***** - 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!!!
The Haunted Pabst Mansion (****) - I wonder if Milwaukee brewmiester, Captain Fredrick Pabst foresaw that his lovely, Victorian mansion that he had built, would be used as a Haunted House during the Halloween season of the early ‘90’s? Probably not. Ya gotta wonder if his ghost roamed the halls watching actors dressed as vampires and aliens hide in closets waiting to leap out at unsuspecting haunt fans. This house gets a few stars for setting alone. The old mansion provides a bit of menace itself, let alone the fact that its basement is a creepy labyrinth of dark twists and turns. The Marquette High School students who used to put this haunt on always did a great job. Sadly, they haven’t had a haunt there in years. Well… not a professional one, at least.
Hubertus House of Horrors (***) - This one is located in a small farm house on the same property as a school. If you can tolerate the VERY long wait and obnoxious kids in the cafeteria the organizers make you wait in, the house is always a good, quick scare-a-thon. Even though they don’t have a lot of room for any really big effects, the show still has charm.
The Rainbow Springs Haunted Hotel (***) - I went to this two years in a row. The first year (1994?) was INCREDIBLE!! They used a real life, empty, unfinished golf resort. They had decaying corpses everywhere, in the pool, in the hotel rooms, in the bathtubs. I remember they utilized the outside as well as the inside. The tour was quite long and climaxed with an effect featuring a train coming at you from inside a huge, dark tunnel. I would have given this a 5 star rating if I had not returned the next year. The following year was a bit of a let down. It was held in a much smaller section of the resort and was much quicker as we were rushed through at break-neck speed. The only major thrill was that my friend Dave “accidentally” got a handful of the pretty, female tour guide’s derrie’re when she backed up into him. I gave it 3 stars. Dave gave it 20. Don’t know if they’ll have it in the coming years due to a huge fire that ruined most of the resort.
Marks Farms Haunted Barn and Hayride (**) - A nice try that needed far MORE!! It started with a 60 minute Haunted Hayride that would have a little (and I do mean little) scary scene every 20 minutes or so. These scenes were mostly comprised of kids running up to the wagon in hockey masks screaming, after which we were treated to lots and lots of passing by corn until the next “scary” event took place. Then we got in line to the Haunted Barn. The wait was very short, which is always a good thing. The barn consisted of lots and lots of dark mazes interwoven with the occasional scene or effect. The two centerpieces for this show were the revolving tunnel and the electric chair (the later I barley got to see ‘cause we were rushed through the attraction). The atmosphere was very spooky, yet the attraction itself took about 3 minutes to go through. WAY TOO QUICK!
