I attended last night's Halloween Haunt, expecting to go in and see the same old, same old. To my surprise however, there are a few improvements throughout the park and mazes! Most of these seem to be props/animatronics from Distortions Unlimited that have been distributed around the park.
Park Decor Improvements:
- At the front gate, there's a new Jack Widow prop from Distortions Unlimited, to the side of the bigger Spider prop as well as a new Pumpkin Witch!
- The walkway from International Street into Grand World Exposition has been changed. They've removed the AI banners that represented past mazes/scarezones. In the place of the banners is a display of hanging Jack O Lanterns.
- On the walkway between Vortex and Timberwolf falls, there are new pumpkin animated props that hangout around the skeletons. They appear to be the "Pumpkin Patch Combo" from Distortions.
- There is a new Grumpy Grandpa animatronic on the walkway between Yukon Striker and Tundra Twister, right next to the Dip N Dots stand. He spits water at guests!
- Overall, I noticed a lot more fog, more consistently as well as some new characters throughout the scarezones.
- The lantern activation points have also multiplied, there's a bunch of new spots scattered throughout the park.
Maze Improvements:
- In 'The Crypt', there are a few Wolf Spider props that've been hung up. (They're awesome, the design really creeps me out)
- In 'Spirit Manor', a few of the monsters now have noise makers to enhance the scares.
- In 'Demons Of The Deep', animated props that didn't previously use water now have these effects activated! I got a minor spritz a few times. There were also some new spots with monsters!
- In 'The Ruins', there are new Medusa props in certain corners of the maze as well as new monsters.
- In all four of these, the groups were spaced out and "pulsed" more often to avoid conga lines.
I also noticed that there were some new merch offerings, namely a new CW branded Conjuring t-shirt/hoodie, a select few leftovers from last years merch designs at The Conjuring store. (IMO, so much better than this years. Wonderland, please make more merch with the logos of your Haunts on it!)
Really glad to see the improvements last night. Hope the event continues to gradually get better through the rest of the season!