Corbett’s House of Horror was an indoor haunt located in Sacramento up until 2016, when they couldn’t find a venue and remained closed for that year. Now in 2017, Corbett’s re-emerges as a new outdoor haunt, Fear Farm. Located on the outskirts of the city of Davis, Fear Farm features three main attractions:

Scarecrow Corntrail is a lonely and desolate corn maze decorated with scarecrows, where chainsaw-wielding hillbillies inhabit the dark corners.

Carn-Evil is a 3D, fluorescent-lit, clown-themed haunt set in a temporary housing structure where clowns and special effects lurk at every turn.

Zombie Attack is a paintball shooting attraction where attendees are seat belted into the back of an assault vehicle and driven through a cornfield to shoot zombies.

The actors showed real enthusiasm and were quite believable in their roles. They do interact with guests, especially the line actors. The hillbilly line actors used knife and hatchet props, but the hillbillies in Scarecrow Corntrail revved up their chainsaws. Most of the clown line actors did not hold any props, except for one who held a squeeze horn. Zombie Attack had enough actors to fulfill the attraction. Carn-Evil had a small number of actors who would emerge multiple times throughout the haunt, so no scene was depleted of characters.

Scarecrow Corntrail could have used a few more actors. There were long, quiet moments of inactivity as we walked through the corn maze.

For the most part, the actors were the strong, silent type. There was one actress in Carn-Evil who repeatedly said, ‘Come play with me,’ but the rest of the clowns remained silent.

We give actor shout outs to “Crazy Clown” the monster clown, “Bop-Bop” the clown, “Corn Pig” the chainsaw-wielding maniac, and “Jedediah Grundy” the hillbilly.

The Fear Farm’s actors were dressed appropriately for their parts. The hillbilly actors were dressed in typical redneck attire. The clowns were completely dressed for their parts, and appeared ready for the circus. The zombies in Zombie Attack did not resemble anything from The Walking Dead, but since they are there to be shot by paintballs, they needed to wear full body protection, so they did look more like professional stuntmen. Most of the actors wore silicone masks, but a few clown actors wore makeup.

Fear Farm was a safe attraction to walk through. If anything, the ground at Scarecrow Corntrail had a few divot holes where someone could trip. The seat belts on Zombie Attack might not fit guests with larger physical proportions. We didn’t see any billboard ads when we were travelling to the location, but as we drove down the street, we could see lights in the distance and there was a sign for Corbett’s House of Horror with an arrow pointing. There was plenty of parking in front of the haunt. We could see a large banner with the haunt’s name and the ticket booth was easy to find. There are porta-potties and water pump hand washing stations. No concession stand was available. It was a short wait time for Zombie Attack, but no wait at all for Scarecrow Corntrail and Carn-Evil. Line actors interacted with guests for queue entertainment and there was a pumpkin / hay bale display at the entrance of the haunt, which made for good photo opportunities. The staff were very friendly and assisted guests as needed.

Outside of the haunt before entering, there is an ice cream truck parked out in front that played standard ice truck music. From the outside is a large banner with the haunt name where attendees walk under to enter. Also from the outside, you can see the pumpkin and hay bale display, so efforts were made by the haunt owners to distinguish themselves as a haunted attraction.

Most of the special effects are in Carn-Evil. Here in Northern California, haunts requiring 3D glasses have fallen out of favor over the last 5 years, so it was refreshing to experience it again. The fluorescent colors under black lights really popped out as we walked through the haunt. Some scenes had random paint lines sprayed upon the black walls, while others had different colored masks and wall d������cor, which served as good distractions for the actors to startle us. An animatronic skeleton clown emerged from a crate at the beginning. They utilized fog machines through a hallway with green laser beams passing through the fog. We walked through a claustrophobia tunnel and a vortex tunnel. Scarecrow Corntrail had sporadic scarecrows set up throughout the corn maze, but there were long moments of awkward silence between scares.

Fear Farm is an agricultural area, so the use of corn stalks was an ideal tie-in. The three attractions had independent themes, but Scarecrow Corntrail and Zombie Attack were the most ideally themed haunts at this location. Carn-Evil, with its clown theme, is the proverbial ‘odd man out.’ All three haunts use themes that are often seen in haunted attractions across the country.

Carn-Evil had the most scares because the actors had plenty of dark corners to hide and lunge at us from. Scarecrow Corntrail had a lot of inactive time where no scares took place, but when they did happen, they were effective… especially with the revving of the chainsaws. Overall, the actors would try to scare everyone in the group. Distractions were best used in Carn-Evil, but there were no distractions in Scarecrow Corntrail outside of the sporadic scarecrows and cornstalks. Most of scares came from lunging at us from the dark or behind corners. The line actors would scare by staring at us intimidatingly.

Tickets for Scarecrow Corntrail and Carn-Evil are $20.00 and Zombie Attack is a separate $25.00. Scarecrow Corntrail took 8:30 minutes to walk through and Carn-Evil took 3:00 minutes.

The total of 11:30 calculates to 0.58 minutes of entertainment per dollar spent, which is a bit low for the price. Zombie Attack took 7:30 minutes, so it calculates to 0.30 minutes per dollar and, even though there are costs of gasoline and paintballs to figure in, this is a bit short for the cost as well.
They have much land to utilize and we’ve seen more entertainment at similar locations, so yes there are dead spots that could be filled to help increase this rating.