Aight. Now that I'm home after a long day, I can finally post my thoughts on the announcement:
First of all, I have to give Murdy props for keeping us in a tailspin about Conjuring's replacement. We were all convinced that it was going to be Leatherface, but thank God that was a decoy to keep us away from what it really was. Murdy won this time and I'm glad to be surprised for once.
With that said, I don't hate the idea for this maze, but I'm not ecstatic about it either. It will be cool to see an All-Nite Die-In maze come to our coast (Just without the Director. Grrrr). Tobias just mentioned this, but the real worry for me is, being that this is a replacement house a bit late in the game, that they will use this as an excuse to save time and $$$ on design and props and reuse gags, props, and sets. There's no doubt we'll see some familiar sets pieces and props, but I really hope Murdy and Chris see this more of an opportunity to do things that they haven't done with those properties yet. I would love to see the upside down room that Orlando's NoES house had a decade ago, but I'm not gonna give my hopes up on that. I'm pleasantly surprised that we're not getting a hand-me-down repeat, but a new spin on something familiar…although this could be a repeat in disguise with some old rooms rearranged for us to feel new. I would've preferred the Thing or an original Chucky maze, but hey, I'll take this.
After this, I really hope Murdy gives the Titans of Terror a break for a long, long, LONG time. It was great to see the original Freddy and Jason in a house for the first time last year since '09 was my first year, but I think they've exhausted every possibility with them at this point. They've had standalone houses on each one, we had ones based on their remakes, we had a FVJ house, we have them on the TT, and now we have them all in one maze. Yeah, I know Michael Myers isn't in it, but they've done all they could with him as well.
So yeah, this should be cool. Just please let them rest after this year. This will be the fifth time we've had them….oh, and please give us the Conjuring next year.