Everyone remembers there first. While this house wasn't my first haunt, for many out there this place was theirs. If you have that brave young soul in your crew that thinks they want to give a walk through a haunt a try and make it part of their Halloween tradition, I highly recommend a drive out to Waukesha. It had a very retro feel with how it was put together for me. Even though this wasn't where I did my first, it reminded me a lot of it, complete with some festive Halloween carnival games. There were many kids standing in line, and based on the reactions as they went through, they found it absolutely terrifying. Now I wouldn't recommend this for the hard core haunt veterans, but there was a great effort put into this haunt by CMH and for beginners it hit the mark. The best part for me was that they donate the proceeds to great charities. This year the charity is Operation Finally Home. There were some very creative ideas and design elements throughout the haunt, but the one thing I would have recommended was a little more ambient lighting in some areas where characters were staged.
Signage / Visibility / Location
Just as scary as the haunt itself for many is the drive through Waukesha. LOL But with technology, you should have absolutely no problem at all finding your way here. As you pull up, there is a terrifically spooky house and well lit banners letting you know you've arrived.
Wait Area / Line Entertainment
The wait area is within a hall of the school. It's warm, well lit, and complete with a concession stand. There is an area that is set up with games for the kids, again lending to the atmosphere that welcomes youngsters in for their first taste of a Halloween haunt.
Actors' Performance
Many of the actors are students and all are volunteers, some executed their roles with extreme ambition and may have been a little over the top. Others really captured the spirit of their characters and were pretty creepy. But all of them really fit into place, to give this haunt the feel that it has. To me it's a slice of rural Americana, tradition, and great memories of my childhood haunts.
Sets Scenes / Props / FX
While the sets were a little crude compared to some of the really high level haunts out there today, this haunt is not set up in a school cafeteria. The haunt takes you through a 100+ year house, capturing some of the eeriness of the season. And there were even a few very clever FX that I have not seen in even the highest budget haunts.
Length
The wait to get into the haunt for us was about 20 minutes with the attraction taking us 15 minutes to get through.
Crowd Control
Crowds were very well behaved and well managed with staff throughout guiding you where to go
Most Memorable Moment
For me the thing that stuck with me was that they were able to capitalize on the resource they had. As you meandered from room to room, you were hit with the recurring theme of the tortured souls of demonic children.
This was a great community effort, to raise money for a very worthy charity. For that reason alone I would encourage this attraction to be added to your Halloween tradition, especially if you have younger kids and are not quite sure if they are ready for a haunt yet. This is a great haunt for that special demographic
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