Where to begin?
I attended Factory of Fear on Friday, October 2nd with two girlfriends of mine. I'll admit that we were skeptical of how FOF was going to scare us, given two of us have worked at various haunts throughout SE Wisconsin since we were in middle school, but we tried to keep an open mind and give the haunt a chance.
When we arrived we were greeted by a really nice woman working at the concession stand. She offered us popcorn, candy, coffee, or hot cocoa to keep us warm. We said "no thank you" and stood waiting for the line to move forward. As we were waiting some actors wandered through the waiting area- something I've noticed is becoming a common "teaser" among locations. One actor, however, was a boy who was clearly a minor. He wandered toward us not in character and talked with the woman working the concession stand about getting some Skittles, then went back into the haunt. The other two actors were young women who had wandered through us in order to get out of the building so they could take a smoke break- right in front of us, no less.
After a 15 or so minute wait by the concession stand, one of the managers mentioned to someone at the front of the line that we were waiting to enter because the crew had to fix some walls that had fallen. I can tell you that those words made me feel SO incredibly safe in the building! :-/
So once we were led to the ticket booth, it started to become a little better. The booth is at the bottom of some stairs, in a kinda tiny cramped hallway- which set the mood for the abandoned factory building that the haunt is located in.
Once we purchased our tickets, which were a whopping $12.50 each, we walked up the stairs and joined two women who were starting to freak out (they entertained me through most of the haunt because for some reason they were actually scared). We handed off our tickets and made our way through the door.
Upon first glance I thought the haunt was gong to be quite interesting- the path ways that they constructed are all spray painted with graffiti which sorta glows in the dark. right away we were greeted by a chilling carnival sound, and I was ready to be scared because I am terrified of clowns. To be honest, the room was painted and constructed well, but the guy in the clown mask tried to scare us before we even entered the room, which ruined the effect for me.
That's actually a recurring theme throughout the haunt- the actors continually tried to scare the first person in the room without waiting for the people at the end, therefore ruining the experience for everyone but the first person...and even then, the first person in our group and I laughed the entire way through the haunt.
One of my biggest problems with the house is the content- the whole haunt is based SOLELY on Hollywood scary movies (Friday the 13th, Halloween, The Grudge, IT, Night of the Living Dead), and didn't utilize the idea of mental scares as well as physical.
My BIGGEST problem with the house was that every member of my group was touched once, if not more times, by the actors. One of my friends was touched by the boy I mentioned earlier, I was touched by a woman on a gurney who was having her intestines ripped out, and my other friend was touched by someone in the dark who wasn't anyone else in our group.
At the end of the haunt there was a SMALL entry room where the exit door was, and a guy wearing a Michael Myers mask holding a chainsaw who (I assume) chases you into the parking lot- and the fact that the actor had a chainsaw in hand while we were passing through such a small room bothered me because I know that people tend to freak out from chainsaws, and having it in such a small space is quite dangerous.