Hey guys I just wanted to drop a little thread about how I was able to get my hood open.
So the other day I went to pop my hood to put the battery on the charger and nothing happened. I was unable to pop the hood through the grille or from the bottom so I started my taking the bumper off. The only issue I had was getting the tabs between the hood and the bumper cover popped out. What I did was I pryed the gap open with a screwdriver and wedged the two clips out by partially breaking them and then I was able to remove the bumper cover. The main issue I ran into was how to manually pop the release as it's shrouded by metal. I tried manually pulling on the cable and I just fell off completely. The solution was to bend open the shroud and use an Allen key to pull the latch where the cable came off. Worked easily but I did have to bend the shroud although that isn't really an issue because I plan to replace the entire mechanism anyway and it wouldn't affect the operation anyway.

In this photo you can see the bent shroud

You can see where I used the Allen key as well as the cable and ball that came detached