2 questions - can you eat at finnegans while waiting?
Most definitely. That's exactly what we did, then moseyed out to the Stay and Scream pen right outside just before they park re-opened (you can stay in Finnegan's too if you prefer to sit, but the air conditioning was making me freeze!).
I'm probably in the minority here, but I actually preferred last year's HHN. That's not to say that it wasn't great this year, and with our Frequent Fear passes we plan to be back as much as possible. But nothing grabbed me the way my three '07 favorites (Freddy's house, Psychoscarapy, and Jack's) did.
Well, okay, maybe one did: Dead Exposure. LOVED it! I am big on dark and disorienteding houses with lots of strobes and scareactors, and this one most certain filled the bill. Definitely my top house this year.
I think I'm against the majority here, too, but Creatures was my second favorite. It reminded me of Psychoscarapy in a vague way (walking through the yard past a truck, walking through interior rooms). Granted, they don't have much in the way of actuall creatures, but those redneck Bubbas alone are scary enough! Lots of 'em got me good...I like houses where you get jumped out at a lot.
Bloody Mary is my third fave, and Interstellar Terror was good too. The rest were just kinda meh. I had high hopes for Scary Takes, but it was just okay as were the others. None was really awful, but either did they particularly grab me.
We bought Express and I am very ticked that it was a $69 night vs. $39. We only used it for four houses and didn't even really need it for one of those. This happened to us last year too; USF needs to change the way it calculates which dates are which price. I have no problem paying $69 on the busy nights but it galls me when the money has basically just been thrown away. We were happy the crowd was relatively low tho' because it meant lots of repeat run-throughs of the houses.
The scare zones were good, but I felt like it was overkill...too many are almost as bad as too few because after a while you just get immune. My favorite is the chainsaws (it always is).
We didn't see too much out of control behavior although a couple of times we saw people who'd been collared by the cops. I'm glad USF has no tolerance and a high security presence; I think that's a big reason why the antics are usually under control. I did nearly choke to death on the smoking that was literally everywhere tho', even in the queue lines. I have respiratory issues that are aggrevated by it, and normally I will tell people to knock it off, but when it's a half-drunk biker type that's a bit harder. Even if I managed to get a security person to ask them, it would be rather uncomfortable being next to them for the rest of the line.
But all in all it was a great kickoff and we are looking forward to going back as many times as we can possibly fit in. We did see Rocky Horror (I love Riff's singing), but we still have Bill and Ted to look forward to. We just didn't want to kill too much showtime when the lines were so short.
