Pete (dubstyle_2k)

So many mixed feelings about this haunt! Shockwave Haunts is located in rural Whitewater, which when you get there seems like a world away from the college town I think of as Whitewater. Shockwave is comprised of 4 haunts, all of which have their own theme. We arrived at Shockwave around 10, let me just say that parking is a nightmare there! We entered the lot, and waited for two cars to figure out how to exit a lot, this took literally 5 minutes or so. They were SUPER confused that we were waiting at the entrance for them to move so we could park in one of their spots. The lot is more of a grass/gravel area with no distinct spots, so you can imagine our displeasure when were were leaving and we had to maneuver our car because the person who parked next to us decided he was going to park at the opposite angle as us and leave his rear end out far enough that if we backed straight up we would have hit his car... annoying!

ANYWAYS, we walked up and saw a sign which read concessions and restrooms, but that's the only sign we saw. Where do we buy tickets??? No clue! We went into the building with the restrooms, it's a big building with Christmas trees decked out with orange lights, and a bar/Halloween costume store. In here you can purchase an Amy Winehouse wig and a Captain & Coke if you so wish. They actually had a pretty good selection at the bar, and if I weren't on official Haunted Wisconsin business I might have indulged and let you know how the service was! But still no ticket sales. We left this building and walked over to a fire pit and a young woman asked if we knew where we were going. Finally someone who wanted to help us! She pointed us in the direction of the ticketing area, which was absolutely not labeled, and not common sense by any means. We bought our tickets, $20 for all of haunts and headed back to the helpful woman, as it still wasn't clear where to go. She took us to our first haunt, which was back in the building with the restrooms, and located through a door which was not labeled, but instead guarded by a young lady sitting at a desk. This was called St. Leah's Last Rights Nursing Home, or "Comedy" so the map says (which we found affixed to a wall).

St. Leah's
The theme of St. Leah's was old super heroes, and this was their nursing home. Was it funny? Sure, but here's the deal, I'm anything but the "I'm appalled guy" but this was a little much. Their blue humor seemed to be shocking simply for the sake of shock value. It seemed like a "we can swear in here and we are going to do it to be edgy" thing, and it got old real fast. Each room of this section had a super hero that was of a certain age, or a nursing home employee, most notably Nurse Double D... Yup, she's exactly what you'd think she is. At a certain point I found myself thinking "I get it, you are edgy" but it just kept going. This section definitely isn't for kids. Hopefully they have enough control to not use that humor if kids come through. We were in and out of this area in about 10 minutes.

Blood Manor
The next haunt was called Blood Manor, and was a pretty cool haunt. But before we can get to the cool haunt I must tell you, this was the MOST DISORGANIZED line I've experienced in my 7 years of reviewing! We walked up to the "line" which was a herd of people with no rhyme or reason to what was going on. The line was made up of what I'm guessing was high school kids and college freshmen, and this proved to be frustrating because friends would find friends towards the front and start chatting, which would make them part of the line. We were at the end of the line for a good portion because it seemed like everyone knew each other and cuts were encouraged. We were behind two high school girls that were trying very hard to be "mature" and the one was assuring the other to just swear because her mother wasn't around, and it wasn't like she cared anyways! Oh kids! The herd lead into a set of stairs that eventually lead to the haunt. You don't know living until you've seen groups of teens apparently under a black light for the first time ever! Oh the amazement!

Blood Manor is a dark maze; that's the gist of it. It has actors jumping out, and some sets. One set we went through had an actor who broke character and told us that around the corner there were some teen girls and he wanted to know if they could join in behind us because they were scared. We met up with them, and as you could guess, it was the aforementioned swearing teens. It was fun listening to them scream and get scared, but by this point the one teen had taken her friend's advice and was all about shouting out curse words. Super annoying, but it was fine. This haunt took about 7 minutes.

Nightmare at the Carnival
Next we decided to check out a section called Nightmare at the Carnival, yep, a carnival themed haunt. This is the hot ticket this year, clowns! We didn't actually know where this haunt was at first as there was no line waiting to get in, and we needed an employee there to knock for us apparently? Well, we found it because we saw a couple girls headed that way, and an employee who let them in. We hustled over there because like I said, no line! We got into it and who would have known, the girls we saw walking were the high school girls from before. They decided to join us again. There wasn't much difference between this and the last section, aside from this one having clowns. Dark mazes bookended by clowns jumping out at you. I enjoyed this area, but it was short, maybe 7 minutes total. Again the girls were pushing and swearing, but I made sure I took my time, if for nothing else to make their horror last longer!

Mystery Haunt
Lastly we checked out the final haunt, which was simply titled Mystery Haunt. No teenage girls would be joining us for this haunt, but we did have a group that was positively HAMMERED behind us. This is the price you pay for having a bar at your attraction (well, I hope they got drunk there, if they drove there, yikes!). This haunt was very unique, as it was 95% crawling. I loved this concept, but it was very short. It was just dark, no jump scares except one point which was awesome, but I'll keep that to myself as I don't want to ruin it for anyone. I'll just say that it was very surprising! Like I said, this area was very short, and as we exited I questioned whether we had taken an emergency exit on accident because it seemed like it should have lasted longer! In all this area was no more than 5 minutes. Maybe the thought was that some people couldn't handle crawling that long, but I wanted more!!!

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First year hiccups aside, Terror at the Fair impresses! Being a southeastern Wisconsin guy I was psyched to see that new for this year, the Kenosha County Fairgrounds was putting on Terror at the Fair. The descriptions intrigued me, so I had to review this one. Aside from a few very fixable issues, this haunt has extreme staying power!

We arrived at at Terror just after 7:00, well when I say arrived I mean after we drove down a road that lead us to some locked gates (thanks Apple maps!), turned around, took a left, drove past the entrance (which was a barely lit up sign and a $9.99 strobe light above said sign that I only noticed when we actually entered the grounds... it was tiny!), turned around and finally entered the fairgrounds. The first thing I noticed was there were maybe 15 cars in the lot. Sweet, no need to pay the extra $5 for the fast pass, this should take no time at all! Boy was I wrong! We purchased our tickets and proceeded to the line area, a stable I think, which was hazed with fog and music courtesy of a DJ! He was playing season appropriate tunes, this was a nice touch. The waiting area had a few clowns that terrorized those waiting in line, a timely treat as we all know clowns are the it thing (based on the news at least!). The were entertaining to say the least, and they knew EXACTLY who to mess with!

Alright, here we are, it's been 10 minutes, the line hasn't moved yet. At least there was line entertainment to keep up from falling asleep! Another 15 minutes goes by, OOOH! Two people enter! alright, we're in business! 10-15 minutes more, two more people enter. Does this open at 8 and they are just letting a few people go through as a test run? Nope, the website says 7, what's going on? We wait probably another 15 minutes and I decide to step out of line and see if we can pay the difference and trade our tickets in for fast passes (I have another haunt to get to, and at this rate I wont even get into the haunt until after 10!). On my walk I genuinely enjoyed the look of confusion on the actors faces as they asked me where I was going. I replied that it was already too scary, and they were confused by this! If they only knew how much it took to actually "scare" me! The ladies at the ticket booth were more than happy to exchange our tickets, and we were on our way to the front of the line! I can see now why it was taking so long, as we arrived to the fast pass area there was a couple that they were letting in, and then they let us stand at the entrance. If you buy a fast pass they aren't letting ANYONE in until you've entered! That line was never going to move if people kept shelling out the extra 5 bucks. I get the idea, you pay the extra and you get the perks, but you gotta let some general admission folks in between fast passers or that line is never going down. But I digress, we waited for another 7 minutes or so, being entertained by the lady at the door with her demon baby that she told me was an "it" after I asked the sex of her beautiful child, and one of the clowns that was legitimately making us laugh out loud! Finally we were able to enter the haunt.

This haunt was super surprising in that they had some of the best actors I have experienced in my tenure as a Review Crew member! Little to no animatronics, which is a good and a bad thing because I truly like them when used sparingly, but they relied on genuine human interaction to get you jumping, and they excelled at that! The sets were pretty good, and they had a good mix of sets and darkness. A really well put together haunt. I don't mean to keep bringing it back to the actors, but I was taken back at the commitment and the willingness to put caution to the wind so they could make the show memorable for the visitors. When I say caution to the wind I mean each and every one of them is going to have the WORST sore throats in the morning! I've never been screamed at quite like these actors screamed at us! It was jarring to say the least, and to the 3 "little girls" that were in that haunt, kudos to you! Funny and terrifying at the same time! The haunt revisits a theme that was pretty popular 5-6 years ago, and that is 3D. The use of glasses and and 3D paint is a fun effect, and the second section is full of this. It was nice to see this again, as I enjoyed it quite a bit years ago when it seemed like every haunt was doing this.

The only con I can say the actual haunt has is that it is WAY too short! We were in and out in less than 15 minutes, and I'm a slow mover in these things, I like to take it all in. The price and potential wait just doesn't jive with the time spent in the haunt. The space is limited, and I really hope they expand on it in the future.

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Here it is, my yearly review of the Abandoned Haunted House Complex! A favorite year in and year out, I've attended and reviewed every year since it's inception. I've been marking the calendar for a year now, waiting and anticipating this season because I knew that brand new for this year they are introducing a haunted corn maze called Stalker! The best haunt in the area is adding an awesome corn maze?!?! It doesn't get any better than that! Well, we arrived at Abandoned and obviously got tickets to all three attractions. Oh, did I forget to mention that Abandoned has THREE attractions in one location? Well it does, two indoor and the aforementioned outdoor corn haunt.

Stalker
We were advised that we’d better check out Stalker first, as that one closes before the indoor haunts. Great, that’s what I was looking forward to; let’s get it done with right away! Stalker was, well, unsatisfying. It pains me so to write that, but it is true. The whole maze is pathways leading to little indoor staging areas. You’d walk a bit through the corn, then you enter a scene inside a built up shack. The scenes were great, but the walk through the corn was just plain boring. I don’t know if it was an off day, but I can count on one hand the number of times something jumped out of the corn at us. This was just disappointing; I was really looking forward to being spooked in the fields, not shacks. I really hope my experience is not typical, there is so much potential and I’m looking forward to the future and what they can do with this area.

Hysteria & Ambush
The indoor haunts were once again second to none. Both haunts must be purchased together, as one house leads right into the next, there is no separate wait line to get into each haunt. Both Hysteria and Ambush are classic long maze style haunts with amazing detail and sensory overloading effects. Both haunts are dark, and feature some amazing actors jumping out at you at just the right time. There are a few sections where interactions happen with actors. Some of the sets and props in these haunts are jaw dropping. I found myself asking myself “How did they get this in here?” and “How did they make that?” Abandoned once again steals the show with their attention to detail!

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Here we go, it’s that time of year again! It’s October, which can only mean it is haunt season! My first haunt of the season took me to Slinger, WI, that’s where Dwelling of Despair is located. Dwelling of Despair, which I will refer to as DoD from here on out, was a little off the beaten path which if you aren’t paying attention, is very easy to pass right up. When we arrived at DoD the first thing I noticed was the signage isn’t great by any stretch of the imagination. Fortunately for them the only people on the road they’re located on, are there for them. No need to be fancy if nobody is going to see it.

It was strangely dead for a Friday night, we were given our tickets and told go wait. But wait where? There were a few places that looked like they could be the waiting area, but wasn’t really told which was right. We walked past an empty room with refreshments; could this be our waiting spot? Probably not, it was, like I stated before, empty. Ah, there was a built up room with benches and a few “dudes” sitting, we’ve found our waiting room! After not gaining entrance because it was roped off at both ends, I finally decided to ask where we were supposed to go. I was brought back to the front of the room and a guy let us in. Kind of annoying when you get no direction right off of the bat. By the time we got into the waiting area the aforementioned “dudes” were gone, so it was just us there. The gentleman working in the waiting area was very friendly and asked if this was our first time at DoD. He also told us to sit, as it would be a little bit (we probably waited 80 seconds, I totally could have remained standing!) I was a bit confused about the lack of an attendance. The man explained where we would walk, and sent us on out way.

The haunt itself is comprised of an outside and an inside. In the beginning you walk through some woods, which is always awesome in my mind! Something about that crisp autumn air and the anticipation of something jumping out at you always excites me. This area was pretty good, and was longer than I figured it would be. You’ll eventually end up at a door that you’ll need to knock on to gain entrance. I was pleasantly surprised by what greeted me, and unfortunately that would be one of the only highlights of the inside section.

The inside was pretty cookie cutter haunted house, they had all the decorations, and they used them well. The problem I had with this section was the underuse of actors and the overuse of animatronics. I’m a huge fan of animatronics; in fact I’d say I’m a sucker for them! I love a good technology based scare, but this place had too many, and they were unfortunately either old/over used or cheap.

At one point we walked into a room, a vampire looking fella lifted an unidentifiable box and something was there, just waiting to pop out. We waited for a good 15 seconds for something to happen, then it did… Super anticlimactic, as the vampire remained silent until it happened. It was equally sad and embarrassing. One room we entered had an actor dressed like a vampire as well. She asked if we wanted to meet Dracula, we of course said yes. She asked us for the password, and I, being the polite boy that I am, said “please.” She told me I was wrong, and said the password started with a “D” and rhymes with “acula” Duh, the password to see Dracula IS “Dracula”. We entered the room where we were to meet the great Count Dracula, and… and… No Dracula to be found. Wait, what? Why go through all that trouble of a password if there isn’t even a Dracula in the end.

The actors they did have in there were okay. My biggest issue, beyond the shortage of said actors, was the number of bad masks I saw on them. More than one actor jumped out at us, said something and all I could focus on was the mouth that never moved. I get wanting masks to avoid time consuming makeup sessions, but cheap masks are a terrible substitute.

A couple of the actors ruined the moment for me, the first of which I’m not going to blame completely. We entered one room and the actress in it was really great! Problem was there was a walky talky in that room and it kept going off. Someone wanted to know were someone was really bad, and we all found out that he was in the house working. The actress tried her best to play it off, doing the whole ‘she’s not crazy, we are the crazy ones for saying that we heard something’ routine, but after while she had to drop it and said someone left it in that room and she apologized.

The second moment ruiner happened after we exited the house. There’s a pretty fantastic maze you’ll hit right after the house, and it is SUPER foggy! I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be that foggy, but it was that night, and it was really hard to find your way. I liked this because you really had to feel around, it wasn’t easy. Well, it wasn’t easy until someone came up behind me and said “You gotta go that way” and hurried us out of the maze, which was the end of the haunt. Uggg, whatever redeeming qualities that maze gave to the haunt itself, that person took it all away. Let me figure it out! In all I’d say DoD is a less than great haunt with some chincy flaws that made it not one of my favorites. I think this place would be perfect for haunt novices that want to jump but aren’t into heart pounding tense attractions.

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