5433 W 88th Avenue, Westminster, CO
http://www.twistedfairytaleshaunt.com/
This was another first year haunt, and was put on by another portion of the old Scream Park team. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out nearly as well as City of the Dead, although a large part of that may have been a matter of circumstances – it’s a mall haunt, which is pretty limiting, and apparently came together in a very short period of time. The result has some nice touches, but is far too short overall, is way too sparsely decorated, and doesn’t have enough activity. I think it also suffers from the break into two haunts – you go into the space through Twisted Fairy Tales, stop to get some 3-D glasses from an employee, then go back out through Your Worst Nightmare. The break in the middle is a definite mood killer, and makes the whole thing feel shorter than it really is. Even if it meant ditching the theme, I think one longer haunt would have been more satisfying. The actors also didn’t seem to be as well-trained or enthusiastic as I would have liked. They mostly stood in their positions, waited for us to pass, then shouted out a scripted line or two. One of them, after bumping my leg with a prop, even stopped to apologize. I appreciate the sentiment, but it certainly wasn’t scary.As for the nice touches I mentioned earlier, I feel I should point some of them out. The haunt started with a long, twisty black tunnel that was so dark you had to feel your way through. I liked this, as it acted a sort of sensory palette cleanser, and helped mitigate some of the effects of being in a mall. The giant spider was good. There was a white rat-bear-something creature in the sheet room that was a little unnerving. And the final gag (I won’t say what it was) is fairly clever and startling.
The fairy tale theme was interesting and has a lot of potential. I was really looking forward to seeing what they could do with it. Unfortunately, the answer turned out to be "not much."
3/10
No comments:
Post a Comment