up in their favorite Halloween costumes. Even better, you can collect delicious candy as you trick-or-treat around Magic Kingdom theme park.”

I had read a few reviews online of the event, and it seemed to boil down to “if you are OK with paying for trick-or-treating, special fireworks, costumed characters, and a cool parade, you’ll like this event.”

We aren’t so much into waiting in line for costumed characters, but Harknell and I are the douchebags who cry at Wishes (fireworks). We love the Electrical Light Parade that Disney runs on a daily basis. Halloween is our favorite holiday and trick-or-treating is cool, so I figured this would be the event for us.

I was wrong.

I’ll break this down into Pros and Cons so you can see my reasoning and decide if you might like this or not on your own.

Pros:

Attraction Lines: Everyone coming to this event is here for photos with costumed characters,fireworks, trick-or-treating, and the parade. Almost no one is in line to ride anything. Not all attractions are running, but all of the big ones are. If you want to go to this party and treat it like an unlimited Fastpass for your favorite big rides and ignore the party entirely, you’ll come away happy.

Costumes: This is the only time adults can wear a costume into the Magic Kingdom. If you really like this idea, you will love this party.

Costumed Characters: Disney has a large number of rare costumed characters available for photos. We saw the crew from Tarzan, Aladdin, and a lot of Villains. The lines were long for these characters. Character photo collectors will like his party.

Cons:

Trick-or-Treating: This was really cool at first. We really enjoyed pretending to be kids again. However, it got old really quickly.

Parade: The parade started out strong. These was this awesome Headless Horseman up front:

The parade never ended up getting this cool again.

WHAT THE FLYING POOPMONKEYS DOES THE FOLLOWING HAVE TO DO WITH HALLOWEEN?

The parade was the worst night parade I have seen in Disney history. The quality felt like that of a 3:30 parade – certainly not a main attraction. They had a handful of decent Halloween-themed floats and walking characters in Halloween costumes. The rest of the parade appeared to be padded with whatever old floats they had in the back. We had a CHICKEN, cowboys, COUNTRY BEARS – just random characters all over the place. Most Disney products tell a story or stay on theme really well – this just didn’t.

There were some cool things in the parade that actually related to Halloween:

These were the bright spots between the filler.

The bottom line is that the majority of the parade fell short. The quality of the floats and music did not compare to the normal quality we expect from Disney. To add insult to injury, the product placement for their Goofy’s Candy Company store on Downtown Disney was so in your face it was infuriating. They already had their logo up at the trick-or-treat trails. This was cool. It made sense to be there. Smart product placement doesn’t upset me.

The finale of the parade consisted of a song about candy, eating candy, and a fleet of Goofy’s Candy Company people pimping out candy. The parade ended up feeling like this was the message:

(I found this photo after I got home and almost fell off my chair laughing. How on earth did I get this lucky to get this exact photo?)

Music: We both hated the music for the parade so badly. The song consisted of one or maybe slightly more phrases repeated over and over and over again. (Sorry, not listening to it again to get the exact number of phrases.) The end of the song ended up being the product placement verse repeated over and over again urging you to buy candy from them. I can only compare it to the Barney the Dinosaur song. Nothing about this song is timeless. This is the type of music parents suffer through for their children at events for babies – not a “for the whole family” event.

This song was also tough to get the song out of your head after the party, so it was the gift that kept on kicking us in the teeth. If you want to experience pure, unbridled hell, they are streaming it on the party’s website, sans product placement ending.

Fireworks:

Wishes is amazing. Almost every night in the Magic Kingdom it tells the story of following your dreams. Hallowishes was just a mash up of sound bites of villians with no story, rhyme, or reason. The fireworks seemed to be “just shoot off whatever, guys. Make it different.”

What a disappointment.

The price for this event ranges from $54 to $67 dollars per adult. Children’s’ prices start at $43 and range upward depending on the day you visit and age. If your idea of fun is costumed character photos, trick-or-treating, and different fireworks, you might like this. If you want to just use this ticket as a astpass to get on as many big rides as possible and ignore the party, you might like this. If you are taking a small child, your child might like this.

We couldn’t help but think that this is another example of Disney marketing just to kids-the very thing that Walt Disney himself loathed.

If you expect it to be anywhere near the quality of a normal Disney fireworks or parade, you’ll probably feel like we did and never want to go to this party again.