Due to vacation, birthday activities, weddings, and races, I only had a chance to get out to one standard Halloween Haunt this year. It was a solo trip down to the "Walk of Fear" at Bamboo Gardens in Vincentown. This was their fourth year in business and the first I'd heard of them, so I headed down to check it out. Things got off to a good start since parking was close, ample, and easy, there was no line to get in, and they gave me a discount for entry for no particular reason! The witches at the entrance were quite nice and we had a pleasant conversation while I was waiting to go in behind the group in front of me. They let me go through on my own rather than waiting to be in another group, which was cool. Bamboo Gardens, as you might have guessed, is filled with a lot of bamboo groves. I've never been in a haunt with bamboo before, but it was really cool. It's dense and dark and it gives the actors great places to hide and a nice, hard surface to whack with weapons for good effect. They also did some excellent work with paint splatters and blacklights in the bamboo - it created an awesome and disorienting visual experience. There weren't a ton of actors, but they were efficiently arranged so that a small number of haunters could come after you multiple times without much travel as you snaked through the walkthrough they'd set up. Most of the actors were committed and loud, and quite good at staying in character. I was particularly fond of the sandy beach area at the edge of a pond that featured some actors actually wading up at you through the water. Not something you see too often! The props were fairly simple and pretty effective - nothing cheesy or animatronic, just a lot of body parts and broken down buildings and so forth. Mostly they let the outdoor setting and the darkness do the work for them, which is the way to go. Altogether, a great attraction for a good price in a cool setting!
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