Frightless Farm

The promotional material Rich's Fright Farm features a Mayan pyramid and the theme of "Ancient Encounters". Certainly anyone who visited would expect something enormously different from last year.

They would be right, but ultimately disappointed. Fright Farm for 2007 contains enormous changes from the 2006 incarnation, representing a great deal of hard work. But while pretty eye candy abounds, scares are few and far between.

Fright Farm starts with the usual long line. A live band was playing heavy metal music, which some people in the line loved and others hated. All agreed that it didn't sound particularly haunted or spooky. As you wait in line, the haunted mansion itself looms in the distance, attractively floodlit. This helps build anticipation as most of the attraction is a slow build-up to actually entering the house.

Once you get your ticket punched, you are allowed to board a flat trailer towed by a massive tractor. Those unfamiliar with farm equipment might find the tractor at least a bit exotic, as you are pulled slowly through what feels like miles of cornstalks. Here is the first disappointment: On the route, there are few scares and little atttempt is made to entertain. There are various static panoramas but nothing particularly interesting or startling. For a long patch, you're riding parallel to nearby the freeway and the road's floodlights ruin the mood. The one thing I really liked about last year's ride, the fire breathing dragon, was missing in action, and it seemed like they had about half the scares or fewer that they did last year.

Once at the entrance to the house, you come in to an impressively high ceilinged foyer and then you are rushed through a variety of scenes. Much of the artwork is good but there are few actors in this part and virtually no scares. A great deal of it looked familiar as part of last year's Terrormania haunted attraction that failed. Apparently Fright Farm's management bought a lot of their old stuff.

After a surprisingly short time you are dumped outside of the house and have to wait in a 10 minute line for the next part of the attraction. A few more items from Terrormania appeared, but most of the rest of the haunt was recognizably similar to last year's event. Unlike the other haunts we've reviewed, acting was poor. The few actors just didn't seem like their heart was in the task of scaring us.

The waterworks was my favorite section from last year, and they even had a couple of scares in it in a haunt that was otherwise noticably devoid of them. The eye candy was fairly good but way too much time was spent in the three choke point areas waiting for people to admit us to the rest of the attraction. We etimate that of the roughly 50 minutes we spent in the haunt, about 20 minutes were spent waiting in line.

About five minutes before we got into the house, actors started to appear. Most of them were wandering around aimlessly, seemingly deranged figures unaware of our presence. Only a couple of them seemed to care seriously about their mission to scare us.

Finally we got back into the house. The controlled indoor environment increased tension, but the shortage of actors and scares let us down again. There were a few great set pieces - I wanted to spend time in the jungle area relaxing, but of course the relentless pressure of the walkthrough crowd sent me through quickly. My friend who came with me pointed out that there was a giant, very expensive monster from Terrormania in the jungle. I hadn't even noticed.

The climax at the end of the haunt was the spinning tunnel illusion that had begun our trip into Terrormania last year. At that point we were dumped unceremoniously into a boring corn maze (with no actors at all) and back to the concession stand.

On a positive note, I can report that the concession stand pizza was good, and the people there were friendly. For that to be the high point of a $15 haunt experience that took an hour to get to is unfortunate testimony to how drab my Fright Farm experience was.

http://www.richfarms.com/frightfarm