Even if we're underground you know that we'll be safe and sound

Haunted house season!  My freaking favorite.  :)

Anyway, my brother had a truly boss idea and I think we are going to do it one night, we are all going to go down on a friday night to columbus and get a hotel and hit a bunch of haunted houses one night and the next day go to the columbus zoo.  Ry and the kids are going to come down and (not enjoy the haunted houses) go to the zoo with us. FUN!!!

Here's a bunch of ideas that I'm posting here so I don't forget.  I will make the schedule soon.

Near Columbus:
Haunted Hoochie 
The Creep 
The Haunted Farm
House of Pain
Wells Twp Haunted House

East:
Canfield Haunted House and Corn Maze
Forsaken

West:
Lake Erie Fear Fest

South:
Factory of Terror
Mansfield Reformatory

Find more?  Add them to the comments section!

So I'm changing my lines and going into it blind

Hello.  Long time no talk.  It's so hard to find a few minutes to myself in which I can spend doing something that isn't personal or household hygiene related.  It's been a hard transition back to work for me and the kids, too.  So, frowny face on that.  I think Asher held the award for the most accidents in one week at school last week.  Four in one day.  I was sooooo mad at his school last week, too.  I'm not going to get into it right now, let's just say there was a complete breakdown of communication and it ended up in one really pissed off mom and an angry phone message for his teacher.  I'm waiting to hear back.  Maybe if I get a chance I'll write about it after I hear from her.

Gotta love City holidays, I got Asher off to school (you should have seen him go in, Ry told me about it because I had to drop off Seiry at Granny's house and then drop my car off for service), all hunch backed and glum.  Ry said if there was a can to kick he would have done it.  I have no idea why he's having such a hard time...he tells us he loves school but then when we take him he's all whiny.  We are planning on playing Borderlands today for more than an hour at a time, it's gonna be crumpets.  Cause crumpets are CRUNK!!!

By the way, terrible twos is totally an incorrect misnomer.  It's the "wish you could bypass the whiny misery" threes.  For real.

For those of you who don't want to know this, tough luck.  I had my first encounter with mastitis and it was freaking awesome. And by awesome I mean it felt like someone had used my breast as a punching bag for hours and when I nursed it felt like I nursed hot lava.  As if there is some other type of lava.  I mean, I was kind of quoting the Chapelle Show but still, hot lava?  I mean, cold lava is just igneous rocks, right?

My mom is getting married the first weekend of next month.  It's all been kinda whirlwind.  I got my dress yesterday. Seiry had a total meltdown in the dress shop and we hadn't even been there for 20 minutes.  I had to call Ry to come help.  And of course the minute he gets there she is totally cool.  I don't get it but it had me frazzled the rest of the time.  I did get a really beautiful dress for $99 though so that was cool.

I'm taking my water II license test next month, too.  And I haven't even begun to study for it. I'm going to try really hard to study for it this week but my calendar at work fills up so fast it should be in NASCAR.

And the first two haunted houses this year were both pretty good.  The first week we went to Spooky Rocking Ranch in Columbia Station which was fun and had some pretty great puppetry (also, if you go, play the "how many rocking ladies can you spot" game.  It's pretty boss).  Over the weekend we used our groupon for the Hinkley Cornstalkers, which was good again this year.  That one is pretty worth it, especially when you get the groupon.  Good times.

Thinking about taking Asher to the "shoot zombies" hayride thingy this weekend....he's pretty keen to go. Anyway, time for Borderlands...

Haunted house schedule....whooo scary ghost!

Yes!  It's time!  I already bought a groupon for haunted houses.  I love this time of year.  We will be starting Friday Sept 28th.

Here's some tentative travel nights, no particular order..

Night 1
Rockin R Ranch Spooky Ranch, Columbia Station.  $20 for 4 houses and a haunted hay ride.
Hinkley Cornstalkers haunted corn maze.  $10 with groupon discount.

Night 2
Fairvew Graveyard, Fairview Park.  $8 for one.
Hudson Haunted House $13.

Night 3
Haunted forest of carousel, Sheffield.  $13.

Night 4
Haunted orchard, wooster.  $15.
Nightmare in the wilderness, lodi. $15

Night 5 will be Pennsylvania...

I also started a google map with all the locations on the map, check it out, yo!  Also, if you have any suggestions or want to change anything make a suggestion.  Thanks!  This year is going to rock!

Forsaken, Last Cleveland area haunted house review for 2011

Oh, I am sad.  Another fun season of haunted houses is over with.  But, it was a good one.  Lots of good houses and fun with friends. 

And they took our photo for free!

This week we went to Forsaken in Mentor.  And we had coupons again! Talk about a discounted halloween, I think we had coupons for like half of the houses we went to this year.  Score.  Anyway...

This one was really good.  For a first year haunted house, they have really dumped a lot of money in this one.  It's all indoors (even the waiting in line, except for the buying of tickets) and the atmosphere is super awesome from the first step into the houses.  It boasts a larger size than it should, saying it's got 30000 sq ft of scariness, but they are counting the big open courtyard where you can mill about, buy snacks or wait in line.  It was nice, that at this house you could choose which order you wanted to go into the houses.  I think this really helped the flow of people through the houses, instead of corralling people like the herd of cattle to slaughter that they are.  We barely had to wait in line at all.

Also, there were lots of actors working and they were all pretty good.  The props and decorations were high class, I don't think we saw a production value this high in any other house (though the factory of terror was a close second to atmosphere). 

This isn't my favorite of the season but I think we all agreed it was the best house we went to this season, except maybe for Conneaut Lake Park.  But that was so far away it lost some points from the crew. 

This is a house I hope sticks around, we will be coming again next year!

Forsaken gets 9 out of 10 headless statues.

Factory of Terror, Canton Ohio, Cleveland Haunted House reviews, week 4

This week we went to Factory of Terror, Guinness Book of World Records holder for longest Haunted House in the WORLD!!!!  Yeah...

We went here last year, too, and it had been heard that it was rearranged this year so that they could continue to hold the longest title.  It was rearranged in some places, but it was mostly the same as last year.  The areas where it was rearranged were not beneficial to the haunted house, it just made it seem...tedious.  Like the area with the chain link fence.  If you've been here, you know what I'm talking about.  Just tedious. 

Overall, though, this house is pretty good.  It's def one to visit, though I heard that Saturdays hold an impossibly long wait time.  We go on Fridays and we only waited for a little bit. 

So, what's good about it?  Well, it is long, and that can be good.  It has really good atmosphere (as long as you don't have dumb girls behind or in front of you) and the props are really good.  I think they depend on hydraulics a bit too much but, as my brother said, if they had the staff to work the house they could use that as a good distraction for a good scare.  That brings up my main beef with this house.  It was pretty understaffed when we went.  There were some parts where you just walked around and...nothing.  There was no one there.  But, the actors that were there were pretty good.  They have these two huge guys who work there...well, they are freaking huge.  And creepy.  And did I mention huge?  Also, Satan is my favorite actor in the house.  These actors, they have character.  It's pretty cool.

Other good stuff about it?  There was a pre-house before you even made it to the actual line for the haunted house.  Pretty awesome.  And the mirror maze.  It really is pretty kick ass.  The mirror maze was actually better this year than it was last year. 

So, other than some parts of tediousness and the lack of actors, this is a solid house worth visiting.  Make sure you get the $2 off coupon for max discountage and go on a Friday or Sunday night to avoid the lines. 

Factory of Terror gets 7 out of 10 industrial disembowelments. 

Next week is the last week, which is kind of sad.  We are either going to Forsaken, in Mentor, or we might entertain going to Clay's Park, probably forsaken, though...

Haunted Houses week 3, Ghost Lake at Conneaut Lake Park

We went to Ghost Lake at Conneaut Lake Park this week.  What a drive.  I was under the impression that it was near Conneaut, Ohio.  Which, if I had just looked at a map I would have realized that this was a false interpretation of it's proximal location.  It's not really close to Conneaut, Ohio.  It's much closer to Conneaut Lake, PA.  Meaning that it's in Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania.  Either way, after our 1 hour and 45 minute drive into the middle of nowhere PA, we get there and park in the largest mud pit in which you might have the pleasure to park your vehicle.  I was gonnna drive this week, and it's probably a good thing I didn't cause I think the mud would have sucked my car into it's dark depths, but I had a flat tire.

My aunt gave us coupons, so that was rock on awesome.  The park boasts 9 haunted houses which take you more than 1.5 hours to complete, if you dare...  We dared.  So we pay and enter and...walk around without much idea of where we are going.  I kind of thought that the park would be operating rides, since it's an amusement park.  I guess I kind of figured it'd be like it was when we went to Geauga Lake when it was still around, you know, amusement park is operating and haunted houses are going.  No biggie, honestly, I was just saying. And apparently there was some type of fall festival going on in the daytime, all the tents were up and covered from the rain in the main concourse. 

We walk around kind of aimlessly for a few until we see a booth selling tickets to the dodgem cars turned into Karney horror freak show ($2 extra) and ask and she points us in the right direction.  Which we might not have found otherwise, because as we walked in the indicated direction, we were kind of leaving the park.  Or so it seemed.  As we walked by the Kiddie Park (which they really missed out on the scare factor, the giant bulbous clown head mounted above kiddie park is purely the stuff horror movies dream of recreating) we were slowly entering into a residential block.  And then, there it was, the first condemned building, I mean the first house.  I think I was more afraid I would fall through the floor or down the steps or off the bannister than of anything else in the house.  My fears of tetanus and caving floors would become a common theme throughout the night.  Since I didn't actually fall through the floor or get tetanus (that I know of, I did get splinter), it was good for the pump of adrenaline. 

We finished the first house and it was pretty fun. Found out really quickly that Pennsylvania haunted houses are very touchy-feely.  I got grabbed, touched, chainsawed, punched in the head (accidentally?) once and generally haunted house groped.  It was cool with me, it makes things creepier and fun.  Hopefully no one tries to punch out an actor, though, I think there's a reason that they don't allow that kind of stuff in haunted houses...Needless, to say, that shit wouldn't fly in Cleveland.  But, I liked it.  I think it's fun.  We dump out on the same street and...follow the block, passing houses where people are living, a Halloween/fall bonfire in the back yard of one, some guy sitting in his patio, people watching TV.  It really felt like we were trick or treating, which made the whole thing kind of surreal in a way. 

It was a nice change of pace from the normal haunted house recipe that seems to be commonly followed.  We proceeded to go into Conneaut Hotel, under the beach house/boardwalk, into another condemned house, a maze in a barn made of hay, into an arcade and a storehouse.  All the houses were inside, which was nice, since it was raining off and on, so we only had to be in the rain while waiting in line or walking to the next house. 

The last "house" was just riding the blue streak "ghouler" coaster in the dark.  Which was pretty awesome.  I really like riding a new roller coaster for the first time in the dark, you don't know what's coming and it makes it even more awesome.  Also, I am a sucker for wooden roller coasters, maybe it's my nostalgia from the Big Dipper.  I don't know.  Either way...it was awesome. 

I really liked this house, even though it was really far away from our base of operations.  The whole night (all 9 haunted houses) cost only $20.00, if you find the coupon, available at Arbys in the Youngstown market, you get 2 bucks off.  It was an awesome deal. 

I give this house 8.5 out of 10 crazy chainsaw guys.

I'm giving it such a high score because of the 'trick or treat' feel it had, the value, and the overall charisma of the place and the actors.  I'm not saying the actors were great, but some of them were, and most all of them were having fun.  You can tell these things.  And it makes a difference.

Cleveland area haunted house reviews, week 2

We only went to one house this weekend, Cornstalkers in Hinckley.  We got a Groupon for buy four passes for $8 each, which is the only reason we went to this one (honestly I hadn't heard of it before and it didn't come up on my searches when I was looking...).  Which ended up being an awesome deal, because admission was $20.00 a person normally. 

Anyway, I definitely recommend this one.  Even if you are paying full price (suckers...).  It was the longest house we have been to so far this year, it took us an hour and some change to get through all three parts.  It's all outdoors, so keep that in mind if you do go.  We had a perfectly beautiful night for it, too, in the lower 60s. 

What made this house good without details that ruin it? Hmm...well, it was long and interesting.  That's always a plus.  And some how they got their corn impossibly tall.  I swear it was 10 feet tall.  Genetic engineering nowadays.... but it was nice because corn haunted houses where you can see over the corn are kind of lame, no offense.  The props and created scenery were a little lacking, but this house is all about ambiance and actors.  We had some pretty good actors, even though they were few and far between. It wasn't that busy so they were able to double back on us and get us repeatedly, but if it were busier they might have been spread too thin. 

Sometimes not having a lot of theatrical props and hydraulically operated monsters in a house is old school and fun.  Ambiance means a lot in a house and sometimes bigger haunted houses rely too much on gizmos and rubber masks and not enough on the basics.  I'm not saying this is the scariest haunted house I've ever been to, but it has the basics down, which is refreshing. And it was fun.  The actors had fun, we had fun, it was a good time.  Could they make improvements?  Definitely.  But were they a decent and sound haunted house which provides a good time that lasts longer than 15 minutes?  By far. 

My score for the Hinckley Cornstalkers Haunted House:  7 out of 10 legless zombie girls.

Cleveland Area haunted houses week 1 review

So, this past Friday we went to North Olmsted's Fear Experience and Elyria's Hauntville (in that order).  Originally we were going to go to North Olmsted and Hinckley but the Hinckley house is all outdoors and we are currently in our fall monsoon season so it was closed due to weather.  So, here is my personal review and opinion of the houses. 

The Fear Experience, Haunting a strip mall near you...

We had a groupon for this and got VIP tickets for the same price as regular tickets so we could have gone through the houses again for free as many times as we wanted (all except for martin who had to buy a regular ticket) and we wouldn't have to wait in line.  That would have been good later, but this early in the season we didn't have to wait in line anyway.  Oh well.  Still, it would have been nice.  This groupon we had to buy for a specific day and they were only offering them for the first few weekends anyway, so they had our number.  Honestly, we weren't even gonna go here, it was the groupon that saved us when Hinckley fell through. 

They also tried to upsell us on this ride where they put you in a hydraulic coffin and shake it around like you are being buried alive.  I passed on that, too.  Not a fan of being put in a box and shaken around. 

These houses were pretty good.  Nothing amazing but they weren't disappointing, either. The actors were okay, the makeup was good, the effects were normal haunted house fare.  I mean, nothing jumped out at me and said, hey, this is super duper cool or scary.  So, nothing left a major impression.  They were fun and amusing and that's all one can really ask for from a haunted house in a strip mall.  I mean, the ambiance is lost a little when the whole second house smells a little like the Chinese restaurant next door.

My overall score: 6 out of 10 mallrats.

Hauntville, stripmall spooks second set....

So, this one was a little harder to find, since the sign was small, unlit and located out in front of a strip mall just like it was a "vote for Hauntville for mayor" sign in the grass.  Lucky for us there was also a giant searchlight above it or we probably would have driven past it again the second time. 

Surprise!  This one is also in a strip mall, conveniently located next to Halloween City, just in case you needed to go get some fake blood to look adequately mangled after your housing experience. 
This was supposed to be three haunted houses but really it was just one house with three separate themes located inside.  We always had a guide show up at the entrance to the next area to tell us we were entering the next area.  The beginning of cell block 13 was interesting but then after the beginning it was all kind of just black hallways and a few rooms, and even fewer actors.  The second one, psycho manor, had a little more decorations and actors happening and the third "house" (if you can call it it's own house...) the dark abyss was kind of swampy but nothing spectacular.  I will tell you, I've been through the vagina tunnel (if you are a haunted house you know what I mean...it has nothing to do with an actual vagina nor does it look like one), they surprised me a bit with this one.  That's all I'm going to say about it. 

The website and the banner at the location claim this is "Ohio's Scariest Haunted House!!!" I politely disagree.  It wasn't bad, it was kind of understaffed and a little dull in spots but it was pretty average for a haunted house.  I had fun but I wasn't convinced on the "Scariest Haunted House" part of the self proclaimed review. 

My review: 6.5 out of 10 vials of fake blood at 20% off retail value.

These houses weren't great but they set a good start for the Halloween season.  I'll see you back again next week with our first Pittsburgh reviews. 

2011 Haunted House List

Calm down, I know you've been waiting for this all year...

Friday Sept 30th: 
Hinckley CornStalker's Maze.  (I bought a groupon for this so the first two people to tell me they are coming this night can get tickets for $8)
Hauntville, Elyria.  This one has an online coupon that I haven't investigated yet. 

Total cost for sept 30th (without discounts) is $35.00

Friday Oct 7th: *****This is a Pittsburg travel date******
Castle Blood.  This one is cool, if you buy the more expensive package you get a hotdog, beverage and tshirt! 
Demon House (formerly massacre on the hill). 

Total cost for both: $32 for regular, $50 for VIP at both. 

Friday Oct 14th: ******This is a Pittsburg travel date********
The Scarehouse. If we buy our tix ahead of time we go straight to the express line without paying VIP pricing...
100 Acres Manor.  This one has all sorts of pricing options, might be beneficial to see how long the line is and pay the extra 9 bucks to not wait in it...

price for both, general admission: $34, $43 for VIP

Friday Oct 21: 
Factory of Terror, Canton
Stalker Corn Maze, Bolivar.  Mike told me this one was open again this year but I can't find a website or any info on it, so it's tentative.  Looking for a replacement for this one just in case. 

Friday Oct 28th:
Options......Either we go to Columbus and hit up House of Nightmares and Terror Park, neither of which seem to be active websites...so there is that... or we can do these ones;
Forsaken (Mentor)
Barber Haunt

price for both, general admission: $35, $45 for VIP. 

There it is, folks.  I'm super pumped.  The dates are flexible except for the Barberhaunt doesn't open until Oct 7th so we wouldn't be able to move it to the first date.  Let me know when you are coming!  Invite your friends!  The more the merrier!