We did Stay and Scream on Thursday and the AP event last night. My feelings are that timing and luck play a big part in how everything works out. For us, the AP event worked out a little better.
For S&S, we had dinner at Finns which was great as it gave us something to do, got dinner out of the way and such. Around 5:30, we went around to the side facing Mummy. We were walked over to AWiL around 5:45 or so and got in pretty quick. When we got out by Evil Dead, we were told they would not open until 6:30 so we decided to walk over by CitW. I suspect they opened the main gates before 6:30 as when we got over there, there seemed to be a lot of folks heading over from where the entrance was, I think it was around 6 PM at this point, maybe 6:10, we found the end of the line and when we got up to the sign, the wait time was posted as 30 minutes. So it did work out well and we got in two great houses by 6:30.
For the AP area, we went over to the Kids Zone a few minutes after four, got in a line to check in that was just a bit past deer scene that the zombie snacks on....we were there for maybe 10 minutes before they started checking folks in.
After we got our band, we decided to go ride ET, then we got in line for TWD as LaLorona did not have a queue open yet and the board had posted that it would open at 5:30. We ended up stopping in the WD queue in front of the entrance to the Woody Woodpecker Rollercoaster which was not too bad as the gate into the real queue (backstage area) was not open yet.
TWD opened at 5, we did that and then did LaLorona. It was around 5:30 at this point and this is where our timing really worked out as the queue was not open yet for After Life which was to open at 5:45, but then we noticed that they did open the queue, so we were about 10 people back when we got in the line and basically had a 15 minute wait for the house to open.
When we got out of here, we were basically kept in this area of the park, so we just wondered around a bit, took a break, got some drinks and such....anyway, we were able to get in three houses by 6:30 doing the AP event....so, house count wise, the AP event got us in more houses before 6:30.... But I could easily see it working out differently with Stay and Scream or the AP event depending on where you are at, at what time you are where you are out, and where everyone else has decided to be at....so I think luck and crowd size determine how things work out more than anything else.
Oh and we got real lucky as we waited until last night to go to Bill and Ted so we could use the pass holder entry for the 1st showing. When we let out, it seemed to have finished raining. We had no clue it had rained during the show, but you could tell it had rained while we were in the show once we got out....