Chilled to the bone
Blood-curling screams rang through the air as they walked through the dark and foreboding attraction. The group huddled in a tight circle in hopes of blocking out the monsters of the night, but it was to no avail.
I recently experienced something like this when I went to the 18th annual Reign of Terror Haunted House at the Janss marketplace, and I have to say, it was awesome! The creators/designers of the attraction did a great job of appealing to the audience.
With local haunted houses, many people do not expect much. I pride myself in usually not getting very scared, at least in regards to scary movies. However, with this haunted house, I am glad to say the I was pleasantly surprised (and scared) during my trip through the Reign of Terror.
Before we actually went in the line (which was quite long), we had to buy tickets. I went on a Saturday when the price was $25. I had heard that the actual attraction only took about 20 minutes to get through, so I was a little iffy on whether or not the price would be worth it. You also could not use credit or debit, which would have been helpful to know before hand, as I ended up having to pay a transaction fee for a nearby ATM.
However, the haunted house was totally worth the price! It’s also important to note that other amusement parks cost at least two times that with probably the same amount of scares. Not to mention the money for gas.
There were a couple of minor issues that I had with the start of the excursion into the unknown. For one, there was false advertising (sort of)! There was a long line that we had to go through to actually get into the building where the frights would really begin, and then another long line once we were inside the building which I did not expect and it brought my hopes and heart rate up since I was nervous about it.
Another issue I had was that I was in a group that had a total of eight people (myself included). I was really looking forward to witnessing the boys of our group get scared, including my brother, which would have given me a good laugh. Instead, the worker split us up! We had to go in two groups of four. And not only that, but right after the first group of four went in, the conductor let in a group with seven people. Seven! What’s one more person? So that was just a little disappointing.
However, once we were well inside of the haunted house where the scares began, it was soon forgotten. To scare people going through the haunted house, there was the use of jumps scares, compressed air, and probably the most impressive aspect in my opinion, technology.
There were several uses of technology that disoriented us as we went through the rooms which made the whole experience feel very real.
The jump-scares also made the haunted house terrifying. It would always seem as though they would actually touch you, and I fell to the floor multiple times as a self defense mechanism.
All of the effects made the whole trip much more exciting and suspenseful, as they felt so real, and you didn’t know if there was something lurking in a corner that was going to pop out at you or not. I was always on my toes.
Overall, I would 10/10 recommend this to everyone. It’s a great way to hang out with your friends, and it was actually scary (and) affordable. We were originally thinking of going to Knott’s Scary Farm or a different amusement park, but decided on the Reign of Terror because it is local and relatively cheap compared to the other options. We definitely picked the right scare to chill us to our bones.
