Haunted Hoorah Review (2021)

There were a few places where there could have been some more actors, but the overall sets were so well done, we still walked away feeling content. We enjoyed the scene with Nurse Gertrude, Maybell, and the doctor together. We watched a wild woman named Maybell hunker, crouch, and attack the poor unconscious patient on the operating room table. The doctor clearly pushed Nurse Gertrude too far, and she found a way to make him pay with some gnarly appendages. While we were observers, we did get a little surprise aimed right at us. We also enjoyed the queue Army instructor who debriefed us on what was going on and handled the hecklers with ease. It was refreshing to see a female playing the opening scene as a recruiter who showed her displeasure of the low quality of recruits she had standing before her. She has the bold and fierce attitude you would expect to see in this area of the haunt.

We got some fun banter with some of the characters. Each of us found a severed hand in our mashed potatoes. When asked about it we each got a different answer including ‘Good for digestion,’ and ‘That’s the secret seasoning,’ all the while smoking a cigar. We each got compliments on our hair at the barber, but we didn’t really believe her compliments. We actually grew a little concerned here.

Being at the site of a military base, we saw a lot of camouflage fatigues. Other characters we came across include medical personnel like nurses, surgical doctors, a dentist, an optometrist, and barbers. There was a cook in the Mess Hall, a lady strapped in a straight jacket, and an overall-clad nuclear scientist.

We met a poor unfortunate soul in the dental area whose mouth was terribly distorted. They were wearing regular street clothes with bloodied streaks across their body. The optometrist had a nasty eyeball dangling from her eye socket, but from the looks of all the eyes she had at her disposal, she had plenty of others to replace it with.

Besides the camouflage fatigues, we saw a nurse wearing the bloodied, more traditional nursing uniform and others in scrubs, and a few dirtied lab coats. The straight jacket of a clearly infected patient kept her in check as we made our way past her. Our guide at the final scene was wearing a tattered pair of overalls, leading us to believe he has been through a lot of distressing events.

We couldn’t ask for better customer service. There were several signs posted along the road we could use to get to the site. Getting closer to the parking lot, we found a car with flashing lights and a well-lit parking area. Parking attendants were dressed in military fatigues, brightly colored vests, and bright handheld light sticks to direct us to where to park.

The ticket booth was well lit and the staff gladly helped us with any question we had. GPS took us directly to the parking area. No safety issues were noted, and we were pleased to see security available.

Scouring the website and Facebook pages gave us all the information we would need including address, contact information, calendar, and ticketing information.

Metal music was playing in the queue area. We were treated to fire breathing and some cracking and sparks from a cattle prod-looking weapon. We lined up in rows of 24 people before walking through a gene scanning contraption. They said they were looking for people with a recessive gene that will have an adverse reaction to the serum we were about to get. When the detector went off, the recessive gene carriers had to undergo further testing including singing publicly, answering trivia questions, or physical activities including jumping jacks and pushups. We were then placed in chain-link holding pens until we were then loaded into military transport trucks to deliver us to an undisclosed area, playing metal music and keeping us in the dark while the driver of the truck seemed to search for every pothole and rough terrain they could find to jostle us all.

While in the queue line early on, an Army Instructor told our group all about the secret project and how it has progressed so far. The entrance to the haunt was massive in size and very impressive; almost overwhelming. Plenty of props were laying about including many military vehicles, stacks of tires, and Hoorah signage.

Hidden in the dark, behind layers of trees, we heard the rumble of a train in the background through the night.

All of this, and we hadn’t made it into the actual main attraction yet!

We experienced different sounds. There was metal music, alarms, machine guns firing, running vehicles, sirens, radio alerts, loud banging, sharp cracks of malfunctioning equipment, screeching metal, radio feedback, and even some elevator music.

The early parts of the haunt were partitions with molded and bloodied walls. We were expected to walk through a darkened revolving door that led to a blackout room. There were various rooms with bloodied equipment. There were bottles and containers with various things you would expect to find in the different examination rooms, including a vision chart, x rays of the mouth, hair clippings, medicine bottles, specimen jars, glowing fluids, etc.

We got to enjoy not one, but two elevators with the shaking floor. We watched a bomb create a mushroom cloud. We walked through labs and an active operation. We walked through a padded room and ended up walking through the control center with a gunshot victim and several bloodied monitors. We crawled through a furnace with fog and red/yellow heat lights to help us feel like we were about to be burnt. There were hallways with several laser lights shining throughout. There were some very real and authentic bombs and rockets.

Compression tunnels, sliding tiles, a shocking wall, injection ‘shots,’ loud sparking equipment, firing squads with lasers pointed at us as we walked by, black-out room with odd-shaped walls, bloodied bodies, and body parts, disgusting toilets with added smells, strobes, and fog were some of the other effects we encountered.

We were treated to a well-executed post-apocalyptic scene with wrecked and destroyed cars. With details like cement chunks lying on the hood of a car. We went through gas chambers and decontaminate areas.

The queue actors told us all about the history and theme of the haunt, from the experimenting being done during WWII by other countries, and the concern to do the same here to battle the new super-soldier. The queue actor explained the tactical strategy involved in choosing Marion, Ohio for the site of such important and secret activities.

There are several military props, large and small. All the actors tell the story of the experiments and horrors going on in the facility. We went through physical training and received a ‘shot’ right away. Everything we experienced and saw here could easily be traced back to the story presented to us at the beginning.

Given the times we are living in, the underlying fear at Hoorah can strike a chord with many. The fear of the unknown is played out heavily. What happens after the injection? Will I be a successful super soldier like my buddy Steve Rogers, or will I have a grotesque reaction?

The sound effects used here will put a person on edge. We were yelled at, threatened, and given tests. Also, we watched a murder play out when the stress became too much. Then, too, we experienced a jump scare from a hidden actor here and there.

Scares and entertainment seemed to be balanced among the entire group as actors waited for the whole group to get in the set to begin. Because of this, there was some wait time for everyone in the group to get to the new area. However, those of us at the end of the line did mess with the actors, and many gave us some ‘food for thought’ on the fly, which we enjoyed.

The final set was designed very well; we had a lot to look at. Adding a horde could undoubtedly amp it up. However, we did find the details in the scene itself to be very creepy.