We made the last minute decision to go to Premium Scream this year. It's been a rough month for us as we had to put our dog to sleep (she had cancer). We had her for 13 years, and it just wrecked us. So, we decided, how about we get out of here and do something different, and this was the choice.
When the start time was approaching, it was storming like crazy - downpours, lots of lightening. We did NOT want to be at the park during that because being soaked and walking miles is miserable. We waited it out at our condo, and showed up around 9:15pm when it finally cleared. When I first walked up to the arches, my mouth just dropped open - there wasn't a soul there. We walked in and were immediately swarmed by scareactors which was FANTASTIC.
The park looked so empty until we got to the first house (El Artista). I saw it said 20 minute wait, so I jumped on it. We ended up waiting almost twice that. The house itself was a stunner, so I thought totally worth that wait, but I kind of had that feeling in the back of my mind that maybe these lines weren't going to be as short as the ticket information claims. And yep, that was the case..
We were crunched for time since we got there so late, so I started picking houses I really wanted to see. After El Artista, we went to Grave of Flesh and waited approx 10 minutes. We got out of that area and grabbed some food - the bourbon glazed wings which were AMAZING. We only waited about 5 minutes to get that food. We wandered through all the scarezones then as that was what I was most hyped to see this year - and they were fantastic! No bumping into anyone, full scareactor interaction in ALL of them. We had a blast in those scarezones. Oh, and the Cat Lady one is absolutely fabulous with how they extended it! These zones are back to what they used to be, for sure! We hit Galkn and waited 20 minutes, and then went to Fallout and waited 40. We did get more food (not waiting more than 5 minutes for our choices), and we hit the Tribute store. That's all we got to see though. Each other house we were interested in had waits of 40 minutes, and I just wasn't going to do it. We spent most of the time in the empty scarezones and played.
Would I pay that price again next year for it? Undetermined - but leaning towards probably not. While it was very cool to walk through every zone and not feel claustrophobic, and it was nice to go through houses with just the two of us (initially), I think it was still too many people. I don't think wait times for "premium" should ever be longer than 20 minutes at the max. They need to correct some things if they want this to be successful going forward.