My son is in year 3. He applied for honors early on and was accepted. He decided to apply to Blount, and was accepted, but ended up declining because it was going to add a few extra classes and he wasn’t thrilled with that. He had AP and IB to cover all gen ed and he’d be in them in Blount. Otherwise, I think he would have done it and enjoyed it.
He did live in Ridgecrest in honors and liked the dorm space a lot. It’s very nice. If you want to sift through housing info, the Facebook page of “Housing and Residential Communities, The University of Alabama” posts updates on availability as housing selection progresses. It starts in May, so you could scroll back and see which dorms fill on which day. Honors does last quite a while.