Got to go on Friday and Saturday and had an absolute blast seriously was one of my favorite opening nights in a long time, and can't believe we finally escaped the rain on opening night curse. Lines were all pretty good, but we decided to splurge on the FFP+ +Express passes this year, and we are loving them so far. The majority of these houses are easily in the running for my favorite houses ever, the original Run and the Mining one in with the flash lights will be hard to beat.
Here is my list of rankings and thoughts on the houses so far, which of will likely be completely different by the end of the event. Usually the house I like the least in the beginning ends up being one of my favorites by the end.
There are definitely spoilers in here
1 AWIL: This house is absolutely amazing. The details are top notch, the puppets are amazing, and it follows the entire story of the movie. I think I like this house better than I liked the movie, and I think the werewolf puppets looked better than the movie. Amazing house all around. +1 for the hidden Mickey
2 Cabin in the woods: Again another amazing house, I love the little details and that they got to have some shout outs to years past in this house (I didn't see Jack but I did see the puppets from Dead Silence and was that the Thing in there too?). All the monsters looked great and worked incredibly well. I think this house would be tied for first except for the lackluster ways that they used the Mermaid (static puppet) and the Unicorn (Clip from the movie in the Mermaid room).
3 Evil Dead: I'm a huge Evil Dead fan and thought this house did a wonderful job of recreating it. The voice overs were great, the flow was great, and the costumes were great. I'm pretty surprised they put the tree root scene in there, but I guess if you didn't see the movie you would never really understand what was happening.
4 La Llarona: I thought the theming in this house was absolutely amazing. I have never seen a sprung maze facade so impressive. I thought the child puppets were great and there were some pretty impressive moments in the house. I did think it fell flat once you got into swamp land and honestly had no clue what was going on at that point. I can definitely see this house getting stronger as the crew gets more practice
5 Resident Evil: I thought this was an excellent recreation of the game, and was very cleverly done. Leon and Jill being in it was a nice nod along with the typewriter, blue herb, and others. The dogs were pretty good but I hope that whatever is going on with the laundromat gets fixed. Could use a little more action especially in the nemesis rooms. I love the idea of the pause room but someone else had mentioned how great it would be to have actors pausing and unpausing which would be pretty epic.
6 Walking Dead: This was way better than last year's and it actually had zombies in it. The themes were pretty good throughout and it was cool seeing Milton and the heads (was that Mike Aiello's head in the top aquarium?). I like the part where you have to crawl through as its a nice way to create some separation without getting flash lighted and it helps create a sense of dread from being exposed.
7 Afterlife: I really enjoyed the way they used the 3d in this house with the newspapers, but felt like it was a little too techie for the story. Plus it seemed awfully Beetlejuicey with the striped clothes and long arms everywhere. The laser lights were a nice addition and it was fun.
8 Havoc: This was a bit of a dud both nights for us. Way too many cages, felt repetitive, and too narrow like there wasn't enough room for all the Bane's to move around. The voice overs screams were incredibly repetitive and annoying. At the end it did feel like it finally starting getting its legs once the maniacs got their guns and were allowed to be all insane. Luckily there were lots of keypads for us to push (beep boop beep beep beep)
Bill and Ted: Good show but still needs a little work to bring it together some more, which I'm sure will happen and it will be absolutely amazeballs. Thought it was very funny and look forward to see it many many more times. Definitely loved the pokes at Disney.
Street experience: I felt like this was extremely weak this year. I think they need a lot more zombies or something to make it feel more dangerous. The area from the barn to the tent was great but other than that, it didn't feel like there was a lot going on.
I love this year and can't wait to go next weekend and many more times in the future!!