Last year we visited Castle Park for the first time during Halloween and the Mausoleum floored us. The Mausoleum haunt in a way became a gold standard for us when judging other haunts. It had it all – great acting, one-of-a-kind effects, custom animatronics and theatrics.

So this year when we visited the new haunt, Factory of Screams, we were a little let down. The acting was still top notch, the ideas were fresh and original and the decor was great. Yet something was lacking this year. The tents were not up so this was an open air haunt where last year was enclosed which kind of changed the feel, but they have a great way to solve that issue at the back of the haunt. Unfortunately the way they solved this also came with a price. Some of the scares became more conspicuous and less effective. This was due largely to the maze and not the actors ability.

At one point however the actors seemed distracted like they were posing for pictures or being interviewed. This also did not help the scare factor since the room this was going on in looked like it could have been the coolest part of the haunt for decor and costumes. This may also have just been our bad luck that this just happened to be going on while we walked through.

The other, and probably most important, item that was missing was the sense of theatrics that permeated last year’s haunt. The Mausoleum haunt did a great job of building anticipation and pulling you from your comfort zone with the introduction room prior to entering the maze. This year when you got to the maze there was no introduction just open the door and go on in. Without that setup there was nothing to pull you into the maze.

Overall though the scares that did go well worked great. The actors did a great job of pulling this haunt off, as did some of the decor. Our “control” people definitely got their money’s worth of scares and even some of us seasoned haunters got caught off guard a few times. Overall this haunt is worth checking out if you have the time. The value for the money is definitely there but if you were lucky enough to go through the Mausoleum don’t expect the same level of haunt.

Summary:

Pros:

• The actors at this haunt are some of the best I have ever seen
• Decor was outstanding, really gave you a sense of what was going on

Cons:

• The haunt fails to pull you in as well as it did in past mazes due to lack of theatrics
• If you have seen what this haunt was capable of in the past, this haunt is a bit of a let down

Overall we give it our zombie rating of 3 out of 5 zombies.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.