Tuesday, October 9, 2012

2012 Jason's Woods Review

Jason’s Woods... not bad... not good. 

We left the house on Friday, 10/05/12 at 4:45PM and hit mega traffic. Google Maps was soooo right about 422 to 222. Too bad we didn’t listen. We hit a few Wawa’s along the way for coupons and finally found them in Lancaster. Yay $5.00 off! We had planned to grab dinner at Fuddruckers but alas it is out of business so we settled for Sonic under the stars. It was a beautiful balmy evening so it worked out in the end. We got to Jason’s woods around
8-ish and were happy to see a moderately filled parking lot. There were a few concessions, a band, some roaming monsters and zero lines. The spooky girl by the ticket booth was a nice touch. 5 Show Grand Slam was $40.00 ($45.00 less our $5.00 Wawa coupons).

Theater
The first attraction you’re sent to is one of the “bonus/ freebies” called the Theater. It’s basically a huge blow up frontage that looks like an old movie theater. It butts up against some scaffolding and a tent. Inside there were movie monsters, movie posters, props, a balcony and a big screen. A costumed guy comes out and basically makes corny jokes and then directs you to watch the movie which is back story for the rest of the attractions. Since everyone talks through the movie and there are monsters roaming around distracting you… uh… I mean trying to scare you…. you end up missing the details. It doesn’t matter though… the haunt is standard fare. Oh… kudos to Beetlejuce… we asked for the “nice fucking model” line from the movie and he delivered although he did forget the “honk, honk”. Haha. Oh… and shout out to the Haunt Rater guys.
www.haunt-rater.com bitches!! We saw them in this attraction and then ran into them a bunch throughout the rest of the night. The were super cool.

Mystery Maze
The next attraction you’re shepherded to is also a “bonus/ freebie” called the Maze. It’s basically a wooden maze that is completely dark and on our night was somewhat muddy. The gist is Freddy, Jason and tons of dead ends. About ½ way through we realized that the Nightmare On Elm Street rhyme was split up and written on the walls. If you follow it you get out. If you don’t, don’t know it or don’t see it then you better buddy up to Jason or Freddy or you’re gonna be in there for a while. Anyway by following the rhyme and… hate to admit it but with a little help from Jason Voorhees… we were finally out. Overall I kind of liked this attraction. Especially since it’s free.

Hayride
The next attraction was the hayride and I wasn’t impressed as usual. I will say that Jason’s does it right by not putting anyone in the middle of the wagons but otherwise blah. Seems like there were maybe 3 actors in the whole thing and honestly the set pieces were whatever. Oh well. Oops… almost forgot… I have never seen so many fire blasts in a hayride as I did in this one. Maybe they got a good deal on natural gas?

Lost In The Woods
This attraction is pretty self explanatory… it’s a walk through Jason’s Woods. The trail intertwines around the hayride route and overall I liked this attraction. I guess I liked it the best now that I think about it. It was dark, a little spooky and the trail was a bit treacherous. I don’t remember there being many props or actors but it felt surprisingly creepy. Hmmmmm? Less is more?? Who would have thought? Ugh.

Barn Of Terror
There were a lot of changes to this haunt since the last time we visited. This is appreciated as it makes you want to come back year after year to see what’s up. The new set pieces were not bad though I have seen better. The floor activated scares were fun but soon felt overplayed. Also, there weren’t many actors and honestly there needed to be. There were a lot of sections that were just a dark maze which felt annoying instead of creepy after a while. It’s a cheap trick IMHO especially since those sections were not punctuated with scares from actors or props. Maybe next year a little more set and actor scares and less dark maze would be better. Overall though The Barn wasn’t too bad.

Pirate’s Revenge
The entrance of this attraction was very Bates Motel but unfortunately that was where the similarities ended. The 3D glasses were awful which was perfect since the 3D artwork was awful too. The props were boring and there were hardly any actors. Also much of the attraction was dark maze. Crutch anyone? Overall I was quite disappointed with Pirate’s Revenge.

Carnival Of Fear
After the pirate crap we’d just finished I didn’t have a lot of confidence in this one. That changed as soon as we made it to the entrance. The clown at the door was excellent. His makeup was very cool and his attitude and dry, witty banter was even better. Sadly that was the only good part of this attraction. Once inside the layout was weird, again featured a lengthy dark maze and was sorely in need of more engaging props and actors. It’s sad because there was a lot of promise for this one in looking at it and talking to the clown out front but it just didn’t deliver.


Overall we had fun at Jason’s Woods but I can’t say that it was a good haunt. There needs to be more actors and props and less dark mazes. Engage and scare us and we’ll tell our friends how good your haunt was. Keep us bumping into strangers for the whole night and we’ll laugh and have a good time but dismiss you.

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