***** - Awesome!! Get in line for it immediately!!
**** - Very good! A must see.
*** - Pretty good. Could be better.
** - Dull. I’ve seen FAR better, yet the attempt was there.
* - Crap-tastic!! Avoid at all costs. Save your money for a real Dark Attraction!!!
Walt Disneyworld’s Haunted Mansion (****1/2)
OK, so I didn’t visit this dark attraction during Halloween season, I visited it in June. But since it is a Haunted Attraction and I did visit it this year, I’ve got to show my respect to a classic and put it in here!
It’s been 24 years since the last time I visited, and you want to know what? It still has retained that magic and charm that it’s always had. It’s still creepy enough to send chills down your spine, while it’s entertaining enough to placate the whole family. It still retains that dusty, musty ambiance that works so well with the many animatronic ghosts and ghouls that inhabit the Mansion.
The only two problems that I encountered while there where that the library, at the time, was lit way too dark. You could only make out the stone busts that stare at you. I have been told that this problem has been fixed since! The other thing that grated my nerves was during the Graveyard scene, the speakers in my Doombuggy (aka: omnimover that you ride in through the haunt.) started to cut the audio out and replace it with a shrieking, white noise sound. But that was only on one of my 11 (that’s right!) trips through the Mansion. Otherwise, every ride was magical.
Terror on Rural Street (***)
This haunt has become a Halloween standard for me and my friends every year. We can always expect a good scare at this dark attraction!!!
This year they used the same façade as last year, but this time it wasn’t a Coffin Company. This time it was Darkhaven Sanitarium, which was the motif for the whole haunt. Again our Rural Street group put on a wonderful show with all the blood, spooks, psychos, dark mazes (AAAAlot of dark mazes) and effects to please any Haunt lover.
The length of this haunt is also on par with what to expect from a good haunt. Just when you think you’re coming to the exit you find you’re in yet another dark maze. The ending can be especially challenging to find your way out.
If I had to find something to whine about it would be the fact that after going to Terror on Rural Street for the past 3 to 4 years, I’ve started to get a bit desensitized by the repetition of the same effects each year. I do commend the group in trying to use the effects differently each season to keep their costs down while keeping the attraction fresh at the same time. But maybe there needs to be some new effects and ideas that need to be implemented. One can crawl through the old fireplace secret entrance only so many times before it gets a tad stale and you can see it coming.
Terror on Rural Street once again, proves itself to be a must see local haunt!
The Hartdford JC’s Haunted House (****)
I felt that this particular haunt improved a bit from last year. Although they utilized the same floor plan (heck, they have to. It’s located in an actual house) they really tried to make it look like a totally new haunt.
They also didn’t rely on so many dark mazes as many of the other haunts today do.
One thing I really love about the attraction is the concise effort to the little details that are strewn throughout the scenes. Many haunts forego this important ingredient and put most of their energy into the big effects. Well big effects do not make a haunt alone! The people of the Hartford JC’s understand that.
Outside of the fact that some of the acting could be a tad better, this is a really great haunt and if you’re already on you way home from Terror on Rural Street, you might as well treat yourself to head 7 more miles east and visit the fine, undead folks at The Hartford JC’s Haunted House!!!!
Meadowbrook Farms Haunted Cornmaze Adventure (****)
Having been to only one other haunted cornmaze in my life, I was really wondering if it could be topped. Well, I ventured out to West Bend to check out this maze/haunt to see for myself.
The first thing I was impressed with was the fact that they didn’t actually use cornstalks to build their maze; they used sunflower stalks which were much taller and thicker than cornstalks. This made it more difficult to navigate where you were in relation to the entrance and exit, thus you felt you were truly ALONE. Some more natural elements that helped create an eerie atmosphere were a full moon and a fog that permeated the entire area.
What also made this a more exciting maze was whoever created it; put together some tableaus that had creepy papier-mâché dummies with distorted heads and hands reaching out to you. Even better were the areas covered in fake cobwebs with bats floating above. Then of course there were the actors, who frightened us relatively well.
I’m still waiting for a cornmaze that incorporates the same incredible effects that can be seen in many of the indoor haunts. The papier-mâché mannequins didn’t quite match up to that kind of caliber, but they were a very nice idea.
It took us a good 40 minutes to get through, which was pretty darn cool. I wish more Haunted Attractions would be that long.
Splatter Haus (***)
Last year, this haunted attraction was THE best one we went to as well as a pleasant surprise. This year, though it still retains its adrenalin pumping intensity, it loses a few points also.
First, the good: Now that it’s in a new location, they decided to construct a whole new façade to it. Last year, it was held in an old farm house, so they had an instant spooky façade. But this year they created their own which was a rusty, industrial factory with flames and smoke billowing out of it. The performers were great!!! They had their act down pat and knew how to scare the frell out of us!!! The scenery they had was lit and constructed very well. The obstacle course like pace started out very well, but….
Now, the bad: If you went to Splatter Haus last year (2002), you pretty much saw what they had to offer this year. The only difference was that some of the scenes were constructed or implemented a bit differently, perhaps due to the new location. This was a bit frustrating, due to the fact that they boast a whole revamped haunt on their website. It wasn’t a whole new haunt, it was the same thing as last year reorganized. Another disappointment was that about 80% of the attraction is dark mazes. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can’t totally rely on dark mazes as the majority of your haunt. One problem with many dark mazes came very apparent to us when we got squished between the groups that went ahead of us and the group that went after us. That much of darkness will slow everybody down, which it did, resulting in a patron jam. What resulted from everybody being jammed up was that a lot of us missed out on the initial scare that would take place in one of the few scenes that we would come across. We’d come in at the end of a scare that had just taken place, or when the actors were resetting the effects of the last scare. So you can see why relying on dark mazes can actually ruin the pace of the haunt rather than enhance it.
I do have to admit, if this were the first time I went through the Splatter Haus, I would probably enjoyed it a lot more.
If in the next year Splatter Haus can come up with more new scenes and less dark mazes, it can easily retain its top notch rating it got last year!!!!
Windingo Manor (****)
Simply said, it was the ambiance of the location that gave this haunt a good rating! Sure, most of the actors were good and some of the tableaus looked spooky, but the fact that this haunt was held in an actual abandoned nunnery made it THAT much creepier!!! There truly was a feeling of foreboding and danger and Dead By Dawn Productions (the crew that runs the show) did a fine job to manipulate that. The building is old and gothic and creeps you out the minute you arrive. No fake façade needed here!
I can honestly say that this was the only haunt I’ve been to where I actually got freaked out at one point. And it wasn’t a scene or effect in the place that effected me; it was looking down a pitch black hallway in the bowels of the nunnery wondering if the place was truly haunted and if that was the correct way I was to go and if it wasn’t where would it lead me to and what would be awaiting me. The place was very high on the creepiosity meter!!!!
Another part of the haunt that was utilized well was the dark maze. Many other haunts seem to rely way too heavily on these, making them a main feature of their haunt. Windingo Manor has one, big horrifically confusing pitch black dark maze that worked perfectly with the rest of the haunt. Sure there were other dark hallways to get through, but they weren’t mazes like this one. Some may find the maze more frustrating than fun due to the fact that they use big open spaces as well as small hallways. Admittedly, we thought we may have taken a wrong turn and gone into a storage room. If it weren’t for the fact that they had sound effects pumped into the room, we would have been utterly confused. People will get VERY lost in that thing!! I’m glad they limited the haunt to just one maze.
Oh yea, then there was the spin room. Something I haven’t seen in a haunt until now. Very nice effect and fun too!
Criticisms, yep, I do have a few. As I said before that the ambiance of the old building they used was 50% of the scare factor itself. They could have played up on this a bit more and put some sort of back story on it. I mean the place IS supposed to be haunted, yet I never heard any tales about it at the haunt or their website (unless I wasn’t looking in the right places).
Some of the tableaus and scenery was spot-on creepy (especially the first couple of rooms). But after a while it looked as though they settled on just throwing up a bunch of unpainted plywood, garbage bags and cardboard to dedcorate the house. That might work for a neighborhood garage haunt, but when you have a big, gothic, abandoned building to use, is that the best you can do? In some scenes the lighting could have been better; there was one room in particular where there were lasers going off and there may or may not have been Hellraiser’s Pinhead in there with us. But it was so poorly lit, we couldn’t tell.
If Dead By Dawn Productions could maybe get a few more set design and theatrical lighting tips, they could do some VERY serious creepiostiy in this haunt!!!!
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