I’ll admit to this upfront, my experience at Nightmare factory was more of an unfortunate nightmare than a frightfully fun time.  As a result my review of this haunt may be a little unfair to a haunt that many have reviewed favorably.  (Although honestly of the 6 haunts I’ve been to this year I don’t think I would have placed this one in the top 5.)  Here’s what went wrong with my experience…it’s probably unlikely that you may experience the same misfortune as me but for what it’s worth….

Nightmare #1…the waiting line incident.  It’s mostly outside and unfortunately while I was waiting a car driving by decided to hurl an egg into the crowd.  My guess is that they were trying to hit BoBo the Clown who was nearby but they missed…and hit my friend standing next to me.  With no local law enforcement patrolling the area and numerous parked cars along the street obstructing you from getting a clear view of the street (including a large snack wagon) there appears to nothing in place at this haunt to discourage incidents such as this.

Nightmare #2…the dark hallway incident.  This haunt, like a few others, features a few really dark hallways.  Typically you don’t find ghouls dashing through these hallways but at this haunt there was.  Have you ever wondered if the ghouls in these dark hallways can see you when you don’t see them?  I’ll admit, I have always been a bit curious.  Unfortunately for me, I found at the hard way when a little ghoul ran right into me in the middle of a dark hallway.  OUCH!  The incident knocked the wind out of me but at least the little ghoul was nice enough to apologize and turn on a flashlight to show me the way through the rest of the maze.

Nightmare #3…not every ghoul may know you’re in the room.  As a result of Nightmare #2 I arrived in the next room a few seconds after my group.  The ghoul in the room had already jumped out and was waving an object with a long wooden handle…not exactly sure what the object was but as he spun around in a move that I originally thought was meant to scare me the long end of the handle caught me square in the stomach.  In hind sight the ghoul obviously had no idea I was there as he was just as surprised to see me as I was at being struck.  No apologies from this ghoul though…just a surprised look and then he continued to carry on with the show.

Nightmare #4…when these ghouls smell blood, look out!  I’ve never seen this before at a haunt.  There were a few ghouls at this haunt who were perfectly positioned to scare those stuck in the back of the group.  In every instance these ghouls actually intentionally walked right past those in the back just to scare the group members in the front.  Admittedly the girl in the front of our group was really scared and it was fun watching her get freaked out but on the other hand everyone else in the group paid to be scared as well.  As a result of this and being stuck in the back of our group there wasn’t a single instance at this haunt where anything made me jump.

Other than these misfortunate instances The Nightmare Factory is a decent haunt.  The 3D section is pretty cool visually and features a trick or two but it doesn’t have much in terms of scare factor.  The non 3D section does contain a little gore and has a few cool concepts but it lacked the oomph to make me jump.

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