Boo!
laurellady, her parents, madelineusher, and I went to Knott's "Halloween Haunt" (aka "Knott's Scary Farm") last night. The previous time we tried this, a couple of years ago, it was awful; the park was so jammed with people that the primary fears were of suffocation and trampling. But it had been good a few times prior to that, so we decided to give it another chance this year. Our strategy was to go on a school night relatively early in October, on the theory that this would reduce the number of people there.
It worked out beautifully. The park was eerily empty -- just us and the monsters -- at first, and never got crowded the whole evening. There was little or no waiting for any ride or attraction. And the place really was spooky. The decoration, lighting, and sound effects were great, but most of the pucker factor was provided by "monsters" leaping out at you from dark byways, or drifting eerily toward you and looking curious (or hungry), or (worst of all) silently creeping up behind you and then making their presence known in some disturbing way. This happened out on the normal paths often enough, but in the mazes things got really hairy, literally and figuratively.
The hanging in the town square was a lot more about campy celebrity humor than the old witch-hangings from early-80s KSFs. Most of the jokes were based on current teenage culture, so madelineusher was laughing the whole time, while the rest of us would occasionally laugh with that "Oh, I got that one!" tone. I was very glad they had this at 8pm as well as midnight; I would have been seriously peeved if we stayed until midnight for that show.
The sparsely attended sideshow featuring Zamora (or something) the Torture King was much more fun. He was weak in the patter department, especially at first, but strong on real squirm-inducing stunts, like sticking a thin metal rod straight through his upper arm. As near as I could tell, nothing he and his assistant did was faked. And a lot of it was pretty cool. They closed the act with a series of Van de Graaff generator tricks, The usual things (powering lightbulbs and fluorescents held in empty air, for example) were followed by cranking up the voltage to the point that sparks were arcing several feet from the assistant's (gloved) hands to the floor, and smaller sparks were dancing over many other parts of her body. She seemed dazed when it was all over, and I don't think that was an act.
Then we all sang ourselves hoarse on the way home. All in all, a pretty good night.
It worked out beautifully. The park was eerily empty -- just us and the monsters -- at first, and never got crowded the whole evening. There was little or no waiting for any ride or attraction. And the place really was spooky. The decoration, lighting, and sound effects were great, but most of the pucker factor was provided by "monsters" leaping out at you from dark byways, or drifting eerily toward you and looking curious (or hungry), or (worst of all) silently creeping up behind you and then making their presence known in some disturbing way. This happened out on the normal paths often enough, but in the mazes things got really hairy, literally and figuratively.
The hanging in the town square was a lot more about campy celebrity humor than the old witch-hangings from early-80s KSFs. Most of the jokes were based on current teenage culture, so madelineusher was laughing the whole time, while the rest of us would occasionally laugh with that "Oh, I got that one!" tone. I was very glad they had this at 8pm as well as midnight; I would have been seriously peeved if we stayed until midnight for that show.
The sparsely attended sideshow featuring Zamora (or something) the Torture King was much more fun. He was weak in the patter department, especially at first, but strong on real squirm-inducing stunts, like sticking a thin metal rod straight through his upper arm. As near as I could tell, nothing he and his assistant did was faked. And a lot of it was pretty cool. They closed the act with a series of Van de Graaff generator tricks, The usual things (powering lightbulbs and fluorescents held in empty air, for example) were followed by cranking up the voltage to the point that sparks were arcing several feet from the assistant's (gloved) hands to the floor, and smaller sparks were dancing over many other parts of her body. She seemed dazed when it was all over, and I don't think that was an act.
Then we all sang ourselves hoarse on the way home. All in all, a pretty good night.