Final Scores – By Category:

Cast (20% of Final Score): 8

Costuming (10% of Final Score): 8.26

Customer Service (10% of Final Score): 9.68

Immersion (10% of Final Score): 7.5

Special Effects (15% of Final Score): 7.63

Scare Factor (20% of Final Score): 6.82

Entertainment & Value (15% of Final Score): 7.63

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Final Scores – By Attraction:

Attraction 1: 7.8

Bloodview is a longtime …40+ years! …mainstay of the Cleveland haunt scene. It’s a charity attraction administered by the Broadview (Bloodview, get it?) Heights Lions Club, doer and supporter of good works.

Bloodview’s main claim to fame is its notorious acting ensemble, known as the Legion of Terror. These fine folks are extensively trained in improv performance, character design, makeup techniques, and the many other factors that go into making an effective haunt actor that will scare, entertain, amuse, and/or gross out patrons. We can count on, well, probably one finger, the number of times out of the dozens we’ve been there that the cast was a letdown.

The trip begins with a spooky walk through the woods winding in and out of various structures, ending up at the House of the Damned haunted house (scored as one attraction). Let’s go!

And so, on to the most notable component of Bloodview: that cast. All volunteers, it should be mentioned. Even for so early in the season (this was their second night open), we ran into just a couple who appeared tongue-tied or tentative. Most seemed to have their character fleshed out and knew what they wanted to do. And did it!

Standouts? On the trail, the wickedly cackling clown we ran into three or four times and when asked if we’d seen him before, hissed rather unconvincingly: “that’s my brother!” The clown’s partner in crime, a vocabulary-forward phantom with a penchant for the word ‘indubitably.’ The ghoul sitting in a church pew who declared this was the Church of Eternal Torment, and shrieked in agony to pound the point. A harlequin figure crawling around on their knees. And a suited specter dragging around a torn torso by a rope, said torso referred to as the girlfriend who talks too much.

In the house, the first creep we met observed one of us popping a cough drop and insisted that we share our Skittles before we moved on. Taste the mentholated rainbow, goofball! While we were discussing whether humans are red or white meat (the deli sign states that homo sapiens = the other, other white meat), a hangry meat-eater snuck up behind us and said they’d eat any color: red, white, green, or blue. Would that be a Smurfivore??

Toward the end, one of the actors, who seemed to be doing some stealth crowd control, kept asking to check our shoes and argued with the other cast members about which of them had pooped their pants. Probably the one who offered everyone their fingers to smell, maybe? And come to think of it, maybe it wasn’t just in their pants, the way they asked us to check our soles…

We came across a wacky bunch of voices, from croaky to squeaky; which delivered tasty lines, from gross to uproarious; and a refreshingly wide range of behaviors, from brutal to bizarre. All in all, and as usual, the Bloodview cast proved a chaotic, personable, and entertaining cast of characters. They really are the main reason for a visit.

The costume/makeup jobs at Bloodview inevitably furnish striking, and/or revolting, grotesque, appalling, appealing, feasts for the eyes. Lots of airbrushing, layering, prosthetic works, and a focus on full costuming and accessorizing make for a great presentation.

The queue actors always look horrific and original. This time they included a pirate clown with a rubber chicken standing in as the customary shoulder parrot, a horned demonic/vampiric door keeper, and a Leatherface-ish chainsaw maniac that also somehow managed to look something like Elijah Wood’s hideous Yellow Bastard character from Sin City.

Out on the trail, something that looked like a mourning lady in black, including a slick lacy veil, made us stop in our tracks. The disappearing/reappearing clown nearby was done up with wicked stylish black line makeup. The lumbering up-on-stilts creature made quite an impression with clickety-snappity finger clackers.

In the house, the Skittles-seeker wore a medieval-esque doublet kind of outfit that matched up well with the torture chamber-style vibe. The horned freak in the psych ward cells was the most distinctive of the group there. The bunch of who-pooped/show-us-your-shoes actors toward the end sported somewhat similar, but distinct ghostly/ghastly/ghoulish get-ups. The one who kept asking about shoes aptly wore some towering platform footwear!

Overall, the makeup effort here was very nicely done as usual. We even noticed an improvement in the head-to-toe costuming over our last visit, where some of it was a bit off with glimpses of sneakers, street clothes, and the like.

Bloodview Haunted House is located in Broadview Heights, on the southwest side of the Cleveland metro area. Its (sub)urban location with proximity to highways and city roads makes it a snap to find with navigation apps. Especially with the no-less-than-three flashing arrow signs on nearby streets. Attendants guided us into free parking on gravel and grass.

Once through the iconic and infamous Bloodview arch (see photos), finding our way around was easy given its smallish footprint. There’s still room for a nice, compact midway area featuring benches, snack stands, photo opps, and a merch table. We first went through the box office line and from there got channeled into the trail, which led directly to the house queue. Easy-peasy.

The trail had some inclines and bumpiness, nothing too crazy. There were ropes, cones, and other path markers to keep us going the right way. The only real safety snafu to speak of was a not easily noticed step-up near the asylum cells in the house; one of us stumbled on that.

Bloodview operates an informative and responsive Facebook page. Its website delivers all the info needed to visit and features a link to the separate Legion of Terror site.

The glowing archway and hearse made for a suitably spooky entrance. Queue actors held forth in lines, doors, and connective areas. They mixed well with chainsaw sounds and creepo music to help set up a haunt-y atmosphere.

The traffic cones on the trail marking off some no-go areas certainly kept us on track, but were not the most ideal for maintaining an in-the-woods headspace. Plus, we had to walk right by the entrance archway where we could see the parking lot. Fortunately this was early in the trail, so we had time to get back into the proper mood. In some places we could hear sounds from the entrance and midway, but much of the trail was appealingly quiet aside from monster noises.

The house felt pretty unified in its presentation, even if there was no real story or theme to follow. Much of it felt like a haunted mansion and/or torture chamber milieu. The sets don’t have a lot of connection aside from some obvious links like kitchen/dining room pairings, but there was always some transitional space, even if it was just some black wall (though most of the walls were decidedly not bare, as we will get into in the SFX section) or the old standby plastic dividers. Aside from the black maze, there was almost always something to look at or be concerned about looming ahead, which helped with immersiveness.

The house exit dropped us right out into the midway with its vendor kiosks and patrons chilling after their walkthrough – and dodging roaming monsters.

This old-school haunt will not blow your head off with animatronics, lasers, Tesla coils, or any other high-tech gadgetry. They really don’t need that sort of stuff. Pretty much everything is handmade and looks great.

The trail environs often resembled a junkyard, festooned with found objects and neglected miscellania. The structures on the trail were well-designed, built, and decorated. We went through a crypt with shaking coffins, an impressive evil church, and a little graveyard. We walked underneath a neat natural arch fashioned out of tree branches, crossed a wooden bridge, and skirted toxic barrels belching fog. But the best effect was a cool new prop for us, a set of metal gates that creaked open automatically as we approached. We had to stop and admire that one.

The walls of the house were packed with skulls, bones, and body parts. Many of the hallways looked like the bio-organic, sticky corridors from the Alien film series—the walls even felt sticky! The ‘Gore-met’ Deli signage proclaimed that a sandwich is just a sandwich, but a man-wich is a meal. Funny! Much of the rest of the house incorporated haunted mansion room sets, plus a short black maze and a very neat stretch that resembled a hamlet with a street of storefronts.

Audio-wise, the early going featured a steady and tension-building rhythm of thump-thumping heart sounds. Elsewhere, we heard droning music and plinky keyboards, and the last section featured random air horn blasts.

On each of our last two visits, we have appreciated noticing new scenery, props, set designs, and overall finer detailing around the haunt. Someone’s kept busy…

Because the cast is so good at acting, improvising, and riffing with guests, we usually go here with the expectation to be entertained and amused more than frightened. And we are very happy with the 2 or 3 to 1 ratio at which that happens.

Bloodview hit many of the major fear centers …from chainsaws, savage critters, darkness, and insanity to clowns, cannibals, cult/occult activities, and grievous bodily injury. Looking back at our last review from two years ago, it seems we collected more scares on the trail. But this time, the house led the way in frights, so to sum it up, there’s some nice equal opportunity scarifying going on here.

On the trail, we experienced some good jumps by the cemetery, especially from the finger-clackin’ stilts creature who came tearing out of a doorway we were just about to enter. The reappearing clown also put some pep in our step, disappearing into and popping out of the mazey structures in an early area.

Soon after entering the house, they got some yelps out of us by way of a cunningly concealed drop window and a few other effective hiding places. The ever-unpredictable psych ward cell actors squeezed some scare juice out of their skittish, unexpected movements and behaviors.

Our biggest detraction from the entire experience was that there didn’t seem to be a lot of effort put into providing a finale for either the trail or house that would send us on our way with blood appropriately a-pumpin’. Or maybe they just missed us?

We tottered across the trail in 12 minutes while the house took 10 minutes, for a total of 22 minutes.
A one-time ticket is $20, one-time fast = $25, all-night ticket = $30, and all-night fast = $40.

With the $20 general admission, the MPD ratio (minutes of in-haunt entertainment per dollar) came out to 1.1. We look for at least a 1.0 as a baseline so that checks out. Just a note, not to single out this haunt, especially as it’s our first of the season, but this number is down a good bit from last time we were here – and we expect we will find a lot more of the same as we go through the season since it looks like prices have gone up as a rule. Inflation has hit everyone and everywhere, it seems.

The all-night options seem like a good economical choice, especially with the improv nature of the acting troupe – you should get a different cast experience and interactions every time. And we haven’t ever said this before about Bloodview, but with their improved detailing in the sets, you’re bound to pick up some new things visually, too, on subsequent walkthroughs. If you go on more than one weekend, you’ll also see different makeups and characters due to the rotating schedule of themes – psycho slashers, fairy tale creatures, sideshow freaks, etc.

What else is there to say? Like most times we’ve gone here, we yelled and laughed most of the way through, so it’s solid on the fun meter. Bloodview is a stone-cold Cleveland classic, like pierogies and Polish boy sandwiches. You haven’t heard of the Polish boy? It’s a sausage roll stuffed with a kielbasa link, fries, slaw, and BBQ sauce, with some variations featuring pulled pork and/or sauerkraut. Tasty and messy, just like this attraction.

The haunt does not serve Polish boys, but they do have a nice lineup of hot dogs, walking tacos, candy, hot and cold beverages, and snacks like popcorn, soft pretzels, or nachos, all at affordable prices for your dining pleasure.

Alongside the photo ops and several actors milling about the midway looking to cause you grief and chuckles, that’s a nice-sized bit for one night’s hauntertainment. Plus, you get to feel good about yourself for upholding a good cause. Look at it this way: most of the time donating to a good cause does not include getting fun-scared and entertained, but at Bloodview, that’s all included in your evening’s ticket!