This was the third stop on my Haunted Houses 2004 road trip extravaganza. Except all the places were local so there was no road trip involved. Also, a lot of them were reasonably crappy so it wasn't an extravaganza. This dump was located on Rt 33 in Hamilton, NJ and I found it from its promising website (http://frightnights2004.com/). It was attractive due to its proximity to my house and its relatively low cost ($15 for four attractions). My friend, Courtney, and I soon learned why it was cheap. 1) Castle Fear - Pretty standard - people jumped out from behind walls, etc. It was largely a waste because the group of idiots kids in front of us went SO SLOW and we caught up to them, so all the surprises were ruined as they happened to the other group while we were behind them, and they had no time to set up the surprise again. I even scared one of the actresses because she didn't think we'd be coming so soon after the previous group. Those kids sucked. It got bonus points for having Metallica playing in one room ("Fight fire with fire!"). 2) The Dark Zone - This really sucked. Just dark hallways that weren't dark enough to be confusing, and had almost no one in them to scare you. Very short and useless. 3) Psycho circus - This RULED. I wish I had done this thing 4 times instead of the other garbage. Some of the clowns were really awesome, there was one clown with a chainsaw which was sweet. And a 10 foot tall clown that I thought at first was a robot (clownamatronic!) but then it followed me. At the end was a spinny, colorful tube that you had to walk through and it was the most disorienting thing I have ever experienced, hands down. I still don't know why it was so hard to walk in it, but it was and I loved it. 4) The Black Forest - This had some cool parts, but was largely lame. Again, the group in front of us was slow as hell and ruined some surprises big time. Also, they handed out 1 flash light to each group, which sucked because I would've much preferred to walk through the woods with no light for greater effect. Two of the things looked like a cross between a sheep dog, a sasquatch, and swamp thing - which was awesome. And Mike Myers with a knife was great. Could've been better, though. Overall: Loved the clowns again, and the spinny tube of disorientation. But the other people there were pissing me off in many ways. The castle and the dark thing sucked hard, and there was a lame-ass hillbilly side attraction thing - all of these detracted from the experience. Other than clowns, it was pretty ugh. |