One haunt we visited for the first time just last year. The other haunt we hadn't visited in a few years.
We didn't have a Mystery Machine, but we did have a Nissan SUV and a Tom Tom unit that helped us guide our way. The first haunt that we visited was pretty easy to find since it was just down the highway from Roberto's. It was an old, abandoned High School known as.....
HAUNTED HIGH - Touted as being America's only haunted high school and largest Midwestern haunt that would be closing after this year's haunt season, how could we say no? The building itself is large, dimly lit from the outside and a bit foreboding. The wait to get in wasn't too bad as we got there just before the haunt started its walkthroughs. The only annoyance was the group of tweeners yapping and yelling and acting like a bunch of buffoons in front of us. This is why most of us who are grown up detest the Justin Beiber and Twighard crowds. Bleh.
Things looked a lot better once we saw that they were relegated to go through in their own group leaving us with a few other adults. Heaven be praised! The show got on the road once we went through a small door and went down a staircase that led us down into the dark bowels of the old school.
Having visited this haunt last year we were expecting a few changes and upgrades since then. Unfortunately, there were very few if any at all. I suppose when you're running a haunt that will be in its last year, I guess you figure, "Why spend more money on anything that will not be used again." The facility will be torn down in the year to come to make way for affordable apartments.
This haunt did not change that much from the last time I reviewed it last year. So read my old review here for a slightly more in depth description of the haunt. One improvement they did make was that they had no Glee tie-in this year that kind of dumbed down the climax of last year's show.
It's sad to see a haunt close down when it still had a lot of room to grow and get better. Oh, well. On to our next dark adventure.
The next haunt was about 10 miles away, out in the countryside. Being out in the middle of nowhere on a deathly cold night with only the full moon as your only light certainly added to the ambiance of our next haunted attraction.......
THE DARK SIDE - The first couple of times we visited this haunt, we always left feeling that it was a good solid spookfest that, in time, could grow and change to be a big haunt. And it looks like they've tweaked some things and have added to the experience. It was definitely an improvement since we were last there. The waiting area has changed from being an outdoor wait to being inside of a huge and very dark hay barn. You can barely make out the giant grim reaper that towers over the crowd as we wait to go through. I guess if I had any issues with this haunt, it would be the wait. It is a very long wait in a unheated barn. Dress warm since they let 25 people people through at a time (at first) and then wait a good 15 minutes for the next 25. We arrive at the haunt at around 8 PM and didn't start to go through the haunt until 9 PM.
But, once we got going and were led outside of the barn, the creep show started! We were told the spooky history of the farmland and then led up a hill to a creepy old mine shaft. The groups of 25 were then broken down into groups of 2 or 3.
The mine shaft was the first of the sections that this big haunt was broken down into. "Decent" was the first chapter in the Dark Side's haunted farm. The old mine that we had to traverse was one of the highlights of the haunt. Great setting and effects! It plopped us out to the next chapter, a moonlight tractor ride through the dark woods called Twilight Nightmare (not at all to be confused with the horrible, glimmery vampires!). This part of the haunt included some fire breathing dragons and totems. It also had some ghouls come along for the ride.
The tractor plopped us out at the next section of the haunt, "Backwoods Revenge". The walk in the woods featured a plethora of inbred hillbillies stalking us as we made our way through a graveyard and a messy butcher shop.
Once we found our way out of the woods, we came to a small corn maze filled with more hillbillies ("Schizophrenia"). These rednecks went out of their way to keep us going in circles for a while before we found the last attraction, "Foxglove Nursery". Imagine a plant nursery where some sort of toxic chemical gets mixed with the plant life within. There are a few plant people we had to contend with to find our way back out to the parking lot and to safety.
I have to tell you that the price hike from the years past was well invested. They've added a lot more here and have gotten their barring on how to run an outdoor haunt. The haunt lasts around the 40 minute mark which is pretty fantastic! The wait can be a bit of a grind and they could put a few more effects during the tractor ride to pace it out better. But, in the end it was fantastic!
So I visited three haunts this season, two more than last year. I don't think I'll be lucky enough to go to to the six or more that I did in the good old days. But, I enjoy the ones I can visit.
Speaking of visiting haunts, here's another virtual visit to a wonderful haunt through the magic that is YouTube.
Alice Cooper has been a favorite performer of Roberto's and mine for a very long time. He's always incorporated some hefty doses of horror, gore and gallows humor into his songs and concerts. It makes perfect sense that he would lend his imagination to a haunted maze at this year's Halloween Horror Nights.
So sit back, turn off the lights and enjoy Alice Cooper Goes to Hell through the eyes of the people at Sharpe Productions' YouTube channel.
That will be all for this post. I hope to post something else very soon before the Halloween season is completely over, so keep an eye out for it.
Until next time, stay vertical!
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