I’ll be honest with you : one of our greatest excitements when preparing to visit the Estate is getting to interact with its cast. Without a doubt, 2018’s roster absolutely succeeded at satisfying that anticipatory fervor.
We’ve found that, often, the Estate’s best-of honors in this category belong to the midway residents, and that is largely true for this season as well… give or take a few asterisks.
Because we’re THOSE PEOPLE, we experienced the attractions in reverse order, making Jack, the introductory character for the Trail, the first indigenous personality to cross our paths, followed by Calvin, the Funeral Home’s truly bizarre representative, and finally Crystal, the sassy Matrie d’ for the Magic Chamber. These idiosyncratic folks really serve multiple roles as rules-dictators/line keepers, but also as the queue entertainment. Mixed into that latter distinction, they also interjected helpful background information regarding their particular haunt.
As a pleasantly-biggoted boy-turned-scarecrow-turned-boy? (it was hard to keep up), it’s true that Jack’s social memes were frozen, perhaps, somewhere briefly post-natal. What he may have lacked in polite etiquette, however, was more than made up for by his rambunctious playfulness. He managed to be clever and witty during our long ad-libbed interaction, while still maintaining a lovably-zany vulgarity as he belittled us.
Calvin was a more subdued, sinister character with his own distinct peculiarities. He was more the type of fella that one would take to a funeral parlor to giddily sketch black, ballpoint mustaches on its lifeless occupants and then find a stray cat to ballroom dance with in an abandoned alley. You know : a real take-home-to-mother type. His cheeky giggle betrays just a hint of malevolent sadism, but is too cute to refuse. With a demeanor occupying a unique intersection between mischief and merriment., he, too, was excellent at playing along with our tomfoolery.
Calvin’s occasional side-kick, a curious fellow that we have nicknamed ‘Hearshel’ was also very good. The two shared only a brief exchange during our time in line, but the interplay was very entertaining. Oh, and Hearshel kissed my ankle so of course he’s my favorite. Duh.
Then, there was Crystal…indeed : charming, madcap Crystal. Good actors (and as I’m sure you’re beginning to realize, the Estate has a LOT of good actors) build up a well-stocked faux-memory bank to access for different situations, dependent on the nature and context of cues that are presented to them. But there is still a ceiling, a reasonable limit after which their spring of snide anecdotes and clever comebacks necessarily dries. We spoke to Crystal for perhaps 10 minutes and in characteristic fashion, came at her from every prodding, dialogous angle we could muster, but she didn’t flinch a single time, retaining character and adroitly responding to whichever brazen absurdities we fired at her, retaining her casual flair between well-placed giggles. It was one of the most impressive improvisational feats that we’ve experienced reviewing haunted attractions. The other midway-gentlemen were excellent, don’t mistake me, but Crystal managed to just barely outshine even their excellent portrayals.
Oh, but you thought I was done, didn’t you; that I had emptied my linguistic cartridge and was preparing to move onto the next category. Oh no, friends; we’re not finished yet.
In fairness to the ‘interior’ actors, who received understandably briefer and less directly-interactive spells with us, they, too, were wonderful.
The entire cast of the Chamber performed so well together, particularly during the finale, that one may be excused in assuming that they had unknowingly wandered into the show-tent of a roving, macabre theater troupe instead of the guts of a haunted attraction. Led by the tongue-twisting, entendre-doubling, off-color uproar of Lucy, the magician’s scheming assistant, the beats of the final act unfold in rapid progression as each of the Magician’s ensemble perform their feats of oft-disastrous wizardry with wry smiles and nimble pageantry.
The Chamber was a unique experiment as a haunted experience. With most of the attraction acting as an inflating precursor to the final act, the success of the attraction depended entirely on the capable shoulders of its cast. There would be no ‘the actors were rough, but the animatronics were great’ or ‘I really loved the set design but the cast could use some work.’ No, the effectiveness of the attraction would be determined in one character-based, crowd-interactive, minutes-long vignette.
Thankfully for them (and for us), it was fantastic.
The Funeral Home boasted some really impressive performances as well. After the devilish Calvin, nutty proprietor, Finklestein, was quite good. Like the trio (or quartet) of gate keepers, we required a generous portion of improvisation from the good Mr. Fink and he responded admirably. In fact, he seemed quite comfortable berating my running commentary to the point that I began wondering if I, too, was involved in the production ‘ unaware of my subconscious programming, installed in my cortex at birth to prepare me to suitably interact during this singular, reflexive moment… – but probably not, right?
He was certainly adept at handling the fuzzing maggot that he introduced us to, though it was a bit awkward to watch him turn on one of the special effects manually. A bit of sleight-of-hand training from Amazo may be in order!
Izzy, easily the Estatian most pleasantly-disposed toward us, was also a treat. After sweetly sharing a secret, she made us fly like planes and insisted that she loved us. We love you too, Izzy. We love you too.
Dave still thinks he’s an airplane. He has been banned from every major airport in the United States. I have no idea how he is still alive.
The make up artist, coffin saleswoman, and swamp men (see Scare Factor below for more information on the last two) also gave stand out performances.
Though there a variety of good down through weak performances throughout the remainder of the Funeral Home, the only really stand-out rough performance came on the Trail. In short, he had a really difficult time remembering his lines. For anyone acclimated to the brief correspondence of traditional haunts, this may seem a nearly-unbelievable revelation, but when one considers the paragraphs of dialogue that many of the Estate’s actors need to memorize, it becomes a lot more understandable.
Honestly, the recitation, though flawed, was still so unexpectedly bizarre that we still enjoyed it. In fairness, the second half of his performance was fine and everything went smoothly after that.
I discuss the powerful presentation of Jack’s dad (and the ever-present scarecrows) in Scare Factor below, but I do want to give explicit credit to the pair of young ladies involved in a torture scene outside of Jack’s dad’s house. We were inside that madman’s cabin for a few minutes, and those two maintained their scene the entire time. It was actually really impressive ‘ I kept getting distracted, listening to ensure that, yes, it’s still going on out there. Maintaining a scene for that long takes an impressive amount of dedication.
Baitshop Betty and the Cemetery Steward performed well also, and we really did appreciate our Japanese blessing!
Truth be told, anyone who visits the Estate, phone-veg’s through the lines and then plows into the attractions hoping only for a handful of reasonable startle-scares is really doing themselves a disservice. The best moments from our time at the Estate revolved around our prolonged interactions with cast members.
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