Final Scores – By Category:

Cast (20% of Final Score): 9.02

Costuming (10% of Final Score): 8.35

Customer Service (10% of Final Score): 9.88

Immersion (10% of Final Score): 8.31

Special Effects (15% of Final Score): 8.97

Scare Factor (20% of Final Score): 9

Entertainment & Value (15% of Final Score): 8.63

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Final Scores – By Attraction:

Attraction 1 – The Forsaken Lands: 8.9

The Forsaken Lands. Great name, and suitably descriptive. Visitors will indeed find themselves forsaken in this attraction – especially on Xtreme Night, which we sampled in all its glory!

This place appears to have been ripped from the roots of Appalachia or the Deep South and teleported to the East Coast. Going through it recalled to us any number of country-fried chaos flicks, from Deliverance to the Wrong Turn and Wolf Creek series.

This is a third-year haunt and they really have their approach and vibe together, sets to effects to actors. It’s tight as hell and guaranteed to test your mettle. Especially on Xtreme Night. We were told the regulars loved Xtreme Night, and we found out why firsthand.

Oh the actors were all amped up for Xtreme Night, baby. Oh yes, these degenerate and depraved backwoods freaks, clowns, and beasts were ready. Super charged, confrontational, and aggressive from the jump. But they hit the right level of messing with guests – well trained to not go too far over the line, and ready to stop at a verbal request or the removal of the Xtreme glow necklace.

There was no shortage of cussin’ though! Several potty mouths roasted us with foul comments, especially the actor running the hotel queue. This one got in our face repeatedly, jammed a shock prod against our throats, and made all sorts of colorful remarks about what freaky dekes we were. We were directed a few times to take a poop and/or clean our butts because we smelled like we went in our drawers, and once an actor stationed in front of a rancid toilet directed us to get down there and clean it.

The butcher/cook in Dan’s Diner sized us up for the best cuts and we were made to stick our hands in a bucket of what they called hot dog water. Kooky clowns gift wrapped us in ribbon and invited us to eat bugs with them. A mechanic demanded to know what happened to his parts (body parts?).

A goofball whose voice sounded like they gargled with rocks requested our skin to wear. One character ran down a laundry list of diseases carried by their buddy, including human flu *and* bird flu. They said this with considerable pride, like the owner of the redneck bar in The Blues Brothers who declared their joint had both kinds of music: country *and* western! Every actor had something like this to offer. So much fun! For more of the Xtreme actions they rained down on us, see the Scare Factor section.

Fitting the theme to a tee, we observed lots of rural wear in the form of overalls, plaid flannel shirts, plain white undershirts, etc. Outfits appeared full, relatively complete, and appropriate to the character scene – clowns in clown suits and garage staff in mechanic jumpers. Characters accessorized well, with many of them wielding shock sticks or lethal looking blades, as well as Kiwi the Clown’s giant ‘poison berry’ ice cream cone to stick in people’s faces. One of the most unusual ensembles was a bathroom baddy wearing what looked like a biker vest and a plunger stuck atop the weirdo’s head!

Makeup jobs looked effective with bloody faces and ghoulish visages, but where The Forsaken Lands really excelled was in the mask department. We saw gruesomely striking masks of gnarly, twisted faces with torn, scarred, blistered, or bumpy/lumpy skin …or what used to be skin. Take a look at their website to get a good idea of what they’re up to here.

The Forsaken Lands is located in Goshen, Connecticut, on the grounds of an exotic animal preserve maintained by the Action Wildlife Foundation. We had no trouble finding the place, aided by a sign out front. Parking costs $6 cash, payable to the wildlife organization.

Ticketing and the line to get in are signposted and right where you’d expect them to be. Note that both general admission and fast pass tickets are sold in time slots. Security was visible on premises. We found the footing to be about as smooth as it gets for an outdoors trail. You’re probably more liable to hit a wall in one of the many structures than to trip on a root.
The Forsaken Lands has a well developed website and social media presence on multiple channels.

The roadway approach to the haunt took us somewhat off the beaten path, which is always a plus. From parking, we passed a food truck and a prop (a tall, ugly mannequin) on the way to ticketing. There, we found some more props and set dressing. The queue ran along some fencing decorated with wheels, a nice lead-in to the first set, a car repair shop.

Queue actors bounced around the crowd. We especially enjoyed Kiwi the Clown, who kept trying to get us to lick his ice cream cone and also denied parentage of Lenny, who seemed to be modeled after the character of the same name from Of Mice and Men and declared Kiwi was his dad …at least we think that’s what was happening? If that was the case, we hope you are right about not being the father, Kiwi. The one thing worse than a scary clown is a scary clown who’s also a deadbeat dad.

The uniform art design and feel of the sets along with the Xtreme nature of the actors contributed to a superior sense of immersion. The exit led out to a photo op that matched up well with the theming and appearance of everything else here.

The Forsaken Lands kept up the redneck-hell aesthetic all the way through with dilapidated fencing, rustic barns and shacks, hole in the wall country diners, corn stalks and scarecrows, and touches like laundry hanging out to dry. Room dividers came in the form of sisal or twine cords. The grungified look was unified throughout. Many rooms or sections had their own soundtrack or unique sound effects; we heard the calls of crickets, crows, and other animals, various power tools in the garage, whispers, weird string music, chainsaw roars, chirpy circus tunes, and big band music.

Things started out with a bang in Al’s Auto, a seemingly abandoned fixer-upper shop. Filled with tires, hubcaps, racks of engine fluids, and small business gear like a filing cabinet and a desk flanked by invoices and such, it felt like we were walking into an actual garage. Like many of the other sets here, it featured dim lighting and wispy fog to create an eerie environment. And like most everything else, it benefitted from a great level of detailing.

The motel featured a neat facade for the crowd control queue, and inside, a vampiress animatronic came flying off the wall to attack a victim lying in bed. We came across a fish man prop in a fishing shack, or perhaps it was a bait and tackle shop. A dark maze in the circus area contained several surprising gags, and they had built an excellent laser swamp in a large, deep area simulating a bog with hanging vines, trees, and other plant life.

We got scared plenty, coming and going and in between! We don’t have a reference point since this was our one and only visit, but our assumption is it’s already pretty scary on normal evenings and things had become ratcheted up for Xtreme Night.

The Forsaken Lands deployed a devious design enabling actors to hit us multiple times in a room and then pop up again one or two areas later. The fog and faint lighting scheme helped out actors who already had a ghastly grab bag of hiding spots from which to choose.

In the large laser swamp, we thought we’d go out of our way to where they weren’t. Nope! That’s where they were, anyway. Not sure if there were several creatures in here or just one who anticipated and moved silently, but either way we jumped out of our boots when they struck.

Drop windows and the old headlights/horn gag got us good in one of the darker sections. Chainsaw attacks came up a couple of times. Besides an initial jump scare, some characters treated us to a prolonged interaction where their lingering weirdness creeped us out. For instance, one persistent freak followed us around for a while making strange noises, repeatedly demanding skin donations, and showing us a victim they’d sliced in half with a machete.

To delve more into the Xtreme actions we got subjected to: we were threatened verbally and physically (in ways and intensities more impactful than usual), shut in an outhouse, made to kneel down over a bucket for a chop-off-their-head moment, and separated several times. One of us had a sack pulled over his head by two assailants and then shuffled over to the next area in a kidnapping, after which he was pushed down onto a chair where the psychos dragged chainsaws all over him for an extended time. That got the ol’ blood pumping!

We survived Xtreme Night in 25 minutes. With a $27.50 general admission, the MPD ratio (minutes of in-haunt entertainment per dollar) came out to 0.91. They entertained our socks off, between the boffo sets, outstanding trail design and pacing, and lively actors carrying on their Xtreme antics.

Bravo, The Forsaken Lands! For a third-year attraction, you really put on a splendid show. We would go back here anytime for another heaping helping of hillbilly-laced mayhem.