Last Thursday the 10th was Jay and my
annual trip to Knott’s Halloween Haunt.
I’ve been going to this attraction since I was a kid and boy has it
grown into a very cool night of fright and fun!
Once I got into the theatre world a group of us used to go every year,
but that has dwindled down the just Jay and me.
Jay is a fully grown male in his 50’s who screams like a 12 year old
girl and one of the main reasons I still love to go. Watching that boy shriek and scream and run
away from monsters makes my whole night.
The monsters of course zero in him once they find out how easily scared
he is. It’s fantastical.
Sometimes we do the Pre-Haunt dinner but the last
few years we’ve skipped it because we find that the food is just not that great
for the price and by the time you finish eating your, “Hour early entry” is
wasted up. So we usually meet up
somewhere nearby and then head to Haunt.
Now that it’s just the two of us we can mill around the park pretty
quickly and get to do everything we want to do!
Jay and I have a similar way about how we trek around the park and it
works perfectly.
This year we realized TGIFriday’s is actually
right there in the park so we chose to eat there. I’m thinking that will be our dining place
from now on. It was just too
perfect. We met there at 5:30 and after
I paid F-ING $20 to park I sat and waited for my favorite date of the
year. He usually treats me to this
evening o’ fun so I can’t bitch about the parking fee too much. But JESUS.
Jay arrives and we giggle and catch up over dinner
exchanging our Halloween themed presie’s we always get for each other. This year Jay informed me that he paid extra
for us to go into the “Trapped” maze.
This was a new feature where you have to sign a waiver to enter and the
monsters interact with you and can touch/screw with you. It sounds like it was modeled after the LA
BlackBox thing they did last year.
Exciting!
Off we went to start our night. I snapped this shot as we walked in:
Unfortunately we were stopped because Jay had mis
understood the website and didn’t buy 2 tickets with “Trapped” but bought 2 “Trapped”
tickets which are good for up to 6 people!
Whoops! Luckily after a few
frustrating directions Knott’s was super cool and sold him two tickets and
refunded one of the “Trapped”. All good.
First maze we hit was Slaughterhouse. This was the typical that we’ve seen
before. Nothing special, nothing stuck
out. I was worried this was a preview of
the night to come. But oh no! We passed Mirror Mirror which had a huge line;
we made a note to come back. There were
a lot of Dios de los Muertos décor which I loved and knew Terri would love as
well. Snapped a few:
A monster harassed Jay for a bit to my pure
amusement then we snapped this selfie:
We passed the games that we always love to tackle
and I noticed that they had baby Skelanimals as prizes which I found out later
are called Furry Bones or something. But
they are cute as hell and I had to have one so Jay and I played toss the ping
pong ball in the floating cup game. I
WON! I of course squealed way more
loudly and happy than was probably necessary but IWON! I chose the pink one and the guy that handed
it to me wasn’t too shabby either. He
was flirting a bit with Jay or I – I couldn’t tell who. He he he.
Next up was a maze called Black Magic. This was awesome! Creepy carnival like atmosphere and great
decorations! This replaced where the
clown maze usually resides. A few of the
mazes were taking pictures of you that you could buy later, and Jay bought us
this one because, well – its rad! They
zombified you! My face was apparently “scary”
enough that they left it off of me. You
can also see my adorable prize.
Next up it was time for our “Trapped”
experience. We waited in a lobby, and
then had to sign waivers. We were also
told if we got too scared, etc we could say “Boysenberry” and our group would
be escorted out. I appreciate the safe
word but it kind of sucks that your whole group has to go.
The only
thing I was mostly nervous about was that they were going to do something to us
that would mess with my screwy dizzy issues I’m having (Remember – tumor thing
in head – weird after hemorrhage – always not doing well with
equilibrium). We were sent off in our
groups. Jay and I were our only group so
it was just the two of us. We waited in
line while a mad scientist like fellow poked at our faces. All I kept thinking was “How many faces have
you touched!” We were sent off. We then were placed in front of an elevator
looking thing and were to punch the button until we figured out the code. This only took Jay a few minutes but I
started to worry a bit because I already can’t ride in elevators at the moment. It opened, we went it, and it closed behind
us and started shaking as if it was real.
It then slammed and jumped and the lights went out. I started worrying I may have to say
Boysenberry if it went on too much longer because I was starting to feel woozy,
but it was over quickly. Thank
GAWD. The doors opened and we walked
into a small room where there was a dude dressed as a janitor and monster-fied.
A desk stood behind him and I saw a live
tarantula in a cage. Oh shit. He then started his bit. I want to give props to these actors because they’re
basically monologues and need good improve skills. Jay and I being actors ourselves messed right
back with them so I think they probably enjoyed that. The guy picked up a jar and told us to find
the key. It was filled with cornmeal and
live maggots. UGH! Jay begrudgingly reached in and after a few
minutes found the key. The dude they
threw it back in! I had to now get
it. Ugh.
So gross! But quite glad the
tarantula wasn’t a part of our show. We
found the key, unlocked the door and had to crawl through a tube filled with
live spiders. Luckily the little
bastards were on the outside. I’m not
sure I would have been able to crawl through otherwise. Jay being claustrophobic was a little worried
at first but saw the end and did fine.
We were now in what looked like an underground thing that looked like
something under a building. A breaker
room of sorts. There was water and a
dude standing in it who immediately started screaming at us to flip breakers
etc. We did as he asked but then he
wanted us to touch a wire to see if it was live. Um no.
God love Jay he did it. This guy
went on for about 5 minutes then we ran across a bridge (I swore something was
going to jump out) into another room.
The door closed and we were now in a padded cell with a very large obese
man in his underwear. The walls were
smeared with what looked like shit and there was a smell of it too. Oh lord.
The guy started touching us as asking if we were real. Again my slight germ fear was like “DUDE!” we
played along then he started screaming and the lights flickered. The wall shot towards us looking like it was
going to smash us. Very cool effect. Then the man was now angry man. He was yelling as us to find the birdie. I noticed a shit stain shaped birdish and
pushed it. This sent us into another
room. Mind you these rooms are all
tiny! I can’t imagine a group of 6
people! Lord. So now we’re in a storage closet looking room
with a dead guy on the floor. He had a
large belly with a towel and blood over it.
My 1st thought was something was going to come shooting out
of his belly but he laid there “dead” forever!
It was a great fear effect because you waited for so long for him to do
something you got more and more freaked out. He finally started shaking, woke up, and
removed the towel to show a huge hole in his tummy. He said the only way out was to reach in
there and get the slide card. Nice. Jay did so and retrieved a blood covered
card. We slid it and a door opened. We tried to give the card back but he said
keep it. Sweet! A souvenir!
I kept it and wiped it down later.
I now have an insane asylum maintenance card. Now we’re in a room with cage doors. A tool attached to a chain is on the
floor. Jay figures we use it to open the
doors. We do and a grudge like chick
crawls out. We open another one and there’s
another chick. The first gal appears
again and points to the crawl space we are to go through. Jay is quite nervous at this point because it’s
a tiny tiny crawl space, but he does great.
We crawl through and into the lobby we land. We get chased out by a couple of monsters and
we’re done! I have to say I totally
enjoyed it. It was fun to interact with
the monsters and do something different.
Next up we hit the Elivira show that was awesome
of course because she’s rad. We slipped
out a bit early and hit up a maze called Forevermore. Very cool.
Lots of Edgar Allan Poe stuff and quotes from The Raven. After that was Pinocchio Unstrung. Hilarious.
It was like the revenge of Pinocchio.
A huge giant animated wood thing was at the end. Rad.
Then I think we did the Gunslingers Grave. Rad.
We stopped in the midst of this to check out The Hanging. As usual it was silly and fun. They ended up hanging Miley Cyrus. I wasn’t surprised.
We tried going on the Log Ride and the Mine Ride
but sadly found out those don’t have monsters on them anymore. Bummer!
We then made it to the other side and hit Trick or
Treat which had a fantastic house set up.
You “rang the doorbell” and in you went.
So very cool!!!! It also had this
cool giant black tree with pumpkins hanging on it like ornaments. Totally an idea for decoration! After that
was Endgame where we did more pictures.
I had to buy these because I thought they were hilarious! I have been in these before…they ask you to
pose then blast you with a loud air thing to scare the crap out of you and
photograph it. Well these guys were
smart – the 1st pic they didn’t do it, but they got you on the 2nd. You can see the one pic is us knowing its
coming and the 2nd is getting it.
Endgame was a bit loud for me but still cool. We hit Dominian of the Dammed and Delirium at
this point too. Very cool as well.
We played another water race game which I won!
Ha! And I gave Jay the adorable blue
Frankenstein monster I got. Loved the
toys this year! The only maze we didn’t make
was Mirror Mirror. We went back and the
line was 2 hour wait. We would have been
there till 3am. I found out later from a
few people that it was nothing and most people were pissed to wait that long
for not that great of a maze, so we certainly dodged that bullet!
My only regret was we missed Blood Drums. I always like to catch that show but we
pretty much hit everything else! It was
a night of lots and lots of laughs, squeals and screams and so much damn fun I
can’t even begin to describe it enough!
As per
usual I had an amazing time and I owe it all to Jay. He seriously is the best date ever!!!! Thank you Jay for another amazing time at
Haunt!!!! It seriously gets better every
year!
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