A craptastic haunted house is always a big disappointment. But less than 24 hours after visiting a really good one, the crushing weight of disappointment is nearly unbearable. Ok, clearly I exaggerate, but jesus christ this place sucked. I speak, of course, of Indian Acres Tree Farm in Medford. This attraction features a hayride with an optional haunted forest walk. Knowing that only paying for a hayride is the equivalent of feeding dollar bills to an extremely old and boring dog, we shelled out an unfortunate $25 each for the combo deal. Now, if you've read my reviews here before, you are aware that I've been on a lot of awful hayrides over the last five years or so. This one doesn't even come close to next-to-last place. The ride just alternated back and forth between horribly acted, poorly written sketches and lackluster visits by guys with chainsaws. Don't get me wrong, the dude with a chainsaw is always good for a quick scare on these things, but that's all this place had going. The cart was visited by exactly five haunters who ran out of the woods and all five had chainsaws. We get the idea already, you have chainsaws. Good for you. And the sketches... come on. Seriously? The best you can come up with is trying to individually make fun of three different politicians for droning? And making fun of them by playing tape recordings of droning speech for 5 minutes while shining a light on a dummy wearing a mask is a fantastic idea. I briefly considered assaulting the driver so i could hijack the tractor and get us the hell out of there. You know those plays that schools put on starring 5th graders where no one knows what's going on and the construction paper set falls apart? Yeah, well at least those have cute kids and don't cost twenty five dollars. The one good thing about the hayride was sweet, merciful completion. It was over after just two or three of those laboriously horrendous sketches and we were deposited at the entrance to the corn maze and forest walkthrough. At this point I still had high hopes for this place because hayrides are almost always crap, and it's pretty easy (or so I thought) to make forest trails awesome for Halloween. But, as Indian Acres teaches us, maybe it's not that easy. "Yeah, uh... I just threw some cheesecloth at a bush. Can I gome home now?" is not an acceptable decorating strategy, you asses! The motto of "We Aren't Trying!" permeated our walk as poorly-costumed teenagers tried almost as hard to scare us as they try to do legitimate sit-ups in their high school gym class. This walkthrough seemed to go on for ages with next to nothing happening. We walked by a plethora of cheesy two-dimensional plywood setups that were supposed to be scary buildings or something. Not really sure what they were going for. The only interesting thing we passed was a ship graveyard that featured actual wrecked boats that had been deposited in a corn field. There was nothing remotely scary about that whole area, but I was impressed at the effort it probably took to move those boats out there. Maybe moving the boats made everyone too tired to give any effort to the rest of the farm. After the boats was an area filled with headstones and clowns. You know, two things that go together like chocolate and mayonnaise. Note to staff about your headstones: it's spelled 'Hannibal Lecter.' Also, Hannibal never died. Finally, the walkthrough ended and... SON OF A BITCH. We have to get back on the hayride? You've got to be kidding me. Dear Indian Acres, Quick slogan suggestion: "It was horrible, but at least it was really, really long. Oh wait." Yours truly, Bill Henderson I'd talk more about the disastrous peeing skeletons and the immeasurably slow Santa sketch that followed, but I'm too angry at this point. On the whole, Indian Acres severely lacked two key components: creativity and enthusiasm. All the ideas and setups were the recycled generic ideas you see at every other haunted house. That's not always a death sentence for an attraction, because you can make up for it with enthuiastic haunters and committed actors. Indian Acres had neither. It's truly hard for me to express how little the employees seemed to care about what they were doing. It's not even late in the season yet when they could be burned out on trying to scare people. Nobody, not a single person, could muster more than a weak "AHHH!" while casually stepping out from a poorly concealed hiding spot. Halfway through the corn maze, I became fed up with the mediocrity and I told a few of them that they could do better. In the end, I was reminded of our trip to Europe last month when we were trying to find lunch in a Danish amusement park called Bon Bon Land. As a result of conversion rates, the generally high cost of Danish goods, and the fact that we were trapped in a themepark, we ended up paying almost $25 US each to eat some of the worst pizza we've ever tasted. In the end, I didn't mind because we were having an awesome time in a great park. Indian Acres wasted my $25 and didn't even give me shitty pizza and fries. Or a farting dog mural. But cheer up, Indian Acres. You still weren't nearly as bad as the New Jersey Halloween Horror Company. That's not something to be proud of, but it's the best I can offer. |
