Midway/Festival
As soon as you step into the exhibition hall, you’re immersed in a haunted party. The overhead lights are dimmed and colored red & blue to help set the spooky party mood. Upbeat instrumental party music is pumping through the sound system, and there is no safe space from the multiple queue line scare actors wandering around. While mostly clowns, they do have a few other creatures that you might see, and one of them is riding a large tricycle around.
The entire festival (midway & haunts included) spans almost the entire 70,000 sq ft of the exhibition hall. The Tavern of Terror (the concession stand) sits in the middle of the room with lots of high-top tables and is surrounded by metal bar fencing to define the space. The concession stand also takes tokens to purchase food and drinks, so keep that in mind when you’re buying your first set of tokens. There was beer for sale, as well as basic food like hot dogs, nachos, and candy. You’ll also find two axe-throwing booths, an escape room bus with two rooms, a sleep deprivation experience room that can hold four people, and the “scare suite”. The scare suite is a room where you can view three of the haunt cameras and activate the scares. Don’t worry, I didn’t participate in this, so none of my fellow haunters that night were traumatized by me…..yet.
The two haunts are both located on the right side of the room, with the extra activities along the back left wall. There is a lot of space, so the area doesn’t feel overly crowded, and it’s easy to move around. Both haunts exit near where they start, so you exit right back into the festival midway and on to your next activity.
Boulevard
Considering this is a temporary haunt, there was a variety of materials used with a lot of details put into the walls and the rooms. While the majority of the rooms were built with plywood, they were painted and decorated with items that matched the rooms. The haunt overall was fairly dark, but you could see that some walls were painted to look aged or had blood smeared on them, while others were black to create darkness. Alternatively, several rooms used wooden pallets, metal fences, and alternative barriers like spider webs or barrels.
The haunt was constantly twisting and turning, which really gave the illusion of a maze and not just walking from room to room. There were a few spots where they had an opening, but it was blocked by a prop or a scare actor. It made it disorienting, but in a good way. You never quite knew where you were in the haunt.
There were several different room themes used. A morgue, hospital room, hotel, bedrooms, hallways, sheds, etc. All of these rooms weaved from one to another to create an exciting experience. I don’t know if there was a storyline or a reason behind the scene flow, but it was still fun regardless.
Circus
This (also temporary) haunt was well-lit and used to its advantage to showcase its circus theme. The majority of the haunt was also painted and decorated plywood walls, but some tall cattle gates gave it more texture. There were several different painting themes used throughout to separate one section from another. All of them had a circus or carnival type feel, like the classic red & white stripes, but distressed and grunged up. There was a section of jagged walls that made the area have a maze-like feel without having to actually get lost in one.
Some of the scenes, like the carnival games, fake bathrooms, air bladder tunnel, etc, gave the haunt some depth while keeping with the theme. It was like walking through an abandoned carnival or fairground.
See Less
