Having exhausted most of our local haunts over the last six years, we decided to branch out for 2010 and explore some remote sites on a mini-roadtrip. Every year we see billboards for a couple of large Halloween attractions out in Pennsylvania Dutch country - namely, Jason's Woods and Field of Screams. Both of these places advertise themselves as the "#1 Haunted Attraction" without any kind of quantifiable justification to back it up, so we figured we could lend our experience and expertise in the field in determining if they're really as awesome as they claim. Arriving after a 2-hour drive to Lancaster, the setting for Jason's Woods seemed promising. It was truly out in the middle of nowhere with a lot of acreage available for setting up some grim and creepy Halloween fun. They boasted a total of 9 attractions for your admission price, and with line-skipping VIP passes available for $60, it seemed like a worthy purchase for the number of haunts we'd be getting. Here's a breakdown of those 9 attractions, each individually reviewed. #1: The Macabre Museum I was hoping for a stroll through a musty, haunted museum setting with statues coming to life and so forth. This is not at all what I got. It was just a room filled with old props that had been retired from previous years at Jason's Woods and some fake movie memorabilia. There was an extremely fat Predator replica, some old dinosaur masks, and a table where you could get your picture taken with the actor who played Jason in the cinematic masterpiece, Freddy vs. Jason. The New Jersey Halloween Horror Company, which is still by far the worst haunted house attraction I've ever visited, had a similarly lame museum to start their tour. While this one at Jason's Woods was a waste of time, at the very least it didn't appear to have been organized by grade school children like the NJHHC one had. Still, a total bummer to begin the evening and a definite rip-off in counting that as one of your nine attractions. #2: Mystery Maze I usually enjoy haunted mazes. At least the ones that aren't in a muddy field, and this one was on solid ground. It featured a gigantic flame thrower that was periodically blasting a tall tower of fire into the air on the right side of the maze. This looked pretty awesome from afar, but from up close it was kind of deafening and I definitely felt to see if my eyebrows were still there after I'd walked past it. Apart from the fireballs, the maze seemed like it was going to be cool at first, but it was over too fast to actually allow any coolness to come to fruition. We only passed two actors in it and were out the other side with no effort or confusion at all. Unless we accidentally chose a lucky path on the first try, it wasn't much of a maze. #3: Horrifying Hayride If you've ever read any of my other Haunted House reviews, you are acquainted with my consistent disappointment in haunted hayrides. I'd say that the average hayride would get about a 1.5/10 grade from me, which makes it a stunning achievement when I say that the hayride at Jason's Woods would get a whopping 4 out of 10. Still fraught with cheesy skits and stretches of emptiness, it was redeemed by a couple of funny vomit-related gags. In the first, an actor perched in a tree-hung cage above the cart made a number of retching noises while showing the crowd below with a bit of something wet. Shortly thereafter, a large animatronic head began barfing suds into the cart. A few people ended up with a pretty hilarious amount of suds coating their entire heads. There were two main drawbacks to this hayride. First, the cart was incredibly uncomfortable. Typically, you sit upright on bales of hay positioned around the perimeter of the cart. But this cart's walls were so low as to make that impossible, and you had to just sit down in a pile of loose hay (which was awesome for my allergies) and it took a lot of effort to not keep sliding into the people around you. The second problem was more fire. There were probably eight or nine more giant flamethrowers throughout the ride and it just became too much. Each one was uncomfortably hot. #4: Lost in Jason's Woods This thing was just a lesson in coping with letdowns. Forest walkthroughs are always my favorite part of these deals - the nighttime atmosphere in the woods is spooky without even needing to add many props or actors and you've really got to try to screw it up. You can tell where I'm going with this so let me just save time and make an itemized list to explain why this sucked so bad. - We had a guide. You instantly lose all the allure of the being-lost-in-the-woods feeling when you're accompanied by some jerk who won't stop saying things. - You're forced to hold onto a rope. To keep the group together, they insist that everyone cling to what was literally the most uncomfortable piece of rope they could have possibly found. "Hey, can you hold this cactus for me for the next 10 minutes?" Being forced to stay on the rope was also great for getting pulled into trees when your group turned around a bend. - The guide wouldn't shut up about her mommy. She was going on about her mom who lived in the woods and ate people, and how some dead six-year-old boy doll was her brother. Lady, you're nearing menopause. You don't have a brother in elementary school. Then when we got to the end, we never even encountered her mother anywhere. Who's writing this plot? It doesn't make any sense! - I think we passed maybe 4 actors in the woods the whole time. It was just lazy. #5: Barn of Terror This was memorable enough that a day and a half later, I honestly don't even remember what happened in here at all. #6: Pirate's Revenge 3D This was probably our favorite part of Jason's Woods. The 3D painted bits were well done, and the art/painting in general was quite impressive. A lot of cool ocean-related visuals going on throughout. The outside of the building was also pretty awesome, as it was skillfully painted to look like a giant ship with a massive, fanged gorilla's head at the end. I'm not sure what the gorilla had to do with the pirate theme, but I was into it anyway. The only bummer here was that there was no Spinning Tube of Disorientation, which are typically a staple of 3D events. #7: Pitch Black Pitch Black was the first of the three trailer-based attractions at the end of the night. Each was cramped and small enough to fit in a portable trailer, like a house of mirrors at a traveling carnival. Feeling your way around the walls in the dark got old quickly, as it does at every haunted house that one. I only remember there being one actor in there, which was disappointing but not surprising considering how small it was and how sparse actors had been a running theme at Jason's Woods. #8: Escape from Oz The first 20 feet started out nicely with an outstanding painting of zombie versions of the Wizard of Oz characters and a menacing robotic Tin Man. But after that, it was just another feel-through in total darkness. In fact, it was even darker than Pitch Black had been in the previous trailer. So boring. #9: Psycho Circus Once again, it was tiny and cramped and there was only a single actor inside. Just like that movie Phone Booth starring Colin Farrell. All in all, we were rather let down by Jason's Woods. It was pretty generic, not particularly creative, and the actors were substandard. Our expectation of getting 9 quality attractions was not met, with the museum being a waste of time and the trailer walkthroughs being short and exceedingly lame. If you read this review and still want to go for some reason, I should mention that I'm definitely glad we got VIP passes. The lines were unreal by the time we were leaving and you were forced to wait in line near the stage for a crappy cover band that was repeatedly butchering Led Zeppelin songs.
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