North Country Nightmares Haunted Hayride Review (2024)

It’s easy to see that every single cast member loves what they do. The energy and dedication in every single role is visible. While this may be the first time acting in a haunt for some, they’re all showing a willingness to learn and get better at their craft, which is really refreshing to see.

One of the things I really enjoyed was the energy of the actors that would climb up onto the sides of The Hayride wagon, which is not an easy thing to do for hours at a time. Others showed their mettle by screaming and yelling and making a ton of noise, while some were big and foreboding. The range of personalities and behaviors from each actor was really interesting to see how they all mesh together to work towards the goal of scaring guests.

Inside the Insane Asylum attraction, the doctor steals the show by interacting with guests in dialogue and being able to go off-script when needed. I was onsite partly to make a video, and the doctor wanted to know why I was filming his experiments. As far as he knows, I’m a corporate spy hired by his competitor. Who exactly is competing to be an evil doctor who experiments on people? I’m not sure, but they really needed that espionage.

The character of “Dolly” also stood out to me as particularly interactive, telling me that we were going to play a game and have so much fun and that I would make a pretty dolly. I still want to know whether that means I get a bedtime story and a kiss on the forehead. Unfortunately, before I could get my answer, I was loudly told to leave by the other scene creature. I’ll take that as a no to my question.

There are many different costumes and characters at North Country Nightmares. In terms of masks to makeup, I would say the balance is even, and this allows for the variety and ease of use that masks provide while still giving room for the creativity of makeup artists. Something I noticed with masks, in a few cases, is that makeup was not used around eyes, mouths, and where skin shows through. It’s a simple oversight and one that most people may not notice, but an easy fix as well.

Costumes fit the themes of each scene quite well. From the pirates in the pirate scene to the more abstract monsters roaming about the forest in scenes where there isn’t as much of a direct theme or style. Some scenes on The Hayride featured clowns in settings where I wouldn’t quite expect to find clowns. This may be a reference to the great clown panic of 2016, where people dressed up as clowns and went into the woods to scare others.

Realism in costumes has a really great foundation, but some things stood out as cartoonish, like the character with an absolutely gigantic tongue mask. I’m not entirely certain what this character is meant to be, or what scene it fits into, but the mask, while looking really cool, is very obviously a mask. Not that I think the goal here is ultimate realism, but I do think the mask is quite funny.

On the other hand, the butcher scene on The Hayride provides a real horror movie sort of quality to the costumes and characters. The pig-headed character is well done, and the gas mask character fills the look of “backwoods butcher” that would fit right into a scary film. Inside The Asylum, I really enjoyed the “Groot” masked character who is quite ominous and intimidating in the scene. This character’s costume is a black outfit, and while this works because guests will certainly be looking at the mask, a more intricate costume to fit the look of the mask would go a long way in completing this character.

Queue actors looked especially good, as they’re visible under the bright lights of the midway area, and they really stand up to the scrutiny of camera flashes and the like. My favorite of the queue actors is the pumpkin-headed creature that drags a corpse around in a rather intimidating manner. The mask looks great on its own, and the costume of a flannel and jeans work well with the look.

The crew at North Country Nightmares are warm and welcoming, and happy to answer any questions you might have. Parking is something that I would have liked to see more direction for. There may be a designated parking area, but it seemed that many people were parking along the road, or in the grass. Guests who choose to park on the road should take care to check for traffic before exiting their vehicles, as cars do speed through the area, and the shoulder isn’t the widest.

North Country Nightmares does not have their own website, but there is a page on the Watertown Garden Center website with information about the event. The events page shows the dates and times, ticket prices, and some information about other fun things happening on site. The Facebook page gives roughly the same information, with the added benefit of photos and videos to look at. A basic FAQ section would be really great to see here to address some basic things like what forms of payment are accepted, special instructions for parking, or other miscellaneous information, basic rules and policies, and rainout information. There is a good amount of information, but room for improvement as well.

Safety is a perfect 10 out of 10 at North Country Nightmares, as there aren’t any places where you could get hurt, or find yourself in a potentially dangerous situation. The Hayride moves at a slow enough pace that you won’t get bounced out of the wagon, and The Asylum attraction is a walk through the greenhouse that is lit well enough to keep anyone from tripping or getting hurt.

Stepping out of the car and into the midway section, guests are quickly transported to a world of horrors and frights. From the screams inside Insane Asylum to the huge animatronics in the queue area and the queue actors roaming about, everything about this screams “Halloween fun,” and it really starts to get you in the mood. Both attractions empty out into the midway, where the fun doesn’t stop, and guests are given opportunities to enjoy some food or peruse the assortment of merchandise available for purchase.

The storylines are a bit mismatched, but this works just fine nonetheless. The Insane Asylum tells a bit more of a story wherein guests have been admitted to The Asylum and the doctor will do to them what he has done to the orderly. The scenes throughout present different aspects of a psychiatric hospital if it were run by an evil genius, although the very end starts to fall away from the aesthetic where there is a hallway with a piano, and a clown in the corner that shouts “peek-a-boo!”

The Hayride doesn’t follow a storyline throughout, but it offers a series of small vignettes with various themes. Visitors are taken from a car crash that may or may not have been caused by the clowns in the scene to a butcher shop, a pirate ship, Krampus, and other, more abstract scenes.

The scenes themselves are quite immersive and quickly get the point across to visitors of what is being depicted and the horrors that reside within. The Asylum attraction is slightly more immersive, in my opinion, as it’s a more intimate and personal setting where you find yourself inside of the scene, rather than viewing it from the outside. Dolly’s room and the doctor’s lab are great examples of immersive scenes in The Asylum. They are filled with small details and ambient lighting to draw the eye where it needs to go.

Special effects come primarily in the form of theatrical lighting, background music, and ambient soundtracks. These are the pillars of special effects. Along The Hayride, there are real fires burning in 55 gallon drums. The Asylum attraction would benefit from a fog machine or an animatronic.

On The Hayride, sounds heard come mostly from the actors. There were other scenes where heavy metal music is playing. As a metal head, I thoroughly enjoyed the music, and know as a haunt reviewer, that it raises excitement. The Asylum delivered with ambient tracks, providing a creepy background to the horrors that lurk within.

Scene design is well thought out, creating believable scenes in the Insane Asylum, and well built sets on The Hayride. The Pirate Ship is a huge set piece, and is built sturdily so actors are able to walk on it. Although it may just be a facade on the side of some scaffolding, the illusion really sells and fleshes out the idea that there is a large wooden ship somewhere in the woods of upstate NY.

Other sets on The Hayride provide enough detail to communicate the idea of the scene without getting too bogged down with tiny details that would likely go unnoticed by many. The butcher scene is a good example of this, where there are a few props like a bathtub for draining the victims out, and a drying rack for the “leather” that the merchant will surely use to make wallets, keychains, and other tchotchkes.

Is it scary? The group of teenage girls near me on The Hayride certainly thought so! This is definitely a step up from family-friendly sorts of haunts, but not quite on the level of the most chaotic. This is a really great middle-ground for people who want some scares but may not be ready for a realistic depiction of psychopathic killers let loose on an unsuspecting populace.

One of the best scares came on The Hayride, where an actor jumps onto the wagon, and another drags them off while the wagon keeps on moving. Inside The Insane Asylum, every actor is giving their best scares with high energy and around every corner. Another big scare comes not in the form of an actor but a wheel loader that blows a horn and chases the wagon down before disappearing into the night. The aforementioned screaming girls found this to be particularly scary, and I think it would make for an excellent finale to The Hayride.

Scares on The Hayride are delivered from various angles, making sure that the most number of people on board get to see them or be targeted. This is a challenge for hayrides, and climbing over the sides is a good way to break the perceived safety of being on the wagon. The Insane Asylum ensures that guests are hit from different angles in a group by placing actors in such a way that no matter where they are in the group, each person will eventually see a scare up close and personal.

Rather than a big scare to end The Hayride, we got the Krampus scene, which is eerie in its own right, with the masked characters and Krampus himself coming out to greet the wagon. However, the actors might as well have waved goodbye as the wagon pulled away. The finale did not provide a big scare, or anything to note the finality of the attraction itself.

Inside The Insane Asylum, the finale comes with a loud ending. An actor stationed just before the exit yells as a light turns on to reveal them, and anybody who isn’t dead inside will at least be startled by this scare.

Tickets for North Country Nightmares are $15 for The Hayride, $10 for The Asylum, or $20 for a combo ticket. The Hayride takes about 15 minutes to complete, and The Asylum about 3. I calculated a total of 17.88 minutes inside the attractions and this gives us 0.89 boos per buck. This is right in line with many other haunts across New York state and even the US as a whole. Parking on-site is free, although you may want to arrive early to secure a spot in the grass rather than having to park along the road. There are no VIP or fast pass options available in 2024, but the lines seem to move quickly.

For the price of admission, guests have two great attractions to see, a blackout maze, food trucks, a small gift shop, and on my visit, a local art vendor selling prints. There are queue actors about, and plenty of photo opportunities to be had.

This is a great place to spend a Friday or Saturday night in Watertown, NY, if you’re up for some spooky fun. Bring your kids, bring your date, bring your friends, bring your grandma. Bring everyone you know because it’s a lot of fun and it’s inexpensive! I look forward to seeing how this haunt grows and develops over the years!