Your experience pretty much describes the exact opposite of my experience.
Attic was the best story led maze Ive ever done where the story actually worked and was a part of the tension (not just some wordy backstory adding nothing to the actual walkthrough)
The preshow was my favourite maze preshow Ive ever done by far, fantastic interaction and atmosphere (NOT just a TV!), very well performed and scripted, set up the experience really nicely.
Once you're up the stairs it changed to become kinda surreal, jumpy and spooky with the ghosts (not hardcore scares obviously), each scene was a step deeper into weirdness than the previous with a great atmosphere. No idea why youd criticise it being too samey, the sets were far from nondescript, this was one of the best themed mazes I think AT have ever done!
I remember it escalating with the music and the exploration deeper into the attic (I was totally disorientated where I was). The strange change of tone when you see the ghosts rising and discovering the bloke screaming "I did it!" This is all part of the story and escalation
You follow the children into the fire, the scenery completely changes, you come into tight corridors burning with heat and effects, how does this bare any resemblence to the attic hallways previously?
Then that weird curveball with the krampus type figure. I think it maybe lacked a spectacle to end on but I came out loving it loads. It should have been advertised as somewhere between Darkest Depths and Mine Tours to avoid people expecting hardcore.
I only did it once, all this stuck in my head more than most mazes Ive done. How totally strange that two people could go through the same maze and have the opposite experience. Each to their own of course. Although I think it's very unfair to say it was bereft of story or scenery when it is clearly the most theatrical and scenic maze at the park.
I went in TotT again, and it was better. The preshow was much the same and still just ok (I just don't find it very engaging, I think it's because of the robotic and detached way the actor speaks)
Once up the stairs, I feel the multiple attic (storage?) chambers all look too similar and it felt like I was walking through the same room repeatedly, once you get to the doll room, it's fine from there...for some reason, after my 1st run, I remembered the 1 hallway with drawings on the walls, taking up much more of the maze than it did...I don't know why (maybe its my brain getting mixed up with the fire scenes and mentally filling in the blanks)
As for the ghosts rising and a man saying "I did it", on both runs, I don't recall anything like that, but, on both runs, there was a hallway where I just walked along the bare wall with a big black curtain on the right (it seemed like it was backstage) could that have been a broken effect?
I remember seeing the children leading me into the fire on the first run but it never sunk in until reading your reply, The fireplace looks similar to the one picture hallway and I misremembered it as being much bigger than it was.
The hell/fireplace scenes were just simply boring and after the mild shock of seeing the demon...it just stands there doing nothing until it lets you continue to the exit!
When I said "escalation", I meant physical escalation, the actors becoming more aggressive and the scares being ramped up ect(like the old TotT) but instead, you go from children jumping out and yelling BOO! In an attic...to a strange man and satan jumping out and yelling BOO! In ??? The "final" is just as slow paced as the first room.
I think my earlier confusion with the hallway thing, is because most of the pre-fireplace scenes all look structurally similar, (same gray wooden walls and floors ect) and lack any
prominent unique elements...with the exception of the doll room and the bedroom, the defining element of each scene is too subtle...for example, there's one room where someone appears at the window, but since its tucked away in a corner, nothing draws attention to it and (In my runs) the actors just ignored it, it just didn't stick out that much...
Anyway, my 2nd run, it was just as "scary" as last time, which made it even more of an out of place shock when the guy in front got dragged away and put at the back...other than that, it was very tame...
I also went in Darkest Depths again today and it was even tamer than TotT so its possible that I just had 2 abnormally good runs of it!
In other news, I went in Dungeons and it was just like normal except there were 2 actors in the Black River (onload) Station instead of one, and I think that the script in the courtroom was slightly changed but I doubt that's anything to do with scarefest.