Okay, I went last night, and while there were many things I liked, there's still a lot to hate... and in the hate category, it's mostly all operational stuff.
Because we had an issue redeeming our pre-sale coupons, our entry time was 9:15 (we obviously wanted 8) with Fast Fright. Getting into Long Beach at about 8:10, the streets around the parking areas were already getting gridlocked, so it took a good 30 min to park even though we were maybe 50 feet from the parking structure driveway. The one good side: the shuttles were surprisingly effective at getting us to the event, loading 3 buses simultaneously.
Once the bus dropped us off, though, the chaos began. The line to get at about 8:40 was gargantuan. When I took this pic, we were at the back of the line (you can see people lined up along the shore, as well as see how far away we were from the event):
Of course, there is no staff or signage around anywhere to let us know there was a separate Fast Fight entry line way up ahead that was much shorter, so we stood in that line for a good 30 min before realizing, and even once we were in the right line, it still took another 30 min to pass security and get in. By this time, it was 9:40, and we had barely 2.5 hours to see everything. Remember that we got to Long Beach at 8:10, and we had planned to enter at 9:15.
Once we were in, though, we did mostly enjoy the event. We were also impressed with Voodoo and Feast, and liked Infirmary as well. Wasn't as impressed with Breakout. And while we found scareactors hit and miss, we didn't care too much, because we were pretty impressed by the production, lighting, and sound design of the mazes (admittedly, we had very low expectations). We even did Voodoo twice. We didn't get to do Big Top or Lullaby at all, because their lines were so long. Fast Fright did mostly move pretty good (seemed faster than GA), but we also had many, many moments where we didn't move at all for 5-10 min stretches. It did appear that VIP had virtually no lines at all anywhere all night long, and were being let on very efficiently, so if seeing mazes is a priority, that would be a way to go (though it was very expensive).
We tried to end the night with one more run at Feast, and got in line at 12:30 (event closed at 1) with a fairly full queue. We were getting close to the front, and all the sudden they yelled, "Maze is closed! Everyone leave!" That's a pretty shitty thing to do after we had already been waiting, and of course by the time we got out (about 12:45), all the other mazes were also closed, so we wasted our last 30 min at the end. Really bad way to end the night, and terrible ops by Dark Harbor, who should know better.
With that, we had to head back to the shuttle, and then experience this line. Be sure to zoom in a see how far back the people go, and then realize that's only about HALF the line.
To their credit, given the length of that line, it moved relatively quick, at about 30 min. But that in addition to the crappy ending did not leave a good impression. I didn't even mention that lines for Port-a-Potties inside the event were also about 15 min long. Oh, and we smelled pot all over the place.
It made us realize that this event is not really for the dedicated haunt crowd. It's more for the party crowd that wants to do a different sort of bar for October. Which is fine, there's certainly a place for that crowd... but it's not really our jibe.
Despite the terrible experiences, I am glad a went. The mazes themselves, and the themed areas, were pretty dang good. At the same time, I don't think I'll be going back for a long, long time.