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So on Oct 4th & 5th I went to Carowinds for the first time, mossttllyyy for SCarowinds lol but it was fun and here's my rankings of the rides and haunted mazes!
Mazes up first:
1. Slaughter House: The Final Cut — This was not the scariest house of the event, but IMO it was the best themed by far! Even the queue is themed, herding you through cattle pens until you finally enter the slaughter house. The first room is a butcher store complete with disgusting foods and custom BBQ sauces (lol), and then you walk through the freezers and into the lair of these dark cannibal butchers. I really liked how many moving parts there were in these sets! From swinging corpses on meat hooks, to conveyor belts shifting products. This house was gory and gross and I understood the story the entire time. A solid 4/5 stars. I'm a sucker for a scary character wearing a pig head as a mask.
2. Silver Scream Studios: Condemned — This one also wasn't technically the scariest of the night, but the sets were so good and the actors were so lively that I just really enjoyed it. In this one you're touring an abandoned studio lot and walking through movie sets inspired by horror classics like Frankenstein, Nosferatu, and even The Birds. I liked that the sets were recognizable, while not infringing on copyrights, and I liked that they were immersive. I've never been a fan of houses with mish-mash themes like that, but I thought this one was very fun.
3. Tooth Fairy — This house was very gory, very scary, and very good. But it kind of loses points in my mind because I'm not sure it had a very distinct story? Like yeah I get it, the Tooth Fairy is maiming people and stealing their body parts, that's self explanatory. But I'm not even sure we saw the Tooth Fairy? In fact I can't recall what any of the scare actors were supposed to be in there at all LOL. So yeah even thought there were a lot of cool sets, and the gore in there was NASTY (affectionate), I just can't say that I comprehended it as well as some of the other houses, y'know?
4. Paranormal Inc. — Probably the scariest house of the night, but,,, fucking confusing. You read this official synopsis, and then I'll tell you what the house is really about, okay?
So, contrary to our beliefs that this would just be about a haunted sanitarium, there's actually a pre-show to this one that introduces you to this paranormal investigation group that's catching ghosts in the hospital, and then one breaks out of containment (Girl VS. Monster much?) and then you walk through the house, which is a lot of random rooms and unexplained monsters. My favorite room is one where a zombie-looking guy is getting freaky with a corpse. On our first walk through he seemed to be eating it, and on our second walk through he was definitely just sniffing and caressing it's feet, which was significantly funnier.I think whoever designed this one went to the Halloween Horror Nights school of haunted house design, because by the end of it you're walking through unexplained caves. The huge monsters in there are cool, but still, idk how we got from the sanitarium to caves? Maybe I'm wrong. They definitely looked like caves, though. This is definitely one of the more classic haunted houses of the event, with tons of hidey holes for scares to jump out from.
5. Depths of Darkness — This wasn't a bad house, it just wasn't my fav. Like the name implies, it's just very dark. Most of the scares rely on flickering lights, and that's just not that scary to me. Ironically there DID seem to be half of a story there (which isn't mentioned at all on the website..) and it's basically about these scientists that are creating monsters with their fucked up experiments or something? Idk it was all kind of confusing and weird. The rest of my group liked it though, and I definitely can see why people who like those kinds of scares would enjoy it!
What I appreciate about all of these houses in general is that they had plenty of classic haunted house gimmicks, like shit hanging from the ceiling that you had to push past, etc. I LOVED that the actors were yelling personalized stuff! But I sort of wished there were more scary, scary things, y'know? Like there were zero drop walls that I saw, not all of the rooms had good hiding spots for the actors, so most of them were just standing in plain sight? In fact some of the rooms had so little space in them that the actors were squished next to the "conga line" and couldn't do anything like jump at people. I feel sort of bad for the actors that got dealt a bad hand that way.
Scare zones:
1. BLOOD YARD!!!! — This is the vampire scare zone and I had a blast in there, because I basically took 10 steps in and then was surrounded by 5 or 6 scare actors complimenting me and asking "what clan I'm from" and just generally being fun. I liked the diversity of the actor's costumes, some where punks, some where victorian goth, some were cowboys, it was just very interesting. Not the scariest or most well-themed zone, but sooo fun.
2. Ripper Alley — Giving credit where credit is due, this was probably the best scare zone, technically speaking. All the other zones were spread out in really large areas, which made it easy to miss the theming and actors on accident. But THIS zone was really cramped and on a small walkway, and the sets were intricate, and it was all just very top tier. The kind of thing I would expect at Halloween Horror Nights or Howl-O-Scream Tampa. The actors were giving it their all, too. Given that this is 1800s London themed, they were shouting all kinds of rude things at people, which I thought was fun.
3. Harvest FEAR — This one would be tied with Ripper Alley if it weren't for how subtle the sets are. The actors CARRIED this zone! The actors were selling the story. This zone is "the annual Harville Harvest Fair," and the sets are mostly fair booths with different spooky themes. A food booth was selling human body parts turned into treats, a kissing booth had 2 clowns (statues) named "Holly Tosis & Ginger Vitus" offering 10¢ smooches, I mean, what a steal.
There were beauty pageant contestants, a timid sheriff, even trick-or-treaters walking around, getting into arguments over who deserved to win the pumpkin growing contest (their pumpkins ARE on display, but they're hard to see after dark) or who deserved to be the beauty queen. Unfortunately the area is very loud, and everything is so spread out, I couldn't hear everything that was said, but it's clear there was a story there! Also there's a band that plays in this area, the Halloween Hootenanny, and their set was FANTASTIC. They played a whole bunch of songs, form Chop Suey (SOAD) [Clip here] to Hot To Go! (Chappell Roan) [I recorded it in full, it's a great cover!!]
4. Lobotomy's Oddities —This area wasn't bad, I thought the theming was super cool! I just thought the costumes were kind of lacking, and it wasn't very scary. But I didn't spend much time over there, and I didn't get to see it after dark, so idk. I think they fucked up badly, putting this scare zone where it is in the park, because it's so far out of the fucking way, AND it's a "dead end" (which isn't really a dead end, but functionally it is). I think they wanted the circus theme to match the surrounding carnival rides, except that area is space/science themed, so it doesn't mesh well with the antique circus at all. Mostly I was disappointed by the fact that none of the scare actors I saw were playing the characters advertised in the circus :( maybe they were there when I wasn't? idk. I really wanted to see Viola the Violin!
We ALSO saw 3 out of 4 of the SCarowinds shows, and tbh the 3 we saw were ranging from fantastic to good. Halloween Hootenanny was 10/10, Raging Inferno was 7/10, and Conjure The Night was a solid 5/10. The performers all did their best, though, I just don't think the material they were given was great. And Conjure The Night had some serious sound issues, I hope they get that fixed.
Coasters:
- Afterburn/Top Gun — I would ride this a billion times over. I get the hype. I wish the line hadn't been so long all day, or I would've done it a few more times.
- Vortex — I really enjoyed this one. It also gave me brief vertigo, which is a first from a coaster for me
- Copperhead Strike —I didn't expect this one to be as intense as it was, so I was thrilled with it. It's like the adult version of Cobra's Curse at Busch Garden's (manufactured by the same company)
- Nighthawk — I'd score this one higher, but the wait was fucking inexcusable. Sorry. They were only running one train and it was just too long. It's a good ride, but it's just like Manta at SeaWorld, and I'd rather just do Manta. (Note: I know this coaster has 2 trains, if someone could tell me if one is currently broken or what, that'd be fantastic, because I can't fathom why they were only running one.)
- Carolina Goldrusher — I have no commentary on this one tbh my sister described it as Big Thunder Mountain and, yup, it's wooden Big Thunder Mountain. Good ride, nothing special.
- Thunder Striker/Intimidator — LITERALLY Mako at SeaWorld. (Manufactured by the same company!) Again, I prefer Mako, I'm sorry, I know, I just don't think the 8 hour drive was worth it to ride roller coasters I can ride at home. They're slightly different but ultimately the same experience.
- Carolina Cyclone — Ouchies. I mean I get that it's 40 years old, but... ouch.
- Kiddy Hawk — Very cute concept. Extremely rough ride. I mean, fuck, oof. If that's your kid's first hanging coaster you might just traumatize them for life LMAO
- Hurler — Felt like being put into a blender, and then blended while somebody shook the blender around. What the fuck.
We didn't get to ride The Flying Cobras or Fury 325. There will be other times I visit, I'm sure! And I'll get to them (and the rest of the kiddy-coasters, for completionist's sake) then! Otherwise, this trip was about SCarowinds for me, and I wanted to complete all the limited-time shit that will never be back. I don't regret that.
I really enjoyed SCarowinds, it was a fantastic event, my only real complain about Carowinds would be that they weren't running their coasters at the right capacity, and for a Saturday with 3 events, including the most popular event of the year, going on, that was a fucking mistake. Your rides and haunted houses shouldn't all have 50+ minute waits simultaneously! That's fucking crazy! Why are you running popular attractions with only one car??
Also I have to say idk if they're having staffing issues or what, but a lot of the carnival attractions were being run by only 1 employee each, and that's kind of absurd. That's way, way too much work for 1 underpaid person to be doing by themself.
So we had a good time, but the staffing and capacity issues were frustrating by the end of the night. Godspeed to all the staff, because the visitors were also shitty as hell. The sheer amount of misbehavior, kids running wild, etc, was crazy. I feel bad for the people that work there. On more than one occasion I overheard scare actors making sure that unsupervised children had guardians with them (15 and under needs adult supervision, as per the rules) and that's just? Not the fucking actor's jobs? I wish security was seriously enforcing the Chaperone policy.
I am grateful I had no problems with security! The scare actors loved me and joked around with me the whole time, and tons of people complimented me both nights. There were even some guests and actors on night 2 that came up to me and said they liked my boots from night 1, lol, good to know I'm that recognizable. There was also a little girl who gave me a kandi bracelet because she liked my outfit, which was so cute!!
Comments
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Shadow Bliss
Glad you had a good time
~~sophia~~
This is so cool and detailed! I'm glad you had a good time :D