Kings Island Halloween Haunt 2011 Review

Kings Island Halloween Haunt: Mason, OH

Holiday Horror:

This is one of the two new haunts this year at Kings Island and was surprisingly good for a first year haunt. The rooms all kept with the holiday horror theme and were well populated with actors and grisly holiday themed scenes complete with a “rabid Easter Bunny” and a “Bad Santa”. The individual scenes were well decorated and the actors were very convincing. The only fault I could find with this haunt was it was maybe a little too well lit to really bring the fear factor into the visitor. Dim the lights and bring up the scare factor and this could be a Frightmaster contender! Watch for the Thanksgiving room – it is hilarious!

Rating: 9.5 – Excellent

Mysteria:

This is the second of the new haunts this year at Kings Island and, in our opinion, was a total miss with both theme and scare factor. This is basically a chain link maze that is populated by actors in weird beige spandex body suits. It is too well lit, the actors are not scary or threatening. Some of them looked like they really didn’t know how to act when people walked through. I really didn’t know how to act either since it wasn’t scary, funny or interesting. This was a miss for me.

Rating: 2.5 – Poor

Slaughter House:

This haunt is definitely not for the squeamish! Blood is counted by the gallons and body parts are numbered in the hundreds. The creepy characters within the rooms keep you moving along with a scream or just a grunt, all the while banging on pans, tables, limbs, whatever else they can get their bloody hands on. Well done haunt, if not a bit over the top with the excessive noise, still worth checking out.

Rating: 10 – Excellent

Urgent Scare:

This was another “heavy on the gore” haunt that remains pretty much the same year after year. The hospital setting theme is well played with nurses and doctors directing “patients” through the winding, dimly lit corridors. The actors were very believable but the rooms became a bit too repetitive after awhile. This is a good haunt but needs a little changing up with a few more dark areas to build the suspense. Not bad, though, and the animatronics were great!

Rating: 9 – Excellent

Club Blood:

Club Blood is like a vampires’ fantasy. The actors are very convincing and are having fun at the same time. This is a haunt where you are scared but laughing at the overall scenes. Great costumes, fun dancers, good all around haunt! Very well laid out. As you progress through your night of partying it gets more and more intense. Definitely check it out!

Rating: 10 – Excellent

Massacre Manor:

This was one of our favorite haunts of the night because of the old style haunted house theme. You enter the first room and the “real estate salesman” explains that the house has just gone up on the market and has a bloody secret. You see a cute picture of a happy, smiling girl on the wall. As you progress through the winding halls, the pictures of the girl get increasingly more malevolent and threatening and at the end, you are surprised by the girl herself. I thought the haunt was superior in many ways to the rest of the haunts at Kings Island because they didn’t use buckets of blood and body parts to build a scream filled walk through. The only improvement I would make is after the terror built to the ending climax, the last room with the girl was a bit weak and needed something more, such as maybe if the girl had a chainsaw and chased people out with it. She mostly just stood there, I think she may have had a knife or something, but it wasn’t very effective as a final “gotcha”. This again could be improved to make it a Frightmaster contender.

Rating: 10 – Excellent

CarnEvil:

This is one of the better carnival in 3-D themed haunts that I’ve seen. Starting with the realistic-looking (does this guy do this in real life??) ringmasters who meets you at the door and explains the rules. This guy is a great actor and really knows how to give you the creeps before you even enter the haunt. The rooms are fun house style rooms with some jump out scares and hidden gotchas. The addition of the bubbles was fun but got a bit slippery as you walked through. This would be a more PG rated haunt maybe for the tweens in your group. Fun but not too scary. Good actors, good decorations. Nice haunt.

Rating: 10 – Excellent

Overall rating: 10 – Excellent

Visit their web site at haunt.visitkingsisland.com