My fifth trip to a haunted attraction this season brought me and a few friends to HalloweenFest at Hamilton Hauntings. I attended their "Fright Nights" attraction last year so I was expecting something comparable. HalloweenFest was based around 4 walk-through attractions for $16. There was no hayride involved, which was definitely a bonus. I've gotten pretty tired of hayrides this year. The price was pretty good for getting four well-put-together haunted houses. The first walk-through we entered was the "House of the Dead." It featured a nice combination of walking both indoors and outdoors and also had a totally sweet giant animatronic snake that jumped out of the torso of a corpse. There was a lot of mist and such inside (which can be annoying to walk through) but it did help to set up some good, unexpected scares from zombies jumping out at us. From there, we traveled to the Psycho Circus. It was your standard house of evil clowns and, once again, it featured the wonderful spinning tube of disorientation. This one was going much faster than the one last week at Shady Brook farms, so that made it much more disorienting. This was a decent walk-through, but it was my least favorite of the four. The Insane Asylum came next. This one totally ruled. Every one of the actors in this asylum were well prepared and totally into their bits. They employed the use of air jets in the wall to startle you both with sound and quick gusts that feel like something is unexpectedly attacking your legs or back. And the last room featured an awesome and crazy looking guy who was eating a dead body and then went TOTALLY nuts on us with a chainsaw. He was really good and they should give him a raise. Finally we made our way to the Black Forest. This was an all-outside walk through that was slightly hampered by the ground being squishy. But it had a few more chainsaw-wielding crazies and that always helps! After leaving the forest and walking back towards the parking lot, we were pleased to discover that they had hired a few freelancers to run around in the grassy area between the attractions to sneak up on people and scare them. There was a very persistent clown and a rather obnoxious hillbilly. Both worked well. We definitely made the right choice for a haunted attraction on my birthday! This was a clear stand out among the haunts I've attended this year and it was a great improvement over last year's effort at Hamilton. Bravo! |