rocketman23
Posts: 429
Registered: 12/20/2001
Rank: Silver Critic
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 10/6/2002 10:05:00 PM
I arrived on the Freaky Preview weekend for Howl-O-Scream, not really sure what to expect from this event. The FLCC had planned a meet this day and the majority of the group was at Tia’s Tex Mex eating dinner while we arrived early. I found two from the club that also decided to get an early start and joined them waiting to get into the Nairobi Gate. The turnstiles opened early, most likely due to the massive crowd that had already gathered. We looked at Demented Dimensions and Escape From Insanity to go in first, but Demented Dimensions was closed off until about 7:30.
So, we got in line for [B]Escape From Insanity[/B], which ended up being a very helpful strategy. It was about a 20-minute wait from when they started letting guests in until we got in the maze. It starts off in the asylum lobby where the nurse greets guests. You then wander into the courtyard where a few inmates beg for help and drums rattle as if guests were inside them. After a brief trip through here, you are ushered into the asylum. Inmates are littered throughout nasty cells, some inside, some outside their cells. Some just cry out, some attack you. The warden walks up and down the halls loudly clanking his stick on the cell cages. These cell scenes are separated with long winding paths in which pictures would suddenly drop from the walls and a spook would pop out. This went on for a very long time, winding through filthy bathrooms, escape scenes, electric rooms, and more. There were some good scares, particularly the electric room one and the ones hidden in the walls, but on the whole, this section had too few actors for the great length the maze was (often wandering path after path with only one or two characters). Once this is over, the maze leads to the outside courtyard again where there are various spooks hidden behind and in broken pipes. After a very long maze, you make your escape from insanity through a large sewer pipe. The map gives it 5 skulls (out of 5), I give it 4. It was a good long maze with above average theming, but as I said before, there were too few actors for the length of this maze ultimately hindering it.
I checked Demented Dimensions, but the line was too long and we had to meet at Kumba by 8. So, we began walking over there. First scare zone we hit was [B]Agony Express[/B]. I must say the scare zones here are very well done. The shovel dragging train workers were a nice touch to the very well themed haunted train station. One of my favorite effects here was the body cut in half. It featured one lower half of the body on one part of the bench with the actor top half of the body on the other side, looked very real. I took a few pictures of the happy-to-pose spooks and continued on my way to Kumba.
Next up was the scare zone [B]Cursed[/B]. This was my favorite scare zone. The actors here were very energetic and were into chasing the guests. Some of the stuff here was very bizarre and hard to take in due to the constant barrage of attacks. One example was a giant eye, which right in front of the eye was a vat of rubber eyes that someone would periodically pop out of.
We got to Kumba at about 8, but no one was there. After some tomfoolery in the Kumba test seat, we decided they got caught up in parking, so we went to do the [B]Tortured[/B] house, which was a walk-on at the time. This house is essentially what it says, it is a dark, aged house that has many people in various tortured positions. It is one of the more gruesome houses: lotsa blood. It had the same pop out of wall scares as Escape did. Many unique scares were also in here. There was someone from above with a duster. Two very cool halls in which were lined with coffins and one bodies with arms sticking out very close to you. Needless to say not all the coffins are filled with dummies nor does the hall with the bodies inches from you on both sides have all dummies. This provided for a very nervous and effective spook. It had some free roamers in the halls t
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