[Haunted Attractions]/Howl-O-Scream

Well, this is a bit of a long time coming. It's been about two weeks since Carrie from Insanity Lurks Inside and myself were down in the Williamsburg area. The purpose of our trip? Not only was it our 7th anniversary but we were there to ride roller coasters and check out the myriad of haunted houses that Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion had to offer this year. Seemed like a worthwhile trip and we hadn't been in the area for a few years, so we were eager to see just what improvements had been made to Busch Gardens' Howl-O-Scream event since the last time we were there it was a bit more kid oriented overall. We were also intrigued by the idea that "nowhere was safe", neither of us expected the same level that Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights is likely to bring but it was a very encouraging sign that Busch Gardens had learned a few things since our last visit.

Admittedly the two of us are extremely hard to scare and have a combined 35 years of experience in the haunted attraction industry, everything from working them to helping with set design and make up. So, armed with cell phones for pictures, the Unlimited Quick Queue passes, and a serious adrenaline addiction we headed into the dark side of the garden to see what they had grown for this year.

Disclaimer: We didn't manage to get to every house but we did hit up all of them save for one.

Upon entering the park, it's made immediately clear that something is up with the Gardens this time of year as the entrance country of London has quite a few things gone awry with it and it only continues to grow in intensity throughout the park as you make your way. However, unlike most people, I've decided to start this tour from the back of the park. Which seems fitting since the actors for the scare zones all were staged behind the Festhaus and then would wander to their scare zones from there, scaring guests along the way. Definitely an interesting idea and it worked fairly well as there were roaming bands of creatures nearly everywhere in the park at all times. So, taking their cue, to Germany we go!

Over the course of Saturday and Sunday, we managed to do quite a bit but still missed out on one house. Chalk that up to either alcohol, tiredness or just not caring that much about clowns. (I'll give you a guess as to which it was.) However, we did managed to hit up five of the six houses and one of their shows. We did also spend a decent amount of time at the bar Open Casket, which was placed in front of the Festhaus in Germany, on Saturday night.

Please excuse the crappy photos, working with a cell camera

The idea behind Open Casket was that it was a bar run by vampires, fitting if you ask me. So the leather pants clad crew did their best to evoke the aloofness of the the genre. They were actually all quite good at it as well. Also was extremely good on Busch Gardens to steer away from any Twilight references as well, these vamps were definitely not the sparkly kind at all.

The only real issue, but to be expected, was the price of drinks. Sure if you ordered one of the martini's that they were selling you got to keep the trippy little light up glass, but for $9.50 it was a little steep. The jello shots were also priced the same but they too let you keep the giant syringe that which they came in, but again a little high. Both didn't skimp on the booze but it's still a bit of highway robbery. There is also a limit to three drinks per hour per guest as well, which I can sort of understand as people would get hammered pretty quickly otherwise. That is if the prices didn't scare them away from drinking too much to start with.

Once again, Germany seemed to be one of the major epicenters of activity. Not only due to the bar, Night Beats show, and new for this year coaster Verbolten, but also held two of the five haunted houses. Bitten and Root of all Evil, the theme for this year's event, were both within the confines of the country. Our first stop? Bitten.

Fittingly so, the entrance to Bitten was right off the Open Casket bar area. Vampires beget vampires, I suppose. Either way, once again the folks at Busch were using the old Drakenfire ride building for this haunt.

At the start of the queue line for the house there were a couple of huge caskets for people to get pictures taken in, this turned out to be a running theme for many of the houses actually. Leading up to the house we found ourselves walking under torn curtains hanging over the ramp up to the entrance. It was a nice touch and lent itself nicely to the overall atmosphere they were trying to convey. Once inside, we found ourselves in maze of Gothic themed hallways filled with all manner of the blood sucking undead, torn curtains, caskets and the biggest surprise of all, sand. Yes, sand. The last portion of the house had the entire floor covered in a thick layer of the stuff. It was extremely unexpected but a nice touch as it had many people off guard and more easily scared.

Overall, the the set design and execution of it wasn't that bad and was on par with other high end attractions that you would expect from a large production like this. The only thing that I, personally, would try and fix in a big way, was the way that actors interacted with guests. A lot of times it seemed like the never ending "conga line" was detrimental and some line pulsing could've helped, the rest of the time it seemed as if the actors in this house were just lazy, tired or both. Not all of them were but overall there could've been a great deal more done with the actors I think. It was a also a fairly low attendance night due to weather so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on not being 100% up on their game as well.

So, as I mentioned before Germany had two of the five houses and since we're still there (in a virtual sense) we'll hit up the second house offering, Root of all Evil next.

Courtesy of Busch Gardens Williamsburg

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the signage for Root of all Evil but there is a reason for this. Since we had the Quick Queue our entrances were sometimes (read: often) in places one wouldn't expect and after getting a bit lost trying to find the entrance that we were to use for this house we were led down some back of house area to get there. At the start of the house we were ushered into a room where they tried to scare us for another of those photo ops that I was talking about earlier. This time it was actually in the house and they did honestly try to scare us. Unsuccessfully, but they did try.

The premise for the attraction was a greenhouse that has gone horribly, horribly wrong and was a mix of an outdoor/indoor house with guests going through various greenhouses as well as open areas filled with maniacal gardeners, various plant monsters and statues that had come to life. Overall the layout was interesting but not the level one would expect for the flagship haunted house for the event, it seemed too low budget. Perhaps that is what they were shooting for here, but when compared to the level that many other parks go to for detail and stage design it was a bit lack luster.

Once again we found ourselves in the midst of a lackluster performance by the actors as well. Many seemed to just be going through the motions here with the exception of a few who really did try and get a scare out of us. Maybe they just caught the vibe that the two of us weren't going to scare easy or maybe it was that we were alone a lot of the time that they didn't try much, it's hard to say but the impression still lingered with me.

Upon exiting the house, we found ourselves (back where we had to enter) and near the Open Casket bar again. (and now you know why we were there so much at the start of the night!)

So, about halfway through our run of houses we had to make our way through the Alps and New France to get to the Catacombs. Dark pathways and a spider infested covered bridge awaited us, followed by even more spiders and other macabre decorations littered the pathways as well on our journey from Germany to France. The atmosphere was great and even though we both thought they went a bit overboard with the bridge in daylight hours, it was definitely in it's element once darkness fell.

Courtesy of Busch Gardens Williamsburg

Upon arriving in France, here was a house that was decked out to the nines. Traveling through the underground and legendary catacombs of Paris. Housed in Royal Palace Theater, this was definitely one of the best that Busch had to offer. The feeling that you were really underground, in a maze of tunnels beneath the city was undeniable. The actors here also were doing a bit better job at engaging the guests as well. Various ghouls and creatures were coming popping out and lurking in unexpected nooks and crannies all over the haunt.

I'm not sure why exactly but it just seemed that the production levels in every aspect was of a much higher caliber. Perhaps it was just the atmosphere or the layout that gave the actors more play with things, but overall it was easily the best house that we had been through so far during our visit.

Some of the scenery on our way to Ireland from France

Our next destination was Ireland, but to get there we had to go through a very quiet and fog filled area that is home to the animal attractions during the day. This area was littered with tombstones, fog machines and people lurking in the bushes with rattle cans and other such ways to startle passerby's. Overall it felt a bit detached from everything else, it was genuinely eerie and still compared to the rest of the park and I think the hands off approach that Busch went with really played itself to the area very well. It wasn't high intensity nor in your face, but when a scare happened did they ever get the people they were after. 



Given that this was a more quiet area, it was kind of nice to just take it all in and see the scenery that that they had put up. The foot traffic here was definitely lighter as well, which I think may have allowed for many of the actors to single people out far more easily too. Though, upon looking back at it this move was probably not only to counter act the insanity that was in Ireland and give a varied bit of atmosphere, but also due to the animals that do inhabit the area as well.

The next stop on our tour leads us to the last big expansion that Busch Gardens Williamsburg has had in recent years, Ireland. Home of a great little Irish pub as well as another show, Fiends and 13: Your Number's Up, Ireland was definitely on it's game for this event. All strung up with lights, various monsters on slabs and the scantily clad nurses of the Inoculation shot stand...the atmosphere was definitely...dare I say it...electric. Top that off with the 80's music piping through the sound system in the area and it was more of a party atmosphere than anywhere else in the park almost. Interesting to note that Carrie was quick to point out that it's the same music as they used to use down in Sea World Orlando as well.

We spent a good bit of time here as well, mainly since it was the only place in the park that you get hard cider, but also other interesting imports and seasonal beers. Germany does offer a few, but not to the same level as what Ireland has to offer. The fun atmosphere definitely had something to do with it as well.

Not wanting to stop the party, they ramped it up with their show Fiends. Which, depending on your standards, may or may not have earned the "Adult content" label. Either way, we've been invited into the Doctor's (not that Doctor) lab for an unveiling of his greatest creation yet, or at least he thinks so.

Filled with musical numbers from classic songs from mostly the 80's it's a pretty insane ride that starts off a bit dark, but then quickly shifts to the party atmosphere that we've come to expect from the area as a whole. While I won't spoil anything here's a little bit about the show, so you can get an overall feel for things. We do have video of the final 10 minutes as well, but that will come later.

The doctor and his sexy nurses, clad in the same uniforms that the ones outside of the theater were wearing, along with a pretty loveable Igor character and even some surprise classic monster guests take us on this wild journey, leading up the climax that is the birth of a new creation. If there are any Rocky Horror Picture Show tones here, they didn't try to hide that at all. While filled with cliche's and pop culture references, they manage to pull it off in a creative way that doesn't make it groan worthy in the least. Sure it was campy, but sometimes you just need that.

In a few parts of the show they even had actors wandering the crowd, getting scares out of them while doing their bits of the performance. While, this is no Bill & Ted's Show, it was definitely something that people should check out while at the park as it was a welcome 45min or so distraction from the rest of the event and executed extremely well.

As I mentioned before, Ireland was also home to 13: Your Number's Up. This house had a huge line and we were really glad to have the Quick Queue passes for this one. Even in the quick line they had numbers on the wall with different phobias. What could this possibly mean? It definitely was an intriguing and thought provoking thing to run into while waiting and had us, along with the other in front of us, wondering just what it all meant.

After a short wait, we were ushered through a black curtain that kept us separate from the other guests who had been waiting in that long line and instantly found ourselves confronted with a room that had a large #1 on a sign. Ah ha! Mystery solved, we found out that each section of the maze corresponded to one of the phobias that had been listed earlier! Definitely a nice little touch and more cerebral than what most try to do with things. That said, you can definitely assume that consistency was completely tossed out of the window with this house and threw everything they could at you. Inflated walls that you had to push through, the illusion of walking over a chasm on a narrow piece of wood, dentists, you name it...it was in there. 

The ending was a bit anti-climatic but they didn't skimp on the effect that they were trying to convey either. Once out of the house you found yourself right next to the pub, the Inoculation girls and back into the crazy, fiendish party atmosphere that had engulfed all of Ireland.

So, with us leaving Ireland and heading over towards Italy we found ourselves walking through paths that had hundreds upon hundreds of pumpkins dangling over head in Scotland. There weren't any scare zones here but that's not too surprising since this is where you enter the main part of the park from the entrance country, England. Regardless, it was an interesting area and it did put people in the mindset that this was most definitely a Halloween event. I mean, with that many pumpkins hanging over head it would be hard not to realize, right? That is if they missed the dressings put on England on the way in...which would require them to be blind or just stupid.

The reason for our little journey through this part of the park? To get ourselves back over towards Italy which was also home to two houses, though the distances between them almost puts them in separate countries. Part of this has to do with where they've placed Escape from Pompeii in relation to the rest of the Italy and the other due to the sprawling nature of Italy in the park as well. The first house that you run across is Dead Line.

As always, the underbelly of Escape from Pompeii is home to a house. It's a great setting to place one of these and the theme always has something to do with archeology or some other subterranean project. This year? A subway line has been overrun with a toxic gas. Yep, that's never a good thing. For this one there was almost no line at all...for anyone. Which to us seemed kind of odd, but it was getting close to the end of the night so many were probably getting in last rides on Apollo's Chariot or some other coaster in the park.


As expected it took on a construction site type of atmosphere but this time it was in the belly of a mass transit system that has been overrun with dead bodies, mutated humans and zombies. Everyone loves a good zombie, right? One of the most interesting bits to the whole house was the fact that they built a very good replica of a subway car that you had to walk through. Filled with dead bodies that had been exposed to the noxious gasses and a few actors that were, admittedly, hard to pick out from the static props. In the rest of the maze, everywhere you turned was filled with mechanical horrors. And as in years past, the job done in the bowels of Pompeii didn't disappoint in the least. The only caveat to the whole thing was that some of the actors seemed a bit off their game, but it was late in the evening and our group small, so the effort may not have felt worth it. Overall though, it was well well done.

Interestingly enough, Dead Line had more theming going for it as well compared to the other haunts. There were TV's outside broadcasting news reports of the incident along with a metric shit ton of props laying about everywhere, including some pretty comical signs warning of what was lying in wait. Why the rest of the houses didn't have this much attention is still a mystery to me but it is something that they should definitely consider when planning for next year's event. It really does add a lot to the general feel and atmosphere of what you're about to enter into. Not to mention it builds up anticipation amongst those waiting in lines for long periods of time, gives them something to look at as well.

The one house that we didn't get to was Fear Fair, but it was clowns and we didn't really care that much about them. Why? In our eyes they've been overdone and only two places that have had them over the years have ever really done them right (Kennywood's Phantom Fright Nights and Halloween Horror Nights). So we opted to skip it and did a few late runs on Apollo's Chariot, including getting in on the last ride of the night, which was worth it (On Saturday night we did ride throughs on Alpengeist to close the night out which was great as well)

Overall, the experience was definitely an improvement over the last time that we had been to Busch Gardens for their Howl-O-Scream event. They still have a ways to go if they want to compete with the big guns like Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights, but they are improving and for their 14th year at it the signs are undeniably in their favor. They have the money, the sets are extremely well done inside the houses but the actors need a bit more direction in a few areas. I know that's not always the easiest thing to do when you're dealing with a lot of teenagers/college age kids but coming from experience you should give 110% to everyone. There were too many instances where many actors just didn't care at all it seemed and that's just not right given the level of detail that's been put into this event. Granted in the same vein, the park really should get it together with the house that is going to be their flagship. It was a bit lack luster compared to others out there and if it's the theme for the whole show, go the extra mile with it and really wow the crowd. The theming in the rest of the park is great and bad acting shouldn't take away from that in the least.

Another thing they should consider is staying open later, closing down at 11pm on Friday and Saturday is just not long enough given the number of houses and other attractions open during this time. There really is no way to do it all in one night if the lines are long and that's a problem, closing at midnight or 1am is probably the key to having a much more successful event and allowing for people to get to everything, or at least attempt it.

So, is it worth it? Of course it is! Not only do you get all of the rides and attractions in the park but after 6pm you get to experience all of the houses and scare zones that they have to offer as well. Considering that the price tag is only about $65 a person and includes every single day in the month of October? It's a no brainer and everyone will come out with an experience that's worthy of talking about to friends, or not if they got scared senseless by some of the more amazing actors.

If you do end up going, plan to do at least two days that way you can make sure to get everything done and just take your time, that was our strategy and over the course of Saturday and Sunday were easily able to get everything we wanted in an extremely leisurely way. Also, the deal they have for their Howl-O-Scream souvenir cups is amazing, about $11 and you get free refills on soda for the entire month as well! Combine that with the $65 for the month and you've got some serious value from one of the best theme parks in the country.

While, we're not sure if we'll make it back for next year's event we'll be trying. As for other Halloween events? Stay tuned, my review of The Haunt at King's Dominion will be coming shortly as well as the write up from our trip to Kennywood's Phantom Phright Nights which we're attending tomorrow night (October 13th).