The fourth of the five haunted house attractions I attended in 2004 was by far the most promising. I was enticed by TV ads, billboards, and a snazzy website (http://www.nightmaresonbroadstreet.com/) - all promising worlds of zombie-awesomeness seeming to be otherwise unachievable. This haunted house filled the entire inside of the Wachovia Spectrum in Philly and promised five separate worlds of unholy despair. How can you go wrong? Well, I'm about to tell you. 1) The Movie - After waiting in line for an hour and change, we got herded into a movie theater and watched a short film about a guy who cut off people's fingers and made a kid eat too much candy. It was lame. 2) The Next Thing - Then we moved along to stand in a new line for a while. Then we went through some generic haunted hallways and some people jumped out, etc. Nothing new. 3) Alice Cooper's 3-D Thing - We then stood in another line and were handed 3-D glasses. There was some really cool artwork in this part (awesome 3-D paintings) and the same spinny disorientation tube that I was in last night at the Hamilton thing. Not a lot of scary stuff, but some cool imagery and a few decent masks (one looked sort of like the Predator). 4) The Freezer - Stood in a new line. Then we went through a maze of mirrors and chain link fences with all kinds of crazies milling about inside it. There was an awesome dude in a mask with tubery all over it. And some crazy, bloody chick strattling us from the ceiling as we walked under (in a really awkwardly crotch-pointing-at-your-head position). Lots of smoke and strobe lights. Kind of cool, though. 5) The Mummy Thing - Oh man, SO MUCH BURLAP. We kept walking through sheets of burlap and there would be mummies on the other side and such. The costumes in here were exteremly well-done. Quite intricate and mumm-tastic. I yelled things about burlap and Mumm-Ra from the Thundercats. Overall: For $20, it was very above average in terms of visual stimulation through awesome costumery. But it lacked clowns, chainsaws, and 10 ft tall things that chased after you. In reality, it wasn't even close to being worth 20 dollars because it took us 2.5 hours total. Two hours of which was spent waiting in lines around a lot of really annoying people. Also, the parking lot was a crowded mess because there was a Barry Manilow concert at the Center (which may have been the most frightening attraction of all!). |