It’s been some time
since I went to Great America’s Halloween Haunt, but it’s better late than
never, right? Yeah, I guess. Before I begin, let me tell you at the
beginning of this Haunt, I was starting to see signs of burnout. The first maze we went through, I wasn’t
thrilled, thought here we go again, and “yep, same thing as usual.”
But that being said,
I have to say I was very, very impressed with the haunt at Great America. And if I were you and only wanted to go to
one haunt this year, this is the one you need to jump on. It’s not at the same level of So Cal…YET, but
it’s dang close and I was pleasantly surprised by the event. My favorite maze so far this year was at this
event, and one of my favorite moments of this year so far also happened at this
event. Plus it had the best opening show
ever!!
THE INTERVIEW
I will do some
research to find this gentlemen’s name, but he’s the lead for entertainment for
haunt and he was amazing. Gave us some
history of the haunt and some of the issues of doing haunt every year. He made us drink blood…more on that later.
But the reason why I
mention this interview, and why I think you need to go straight to The Season
Pass Podcast on Itunes and listen to the episode…when it comes out, is what he
said about running a haunt. Due to laws
within California, it is mandatory that all scareactors get a break. Due to this law, there are times when you go
through a haunt and it may seem empty, well, this is because the scareactors
are on a mandatory break. Of course my
mind went to then you need to hire more actors.
But that really doesn’t fix things either because then you would need to
have two actors for every scene and they would swap, and that could get
expensive. You can’t really have the
same actor do breaks for other actors, because that would require a different
kind of makeup. So I no longer complain
about empty areas in the haunts, and I don’t think any of us should. It’s just a cause of the system.
HAUNT OPENING SHOW
I really have no
idea what they call the opening show, but it was amazing. Now, please remember that we were behind the
lines that were holding people back. I
got to stand above the crowd and look down on them to see their reactions,
which made it even more awesome.
So first, a junky,
creepy RV drives up next to the crowd that is waiting for Haunt to open. The RV stops and then just stays there. The crowd turns to see what exactly is going
on. Some people see us and try to pass
the ropes but the few people that hold the ropes tell them to get back behind
the lines. Then the RV starts rocking
from left to right and eerie music is played.
Then the rocking stops, the door opens, and the undead climb out of the
RV and line up right in front. They
stare at the crowd, make sounds, point, jeer.
It’s all very creepy.
After a couple of
minutes of staring back and forth, a siren comes on from the speakers. I’m not sure if anything is said, like a
warning or the undead have risen. The lines
are then dropped, and the undead sprint at the crowd. This causes the crowd to run straight towards
us like a tidal wave of people. The
undead are sprinting after them while people scream in terror. It is a surreal feeling watching pure fear
and laughter erupt from this wave of bodies.
I’m shocked that nobody is trampled on because people are hauling ass
past us. It’s an amazing visual, and an
even better way to start this great evening.
CARNEVIL
Even after that
amazing introduction to the event, my burnout of Haunts started here. It was a 3-d maze, which to my amazement, you
have to pay $1 for the 3-d glasses. Now,
we had the Fright Lane pass (aka front of the line pass) and the Skeleton Key,
and there was no booth to buy the 3-d glasses where we lined up. In my opinion, those that pay the big bucks
should get the 3-d glasses for free and maybe given to them when they got their
pass. Just my recommendation.
The maze was
fun. Crazy colors, crazy clowns. There was this weird cotton candy hallway
that was just full of fuzzy pink walls.
Very strange.
The Skeleton Key
room consisted of multiple tv’s that each person stood in front of. You watched a series of images and videos,
then a scary figure would pop out in an attempt to scare you and you moved
on. Been victim to these types of jokes
before, so it didn’t scare me. In my
opinion, the Skeleton Key room’s are supposed to inform you more of the
storyline of the maze, and this didn’t do anything to enhance the maze.
DIA DE LOS MUERTOS
One of my favorites
of the event. No Skeleton Key in this
room, but the artwork and the environments were simply awesome. This is a maze that I knew I had to go
through again, but with the Fright Lane, you only get to go to the front of the
line once, which I thought was ridiculous.
At Knotts, I would do mazes multiple times to see everything, one time
through? Not good. I can see going through the Skeleton Key
rooms once, but the mazes? My first
dislike of the evening, possibly the only one.
Dia de los Muertos
is the Mexico celebration that follows Halloween. Tons of cool costumes and neon lighting. Doug got yelled at for recording audio, but
after a 5 minute detour, we finally finished the maze. Hard to describe the awesomeness of the
jungle, the town, and the building that you go through.
MADAME MARIE’S MASSACRE MANOR
Another Voodoo
maze. It seems like this is the thing
this year, even though this is a returning maze. Now this maze didn’t have any swamp like
scenes like the other ones did, but it did have a creepy house full of weird
voodoo art.
The Skeleton Key
room is in the middle of the maze, like CarnEvil. It’s spooky as hell. You walk into the séance room, grab onto a
crystal ball and hold on for dear life.
Now I was expecting a zap from the ball, but no such thing
happened. The table starts moving, the
lights go out, then a strobe comes on and a freaky girl appears in the middle
of the table staring at each person. It’s
pretty awesome and definitely gets you in the mood to finish the maze.
Room after room
after room of craziness. Again, one I
wish I could have gone through to remember more and seen it all.
MIRROR, MIRROR
This is considered
an event rather than a maze. Fun House
Express is the other event, but we didn’t go to that. The guys said it sucked. Mirror, Mirror was something that I didn’t
experience last year at Knott’s, and it was disappointing here. You put on plastic gloves so you don’t get
the glass dirty, then you get sent in as a group to find your way out. Clowns/masquerade characters haunt the mirror
maze to confuse and frighten you, plus there’s this crazy strobe light that
gives you a headache. It’s a timed
experience, and it didn’t feel like we were in there for long until we were
escorted out. Very disappointing, even
more disappointing if I had to wait in the hour line to get in.
WAX MUSEUM CHAMBER OF HORROR
Follow this up with
this best maze I’ve been in this year. I
LOVED Wax Museum. The idea is simple,
you walk through a Wax Museum full of wax sculptures, some have a human in it,
some don’t. There’s a mix of serial
killers and monster movies in the maze.
My favorite moment was coming face to face with a live Jack the Ripper,
gives me the chills. Loved it. There was an African expedition room, a
monster room, a western room, a room filled with kings and beheadings, just
fantastic. Startled a couple of times
because I was admiring some of the great details.
After the Wax
Museum, you enter the backstage area where the wax sculptures are made. Some animatronic figures move you along from
room to room as the sculptures get less and less decorated. Then in the final room you find that some
poor victims have been captured and been waxed for the museum.
Great storyline,
great idea, I love this!! I hope Knott’s
gets a version next year. Would love to
see how that group can make it even more insane.
TOY FACTORY
The one thing I
remember about Toy Factory? The
song!! I loved that stupid annoying
song. I have no idea why. The toy factory had a lot to see in each
room, which again would have been nice to see a couple of times to see
everything. They had play on names like “Build
A Bear” they called “Kill a Bear”, not sure if that’s right, it’s been
awhile. This is a haunt that didn’t
really need people in it, it was just cool to walk through and see all the
imagination that went into creating it.
The Skeleton Key was
very disappointing. You walk through a
long hallway with those weird air bubbles on each side so you feel like you are
going through a birthing canal. Then at
the end of the one hallway, you do a u-turn and do it again. Then back into the maze. Very disappointing, and not worth your time.
ZOMBIE HIGH
Like Toy Factory,
this one didn’t need actors, just cool to walk through. You went through chemistry class, English class,
history class, and each time you left a room, you walked through a hallway
created by those old school desks which made it really creepy. Some good startles, but it was really awesome
just walking through the scenes. They
did have one guy in the bungee cords who jumped down and startle you. I think the scene I would have like to have
seen more of an NC-17 rating was the locker room and the shower room at the
end. Felt like I was in a teen movie,
but the fact that everybody was in a swimsuit kind of took you out of the
story. Bring on the boobage, lol.
CORNSTALKERS
THE WORST MAZE
HERE!! God, I was disappointed in this
maze. Walking through a corn maze with
people in the corn to jump out at you with some redneck stuff to walk in. There were long areas where there was nobody
in the maze, breaks? Not sure but it
seemed empty. We went by 6 outhouses
that I really thought someone would be in, but there was nobody. Weird maze, not very fun.
BUT THE SKELETON KEY
ROCKED THE HOUSE!! The Skeleton Key room
was the first thing you went into and it was so awesome that we talked about it
for the first half of the maze. It was
that awesome. I’m hoping to get an
unedited copy of it so I can share with everybody, but we laughed so hard. We kept the characters going and at one
point, the actor stopped the act and thanked us for being so awesome. The gist: Two red neck boys, the older one follows
his woman around with a cup once a month, then takes the…stuff, and puts it
into pumpkins. To get out, you need a
key, and the key is in one of the pumpkins.
After diving through the pumpkins, you are allowed to wash up. Everything that happens in between, pure
humor. I’ll post a link to the recording
when Doug uploads it. Man that was a
good time.
ROADKILL ROADHOUSE
Final maze of the
night. Also new for this year, but we’ve
seen it all over the place. The story is
that you enter a restaurant that serves meat and you find out that the meat is
human. This maze is as common as the clown
mazes. Nothing new if you’ve been
through this: dead bodies hanging, ground meat from bodies, cleaver wielding
people chasing you, all the same.
But the Skeleton Key
room is a bit different. You enter the
room and the cook tells you that you have two things to choose from, the blood
or the bug pie. Now I mentioned earlier
that I had the blood back in one of our interviews and it wasn’t as bad as the
urine I had to drink back at Knotts…again, something I haven’t talked about yet
but will after Halloween is over. Doug thought
it was grosser than the urine, but I had a little bit left in my cup so I drank
a little more (ingredients: water, salt, ground up iron tablets and some kind
of stuff that makes it thick). So we
went for the cricket pie, which tasted like sunflower seeds except for the leg
that got stuck in my teeth.
THE REST OF THE EVENT,
The rides were open
which was cool. Gold Striker was awesome
at night, great ride. Didn’t go on anything
else because we ran out of time. We also
didn’t get a chance to see any of the shows.
We got a special dinner in the employee café which was awesome. Great America brings down the prices and
serves decent food behind the scenes for it’s employees, bravo. The scare zones were fun. Iron Works was just a bunch of guys banging
metal around. Underworld Alley was
apparently awesome the year before, I thought it was fun. The Gauntlet was a fog filled area like Ghost
Town, but it was just okay. Didn’t have
the building of Ghost town.
I did a lot of
comparing between Great America and Knotts, because they are run by the same
company. But the So Cal parks still have
a leg up on us Northern California parks.
But Great America is the best even within a 3 hour drive and I strongly
recommend checking this out. Loved it
and will be returning…with new victims next year.
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