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Its been mentioned on the site that Dio doesn't do haunted houses. She doesn't do haunted corn mazes either. In fact, if there's a chance she's going to a place where people can jump out to scare you, chances are that's a place to avoid like garlic flavored gum--unless you're not a vampire and you're into that. But that was back when I was forced to go through an hour long walk-through one at Six Flags Marine World nearly 15 years ago. On 2 different occasions I've accidentally punched a scarer. @_@ I'm ashamed of that cuz that poor guy didn't get paid less than minimum wage to get socked by a tiny girl. About the only haunted house I've gone to before and gone more than once is the Winchester House in my hometown but that's cuz for some reason, the possibility of real ghosts scares me less than people dressed up as some.
I know. I'm strange like that.
So i figured, to kind of get over that, I'd try one. Since our local amusement park, Great America, does a yearly haunted attraction event throughout October called Haunt, I figured that was a good place to start. Sounds familiar? Well that's cuz Choco did it one year, and I wanted an experienced tank. No idiot does a raid without an experienced tank. XD
Choco covered his piece already, so here are a few of my perspectives on it (he did a way better job of covering it, actually XD). To the left here is the observation tower ride. Its car was pulled all the way up (its a security thing to keep people from breaking into it, I assume), but they installed managing lighted eyes in them for a nice touch. I though it was pretty cool.
Haunt is organized in the park into late hours. Some of the rides are up, some aren't. It depends on the hour (when quiet hours have to be enacted for the surrounding area), or the type of ride. Its like going to an amusement park after-hours, and its a neat experience. There were 8 mazes or houses: Insanitarium, Cornstalkers, Toy Factory, Madame Marie's Massacre Manor, Roadkill Roadhouse, Dia de los Muertos, Zombie High, and Wax Museum Chamber of Horror, and 3 Scare Zones, or open areas with actors and props to scare people outside the mazes: Killer Clown Town, Evacuate, and Lockdown.
Excepting the Scare Zones which are places in the paths going from one side of the park to the other, the attractions all have lines, so we knew we wouldn't be able to hit all the houses in one night. As it ended up, we hit only 2: the Wax Museum and the Dia de los Muertos mazes. Apparently the mirror mansion required not only a wait, but because it was an actual maze that needed to be navigated--rather than a linear path like the other houses--it required a time to come back to do it, so we skipped that. Maybe next year XD.
After passing the Insanitarium and Lockdown portions (all fogged up and with blinding colored lights, perfect for an actor to sneak up on you) and a coaster, we decided to grab a snack first. I made friends with the cuties on the right==>
UGHHHHHH. D8 Those are real btw, and in the sickly green light, that made them look bigger.
Our first stop was the Wax Museum, with a rather lengthy line. There was a pond next to us and the nearly full moon was reflecting off the water. It was actually kinda pretty, excepting that Choco and I are wary of any body of black or dark water.
Ne, Yuuri?
I was predictably nervous, since it'd had been over a decade since I last did one of these but I found out if you pretty much looked the actors in the eye, you had a 50-50 chance they'd try something and if they did, I was already looking at them so I wasn't as startled. Some of the figures were pretty good, but it wasn't too hard to figure out which were actors and which weren't. A couple would kick the walls or bang them for a stable noise. Good ambiance.
The one that got Choco was a John Dillinger "wax dummy" who I recognized as an actor…mostly cuz he was kinda cute. XD;;;; Leave it to Dio's sex drive to overcome fear (its why I play sexy horror games, ne?). A row of body bags with 2 actors in 2 separate places got me a little, but over all I was feeling pretty good. I didn't have that dread I thought I would going through that.
Which was good cuz the next scare spot was the clown one. Scary clowns are a great staple of horror places, and a few creepy clowns were perfect ambiance. I did see a cute little one who was this girl that might have been a rag doll costume. I didn't remember, all I did remember was waving around and trying to get her to take my hand. She was cute XD I kinda saw if you engaged in unexpected ways, they'd have to reroute their scare programming to get you XD. One clown came up in my peripheral while I was winding my camera for film, but I did give him a nod just prior and he moved on. Apparently a couple followed us, hoping we'd turn but I was too busy trying to see everything. XD
The evacuation portion had large cars and trucks and a bus all parked as if it was the aftermath of an apocalyptic evacuation, and had actors pop up from car windows or from under vehicles. Some actors had these neato knee skates that allowed them to run full tilt at people, and skid along the ground or come crawling out from small places. I really wanted some. XD I was starting to see that more than being scared, I was looking forward to the whole experience. Maybe my memories made things out like this to be more scary than they really were, but part of that was the excitement. After a ride on at the carnival styled Beserker (think those carnival rides of the trains that run in a full circle going crazy miles an hour, and that's the ride. It had no line which was the best part.
A note on things: scare zones were ok to take pics, but not inside the mazes, which is unfortunate cuz the second maze we did, the Dia de los Muertos maze, was so incredible I wish I could have taken pics. It was built behind and under the Gold Striker wood coaster (which we did last, and man was that a ride XD), and had an option of having 3D glasses. I bought our party a set, a dollar a pop, so we could use them, and just at the entrance, you could see the glasses were worth it and more. The maze was done up in fluorescent paint with black lights, and with the glasses, the paint looked so 3D, it looked like it was projecting up to a foot towards you. The tech was called ChromaDepth, and it was INCREDIBLE. Curious as to how it works? Check this link out on the spec details for a small idea. This is something you have to actually see to believe.
I rather like the artistic style of did de los muertos, and painting everything in black light colors was fantastic, and more so when it was in 3D. It possible to look at the maze without glasses and its pretty impressive, but with the glasses on, the orange "blood" on the staggering barracho skeleton made it that much more special. One actor managed to get between me and Lantz and Choco, but, still riding high on the color saturation drug trip of the paint, I only laughed and giggled and was butchering my spanish that I'd painstakingly tried to learn in my final years of spanish class. Seriously. The paint was making me high on the visuals alone. I was so enamored of looking at everything that I think i'd completely missed some scarers (apparently, Choco was trying to warn me but I was too distracted by the pretty XD;;;). We passed crypts that didn't open though I was hoping to see something. I think I caught sight of a la catrina girl but her face paint was so pretty I think she gave up trying to scare me. The guy at the end was a skeleton in a bungie set up, with fog as a distraction so he could leap out from the fog and scare people. The staff member at the end, waving to the exit helped cover the fact there was something else there, but other than that, more than being scared, I was a kid in a candy shop. It was the best experience I've ever had, to the point I forgot to feel scared.
All in all, I really enjoyed it, and totally intend to try again next year, and hope to hit more of them (maybe get that all-access, fast-track line pass too for less line waiting). If you're free this last weekend and are in the Santa Clara area, give Haunt a try. Its definently a fun experience.
--Dio (10/29/15)
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