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!!!
Signage / Visibility / Location
Shockwave is located on a VERY dark road, but fortunately you can see it as you drive up, it is well lit and the name is written in lights. Like I said, this place is in rural Whitewater, so plan on taking a few back roads, and make sure your high beams are in working order!
Wait Area / Line Entertainment
The wait areas were up for interpretation, each line had zero control, and if you weren't with a group, you better be forceful! No line entertainment was present.
Actors' Performance
The actors in the haunts were entertaining. This haunt was more about dark mazes than actors, but it had it's fair share, and they were good.
Sets Scenes / Props / FX
Mostly dark, but the sets I saw were okay. Not a lot of FX.
Length
All told, expect to spend an hour or so here. Lines are lengthy, and the attractions are short.
Crowd Control
ZERO!!! No employees helping with the disastrous line situations! Very disappointing!
Most Memorable Moment
The jump in the crawling haunt! Nicely done!
Shockwave is 4 haunts that seems to be put on by high schoolers and early college kids, FOR high schoolers and early college kids. It has a lot of potential, but lacks enough substance to make me want to go back. The line situations were so disappointing, I most likely won't return any time soon. Take my warning, you must have patience when attending this haunt, there is a lot to be improved upon here.
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