Haunt Trip Report 9/30 to 10/2

[MagnumFan]

Most of our fall weekends are spent at our home park, CP, but the wife and I like to ditch the kids once a year (they are still young) and come down for a KI Haunt weekend. Here's my report:

Friday we rolled into town around 4PM and hit Buffalo Wild Wings happy hour. Over to the park when it opened, and decided to try to do most of the haunted attractions Friday, with the anticipation of purchasing a Fast Lane pass for Saturday and riding all that stuff during the day. We started with my favorite, Club Blood, which was less-than-impressive at the opening. The dancer cages were empty, and some of the other spots were un-manned. Then Wolf pack (since we were already there) which was better than last year also. Urgent scare seemed about the same overall (in terms of our overall impression). Massacre Manor seemed worse than last year. We did not do many of the outdoor walk-throughs on Friday. To be honest, at this point we had had too much to drink (even at $15.31 for every two beers). Money goes fast when you do this. We ended up doing most of the indoor haunts at least twice, except Carnevil which we completely forgot about on Friday. Lines were generally quite short, I think the longest we waited was 10 minutes for Massacre Manor, which has an unusually slow moving que line.

Saturday we intended to be at the park for early entry, but our bodies had other ideas. We didn't roll in until 1PM and were surprised to find it less busy than Saturdays in the past. Because we felt less than 100% we did not purchase the Fast Lane passes. We figured we would be able to ride more stuff on Sunday morning, and boy were we right!

Saturday evening we focused on hitting all the outdoor Haunt stuff. Tombstone Terror-Tory was probably our longest wait of the trip at 1 hour. Urgent Scare was about 40 minutes, unless you went in the left lane which was only about 10 minutes. Seriously, how do people not figure this one out? Though I do have to admit, the left lane looks like it could be a Fright Lane, but it's not.

We finished out the night with more indoor Haunted houses and left the park at closing.

Sunday was my best day at the park EVER from a rides perspective. From 10:40 until 1:30 when we left, we rode nearly every single ride in the park, some multiple times. Check out this ride count for less than three hours:

Diamondback -5

Beast - 1

Crypt -1

Firehawk - 2!!!

FOF- 2

Drop Tower - 1

Invertigo - 1

Vortex - 1

WindSeeker -1

Racer - 1

Delirium - 1

Back Lot - 1

and I'm sure I'm forgetting something....

We could have done a lot more, but were taking our time. It was one of those magical days where the weather was perfect, and it seemed like every ride we walked up to was not only no wait, but literally walk-on. DT, Delirium, and many others we walked in, sat down, and the ride was just ready to start. Amazing. Likely never to be repeated.

Some final observations on Haunt stuff... I went through many of the houses multiple times on different days, and have noticed some patterns. First, the houses are not great when the park first opens. They aren't "in-the-game" yet and sometimes not fully staffed. Likewise, at the end of the night, they are just going through the motions, seemingly counting the minutes until they can go home. Who can blame them? They are open for 8 hours on Saturday (5PM-1AM) and that's a long time, especially for those in uncomfortable positions, like the girl in Club Blood who is bent over the gurney, chewing on the ankle of the dead body. That looks really uncomfortable, yet she always delivered a great scare!

So my wife and I are torn -- do we wait maximum wait times during the middle of the evening (say, 9-10PM) for the best chance at a good performance? Or do we go earlier or later, when the performances tend to suffer but the wait times are MUCH shorter?

Lastly, I think that reviews of the Haunted stuff should be taken with a grain of salt most of the time. One time through an attraction is usually not sufficient data to draw a meaningful conclusion of the overall quality of a house or walk-through. So much depends on the time of day, your place within in the group, etc. Except for Mysteria, which was terrible, no matter how you slice it. Unless you are scared of the color green.

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