I quite enjoyed tonight's first night of Haunt despite a few hiccups! We went through four of the six mazes included with the Haunted Attractions Pass, with those being Slaughterhouse, Jason: Blood Reign, Metal Massacre, Order of the Dragon, and then once again through J:BR. It was a little hard to find an open HAP location beyond the front gate, but I believe they opened more as the night went on. We used our Haunted Attraction Express Passes for two of them and then stood in the standby queue for the other three run-throughs. I can use my Express pass during the other nights of the year when I don't have friends with me, so it was fine.
General thoughts below with spoilers in the spoiler boxes.
Slaughterhouse — Pretty much the same house as years past, but the experience was good with a nice amount of actors in it. This queue wasn't really an issue for me since it's so small.
Jason: Blood Reign — A really good house that improved from the already-good Hotel St. Michelle. I was curious about how they would manage to bring the outdoor environment indoors, and was pleasantly surprised to see each scene play out how it did. There is one part where I think the park needs to add something to physically block guests from trying to go through. It is around the 1/3 point in the maze where you make a right turn around a post, and I managed to run into that same post twice. I can't remember enough of Urgent Scare to know exactly how it stacks up to that, but the back hallway is better now than it was before. The biggest thing that I would generally change about this attraction is the queue line. It would probably be hard to accomplish but I'd take one big set of cattlepens instead of the dual zig-zagging standby queues. Anything that makes the standby queue less agonizing to wait in would be better than what is there now.
Spoilers for Jason: Blood Reign
Metal Massacre — This is the other new house for this year. I'll say now that part of my experience was dampened by the daylight environment, but it only made me more excited to go through during the nighttime! The references to all 26 years of FearFest/Haunt are really fun to see. I appreciated the fact that the greeter (the guy who sends you into the maze) had a themed speech whereas all of the other greeters just went through the rules.
Spoilers for Metal Massacre
Order of the Dragon — One of last year's new houses. Just as good tonight as it was last year. The extensive theming continued to be a major highlight, and the mix between scare actors and animatronics is one of the best in the park. My biggest complaint about this maze is the queue line. It either needs something that feels a little more permanent than the yellow ropes or it needs a second rope installed halfway between the top rope and the ground. The little section between the merge point and the actual maze entrance also needs something to make it feel less barren. I'd build a new fence near it that looks like a stone wall and put that around the exit too.
Overall this was a good opening night with only a few hiccups. The "new" phone scanners up at the front gate were odd to see, there need to be more Haunted Attractions Pass stands open when the park opens, and some of the maze queues need to be rebuilt/rethought. All of the Jason queue needs to be rebuilt from scratch for the aforementioned reasons. The 2026 Opening Ceremony either started before 6 or didn't happen how we expected it to. This also happened at Mid-America Adventure when their 2026 Fright Fest opened, so it isn't unheard of. We saw most of Ghouls Gone Wild and I enjoyed it a little more than I did last year. It looked like some of the set changed this year (likely following the Hollywood Hits redesign), but it's still basically a family show. We didn't watch Nytewalkers or Dr. Nightmare. The 8PM fountain show (Sweet Dreams) was really good. The 11PM fountain show was interrupted by a No Smoking message, but all of the lights and fountains kept going. I'd love to know if those are automated or if someone has to press a button to play that message. Hopefully it won't happen again during a fountain show. Nytewalkers did not have a full audience at 11 when I passed it. Part of that is probably because the set blocks the view from the two outermost sections. I really hope this show moves to a different venue in the future if Kings Island will be sticking with All Wheel Sports. The park needs more entertainment during Haunt in general, but they especially need either a new show like Hot Blooded or a show like Dead Man's Party that's proven itself at other parks. If the park doesn't want families to see the skin on display then either put up curtains around the venue or beef up the costumes to be less scant. I'd absolutely LOVE to see a new show like Fangs After Dusk come to KI in a newly-built venue.
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Losantiville Mining Co. ·
