Not Scary Farm

not scary.jpg, originally uploaded by macslost.

So last night we went to the Knott's Berry Farm Halloween Haunt. The key element of the "horror" seemed to be the fact that it was a) dark and b) had goons like this guy pictured here running around.

Most of the haunted mazes seemed to features "scares" in the form of what I refer to as "tap hands". The employees had gloves with metal palms and finger tips they would click together in people's faces or slap their hand against the plywood wall. Most of the mazes were like this. The last 2 were pretty cool, though. They did one for Beowolf, which had a pretty great set design and these massive giants wandering around, which was pretty cool and The Grudge II maze was a good one. Lots of hair everywhere and creepy little girls popping out of the walls.

I'd heard stories about all of the fog and creatures lurking in it, but the place was just packed with people, mostly of the teen variety, so adding a creepy factor was a bit lost and had to be boiled down to the startle factor to get people to jump or scream. There wasn't a lot of fog, either, though there was some ash falling, which was crazy because the fires were all about 2-3 hours away. Then again, we were pretty close to San Diego and they had some as well.

A few of the mazes, like the "Dark Realm - Laser Rage" and "Killer Clown Kollege" were pretty damn weak. But for the most part, if you like Haunted Houses, there's some pretty fun ones to look at. "The Doll Factory" and "13 Axe Murder Mansion" had some fairly intricate sets made.

We may try to hit the Universal Horror Nights this next weekend, but it's pretty crazy with the long lines and I'm NOT a fan of lines. For anything.