Haunt
So every year our other local amusement park, Knott's Berry Farm, does a
Halloween Haunt.
I've been sorta wanting to go for years, but also a little reluctant because Cj said that last time she went, it was totally nerve-racking having things constantly jumping out at you, to the point where she had to sit and rest periodically.
Well, last night we finally went, and it was totally cool. There were 8 or 10 themed mazes... vampires, post-apocalyptic mutants, carnivorous clowns, etc... y'know, the usual stuff... but really well done... much better than I (in my very limited experience with such things) had seen before. Some pretty well-done and disturbing props, too, like this fat nasty clown barfing rainbow sludge all over himself. Great fun!
The "startle" factor was interesting. They have literally hundreds of people who've been hired to jump out at you, and shake bells and rattles, and otherwise make you jump and shriek. And while my companions' just got more and more wound up over the course of the evening, my defense mechanism was apparently to relax to the point where it had no affect on me. After the first maze, I didn't get a good scare all night. Instead, I enjoyed myself by finding other people who were really jumpy, following them through mazes, and watching them freak out. One woman literally ran screaming out of the Carnivorous Clowns maze. Again, great fun!
So this morning I'm reading in a computer gaming magazine how a study has shown that gamers' peripheral vision and ability to track objects in their field of vision is measurably superior to that of normal and even deaf people (who's sight is allegedly improved to compensate). And I had to wonder if my brain had just gone into Quake mode last night :-)
Anyway, my point, if there is one, is that folks in the LA area for whom this sort of thing holds any interest should definitely check it out.
Well, last night we finally went, and it was totally cool. There were 8 or 10 themed mazes... vampires, post-apocalyptic mutants, carnivorous clowns, etc... y'know, the usual stuff... but really well done... much better than I (in my very limited experience with such things) had seen before. Some pretty well-done and disturbing props, too, like this fat nasty clown barfing rainbow sludge all over himself. Great fun!
The "startle" factor was interesting. They have literally hundreds of people who've been hired to jump out at you, and shake bells and rattles, and otherwise make you jump and shriek. And while my companions' just got more and more wound up over the course of the evening, my defense mechanism was apparently to relax to the point where it had no affect on me. After the first maze, I didn't get a good scare all night. Instead, I enjoyed myself by finding other people who were really jumpy, following them through mazes, and watching them freak out. One woman literally ran screaming out of the Carnivorous Clowns maze. Again, great fun!
So this morning I'm reading in a computer gaming magazine how a study has shown that gamers' peripheral vision and ability to track objects in their field of vision is measurably superior to that of normal and even deaf people (who's sight is allegedly improved to compensate). And I had to wonder if my brain had just gone into Quake mode last night :-)
Anyway, my point, if there is one, is that folks in the LA area for whom this sort of thing holds any interest should definitely check it out.