My wife and I have been wanting to try out Slaughter House ever since moving to the area but for…read moreone reason or the other, it just never worked out. Finally, this last Halloween, we were able to make it work.
Slaughter House is held at Greater Nevada Field, which is where the Reno Ace's play. They offer the usual Haunted House experience and a Haunted Train attraction (more on that later). Considering if you purchased both attractions together (and getting access to the faster line) it would be cheaper, we decided to go that route. Afterwards, we wish we just went with the Haunted House.
We waited in line for around 30 minutes before getting into the House and all in all, it was alright. Sure, it had moments that made me jump and even freaked me out a bit, but all told it just wasn't that great. There's one portion of the House where you're forced to walk through a ball pit that features a "scary" Clown to add to the discomfort. Normally, there would be nothing wrong with that. But, what is wrong with it is my wife has a very bad ankle and it could be rolled very easily. There was no warning at all about having to walk through a ball pit where rolling your ankle wouldn't be too difficult. So considering I was highly annoyed by this and focused on making sure my Wife didn't get hurt, it took any and all "scare" out of this portion. To his credit, the actor playing the Clown picked up on this and backed off. That was cool of him.
As soon as it started, it ended. I felt like there was no grand finale or anything like that, you just suddenly left the maze and that was that. Pretty flat if you ask me. Oh, and the first thing they do upon entering the Haunted House is take your picture along side a creepy actor. It's your usual tourist trap type thing with them pitching you to purchase said picture at the end. Full transparency though, I bought it. Lol. It actually turned out to be a good photo of me and there aren't very many of those. Lol.
Now here's the portion of the review where things really take a turn for the worst. The Haunted Train. It was probably the saddest thing I've ever experienced. The train carts are stupid small and cramped (it became apparent to me at this point that kids were the primary target audience for this), they played music by the band "Disturbed" (probably its only redeeming quality), and they attempted to scare you while you passed by Coke a Cola and Hot Dog vendor carts. Super scary. They didn't even TRY to cover these. I was able to spot the scare actors coming a mile away. It just flat out sucked, ok? The little kids on the ride weren't even scared. They either need to completely revamp this or scrap it all together. Seriously bad. Don't bother wasting your hard earned money on this.
So the reason for the 2 stars is the fact that the Haunted House (the main attraction) was just ok and had a flat ending, the Train ride sucked, and the fact that a female Security Guard (at the main line entrance) could be heard by all of us in line talking a whole mess of sh*t about customers. Now, I used to work in Customer Service and I hated every minute of it, so I completely understand how stupid and rude the general public can be. However, you NEVER talk about customers RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. That's just asinine even to me. If you hate it, then do what I did. Go get a job where you don't have to deal with them. Problem solved. Also, all told, we spent north of $50 for the attractions and I'm sorry but for what you get, that's too much. It just wasn't worth the cost.
So all told, there's a good chance that this was our first and final visit unless they make some big changes. We're more than likely going to opt to do something in Virginia City for Halloween this year. Then one upside to all this? Parking was free in the garage across the street. So there's that.