Reapers Revenge Review (2020)

If you like a theatrical haunt, wait until you get a load of the hayride. These folks were acting!

The pop culture characters shined. Alice boarded the wagon and held forth with an extended set-piece on our way into Wonderland, followed by a cameo from the Mad Hatter. Jason shuffled in his inimitable way and waved his machete at the wagon’s riders. Freddy was spot-on with the one-liners and throaty guffawing laughter seemingly ripped straight from the films. The whole wagon erupted with audible revulsion when Samara climbed aboard from her well and hideously snapped her limbs. Not sound effects, we were assured, and it certainly sounded real!

Elsewhere, the psycho trash family that appeared to be modeled after Rob Zombie’s Firefly clan made a big impression in their murder barn, mocking and antagonizing the city folk for daring to enter their backcountry realm. Ditto the chainsaw operators near the end of the ride. They spun around waving their saws in the air, Leatherface-style and brandished their weapons on the wagon with ghoulish zeal. Also, hurray for having a female chainsawer, we don’t get to see that too often. Well done, all!

The incredible variety of the cast on the hayride gave way to a more homogeneous roster of characters on the trail and in the clown house. They mostly consisted of clowns, plus a ringmaster and a couple of other carnie types. Compared to the hayride with its extended scenes, there were also fewer opportunities here for performance.

Exceptions included the ringmaster, who stopped us for a quick chat as part of a crowd control checkpoint, and the intimidating actor by the bridge who did some great physical acting without saying a word. But for the most part, a high number of actors along with the relatively quick pace of walking the trail meant a lot of actors went by pretty quickly. Considering that, we think most of the actors here did what they could with the time they had.

Delirium held the fewest actors, but we got to see them more often. The layout gave the actors multiple opportunities to make their presence felt. One actor sporting a bird beak zinged us four or five times!

Haunted Hayride: 9.36
Lost Carnival: 8.41
Delirium: 8.43

Everyone displayed top of the line, professional makeup and masks. We saw super airbrushing techniques and expertly applied blood effects and prosthetics. In every attraction (but especially on the hayride), the costumes evinced an almost maniacal attention to detail. Honestly, they were some of the best we’ve seen.

The characters mentioned in the Cast section looked like they walked right off a movie screen! Alice looked just like a grubbier version of the girl in the blue dress from the 50s Disney cartoon movie, and the Mad Hatter rocked a very distinctive look. The murder family had singularly evil appearances. A cult group preparing for a sacrifice wore some outstanding masks, including a wicked-looking ram’s skull. The graveyard zombies could have been featured walkers on The Walking Dead.

In Lost Carnival, even though most of the characters were clowns, they all looked different. Props for paying attention to the details that helped make each character unique. Delirium featured some freakier faces and more out-there costuming, especially for the actors who blended into the walls. One black-clad inhabitant with star-like twinkles who popped out of the darkness looked like some kind of dark matter or anti-matter creature!

Haunted Hayride: 9.64
Lost Carnival: 9.58
Delirium: 9.55

Reaper’s Revenge is in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It’s in northeastern Pennsylvania by the Poconos region, about a two-hour drive from NYC or Philadelphia. We located it easily by GPS. It was apparent when we came to it from the traffic cones, parking attendants, signage, and the large field loaded with cars.

Parking ($3 cash) is on grass. They really pack ’em in tight here, so be mindful of other cars both stationary and mobile, as well as the many people walking between cars and in the narrow paths separating rows.

They have a great website dense with info, as well as a heavy social media presence. You should be able to easily find out anything you need to know.

Extensive safety and security precautions are taken. For a full rundown, please see last season’s review by Team Haunt Crew. For this year, we’d like to focus on COVID response.

Reaper’s Revenge has come up with an aggressive and forceful response to COVID. Procedures include temp checks (at the security line where you’ll also sign a waiver and be metal detected), masks for all, distancing enforced, 3-D glasses sanitized after each use, a decon team that’s clearly identified and can be seen in dynamic action cleaning up the place. If you want to see a comprehensive plan, check out their website at the ‘COVID-19 Operating Plan’ link. Better yet, see it in action. We were repeatedly warned to keep distance between parties by the line attendants, and a whole presentation on the restrictions appeared on video screens.

While not ADA compliant, the attraction will do their best to accommodate differently-abled persons. For example, during our visit, we saw a person in a wheelchair that was taken on a tour. Contact the staff for details and to set up a visit.

On the way into the attraction from the security check, we passed some puppets and animatronics while being serenaded by the strains of the classic Blue Oyster Cult song ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper.’ The hayride queue and its immediate environs had a country fall appeal, with wooden fencing, hay, and scarecrows. So far, so fun!

The facade of Delirium had a crazy funhouse feel to it. We had to walk through a clown face to enter. We also walked past the Pitch Black and Sector 13 structures, which added to the spirit (though we imagine it might be upsetting or sad to see for those who’ve been to these closed attractions before).

After finishing up, the hub was exquisite. It featured plenty of photo opps, a carriage drawn by skeleton horses plus some other gigantic puppets and props, a huge roaring bonfire stacked with massive logs, food vendors, some games that included throwing skulls into a basket held by a towering skeleton, a movie screen, and before exiting a fully stocked gift shop. It was an impressive, happening place to be.

Do you have about four hours for us to tell you all about the special effects at Reaper’s Revenge? Day-um. Outstanding, tremendous, remarkable, magnificent, please refer to your local thesaurus for more superlative words.

Even more impressive, all… or pretty much all… effects (even audio), props, structures, etc., are made in-house. Given the top quality and the sheer volume of it all, we say congratulations.

Pyro!! Woooo!!! Reaper’s Revenge loves its pyro effects. Not one, not two… maybe three? Wait, were there four pyro events? We’re not even sure anymore! The first pyro blast made us feel like we were inside a blazing inferno. Very impressive.

The high-tech effects got off to a quick start on the hayride with a stop at the entrance to Reaper’s Forest. An enormous animatronic reaper perched above us addressed the wagon but we were unable to hear it. From there, the hayride consistently displayed near-Disney levels of presentation, technical accomplishment, theatricality, creative imagination, and scale.

The graveyard was awesomely decorated. We passed through the lair of some giant spiders who took some crazy angles of attack on the wagon. A tour de force extended trip through a landscape filled with pumpkin-headed puppets and leering jack-o’-lanterns had our wagon oohing and aahing.

Wonderland was, well, a wonderland. A couple of young dudes near us were openly ‘geeking out’ (their words) over the incredible set design and visual effects, which included psychedelic imagery, kaleidoscopic colors, lasers, and a video presentation. In this and other sets, super-sized props towered thirty to forty feet or more (we’re guessing) above the wagon. Some of these effects had us feeling like the youngsters in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! Or for us older folks, maybe The Incredible Shrinking Man or Doctor Cyclops…

The Lost Carnival wowed us at every turn with unbelievable set design(s) resulting in a totally cohesive and immersive feeling of actually being at a carnival that’s been lost to time. If someone were just dropped in here with no warning, we think there’s a good chance they might be fooled.

Everything in here looked nothing less than authentic, from the Zoltar fortune-telling machine to the gaming booths. For heaven’s sake, they brought in actual amusement park rides like the paratrooper, a carousel, and a functioning, spinning Ferris wheel! What a trip! Plus, the place even smelled like sickly sweet cotton candy. The setting and experience were amazing.

Delirium relied on excellent 3-D artwork painted on almost every wall, covering carnival subjects like clowns, circus animals, and varied grotesqueries. The disorientingly crazed visual effects in here turned us upside-down and inside-out. At the very end, they had us questioning if we were walking right through walls.

Bottom line: Reaper’s Revenge stands near the peak of the haunt heap with top-flight effects.

Haunted Hayride: 9.51
Lost Carnival: 9.65
Delirium: 8.95

Lost Carnival: Never before had we experienced such an extended, complete, thoroughly engaging exploration of the dark carnival/circus freak trope. It involved every one of our senses and it felt lived-in. The imaginary world created here was so convincing, it had us believing we were at the remnants of a real carnival ripped from some alternate Ray Bradbury-esque dimension.

Delirium: 3-D clown house. Done and done. The attraction deviated not one iota from the theme. Room after room, through twisting corridors of nothing but 3-D clown art, 3-D clown actors, 3-D clown props, 3-D clown costumes. Delirium = 3-D clowns!

Haunted Hayride: It had no theme, other than being the very definition of its name, a haunted hayride.

Haunted Hayride: N/A
Lost Carnival: 9.8
Delirium: 9.36

The first part of the Haunted Hayride worked the ‘wonderment’ angle more than scariness with its incredible sets, effects, and a song and dance routine that broke out in the graveyard (!). The result is that the scares were more infrequent than the other attractions. Still, Samara made us feel icky with her inhuman movements and joint snapping. The giant spider attacks thrilled, and an immense prop seemed to signal an impending disaster in Wonderland.

The second half of the hayride amped up the frights considerably. Here’s where the chainsaw gang lurked and the psycho family harassed us. And talk about ending with a bang. The finale melded light, sound, actors, hydraulics, and a pair of intensely glowing eyes into a crescendo of delicious danger and a final visit from the Reaper. It amounted to one of the best send-offs in memory. That’s the way you end an attraction!

Pop-out actors provided most of the scare quotient at the Lost Carnival, aided by the intricate layout that housed a host of hiding places. The funhouse especially had us running from a mob of assailants coming at us from every angle.

We found Delirium to be delightfully frightful. Camouflaged actors peeled right off the walls for big startles. The design gave its actors multiple access points to attack unsuspecting patrons. In particular, the bird-beaked fellow got us multiple times in seemingly less than a minute. The busy environments and loopy optical illusions definitely gave the actors an assist here in their spooking duties.

Haunted Hayride: 8.66
Lost Carnival: 8.12
Delirium: 8.52

We spent 64 minutes in the attractions, with more than half that time on the hayride and the shortest being Delirium. General admission is $45, which leads us to a Minutes Per Dollar (MPD) calculation of 1.42.

Now $45 is higher than what we’re used to seeing, but becoming more standard. And considering the eye-popping effects, many of which we feel confident saying you won’t see anywhere else, plus the general overall quality, it’s a good value.

Plus, with the hub’s bonfire, people watching, food, merch, and so forth, you will no doubt spend much more time here after going through the attractions. This is a big place, more than 60 acres, and the space seems to be optimized and well used.

Coupons (see website) deliver $5 off on Fridays and $10 on Sundays. A $25 VIP upgrade to get you through lines faster can be purchased at the box office only, cash only (ATMs on-site). Group rates are not available in 2020.

To sum up: Visit Reaper’s Revenge for a stunning bonanza of effects, incredible design, and a cool cast rocking exquisite costumes.

Haunted Hayride: 9.36
Lost Carnival: 9.31
Delirium: 9.13