Wednesday, October 9, 2013

October Horror 2013: Off-topic: Haunted Attractions

I mentioned in the writeup for this month that we're going to be visiting haunted attractions, but up until now I've been too busy to write about any of them.  However, due to a really late night and owing to the need to wake up and go to work, we never actually got through The Mummy which was scheduled for last night.  So, temporarily lacking a movie for today, I'd like to go over some of the haunts we've been to so far.

Barrett's Haunted Mansion
We first went to Barrett's in Abington 3 years ago.  It's an indoor haunt but the line is outside.  I've always held it as noteworthy in that the ticket booth is part of the attraction and you usually get a scare on the way in before you've bought anything.  While the interior of the house changes, the tickets are always sold in some sort of Diner of the Damned, and the booths are stocked with various undead monsters and corpses.  The ticket line usually works its way through some sort of meat locker or walk-in freezer where you get boo'd.  The first year we went through they included a false stop in the middle of the house where they placed a gift shop, upon being greeted in the gift shop and told the tour was over you were chased from the room by a monster and finished the house.  It was great, but they've never quite managed a scare so amazing since.  This year the main house includes a heavy Alice in Wonderland theme, which is very surreal.  They've also added a 2nd attraction called "The Cell" which is a foggy maze walkthough set in an insane asylum.  It gets really breakneck at times, especially when you get turned around and run back into the lunatic you were just trying to escape from.  My only complaint is that the 2nd half has issues with the fogger, they can't run it too long or else it wafts into the main house and sets off fire detection equipment, plus makes it impossible to see in there.  While not being able to match up to their first year, Barrett's is a great house.  The Abington Ale house which they are right next door to, is not so great.  Their food is mediocre for family dining fair, and while claiming to be an Ale House their beer selection is neither impressive nor respected.  I'm pretty sure they served me the wrong beer the first time I was there 3 years ago, and they haven't improved as of this year.

Lakeville Haunted House
Lakeville Haunted House is a youth-run outdoor walkthrough in Lakeville.  It's a cheap ticket, and includes a nice covered waiting area with picnic tables, food, light up toys, etc.  They play music videos against a sheet, it's generally pretty nice.  They then take you in small groups every few minutes into the haunt where volunteers shepherd you through.  They have an interesting system where there is a gatekeeper up front after a short walk through some scenery that takes your ticket.  And a few other points where they bottle neck you behind a gatekeeper, presumably to control flow as they like to have skits acted out in many rooms, though groups are sometimes paced poorly and you can get stuck into a super-group and ruin a skit.  It's not the most high quality attraction or even the scariest since it's all kids, but it's got "heart".  They've expanded this year and have several new sections, including Slender Man.  I guess the meme is about over, but he's still a creepy bastard.

Zombie Apocalypse
This isn't so much a haunt as it is a semi-interactive indoor adventure.  After waiting in line, you're grouped into a squad of 6 people and armed with a fake automatic rifle that basically just makes noise and shakes.  You've been "enlisted" and now you have to debrief with your squad's commanding officer, who gives you the rules and the situation.  The city outside has been overrun with zombies and your job is to clean out some key tactical points and then make it out the other side.  The interior is a little sparse, which makes sense since it's basically a warehouse.  It's all a pretty fun sprint through a few interiors.  There's not a lot of variety, it's mostly go across this open area, clear this building, back out, along a wall, through this tunnel, etc.  But the squad leaders pretty lively and make things fun.  At $20 for the regular line and $40 for the VIP it's pushing it for the length of what it did offer, but if you can find it on groupon, it's worth.  We went early in the season and the regular line wasn't terrible, but they can only have one group inside at a time, so it takes quite a while to work through their queue.

Ghoulie Manor
We'd never been to Ghoulie Manor before, it's a newish attraction (I believe in its 2nd year?) in the Silver City Galleria in Taunton.  (or at least that's where it was this year, I'm not sure if they move yearly or not)  It's entirely indoors, which is nice and probably makes it a great late-season house if you don't want to be too cold.  While not a reason in deciding to go there this year, Ghoulie Manor was featured in a documentary on Netflix called The American Scream as being the result of a home-haunter being laid off from his Sysadmin job at State Street financial and deciding to take the opportunity to go pro with a haunted house.  As a former financial services IT employee, I can sympathize.  The haunt itself is super-professional and incredibly well done.  Also, tickets are quite cheap, especially for the quality of what you get.  The entire house is put together in a very coherent Victorian theme as the Goulet Manor family home, magically transported from the early 1800's to modern day.  The line is walked by several well-developed characters who you are free to chat and interact with.  They're not so much line-scarers like at many other parks as line-creepers.  They send you through in extremely small groups, and we were able to go through as just the 2 of us.  It's quite well paced and there are a lot of rooms.  Even interstitial areas to make it more home-like, including a freaking scary little girl on a set of stairs.  There's also a very good graveyard section.  This has definitely skyrocketed to a position of favorite haunts, especially of indoor haunts.  We decided not to go to Factory of Terror this year as they're too crowded and basically send people through in a continuous line rather than a group, this is probably a better house than even the best walk through Factory of Terror we did.

So that's the update as of today.  This weekend we're making the journey out to Central New York for a haunted village that's held on the same campus(?) as the Sterling Renaissance Festival, and a haunted amusement park in Sylvan Beach.  Fun times.  Also we're going to be catching up with the movies at some point, so that entry will be back-dated to the correct time.

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