Halloweeeeeeeeeenie Part Deux

So Halloween is over. Sad face.

Luckily it was one of the most jam-packed Halloween seasons I've ever had, so I certainly took advantage of it while it lasted.

I previously posted reviews of a couple corn mazes and a couple haunted houses. Here's my list of reviews for everything else I did (still trying to make it to Fear Factory):

1. Provo River Halloween Cruise: Cute but short

With Halloween lights strung across the river and hundreds (or maybe one hundred) jack o' lanters, this cruise is pretty much one of the cutest, most classic Halloween things I did all year. You sit on a barge and make a little round-trip cruise on a very calm part of the river. I thought I spotted a unicorn jack o' lantern, but it was really Batman (so disappointing). It's cute, they sell hot chocolate and scones and taco hot dogs (which I did not eat) to keep you warm while you take the cruise, and your boat gets attacked by a pirate in a canoe (I'm sure they had canoes) who tells some fantastic jokes. Example:

Q: What's a pirate's favorite letter?

A: You might think it's R (aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrr!), but it's really P. It looks like an R but only has one leg.

and

Q: Why are pirates so mean?

A: They just aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr!

I'm easily entertained by pirate jokes, clearly. The only down side was that the cruise was pretty short and the majority of it was listening to a sales pitch for the place doing the cruises. You eventually get to hear a scary story, which is a recited poem delivered with as little inflection as possible. But it's worth seeing all the lights and jack o' lanterns, which are carved out of real pumpkins, awesomely.

Oh, and Provo is the worst place in the world and pretty much every single street is under construction or blocked by a train. That's not the Halloween cruise people's fault though.

2. Anguish Asylum: 0 stars. Negative stars, if that's possible

This is honestly the worst haunted house I have ever been to. I feel bad saying that, bc I think it's family run. But really, it was awful. Here are the reasons why:

-It's in the parking garage of a mall. I won't hold that against them, because resourceful, but there was A LOT of light leakage and and it was freezing cold.

-It was super short with very few actors. The majority of the rooms didn't have any scares.

-Their last ride (which costs $4 extra and I didn't do it) is a burial simulator with a camera inside. So everyone can watch you. Pay $4 for my friends to watch me bored in a coffin? No thanks.

-They claim they're better than Nightmare on 13th. News flash: you're not. The ticket booth at Nightmare on 13th is scarier than your entire haunted house.

-There was a maggot-faced zombie with SERIOUS anger issues who started going off about missionaries and Mormons. Tell me why a zombie in a haunted mansion-themed room has a "Dear John" letter and needs to beat up every Mormon with a bloody baseball bat, because it made no sense to me. I think the guy was honestly supposed to do something different and was just taking out his own issues on paying customers, which was totally supported by his getting genuinely angry when we didn't play along and calling a member of our group a slur that also refers to a cigarette if you're British, or a bundle of sticks if you're a 17th century peasant.

There were a couple good-ish parts, though the bad outweighed them. They were:

-A room full of blood-filled IV bags hanging from the ceiling that you have to find your way through.

-The fact that the chainsaw guy had nothing better to do, so he decided to chase a conveniently hysterical girl in our group out of the haunted house and through a large portion of the parking lot. Well done, sir.

Okay, enough with the suckfest and on to a literal suckfest:

3. Ballet West's Dracula: BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO MY LIFE

Seriously, this was my favorite thing I went to for Halloween, and I actually went twice. I feel bad for anyone who missed it (though rumor has it that they bought the rights for 6 years and will be doing it each year for at least that long). I have no desire to ever see Thriller again as long as Dracula is around. Maybe I'll do a separate post about what made Dracula so amazing, but for now, here are the highlights:

-The vampire women who had matching powdered wigs, amazing zombie arms and were frequently laying face-down on the floor.

-Everything about Dracula, especially his cape.

-A carriage that billows fog from inside.

-Burning vampires.

-An incredibly graphic (for ballet) neck biting scene in which Dracula throws a girl on the floor, stradles her and violently bites her neck as she kicks and twitches. Then the vampire women come in and tear what's left of her to pieces. EEEEEEEEEEEE!

-When that same girl returns as a vampire. Genious.

Okay, I'll stop now, bc I could go on and on and on and on and on.

4. Haunted Village at This is the Place: My favorite haunt

It wasn't as good as last year, but the fact that was compeltely different from last year was awesome. You won't get stuck seeing the same stuff year after year with this one. Highlights include:

-A very, very scary staircase.

-Something under the bed.

-Really for real haunted buildings (I've heard EVPs from that place. Serious stuff, peeps. Serious stuff.)

I also put on my own haunted house in my basement, which people told me was better than Nightmare on 13th (hahahahaa, zing!). Not really. BUT, I did do some crawling around in a Ring wig, and my friends made very convincing psychopaths. I wish I had taken pictures or a video. Maybe I'll talk about that more later too.

And review of Fear Factory to come when I actually go!