Please note: this review is for the 2006 season rather than the current season.

Wisconsin Feargrounds

by louiscyphre after attending on Saturday, October 14, 2006 at about 5:30 p.m.

Fun Factor: Very High Fear Factor: High

Review

Signage / Visibility / Location

Very easy to find from I-94, in the Waukesha Expo Grounds, plenty of parking.

Wait Area / Line Entertainment

There's a little trailer selling treats and stuff, lots of area to mill about in. Waiting area proper is a series of cattle runners in a covered barn building. Basic ghouls in the waiting area, chainsaws, etc. When you finally get ready to enter the house, entrance looks great, though.

Most Unique

The Venture-Bros-looking floating giant skull which appears to be projected on the wall, or is it floating in the middle of the room, or is it right in front of you? And they seriously have the coolest changing portraits I have ever seen sprinkled through some of the more "haunted mansion"-y rooms.

Actors' Performance

Acting was uniformly Spectacular with a Sweet capital "S" inside the house; this is a serious haunt with serious ghouls, actors look great, are convincing, spooky, and game for interaction -- kudos to the eye-rolling little girl in the nursery, the kids behind the portraits, and the bunch of spooks in the coffin room. They also did a good job of paying attention to what you were doing and playing off that ("You think this is funny? This is not funny."), and saved up some scares for those in the middle or end of the group, as opposed to letting the people in the front of the line have all the surprises.

Appropriate For

Probably skews a little older, the disorientation of many rooms could get pretty intense. I did feel like there wasn't as much boring gore as in a typical haunt, though.

Summary

Someone clearly spent a great deal of money on this haunt, and it shows; very slick and professional-looking with high attention to detail in many scenes, while also not appearing soul-less or just there to grind its audience through as fast as possible. I and my companions had the impression that there were many details we likely missed due to not being able to take it all in at once. Great misdirection, some nice foreshadowing of ghouls/scares to come, some unification of theme running through the haunt (various rooms in a mansion, basement, crypt, mausoleum, etc), lots of disorientation with fog machines, well-placed strobes, etc, sometimes too much, actually. Also felt like you got many more actual scenes, versus dark maze time, than a usual haunt. Liked the smelly little homage to the "sloth" scene from "Se7en," too. Overall a terrific haunted house, acting, details, presentation, and scare factor very impressive.

HOT TIP: When you reach what appears to be the end, you will see two "Exit" signs separated by a short hallway; it appeared that if you went through them, you actually exited the haunt, but if you skip them and move down the hallway, there are a couple more spaces to experience before you find yourself exiting the haunt for good.

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May 3rd, 2024 2:44 p.m. CDT 24.07