My seven year old son and I visited SFGAM this past Sunday (10/2) for fright fest. We arrived around 4:30 PM. The park was not very crowded.
In my opinion, it appears that park was not ready to open for FF. We saw very few actors in many areas of the park. (although this did get better as the night went on). I did not see one ride aside from Terror Twister that had signage showing the new name.
Orleans Place still had all of the Sevens sins decor from what I can see, but without the "sin" printed on the top. Theme made no sense. Did I miss the second door on TT as the effects were drastically reduced by significant light coming in the exit? The first thing my son asked about TT is "What happened to the DJ?" I don't know if it was removed from the theming or if its just not used anymore, but at least one person missed it.
The rides of past graveyard was an excellent addition and brought back quite a lot of memories.
When we walked through Necropolis, we both immediately noticed that the haunted trail was significantly less decorated. The small walkthough institution was gone and not many actors were here. On a very funny note, we did see a girl scared by one of the actors try to run and hide in the trick portapotty and she took the spray right to the face....extremely funny! The Asian inspired character near the coffins seemed very much out of place and did not fit in with the theme as far as I could tell.
Being that my son is only seven, I'm not ready to bring him into the MOT or the other longer walk throughs, but we did go through Primal Scream. The actors did a good job in here, but it was incredibly short and it is an absolute shame that this is not free to pass holders as in years past. I can see this one with empty lines all FF as few will be tricked into paying $5, and even fewer who will go through it more than once.
Despite all of the hoopla surrounding this years FF, it felt thrown together and incomplete. Why go through the trouble of renaming many of the rides if all of the new names can only be found on the website? I plan on going at least one more time and I hope it gets better and more is added.
We both left disappointed with FF, but had a great time in the park due to the favorable weather and light crowds.
