Was I frightened? Only by their incompetence. This place was absolutely terrible. They're expensive, cheesy, not scary or even fun, and wait until I get to the Zombie Hunt.
Lets start with the good:
The fire-dancer was ok. They were clearly in training, but anything with fire is cool.
They had some good wandering costumed workers, like Freddie and stilt walkers that were kind of cool, though the makeup on some was lazy (paint on face, not on neck...etc)
Now, for the rest.
They cost $35, They force you to go to everything in a specific order, apparently because they don't want you to "miss" anything, as if you can miss any of the 3 things they have. Because of this, especially if you go close to opening, you're standing in a TON of lines because they make everyone go to the same thing at once. We spent a total of 3 hours in lines, for about 30 minutes of total events.
The haunted house is terrible, its disjointed and lazy, and the people they hire to act in it aren't very good, they all believe that all they have to do to scare you is come up behind you and yell. That happens every...single...time. After the first 10 times, its not even surprising. There's also no ambiance. They had Michael jackson's thriller playing outside, almost like they picked "halloween music" on Pandora, and NO music on any other the other events, so there was no ambiance at all.
The hayride had SO many missed opportunities, they clearly spent a lot of money, with zero thought into how it all fits together or how it looks. Apparently, they think fake pumpkins are the SCARIEST THINGS ON EARTH, because I have never seen so many fake pumpkins in my life. They must have raided every Walmart in town to get all of these.
They have you riding behind an old tractor, so you're choking on tractor fumes the entire time. The "scenes" for the hayride were so...SO bad, basically painted particle board, and you can see the actors standing behind these "houses" waiting to burst out at you yelling (again). One of there "scenes" was an IRS Collector"being crucified... hicks. Finally, there's no music or sounds here either, it just felt...boring.
Finally, the most HORRIBLE part of this awful experience, the Zombie Paintball Hunt. Where do I start. We waited in line for an hour and a half, in the freezing cold (again, because they told everyone to do things in order). At first we noticed a lot of angry people getting of the trailers, then we noticed that instead of picking up new people, the trucks were driving away (apparently to go fix something) and then they'd come back and pick up more people, and then 10 minutes later drop off more angry people. By the time they got to us, they were running only 1 truck, at half capacity.
Me and my group boarded the trailer, and we set off. First, there was a woman (employee) SMOKING, hacking and yacking loudly behind us about her weekend plans, who was supposed to help us if anything went wrong with our guns, but all she did was hit the gun when it wasn't working. There were 3 "scenes" we drove through, and in all of them there was 1..maybe 2 "zombies" (they were too far away to see). In between every scene the attendants were yelling at the actors to "come out more next time"...right.
And worse, some of our guns STILL weren't working. You shot once, then the gun would jam, and loud lady would come up behind you and hit it for a bit, and once she got it working you were off to the next scene.
We complained about this to the front desk, asking for a refund since it was really the only reason we came here, but their response to us, and the dozens of other angry people who stood in line for nothing was "We don't provide refunds" They would only allow us to go again (including standing in line again!) They said "This is only our second year, so live and learn" The only thing we learned is to never go back. Save your money, and go to Buck Hill. That may not be scary, but at least its fun.
Nightmare Organizers, some advice:
*Don't hire friends or kids to organize or act. They're not good. You can have them walking around or sell tickets, but they don't belong in your showpieces. There are plenty of out of work actors to hire.
*Hire someone who knows what they're doing to organize logistics, then hire a DIFFERENT person (preferably someone with a theater background) to layout designs, plan themes, and coach actors. The type of person who is good at planning administrative details is not usually good at being creative, I'm just guessing, but it feels like there's just one guy doing all this.
*Have a theme, or 3 separate themes for your events. It looks like you raided a halloween store.
*Everyone should be in costume and in character, ALL THE TIME. I don't want some lady in a packers sweater yelling instructions at me, it ruins the mood.
*Also, its not horrible, but don't leave your trailers out at night, soaks the hay (and in turn, our pants) and then people feel uncomfortable while they stand in line (foreve read more
