We went last year on a SAT night. We got there early and checked in out front (which we needed to do since we had a non pass holder guest with us) so we got our wrist bands and entered the park via the pass holder entrance with our HHN tickets. When we went over to the Kidszone, we did see that you could check in over there.
People were lining up at the two houses in the Kidszone, the queues were not open yet, so the lines seemed worse than they were.
When those houses opened we did those, when we finished, we were still kept in the Kidszone as the third house was not open yet. What I really do not know is if the third house opens around the same time as Stay and Scream. I just wonder if we would have been better to head over to the sound stages after we were released from the Kidszone area.
We did get all the houses in, we also had dinner at Mel's, saw Bill & Ted (but not the 1st showing), and left before the event was over ( do not recall how early). Anyway, we just did all the houses first going in order counter clock wise. We did have rather long waits for the last two houses (which is why I wonder if we would have been better off doing those sooner in the night), the other houses had long waits, but not as bad as the last two. I also feel it was too light out when we did WD (Disaster Queue house)...but we did get to do everything we wanted and I do not think we would have w/o the early start.
I have read on here from past years that there are times w/ shorter waits so I do hope it will be better this year since there is more to do (an 8th house, scare zones, Transformers....stuff like that to hopeful spread the crowd out better. We are also going two nights this year, so I imagine we should be able to see houses we enjoyed more than once this year.