Halloween Haunt Trip Report

[gabelogan99]

Well I vowed to try to make it back to HH when it wasn't so crowded, so I did. I went on Friday and there is a big difference between Friday and Saturday, crowd wise. It wasn't nearly as crowded for HH as it was last Saturday.

My main compliment has to do with the entire atmosphere of the park as a whole. I loved it. I didn't expect that many monsters in the front, and it really makes a great mood-setter with all of them lurking around up there. But there was just so much improvement that I saw all over the park when it came to themeing and scareacters. So that was my favorite part of Halloween Haunt, although I will say that the front of the park is CRAZY crowded with people at 7 on Fridays. Add people running around like monsters (this doesn't even include the "real" monsters), and you have quite a scene. But I really embraced it, and I loved it.

The first thing my aunt and I did was Redbeard's Revenge. There was absolutely no line for it, so we figured why the heck not. It's something I wanted to do anyways. It wasn't really as scary as I thought it would be. But it wasn't really all that bad either. I'd say my expectations were certainly met.

Next we rode The Beast. And by this time it was pretty dark and riding The Beast in the dark is not something I get to do all that often, so that was great. We then went on our way towards AZ and stopped by Adventure Express on the way for another great night time ride.

Action Zone wasn't nearly as crowded as I expected it to be. We waited about 20 minutes for Club Blood and although I had high expectations, they were certainly met. Some things made me jump a little bit, but overall I didn't think it was that scary either.

Then we made our way into Coney Maul, which was packed. We kind of checked out the line for Massacre Manor and Death Row and they were both long so we figured we might just wait to do them. (I didn't really want to do Death Row anyways.) But Coney Maul is definitely a great area to get spooked. I loved the themeing here, too.

We met up with some friends who were just coming out of the long Firehawk line and we decided to go on Vortex. (By the way, something HUGE went down in The Vortex queue later that night, around 12:30. There was a big racially motivated fight that had the Mason PD out there hauling people away. I was gone by then, but my cousin saw the whole thing and told me the next day.) We had a great night time ride on Vortex and then after that our group hoofed it back to AZ.

We all decided to ride Drop Zone. I had never done it before at night, but for some reason it still didn't strike the fear into my heart that it usually does. I was in seat #1 for the first time, right by SkyFlyer. Then we decided to ride The Beast. (We had to go via Coney Maul due to path closures.)

When we got to The Beast the line was really long. My aunt and I wanted to focus more on the HH attractions so we decided to leave the group and go do another haunt. But then everyone else decided to do the same thing so we went to carnEVIL. Now, first of all, carnEVIL was nowhere near where I thought it was. I thought it was in the midway but, as you know, I was dead wrong. I had not planned on doing this because I didn't think it would really be that great. And the line for it was pretty long when we got there. We waited about 30-45 minutes for it. I didn't expect much, so I will say that I got more than what I expected. This turned out to be a pretty good "haunt" although nothing too Halloween-oriented made it just ok in my opinion.

It was about midnight and I decided to leave so we could get a jump on the traffic and such. I didn't get to do The Cemetery or Massacre Manor but I'm not completely ruling out another trip to HH this Saturday or maybe even going on a Bare Bones night. (I'm almost certain I'll be going on Sunday with a small group, this will probably be my last trip to KI this year.) These two things could be there next year, too.

I give the Haunt an unprecedented 9 out of 10 and hope it just improves in years to come.

[Snake Attack!]

If you go this Saturday plan on some big time crowds, I would say that the bare bones nights will be a great time for you to go.

[Karen]

I can say that I noticed something this year as opposed to last year - Fear Fest was super busy the first two weekends then really slacked off toward the end. But this year it seems to have really kept the crowds coming. Fridays have even been pretty busy - not as busy as Saturdays but pretty busy still.

Yes I would believe that Saturday will be very packed. Barebones there will not be as many attractions going - not sure what they are keeping open or not but so far Tombstone TerrorTory and Death Row are open as far as I know.

[Touchdown]

Hoping the threat of rain keeps the crowds low this Friday, I really want to hit all the haunts that night so I dont have to stay too late on Saturday...