Scandia Haunted House The Wussmaker Review (2019)

Last year, The Wussmaker’s actors were very intense in their approach to scaring guests. This year, with the added scenery elements, it’s changed their performance to be more engaged with their scenery and respective themes. The beginning had a clown run and knee slide right by us, while making sparks on the ground with his glove. The butcher stopped to growl at us when he was cutting us a dead body. There were two goth girls playing with their creepy dolls who did glare at us intensely. The clowns in the black and white strobe light room were startling us from various corners, and some would grab at an ankle. There was a nice homage to the movie, The Ring, as we saw a well and Samara climb out of it and crawl towards us, just like she does in the film. The skull-face ghoul was able to startle us in the fog-filled white-out room.

Outside of the haunt, there were several line actors who were interacting with both guests waiting to attend the haunt and guests just taking part in Scandia’s other attractions. One of them was dressed as Michael Myers, and played the part like the Halloween movies. The actors do not speak, because this place is a startle driven haunt. There is a good variety of characters, a whole array of beings from the horror genre.

Scandia The Wussmaker is very easy to find, as it’s located on Hillsdale Boulevard, which is next to Interstate 80 in Sacramento. As soon as you see the Sky Screamer carnival ride protruding in the horizon, multiple stories taller than any other building in a 12-block radius with neon lights, you have your landmark. Parking is free, and it wasn’t too hard to find a parking space, considering they had a busy night, that night.

Scandia is a large place, and the haunt sits between the arcade and batting cages. This year, there were no staff at the ticket booth. Instead of tickets, guests had to put money on a Scandia Fun Card, which had to be obtained in the arcade, and have it swiped by a staff member to attend the haunt.

The Wussmaker is handicap accessible, and we found it to be very safe. Those Wuss Doors also double as emergency exits. We found the staff to be very professional, helpful, and friendly, and they treated us with respect. The non-acting staff were easy to find, because they had Scandia The Wussmaker black T-shirts. Information for this haunt is easy to find as they have an official website and a presence on various social media.

The Wussmaker has made an effort this year to create small vignette scenes throughout the haunt. Despite the cramped quarters, the scenes do have enough sets, props, and details to convey the individual themes.

As with the homage to The Ring, there’s homages to Silent Hill and the sewer from It. There’s also a few standard haunt themes, such as the butcher room, asylum, children’s doll room, and clown room. The final room was the most unique, whereas, many haunts will have a blackout room, Wussmaker sends you from a blackout room to a whiteout room. Filled with fog and bright lights, all we could see was a white cloud completely surrounding us as the final actor would startle us. Switching from darkness to light really played with the adjustments with our eyes. It’s a reminder of how you should never turn on your high beams while driving in heavy fog.

The sound effects were subtle, but most notably, the children’s room had a haunted music box song with distorted children’s voices singing. It fit really well with the gothic children and their gothic dolls. The special effects were effective in providing scares and entertainment, and added to the haunt experience.

The Wussmaker was scary, but we did miss the aggressive approach from last year’s haunt. The clowns in their zone were aggressive, but Samara’s creepy four-limbed crawl was in line with the movie. The children were more into intimidating stares, and the skull-faced actor in the whiteout room only startled us intermittently. Similar to last year, they did grab at our ankles. As a result of the different scenes in the haunt, the scares did become more diverse and less ‘attack, attack, attack’.

The finale was interesting with the whiteout room, because we haven’t seen any other haunt in our part of the country do it. In a similar vein as a blackout room, the effect is more psychological because you know there’s something in the fog, but you just don’t know when or where it will attack.