September 29th, 2017 Atlanta area Haunted House Excursion
My husband & I normally go to Netherworld every October, but we decided to hit as many haunted houses in the Atlanta area as we could in a night. So Friday, September 29th at 2 pm we left Birmingham headed to the Atlanta area. In this order, we went to Netherworld, Paranoia, Folklore, Nightmare's Gate, and Haunted Chicken House. I am going to give a brief review of each of the haunts that we visited so that anyone else that may be interested in checking them out will have an idea if they are worth visiting.
I am also including the haunted houses we visited in central Alabama to give a list of how each haunt ranked in comparison to all the others we visited this season.
Here is our favorite haunted houses in order:
1) Netherworld
2) Nightmare's Gate
3) Atrox
4) Paranoia
5) Hellbilly Hollow
6) Nightmare 3008
7) Warehouse 31
8) Hollis Haunted Chicken House
9) Insanitarium
10) Sloss Furnace
11) Mountain Creek Trail of Fear
12) Folklore (only BAD haunt we went to)
12) Folklore- "Biggest Disappointment" (3 out of 10)
Total time on site- 27 minutes
This is the first time we have gone to Folklore and it will be the last. Let me start by saying we had high expectations for this haunt after my husband talked on the phone to whom he suspects was the owner. He bragged that his haunt was the 2nd largest in Georgia behind Netherworld and that if you put containment (another haunt in Douglasville) and Nightmare's Gate together that it would be about the size of his haunt. He also said that he had a bunch of animatronics and about 40 actors. His haunt may be the 2nd largest in Georgia, but size doesn't matter in this case. There were a lot of animatronics and I'm guessing about 40 actors would be accurate as well. Upon arrival, we saw a lot of people standing in the parking lot, most of which were either workers or security. I only noticed one monster walking around the parking lot and he didn't seem too interested in scaring people. We were also going to do "The Last Ride" coffin simulator after the haunts, but after being so disappointed in the haunts we chose to save the money and skip it. We left disappointed in the experience. If Folklore is really just a little smaller than Netherworld then they need 100+ actors in the haunt to make it be comparable to the other haunts. I understand it takes guests paying money to be able to hire more actors, but it would be more logical to just have 1 or 2 haunts with a lot of actors rather than 3 haunts with only a few actors...or at least set it up so that the same actors can move through the haunt & scare you multiple times without it being overly obvious to the guest that it's the same actors. It could have been good with more actors, but I can't judge it based on how it could have been better, I can only judge it based on how it was.
The first haunt we entered was The Manor (I think). We were greeted by a worker dressed as a normal person who gave us a set of rules prior to entering. After entering we were able to enjoy the scenery/props/animatronics. We were able to enjoy them because of the lack of actors. There were several rooms that we walked through that there were no actors at all. It took us a total of 5 minutes to walk through the first haunt and I can't recall screaming at all....maybe once or twice at most.
The second haunt was Tremulous (I think). Again we were greeted by a worker dressed as a normal person who gave us the same set of rules prior to entering. Again we found ourselves enjoying the setup in each room, but because of the lack of actors, it was hard to really get into the mindset of being scared. About ¾ through the haunt, it merged with the first haunt and then exited out of the same doorway...btw which had 3 or 4 workers just sitting there hanging out. It took us 7 minutes to walk through this haunt.
The third haunt was Chromophobia (3D haunt). Unfortunately, after Netherworld, it seemed like a funhouse walk through that you would find at the fair or in Gatlinburg. I understand that according to their website that this is an all age haunt so I'm guessing that is why there weren't but a couple of actors in there. We found ourselves talking about how pink and yellow pops out more than the other colors. It took us 3-4 minutes to walk through this "attraction".
P.S. According to a recent reviewer Folklore let them go through the first haunt & then delayed them going through the 2nd haunt until the monsters moved to the next haunt so that the customers were getting more scares & so the haunt doesn't seem as understaffed. In my opinion that is listening to complaints & trying to give your customers a better experience. read more