[0:22] Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And this is Haunt Weekly, a weekly podcast for the haunted attraction and haunted entertainment community, whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you. And we return to you with what I have a feeling is going to be a very special edition of Haunt Weekly. Yeah, we may run a little long. We're coming at you legitimately not knowing how long this is going to be. Usually we have show notes, and we know about how much we can cover in 45 minutes to an hour, which is the range we shoot for. We have no notes this week. No. Literally. And you'll understand why in a second.

[0:59] But this episode could go significantly longer. It may end on time. I'm not making any predictions. But I'm also saying that you, as the listener of this episode, after it is recorded, have a better idea of how long it's going to be than I do right now going into it. Because we've decided to remove the time constraints because we have a lot to go through on this. And we don't want to rush it, honestly. And I feel like this is going to be an episode for damn near every type of Haunt Weekly listener. You like it when we drag something and get mad about things? You like it when I rant about shit that's awful? Yeah, guess what? There's going to be that. You love it when we have amazing Haunt experiences and get to share them with the world? We've got that. And you want to hear about us bringing family members to a beloved haunt that we got to see for a second time? We got that. We got a little bit of everything, and we're going to get into it in just a minute. But first things first, if for some reason that is not what you want out of Haunt Weekly, I don't understand how the hell that could be possible. There's 460 other episodes. Go check them out at hauntweekly.com or hauntweekly on Twitter slash X or whatever. Haunt Weekly on Facebook and YouTube.com slash hauntweekly is the YouTube channel. Check us out wherever you get your podcasts from.

[2:19] And before we jump into the topics du jour, every week we do try to ask a question. Last time around, we asked you, what is one haunt mistake you wish that you could erase? Sam Farrell said, undervaluing your product. It's easy to look at the ticket prices of Pro Haunts and think you should charge extremely low prices to somehow make up for it. And basically reminds everyone to make sure your ticket prices are fair to your fans and to yourself. Yeah, and that's a great point. Great point. All right. Greg Packard said what Tim Fowler said. And Tim Fowler said, getting involved in a project with the wrong people. We've seen this firsthand and can't agree more. Yeah, I 100% agree. A bad partner in this is death knell for a haunt. Yeah. Way quicker than anything. Jeremy Bax says that I didn't do it sooner.

[3:16] Maximus Christian Bryant said not 100% of my customer interactions in the queue have been great there's been a couple of times where I've unintentionally made someone upset I think about that and sometimes wish I could erase those moments I've got a few of those in the queue line too yeah that I think that just happens being a human interacting with other humans yeah because here's the thing in that we like Q line actors don't talk about this enough but in like four hours of queue line acting or whatever you will easily you can easily interact with thousands of people yeah think about the number of people in particular strangers you interact with in a week you're probably getting more interactions in one night than most people will get in a year or multiple years they ain't all gonna be winners right and we also know that everybody has okay Okay, so unless you're a sociopath, you have that thing where you focus on the negative and the things that you did wrong instead of praising yourself for the things you did right. I don't know anybody who doesn't do that, luckily. Yeah.

[4:21] It's very easy to, like, I don't remember what the study was, but it's like a negative experience is worth seven positive ones or something like that, a seven to one ratio. Show um i've had times as a q line actor where i've you know gotten angry blown my top said things that i wish i hadn't said um and yeah you know and there are times i've been a little too aggressive and making fun of people or doing this or that i have moments i wish i could erase too but you know you got to try to focus on the positive and understand that you know if you're feeling that bad about it it's very likely a bigger deal for you than it is for them yeah, that's something that you got to keep in mind but i gotta say isaac uh chevalier is probably the one after my own heart here he listened to the episode and said you really hit home with using torques instead of philips screws my god yep yeah.

[5:15] Yep. That deserves the king of the hill, yep. Yep.

[5:22] That's what that deserves. All right. So, jumping into this week's topic. We have literally since Wednesday evening, we're recording this Tuesday evening, it'll be going out Tuesday evening. Right. But literally since Wednesday, so for damn near a week. Yeah, since the 2nd. Yeah, since the 2nd. We have been traveling. We made a trip first to Kansas City with the intent of checking out a few haunts there. And then we slid on over to the St. Louis area for a baby shower for our upcoming step-grandbaby. Ellie's son is having a baby. Apparently now, never mind. but yeah but the point being we while we were there we invited everyone who had any degree of interest in coming to join us as we went to Waterloo because we gushed about Waterloo I believe years and years and years ago I know we did it on garbage for they could do it on Haunt Weekly too and basically.

[6:26] It was one of our favorite haunted attraction experiences, especially one of our favorite trail experiences ever. And we were so keen to show it to more members of our family.

[6:37] And we're going to talk about all three nights of haunted attraction fun we got in there. And, you know, it's very Dickensian, except you've got to flip the sentence around. It was the worst of times. It was the best of times on our Kansas City trip because I am really surprised I left Kansas City feeling positive about things in general.

[7:04] So what we're going to do is we're just going to take the nights in order, I believe. Yeah. And we're going to start with Thursday night, which was when we'd arrived in Kansas City. And we went to the combination haunt of the beast and the edge of hell right and we had gotten into town about an hour and a half before going so i do want to preface it that way um just because we were we were already tired from the trip yeah we were at the tail end of like a 12-hour car trip at this point yeah because our traveling included 1800 miles in four hotels and five nights yeah Yeah, this was a, yeah, in fact, the Kansas City Hotel was the only hotel we stayed two nights in. Yeah. I believe. Exactly. All other days we were traveling. No, it was four. Yeah. Because the one on the way back, yeah. Yeah. And the one on the way up, too, yeah. Yeah, so there was a lot here. And so we'll admit to being tired. We'll admit to being a little cranky.

[8:08] We booked. They require time ticketing. Right. And we booked for the latest slot in the evening we could to give ourselves the best opportunity to arrive and be on time and we were on time yes everything did work out okay and we actually ended up having a uh you know being there a little bit of time i had a little bit of time in the hotel to decompress before but admittedly not enough yeah now i do want to say that before this trip and I think that it's important to bring this up now whenever we were looking at the second night's haunt mm-hmm it had warned us that it was going to be very physical yeah and so demanding physically demanding so we were worried about that one because my health has not been the best in the past couple of years neither is mine admittedly but so we were worried about that one yeah and.

[9:05] That's not what we're doing Thursday. No, no, no. Thursday night, we were visiting a haunt that was recommended at us by a couple of listeners of Haunt Weekly. Yeah. And I don't want any of them to feel bad for what's about to happen. No. And... Go ahead. And I also don't want the actors to feel bad. I think that we should start with some of the positives. The actors were working their ass off. Yeah. And I want to preface this like the way Yahtzee Kroschall did once. Yeah. Which is like when we talk about haunts in this podcast, I like to picture that people connected with a haunt are gathering around to listen to the criticism, listen to us, make jokes and have fun and talk about the experience. And if you are an actor doing that right now, I want you to hold your head up high. You're working hard. You were doing as much as you could in a very difficult situation. Yeah, and every time I threw a curveball at an actor, like, you know, offered to dance with a person who wanted to dance or asked me why I wasn't dancing, they responded appropriately for the character. Yeah, everyone, I think the actors were overall solid, at least doing the best they could with the situation at hand. Yeah. Our issues come with the safety.

[10:21] Our issues come with the creativity or lack thereof in the songs. And the sheer physical demanding-ness of this. And we're going to get all that in a minute, but yeah, I agree with you. Let's definitely get out of the way that the actors have very little to feel bad about. Didn't hear much in the way of Boo, didn't hear, you know, the stuff that makes Jape spin over in his grave, even though he's not dead. We didn't hear much of that.

[10:50] But clearly these actors are working with some pretty significant constraints. And we're going to get into that in a minute. But I want to start with what happened when we got there. Because it set the fucking tone just perfectly. It really did. Okay, so we got there. We arrived literally at the exact time on our tickets. Like, I think we had like 8 to 10. No, it was like 9 to 10.30. 9.30 to 10.30. Yeah, something like that. We showed up within five minutes of the time. Pulled in. There was a nice parking lot right across the street from the Beast. Got a great spot.

[11:25] Looking at it, taking photos, having a good time. We woke up and, like... Well, an actor comes over to us after... As we're trying to cross the street. Yeah. And he says, hey, do you already have tickets? Yes, we do. And I waved my phone. I already had it up on my phone. We were ready to rock. He said, you gotta go over there. Yeah.

[11:43] Over where? Go down the road. It's to the left where the cones are. You gotta go there. Where the flashing cones are. Alright. And to be... Put this in some context. We parked literally across the street from the haunt. Yeah. And now we've got to walk two blocks for reasons that were not actually explained. Right. Because he said, you need wristbands to get in. But there was no explanation as to what the wristbands signified or what they meant or why we needed them. So we get down there and what we find out is basically, and I want to apologize to the person I was talking to initially. I want to personally apologize to them. I think, in fact, I know that waivers and things like that are fucking useless for haunts. They really and truly are. Go to your local BDSM community meeting if you think waivers are worth a shit, and you will find out exactly how little they are worth. In this case, in fact, they might actually be evidence against you. But regardless, I found out that they had changed their waiver process like the week before. Yeah, the week before they had changed their entire thing. Which is well after opening for them. Yeah. And...

[12:58] That we really should have taken the fucking hint right then and there in hindsight.

[13:05] That's, to me, the moment where we should have, wait a minute, what the fuck? Because what they have you do, and this is clinically insane, is you now have to sign the waiver in person there. And not only do you have to sign the waiver, you have to look into a camera and confirm that you signed it and that you have no questions about it. Right. The last time I was treated that hostily, it felt like, was when I was giving a deposition before opposing counsel in a case I was an expert witness in. Yeah. That's what it felt like. That's legitimately what it felt like. Yeah, it was very odd. And then to go and walk that far to do it, too, was also odd. And this was confusion galore because we saw other groups large and small really struggle to figure out what the hell they were doing there there was not adequate signage no and when we were done signing it they gave us a wristband we went back to the beast flash story we we told and we had two different people and we told both of them that we had two tickets we were going to both events but they gave us one wristband like okay that's just a flash and get in obviously yeah no No, at the beast that they cut off the wristband. Yeah, and the wristbands were identical. So telling them that we had two meant that they could have just let us have the one that we had on and not cut it.

[14:33] Yeah, and not cut it or, I don't know, done anything other than this. Yeah. But they cut the wristbands off of us, and then we went into the haunt.

[14:45] And it did not start well. Mm-hmm. Um the very one of the first rooms i think like the second or third room yeah first you have to go up stairs i see but a very lovely set of stairs you can tell that these are very old buildings and yeah and it does what parts of the building i could see did look oh very good oh by the way i wanted to throw this up before we get too deep into it um when we were going we i had noticed that these haunts were done by full moon productions um i had confused them with full Moon features right the movie studio that does the puppet master films and a bunch of that type of cheesy but not quite trauma horror yeah you know it sits it sits in that that space and I actually got a little bit excited about that but it turns out no this is just two horror related companies with very similar names yeah and I also want to mention in the waiver we did get warning that there would be slides and things like that in the haunt, but.

[15:48] Was not enough preparation for what was to come. Not only did they, they did put in a waiver, you're right, but they did not put it in any of the marketing material. No. So I showed up in clothes that weren't really for slides, as it turns out.

[16:06] We'll get to that in a minute. Yeah, we will get to that in a minute. Because like I said, if there was any mention of the slides in the marketing, I didn't see it. You didn't see it even after we went back after going through it trying to yeah no I went to the facts to see how they marketed the physicality of the the two haunts and to see if maybe we just didn't read deeply enough yeah and and that's one of the things that you know and because I thought well maybe that's on me because I typically like to go into a haunt with as little knowledge of the haunt as possible yeah I agree um I don't do a lot of research on it I don't want reviews i don't want people tainting the experience for in fact the first time we saw reviews for this is true was when i punched the address in to drive there and noticed it had a 2.5 on yelp yeah and you didn't even tell me that until after we were done with both yeah but i saw that and i went huh but then i thought to myself but yelp is kind of bullshit you know So I didn't let it impact me that much. I mean, I've never personally had problems with Yelp reviews and anything I've worked on. But I know businesses that have. And I know enough to not take Yelp like super serial, man. So anyways, we go in and we get to one of the first rooms. And it's a pitch black room. You cannot see anything.

[17:33] We're both kind of feeling our way through it. Well, I think there was a swamp scene before that. Yeah, it was one of the first rooms. It wasn't the first room. No, no. There was one or two other scenes before, but it was very, very early.

[17:47] And then I felt, you know, something, my nose bump up against something. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, silly goose me, I bumped into the wall. I go to back up, then a strobe light hits, and it turns out what my nose had bumped into was an animatronic alligator that was hanging in the walkway.

[18:06] And it activated with me literally all but French kissing it. And it, like, bowed its head down, and it came back up. And when it came back up, its tooth or something caught my nose and snapped my head back hard enough that I was very worried I had a nosebleed. Yeah. Or that you had broken it. Yeah, it hurt. Yeah. And I was, because I am very susceptible to nosebleeds.

[18:30] And I haven't, okay, I was very susceptible to nosebleeds. Yeah. When I was a teenager and a kid, my nose would bleed if I just looked at it the wrong way. If I crossed my eyes too hard, my nose would start bleeding. bleeding um it hasn't been as big of a thing since i've become an adult but i still have that psychological thing there you know what i mean yeah where it's like oh god i got hit in the nose there's got to be blood everywhere i'm gushing luckily no damage was done but that was literally one that's literally all but the first memory i have yeah that was in the first five minutes yeah first few minutes of it and it was very painful and that was a very unsafe room and then and that kind of set the mood for the rest of the haunt because now we know okay we've got to be careful going through this because they're not thinking about the positioning of things for for people going through and if you think oh well obviously they're not going to do that multiple times times, I would say they had at least a dozen rooms in that hod, in which it felt like a dozen rooms at the very least, in which you would walk in, it'd be pitch black, you'd reach a point, a strobe or a light would hit, and an animatronic would go off. Yeah.

[19:48] That was probably the most used scare, and it was used, it felt like at least a dozen times. I don't know how many in that she was, I lost count. right but that first one did tell us what to not to do which is you know stick close to the walls which is what you try to do when you think you're going into a blackout maze yeah i mean i had that happen and in a later room we both got quote unquote bit by the puppet dogs yeah they did a very similar activation thing but those were controlled by human puppeteers i have no idea, I have no idea what their excuse was for snapping us. It was supposed to be scary. Yeah, I didn't get a bruise from it, but I was convinced I would. Yeah, but after the alligator, then you got poked in the eye. Yeah, because I went into another one of those blackout rooms. Well, it was just a dimly lit room with tree things. It was a room I couldn't see, and apparently they had covered the walls with plant matter. No. Sticks, twigs, leaves, and things. And one of the sticks jabbed right near my eye. I got a modest little gash in the corner of my eye. I mean, luckily, you know, nothing, luckily none of the injuries, other than one we'll get to in a minute, had any lasting impact. No.

[21:15] Because, yeah, okay, but the other issue the haunt had was there were so many stairs. Yeah, well, I was going to talk a little more about the lighting. Okay, do the lighting. Let's talk, let's stick to the lighting then. Because the rooms in general were very dark. You could tell that they were decorated, but you couldn't really see the decorations. It reminded me a lot. If you go back to our review and our chat about Limp Brewery in St. Louis, oddly enough, we talked about how you could tell it was a beautiful cave. Yeah. Absolutely gorgeous, and it has some great decoration. Couldn't see any of it, except brief glimpses here and there when the lights hit whatever way. Yeah. Yeah, and if they just added a few more lights or brightened it up just a little bit, it would have been great. And for tree rooms, if you light them from the bottom up, they look creepy and give you all sorts of great shadows. Yeah, there were so many opportunities to light this for A, safety, and B, effect, that they didn't take.

[22:21] They chronically underlit everything, and I could not see what was going on. And it was more frustrating trying to figure out where to go not helped by the fact that many times they would deliberately hide where to go yeah either give you multiple doors and only ones the real one walls rooms with hidden doors yeah the actors had to open for you or ones that you were supposed to find yourself somehow i mean and it got incredibly frustrating because yeah and it It wasn't us, but there was a group with us in a maze-type room where we were trying to figure out the correct door. So I found a room off of the side of the room with all the doors immediately, but that room had no real doors. What was it at then?

[23:16] I mean, I'm going through this, like, asking, does Kansas City not have a fire marshal? Yeah. And the group that we were with was like, this isn't fun. I want out of here. Yeah. Like, that's a literal quote from somebody, not us. Yeah. And they were teens. Yeah. They were like mid-teens. They should have been the target audience. This is your target audience. This is your bread and butter. And they were literally getting pissed off about not being able to go to the next scene. Yeah. And I honestly don't blame them. Yeah, because not only was it multiple doors in that area, it was also strobe lit. Yeah. And one of the correct doors just looped back into the room itself. So you could easily think, aha, I solved it. And then, fun fact, no.

[24:08] So, yeah. Yeah, no, you had to move a curtain to find the real door.

[24:14] Yeah it it was a real struggle so between the blackout rooms where an animatronic activates the haha you'll never guess the way out rooms those were the two main scares accompanied with actors popping around corners yeah and the reason there were so many actors popping around corners was there were so few rooms where the actors were giving anything they could do yeah this was not built for actors to play in no no they gave a couple of boo holes for actors to pop out from around blind curves so i get that and that's a fine thing to add but that's all they added i don't recall any drop panels i don't recall any um you know other than the uh dogs the puppet props i don't you know what i mean i just don't recall the actors having a lot to play with well no and it it seemed like actors were supporting animatronics more than animatronic supporting actors yeah and there were some and you know that that's something that we harp on and there were some scenes where definitely the human was the distract for the animatronic and that is backwards yeah i mean they clearly were wanting to put it's like the darkness once again in St. Louis, where they were clearly trying to put the focus on the animatronics, not the actors. Yeah.

[25:39] Now we can get back to the stairs. Yeah, now is a good time to get to the stairs, because that ended up being, I think, oddly enough, my biggest complaint. Now, I personally, you know, I don't mind stairs that much. Like, we go to the mortuary, they have a few stairwells in it. Haunts with stairwells, that happens in historic buildings, I get it. But there had to have been at least 20 flights of stairs in this. Well, not only that, but now that I'm thinking about it, there were two slides in that first one, which went down just to go back up. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[26:17] Yeah, this was like, this was like, like the only haunt I can think of where I climbed a lot of stairs like this and even went down just to go back up was Raven's Grin In. And it felt like with the slides and the stairs and everything, they were kind of like aping that a little bit with zero understanding of what made Raven's Grin In work. Yeah. No understanding of what Jim and Jessica Warfield were doing, or were slash are doing there. I mean, they clearly did not get it, what makes Ravensgrin such a great haunt. And it's just the insanity of the Warfields.

[26:57] That's it. There was no insanity or charm here. No. I don't remember. And also, I don't think we climbed as many stairs at Ravensgrin, either. No, we didn't. Nowhere near. I remember there was this one scene in The Beast where we literally were going up one of those square spiral staircases, if that makes any sense, but into a bell tower or something like you see in the movies, and they actually had it lit really cool. It had a giant purple and blue light thing emanating from the bottom, and then it's like, oh, wait, but I've got to climb at least eight flights of stairs in this, A, and B, halfway up they cut off the fucking light for a bit to make it dark.

[27:37] And make it scary yeah no no no this is a cool effect i'm actually really enjoying this i'm not enjoying it took away from the fact that i'm doing so many fucking stairs yeah i'm not enjoying the fact i'm i'm i'm spending half an hour on a stair master but but yeah it was so frustrating and like you said we got to the top and what do we do when we get to the top we went right back down yeah and when we ran back down what do we do we went right back up yeah it's just it was over and over and over again with these steps and you almost never went down steps because we're going down slides right which as you noted was not clearly mentioned on the site right which created a problem for you because i had worn a new shirt that is basically at waist height but that means that whenever I'm on a slide and I'm doing slide things that shirt is not staying down so on especially the biggest slide which was the second one in the beast the shirt came up and my back had a bad burn on it yeah not to mention it's a giant metal slide yeah and not to mention anyone with a camera or anyone at bottom might have gotten more of a show than they intended oh they they totally did and I just you know I'm sure it's it's out there somewhere it'll show up yeah it was.

[29:05] I was lucky. I mean, I wore what people refer to as Jonathan costume. Yeah. But my polo shirts were long enough. I didn't have that issue. Yeah. Well, I wore a crystal costume. It's just my shirts are sometimes cute and not past my butt. Yeah, and not meant for sitting on. Yeah. Yeah, and that's just it. When we went to Raven's Grand Inn, we were prepared for the slides. Mm-hmm. So we dressed accordingly. Well, not only that, but Jim gave you a whole sleeping bag type thing to sit down in. So it didn't matter what you wore. It was either a sleeping bag for one, and for one there was like a carpet, a full carpet you laid on. Yeah. Not this little one foot square piece of wax paper they gave you at the Beast. Yeah. That did not make it to the bottom on one of them. Yeah, I have no idea what that was supposed to be about. Because that didn't work. No, no. I was like, here's a piece of wax paper, put it in your butt and go down the slide. I know once that wax paper did not make it to the bottom. Well, and the other thing is, there are people of different sizes. Some people are going to need more than the one foot square. Even I needed more, apparently. And I'm fairly straight sized.

[30:21] The slides were not well done. They were uncomfortable. Uncomfortable they were poorly they were not mentioned in such a way that we were prepared for it no um honestly i really just thought we were going through a big relatively traditional haunt and that is not what it was it was a lot a lot of stair climbing a lot of going down slides a lot of time feeling your way through black rooms and a lot of time trying to figure out where the fuck to go, because either the actors are playing a game with you, or the set is playing a game with you. Yeah, and that's, the actors are playing the game with you because that's the role they were given. Exactly, that's not their fault. No. No, that's how the room was built. Yeah, exactly.

[31:08] Yeah, that was frustrating. And I've got to give props to two actors who really were in an impossible situation. One of the better decorated, one of the better lit rooms involved a witch trial burning. Yeah. And they had a female actress being burned at the stake, and a male actress, a male actor rather, playing the part of a reverend or something.

[31:36] Condemning this woman to death. We came into the room with the group that you mentioned, the teens, because we all entered there from the previous room where we couldn't find our way out. And he's giving this really bombastic performance, and she's doing a great job crying and sounding scared, and everything's coming together. And we all stop. Yeah. Because we're expecting something to happen. Yeah. Because it feels like this is leading somewhere. Because it's a giant room. And it's a huge room. And he's doing a really good job with the performance. They're both doing a great job with the performance. And it's like leading up to something. And then you could tell he runs out of shtick and looks around and goes, oh, shit. And then he just starts over, which is probably the correct moment. Oh, we were just supposed to meander past this. We weren't supposed to stand here and wait for the performance to reach its climax. There is no climax. No. That's a great example of how good actors are getting hosed. Yeah, because there wasn't even a scare in that room. I think that the fact that there was a quote-unquote witch on fire was supposed to be the scare.

[32:50] I i just don't get it like i don't understand it there was no startle at all right and what i was gonna say that i forgot earlier was that apparently for kansas haunts vertical haunts are like kind of a tradition there yeah like everything because we talked to our friend who used to live there and he said that yeah you're gonna do stairs and stuff which maybe that's That's, you know, but coming from the land of flat. Yeah, we came from New Orleans. We literally had to build a hill so kids would have a hill to climb. And know what it looked like. And know what a hill looked like, other than I can photograph some shit. Yeah, that's actually a true story. Look at Monkey Hill at the zoo. Yeah, for the longest time, and I don't know if it's still true. Maybe it was the tallest. Highest point in the metro and New Orleans area itself. I think New Orleans itself, yeah. Well, I think all the way up until Monroe.

[33:50] Yeah, it was the tallest hill for a while. And I don't know, man. It's a crazy story. I don't know if it is still the tallest hill or highest elevation, whatever. But it's a crazy and very true story that they literally built a hill so kids could experience climbing a hill in New Orleans. So, yeah, that is some of the problem we have is we're not used to climbing steps. Steps it's not really a thing you do a lot in New Orleans no and we also have a ranch styles we do have steps in the house but yeah only a couple yeah it's it's more of like a step down into the living room type thing not a two-story house right it's at most a mild split level yeah but yeah it.

[34:36] I just, The Haunt really felt like it had only three scares that were just repeated. One of the scares was dangerous, and one of the scares was annoying and frustrating. And the other scare felt like, just got old after a while, and felt like the actors should be given different things to do. Yeah. And so, the one thing I will say very positive about both this and Edge of Hell, which we have not gotten to Edge of Hell yet. No. Which, fortunately, will be a short conversation. But the thing is, is that this was a very long haunt. It was a $27 ticket price. We spent about 25, 30 minutes in it. Yes, some of that was us getting lost in the room. Some of that was huffing and puffing up the stairs. But we did get roughly 30-ish minutes out of it. Yeah, and I'm sorry. If you're going to have that many stairs and let someone go in who is of a larger size, please don't tell them to hurry their ass up because it's just frustrating yeah it was, a very rough experience and when we got out they said that we had to go back to the goddamned.

[35:51] Um waiver place to get our other wristband because they cut the first one off and And we legit had a conversation because we were, at this point, we were across the street from the car. Yeah. We had a legit conversation. Did we even bother cashing in those second tickets? Yeah. And there were two things that made it to where we went and got them. One is so that we could report on the difference. If there is any. and two is because the family in front of us had a little girl and they were telling her the second one was easier.

[36:33] And I heard that, and I'm like, okay, if it's easier, maybe they mean physically, and I could do it. Fun fact, no. It was, I mean, and the thing about, the ultimate thing about it is the second haunt was just more of the same with the first. Yeah. It had the same scares, the same setup, the same everything. It had vaguely hell and heaven theming. Yeah, I did like it a little bit better. I liked it better because it did have a more cohesive theme. I'll give it that. Yeah, it had a more cohesive theme. There weren't as many things in the walkways to poke you. I agree with that. Yeah, it was a little bit safer. Yeah. But still not safe by any stretch in my mind. Right. And in both, the costuming was good. I did find it interesting that there was a heaven scene. I don't think I've ever seen that in a haunt. So I will give them kudos for including something I haven't seen. Yeah.

[37:28] But ultimately, it was still very similar. No. And it was about the same length. It had the same types of scares, the same... Most of everything else was roughly the same.

[37:43] It was such a rough night, and it was so bad because by the time we were done, between the road trip and between the stairs, we were both so tired that we almost literally couldn't do anything. I actually went ahead and got the car. Yeah, because I made it to about a block and a half away from it. Yeah, and honestly, I don't blame you. I don't know why I had more energy at that moment. I think I was just more angry.

[38:15] Anger is a hell of a motivator. Yeah, and if you're the listener who stood outside of the beast and asked us how it was, I'm sorry if we were short with you or came across. We were just, I was in a lot of pain. Yeah, because the injury I did take that actually stuck around for a minute was they had one of those weird half steps. It's not like a full step. It's like a half step down. down a few inches it was a it was a half step down inside of spinning lights with glow stuff yeah and i i did not see the step down and when i stepped my right foot off and i did that thing where you like you you fall but you land with all your weight on one leg yeah and my hip was hurting for a good while after um after that it's better now it actually after i got a good night's rest Just a few nights later, unfortunately. Yeah. It seemed to settle down. But between that and then taking that injury, then doing all those steps on it. Yeah. I'm sure that didn't do it any favors. Right.

[39:20] It is better now. And like I said, nothing lasting. But that was really annoying because I had no hope of seeing that step. No. Because there was just, there was too much movement with the light. And the the edge of the step even though it was painted it had been worn off yeah from so many people stepping on it and just being so old in general yeah yeah so it wasn't bright enough to see that there were steps especially in and amongst everything no i had i had no hope of seeing it i looked back in fact when it happened i looked back trying to find this step and i still struggled to see it yeah yeah but so yeah that was that's the other thing so yeah these were just i I don't think I've ever left a haunt with bruises, but I have like six right now that are still healing.

[40:09] Yeah, this was not, especially not a haunt that's just marketed and presented as a traditional haunted house experience. Right. This wasn't an extreme haunt. No. This wasn't a whatever haunt. This was, you know, basically, hey, come to this large haunted house in Kansas City. Yeah. And it was a rough experience. And honestly, I...

[40:37] We kind of assumed someone had to have gotten hurt in order for them to change the waiver procedure, like mid-season like that. Yeah. I can see how that happened. Yeah. I can see so many ways that happened. Oh, and I will say that they were celebrating 50 years of the company. Yeah. I'm not sure if that was 50 years of the haunt, and it's kind of vague on the site even. but they are celebrating 50 years of something. This was just a rough experience all around. This put us in an incredibly sour mood. Yeah. And I remember we found this little bar that was open until 3 a.m. And had a kitchen, and we got a super late dinner with Ellie.

[41:24] And basically what we're telling Ellie the whole time is, I don't know how we can do Exile. I don't know how we can do The Haunt tomorrow. Yeah, because it warned us. It was going to be physical. It was going to be physically intense. This was going to be challenging. You were going to have, you were going to struggle. It made it sound like a goddamn ropes course. Yeah. And we were like, yeah, I don't know. Cause now, you know, I'm beat up. Yeah, I'm beat up and a trail haunt with actual hills, you know, not New Orleans, but actual hills, sounded very daunting. Yeah, it really did.

[42:02] This it started the trip off horribly and frankly i am surprised the trip recovered, yeah but it did we're already 42 minutes in my boy yeah so just a reminder to the listeners as we said at the top of the show there are no time restrictions with this one we're doing whatever it takes yeah yeah because i was about to ask do you want to break it up here no we're going to plow through just like we did in this trip we got more haunts we're going to this weekend we We can't get further behind. And besides, like I said, I want to leave on happier notes. I don't want to end it here anyway. Yeah, but again, everybody was nice to us. The actors were great. They just had shit to work with. I don't think I could have done any better in those rooms. Yeah. Like I said, I feel very bad for the witch being burned and the pastor guy because that's... Oh, there were also lots of hairpin turns and spaces to squeeze through that were...

[43:09] Oh, and the fireplaces. Oh, yeah, so much ducking, yeah. Yeah, you hit your head at least once. Yeah, it was fun because I thought I was through. And I stood up a step too early, apparently. Yeah. I hit right on the corner. Luckily, I mean, one of them, you can tell on some of them they put a decent amount of padding. And some they had not. Well, and the one that frustrated me was the one that the false ceiling continued past the curtains for the fireplace. Like you went through the fireplace, you went through the curtains on the other side, and the ceiling was still going. The short ceiling. Yeah, the low ceiling. Yeah. But anyway, I'll say this. Everybody we saw in that haunt that was over the age of about 12 was incredibly frustrated. No. And I will give it to them. They scared the ones under 12 pretty consistently. Yeah. And I don't think that's a bragging point. No.

[44:11] Like I said, we comforted one girl on the outside because she was feeling bad about crying or being upset. And I'm like, no, you handled it better than people handle our haunt. We see 40-year-old people going through our haunt, falling apart, way worse. Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with being scared. They are trying to scare you. That is literally what they're trying to do. That's why everyone's here, supposedly. Yeah.

[44:33] Anyway, so the reason for the season, the reason for the trip, for us to go to Kansas City rather than just go straight to St.

[44:40] Louis, was Exiled Crooked Rose Woods. It's in uh bonner springs kansas which is about 30 minutes um west of the center of the city on the kansas side of things and the reason we were going was because we reported this on a news episode recently that darren on bozeman the director of repo the genetic opera and some of the later soul movies souls 2 through i forgot which one's the last one he did um and others um was supposedly directing both the Carnival and another VIP show. Yeah. And we were incredibly excited about seeing his work. And so, but now, because of The Beast and The Edge of Hell, we're achy, we're hurty, we are not at 100%. And like you said, this haunt has, and it's Mark and Matilda repeated, this is a daunting, physically challenging, haunted trail. You will be pushed to the limit, da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, and after, like, a...

[45:48] So I got up and we went to lunch that day and to a yarn store with Ellie. And then I came back and I crashed it because my body just said, no, you're not being awake anymore. Yeah, we had to wake you up to leave. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it was, we did not have a very full day, to put it mildly. We did have a lovely Italian meal, though, at that restaurant. We did, and the Yarn Social was very nice. Yeah, Yarn Social in Kansas, definitely, Kansas City definitely gets a recommendation, too. Yeah. Thank you for joining us on Yarn Weekly. But, you know, so we went out there.

[46:27] Now, the thing about Exiled is they have three tiers. Yes. And I'm going to give a criticism here in that I don't think they explain the difference in the tiers very well. I would agree with that. They do tell you that tier one takes about an hour, tier two takes about two hours, tier three takes about three hours, and that your interactivity increases. But beyond that, there's not much explanation. well and there was so much talk about the physicality of of the location that i was worried that stepping up to another level also meant that the difficulty of getting through the trail haunt would increase as well like maybe there were other passages you had to take things like that that was a longer trail you had more scenes yeah more obstacles more things like that Exactly. Yeah. I will say now that is not the case. No. Do not let the talk about the physicality of this haunt stop you from going. They're right to warn you. There are some physically challenging parts. But I think they might actually be the rare case of warning too hard. Yeah. Because, yeah, this to us was way easier physically than the beast and the edge of hell. Yes, definitely. Way easier. Way, way, way easier.

[47:53] So when picking our tiers, we chose tier two. We agreed to the greater interactivity and to the heightened cost, but we were not comfortable.

[48:07] Especially between the money and the physicality side of it, doing level three. Right. And Darren Bozeman was advertised at the level two. Yes. Darren Bozeman's work was... He was advertised as the creator of that level. Exactly. So we chose that. It made perfect sense. So we rocked up and we ran into one of the characters first. Yeah. Way outside front of house. and she was kind of a dick to us but that's the character she is yeah she's in character but she's way front of house so maybe you know keep your character work behind the actual ticket booth that's one thing i would say yeah keep the elites away from the ticket booth yeah yeah she she was very off-putting and just like well she didn't like us and then we get in and oh she's playing one of the family members because basically there's two groups roaming around outside you have the elites who you will recognize by the suits they are wearing very dapper looking better than a dapper looking very smashing all of them and the family the uh the yeah curves no and uh the red red curves red red curve uh it's gonna hit me in a minute um but yeah the red curves uh Red Kerr family basically they are your stereotypical quote-unquote hillbilly.

[49:34] Country folk family and yeah and they're very very stereotypical but very large family too yeah but anyways so.

[49:46] We went, so they, so yeah, we got in there and we let into the carnival, which actually was a really cool carnival. It was. And the first person that approached us was the apothecarian. Yes. Who started telling us the story of the land, did a good job, and then we got pulled out of it. Yeah.

[50:10] Yeah, we weren't able to finish it because they interrupted to have us go to the stage. And the stage show involved an audience-led pig squealing contest yes um and then everyone being forced to dance to random country jig song well it well there's also a little bit more storytelling too yeah it was the twist oh i know that because i did the twist exactly it's an easy dance to do and and that that actually was a lot of fun so i danced twice during in haunts during this trip yes this was this was just unusual for me yes i uh slipped off and bought alcoholic drinks which i just thought somebody had kidnapped you and that came later around i know but i didn't know okay so i didn't know that it was a possibility but i didn't rule it out either so i'm trying to and i'm having a little bit of an internal debate here because i don't want to spoil too much of this haunt no um and i'm trying to figure out a way to talk about some of the things that happened um without you know be doing spoilers um but yeah so i went away and i got an alcoholic drink for each of us and we went we played some carnival games. Yeah.

[51:35] And as we were roaming, I was approached by a character named Cleetums.

[51:41] And he cleans and i had a friendly conversation and he was very lovely um and he went away and then he came back like 10 minutes later yeah and he's like do you trust me jonathan.

[51:55] And basically um asked me to put a like executioner's hood on my head like a like a basically a black sack and then follow him into the woods No. And of course I did. Well, yeah. Now I won't say what happened other than obvious spoiler, I'm alive still. Yeah. I don't know if you noticed, I've been here the whole time. I'm still alive. I did not die at Cleedom's hands. No, it's just that I have, I have mastered making your voice and doing a great interpretation of you. Okay.

[52:30] That's, that's why you sound like you're here, but you're really I'm pulling this whole thing off by myself which is really good doing the parts where we're talking over each other that's kind of that's hella skilled I know right I wish I knew you had this talent this whole time we could have been making bank off this doing the human marionette shows and shit or human um ventriloquist shows uh but anyway I won't spoil the interaction but it was interesting it led to more information about the story and it basically Basically, it was a lot of cool. It was very cool. And apparently, pretty much all of the characters there have some degree of interaction like this. Yeah. And this is one of the times that I went to the website afterwards and to their Facebook page and wish I had researched it a little bit more before. Yeah. Because there are contests on their Facebook page that's every night. If you find certain characters and the first ones to find them in the night, you get prizes. I don't know what those are because I didn't know about it to know to do it. Yeah. I'm pretty sure we did interact with all the characters in question. Oh, yeah. I did. One of them found me and told me she liked my hair.

[53:44] I told her I liked her hair, too, and then she wandered off. So all in all, we did pretty good with the carnival. Yeah. And because basically we got there at 7, almost on the nose. Yeah. Our tickets were at 7. But when we went past and got, basically, and the other thing we forgot to mention when you're coming in. Is you will get a lanyard with your color of level. Green for level one, yellow slash white for level two, and VIP is red. Yeah.

[54:16] And so, but since we were level two, we were to go into the trail at eight, not seven. We had an hour to faff around in the carnival and with the stage show and all that. And yes, we did a great deal of faffing. And had a good time with it. And it was getting, starting to get close to eight. And people from our crew were already lining up. But I wasn't eager to run and get in the line yet. Because we were both kind of dreading. Yeah. We're still wrapped up in this physicality thing. Right. And by the way, all of the characters that interacted with me one-on-one were terrific. Yes. Like, I'm just going to say that. I'm not going to tell all of the things that they said. I was asked multiple times for tokens, and I don't bring anything with me to haunt, so I didn't have anything. Yeah, that might have been another area where we should have read more about the haunt. I mean, and this trip, I think, did expose some of how our approach to going to haunts is, hey, there's a haunt, here's the name, here's the price, here's when it's open, let's go. Yeah.

[55:26] May not be the best for every haunt. Yeah. We like going in with no preconceived notions. So basically, if it ain't on the homepage of the site or if it ain't like in the sticky post on the Facebook page, we probably didn't see it. And that's intentional. So just something to think about on both sides there. But anyways, we were milling about. And I noticed someone walking around with a shirt that said lead. And he looked familiar.

[55:56] And looked vaguely familiar. And I walked up to him and I said, excuse me, I'm bad with faces. So if I'm wrong, just tell me to nap off. But are you Darren Bozeman? And he said, yes, I am. And I go, hi, my name is Jonathan Bailey. I just bought a couple of lots of the Revo, the genetic copper post from. He sent the photo from my office showing me how we mounted them. And he looks at me and crystals beside me at this point. And he says the line I'll never forget. He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But aren't you from New Orleans? Because he remembers shipping all that crap to me. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. It's like, oh, there's that asshole from New Orleans again.

[56:36] I'm saying it under his breath. And he's like, yes, sir. And he's like, so you flew up here for this? Oh, no, sir. We drove. Like, that's better. That's totally not better. I don't know why. I thought that would make me seem more sane in that moment. We drove 12 hours just to see. And the thing I tried to explain to you, we also got a baby shower and got a bunch of other things going on. This was just a very opportune thing, which is true. It is true. It still did add like eight, eight and a half hours to the trip. He still made sacrifices to do it, but still, it wasn't like the whole 12 hours there, 12 hours back was just for this. No. No, no, no. And he was like, how freaky do y'all want to get tonight? How weird. How weird. Yeah, it was hell weird. I couldn't remember. How weird do you want to get tonight? And I'm like, I don't know. Follow me. And then he curls his fingers like, follow me. And at this point, I'm thinking, oh, great. We're going to go off into the woods to do drugs with Darren Bozeman. I'm kidding, of course. No. But, I mean, I had no idea where this was going at the moment. No. He led us back to...

[57:45] The booth. The ticket booth. The ticket booth. And had us get in line by this tent that we had noticed near the carnival. Yeah. But hadn't gone inside, and apparently we're not even allowed to go inside. Mm-hmm. And he brings back two red... Lights. Lights. So basically he upgraded us to VIP. Yeah. Which was, like, we were very thankful for it. We were and are very thankful. full of Darren. If you do happen to be listening to this, I know I sent you the message on Instagram, but I want to reiterate here. Thank you for your hospitality and thank you for your generosity. It was incredibly appreciated.

[58:27] Please don't think I'm a weird fan that literally stalked you to Kansas City. We didn't know you were going to be there. We didn't know you were going to be there in person, definitely. Well, no. We thought you had influence over how it was built and the actor training and stuff, But we didn't expect to run into you randomly. Yeah, we didn't expect to bump into you. And we didn't expect the other celebrity we bumped into. We'll get into that in a minute. There were multiple. Yeah, but... I can't remember the names of some of them. Yeah. But anyways, we go into this tent. And once again, avoiding spoilers. Trying to avoid spoilers here. Because on the site, I pulled up the site here. Here, it's called Opulence, a VIP experience, and basically, it is your opportunity to join quote-unquote the elite. Yeah. Now, that's not a spoiler. It's literally on the side. Yeah. So, basically, what it is, it's a one-hour program.

[59:27] Where you are joining this cult-like thing for rich people. Yeah. Or for the elite in general, I should say. Yeah, it's basically your trial to see if you can be an elite. Yes. And you are going to, A, drink a lot of toast. I'll tell you that much. Yeah. That's not a spoiler. Bring your liver, is what I'm saying. Or you can ask for water. You can ask for anything, actually. Yeah, and it's 21 and over. Yeah, it's 21 and over. That's a point there. But you're going to play a variety of games, humiliations. Well, it's only humiliating if you have any self-respect. Or if you care about what these particular assholes think of you. Yeah. And one of the things that's kind of great about it is, I can talk about some of the things we did, but since it's totally random, your experience is going to be different. Yeah. Like, one of the things I had to do was go around and insult other members. Right. Other people, other guests. And so that was one of the things I had to do. They also had a game where people were begging like they were homeless. Things like that. These games change. The specific games do change. But be prepared for games that are going to push you out of your comfort zone, is what I'm saying. Right. And that's the thing. It's like, I'm not easily made uncomfortable. No. But this was definitely working to push me out of that zone. Well, and it's weird for me because I'm uncomfortable all the time.

[1:00:56] And I like to think about what I'm going to say and analyze and stuff before I say anything. Like, other than on this podcast and apparently in haunted houses. Haunted houses are my safe space. I've said this before, which is really weird, but they are. Are so i am up for anything in haunted houses yeah um so yeah we went along with it it's basically a one hour fully interactive show with a cast of like six or seven um elite who are gonna put you through your paces and there's just a lot of different elements involved in it i don't want to do spoilers but this is easily the most interactive haunted attraction event we've been a part of. Yeah. And it's like I said, it's one hour, but it feels much longer. It feels much longer. In a good way. Oh yeah, in a very good way. It's very interactive. You forget that you're not auditioning to be part of this family. Yeah, this is, as I was telling Crystal when we were talking about it afterward.

[1:02:06] There's only two times in a haunted attraction i've had to remind myself it's it's just a show i really should just relax yeah because usually i've always got that somewhere in the back of my head and i never completely lose it alien encounters in disney world rest in peace the goat and this were the two times i had to go well just remember jonathan this is still a haunted attraction you are still in that space yeah i thought you had mentioned raven's grin oh yeah Yeah, Ravensgrin in two. Yeah. Yeah, okay. When we were talking, you had mentioned that you only got that feeling there. Yeah, I did get the feeling there, mostly because I realized we were two people alone in this creepy old guy's house. Yeah. And, like, nobody knows where we are, and we have no cell signal.

[1:02:50] No. No, yeah. So, yeah, that's true. Actually, that's a good example where the Beast was, like, trying to ape Ravensgrin in, or it seemed like they were, without understanding how it worked. This attraction actually emulated that getting sucked into it feeling so well so it was an incredible experience, it's not very physically demanding it's going to be a theme as we're now going to be rating all the haunts on physically demanding nature now this was not physically demanding but it, it's going to make you awkward if you don't like being on stage or performing in front of a crowd this is going to be your hell right it is intended to, To put you off your game. Yeah. And to make you the center of attention. Yeah. In ways that will make you uncomfortable. Yeah. Especially if you're not someone who does a lot of self-reflection. Yeah. Yeah, that was a theme throughout this exile, though, was the self-reflection aspect of it. What regrets do you have? Who do you hate? Who would you kill if you could kill anyone? Things like that. These were themes throughout, not just this VIP thing, but throughout the entire haunt. Right. And basically, though, you join, and then predictably enough, at the end of the hour, you don't make it. Right. You get put back out with the riffraff. And then you've got to go do the trail. Yeah.

[1:04:14] So that's not a spoiler either, because you've still got to do the trail. Yeah. So spoiler alert, you're not going to be one of the elite when you exit. I'm sorry. But, man, the whole thing is incredible.

[1:04:28] It's well done. The actors were amazing. Yeah. And it found very subtle ways to be unsettling. Yeah. Like, very, very subtle. Like, this is just wrong. Like, not even, like, wrong, just, like, weird wrong. Yeah. Like, one of the actors was doing all the toasts with a jug of milk. Yeah. It's like, that's weird. And I kept looking at him going, huh? Eyes cold because it was, you know, sweating. Um but yeah it was it was interesting it was an interesting and wonderful experience, and i'm glad i embarrassed myself enough in front of darren to have a lesson it was worthwhile and i'm glad we get to talk about it because and if you can't afford it i would recommend it yeah, thing about it is none of the tiers are particularly inexpensive no for haunts like the lowest and the one is 49 the middle term is the middle tier i think is 78 no 80 no it's yeah 88 because it's 39 more um and the vip is 200 whatever amount you're comfortable with financially, I would go for, because I think each upgrade is worth it. But I also understand that $200 for a ticket is a huge ask. Yeah. I understand that completely, and I think it's worth it. I think it's a unique enough experience.

[1:05:57] It's definitely unlike anything I've ever done. Yeah, and I think had I known going in what it was, I would have said we should do it. Yeah, I agree. Even though, like i said it's a big ask for us when we're not particularly wealthy but i i would definitely whatever you are comfortable with financially i would pay because what i learned and now i can actually explain the differences between the tiers fine yeah um level one is basically you do the trail yeah it's no real interactivity you don't get to do very much you're not going to have the various character interactions that you'll have at the higher tiers um so you're You're basically just going to do the trail launch. Level two gives you access to the carnival. And you have interactivity points all along the trail. Right. The characters will pull you aside. They'll have you do various tasks and various things. Some humiliating, some disgusting, some funny, some scary. And level three gets you that tense experience, the elite experience. Yeah. Plus everything at level two. Right. That's my actual understanding of the levels. It was not clear from...

[1:07:14] The marketing on the website. So that is what I would encourage you to do is basically, hey, there's Cleetums. But basically, I would encourage you to whatever level you are comfortable with, go for it.

[1:07:28] Right. Which brings us to the trail. Yeah.

[1:07:32] You know, as weird as it sounds, I don't have a lot to say about the trail because it was good. It was very good. Yeah, it was very good. the um the actors had obvious training oh yeah like everybody stayed in character even when they were asking if i was okay because i was exhausted well and i well this is not the fault of them i uh tweaked my knee one of the characters had me crawl and i wasn't looking where i was going i put my knee down on the rock yeah and that hurt once again minor that is minor as fuck But I shook it off. But, like, get back down and crawl. I can't. My foot's now asleep. Yeah. Have you ever heard that soft spot of your knee and your foot goes asleep? It sucks. Yes, it does. Yeah.

[1:08:22] But, yeah, the interaction was great. All the characters stayed in character. And here's the thing that I realized as we were going through it. Every character has a place in the bigger world. They are world building here. There's this whole tale about the evil in the woods, the Red Kerr family, the greedy elites coming in and trying to snatch up the land because it's valuable to them for some reason that isn't explained. They're doing world building and everybody, every character fits into it somewhere. Yeah. There's a teacher that teaches the kids. Yeah. The schoolmaster, so to speak. and the student was not enjoying the lessons, we'll say.

[1:09:10] I'll say this. It was a fairly physically demanding trail. There was one part where we had to climb through a school bus that was at a 45-degree incline. Now, we'd heard someone else describe it as being straight up vertical. And I'm like, how the fuck would you climb in the back of the seat? What do you do? Yeah, I don't know. I was trying to think. Because they're too wide apart to be stairs. Yeah. um but it was just a it was not that bad it was through the door and around behind the driver's seat yeah basically yeah the entire length but it was impressive to look at it was impressive to look at and fun to do yeah um actually because they they the footholds and the way they positioned it yes obviously you can't do it if you're on crutches or otherwise mobility right able but But if you are ambulatory, you will be fine. And if I was able to wear real shoes, I would have had less problems with the trail.

[1:10:06] I brought my good boots for this. Yeah. I had no trouble. Yeah, I'm only able to wear slip-ons right now. So that did hinder me some, but if you can wear tie-on shoes, you should be fine. Yeah. Honestly, this was way less physically demanding than either the Beast or the Edge of Hell. Yeah. And for all of the worry and all the concern we'd had, it was for nothing. This is a fairly standard. standard it's like other haunted trails we've been on in terms of difficulty right yes there's some hills yes there's some climbing around but nothing that should cause you any real concern it's long once again this this trail experience went about 50 minutes but once again we were level three slash two um so there were a lot of interaction points in there yeah uh just to give one away, they had me reach in to an outhouse, a quote unquote poop filled outhouse.

[1:11:06] Um to get a key got the key unlocked a character and then more stuff happened yeah but i remember that one vividly because i'm sticking my hand in and feeling the fake turds around yeah and i'm like i just hope the water is actually clear i pull it out no it is brown yeah what the fuck do they use and then i sniff my hand and it's oh chocolate yeah and of course the the lady goes how you like running around in my poop and i'm like well your poop smells like chocolate you You might need to see a doctor about that. She's like, yeah, I got a sweet tooth. I got a sweet tooth. I love chocolate, all right? A little too much. It's coming out of your hole.

[1:11:46] But yeah, if you are at the level two, you are encouraged to interact. Now, they say do not talk to characters that do not talk to you. And I'm pretty sure they have strict rules of which characters are allowed to engage. Right. And what they're allowed to do. But if a character does talk to you, do engage, do play with them, do. Yeah, I mean, and I'm sure that there are some things that we missed just because we weren't sure what we were supposed to do. Yeah. Like, I'm positive that the dolls that kept trying to talk to us probably did want us to say and do something, but I couldn't figure it out. And that scene, I remember that one pretty well, because once you stay and play with me and stuff like that is common expression in a haunt that you're not supposed to take seriously. And so I would maybe this is an idea as a tip, find a different way to indicate that this is an interactive moment. Yeah, because they said, do you want to play a game? And I said, sure, what game? And then they talked about swapping our faces. which um but then they kept following us and saying more things and i'm like okay so what are we supposed to do do we keep going do we stop do we interact more like yeah so that was a little.

[1:13:09] I won't i won't say it was frustrating but i do wonder if we missed some things just because we're so used to going through haunts that aren't as interactive yeah and a lot of the lines are just throwaways you're not supposed. Yeah.

[1:13:24] To engage with exactly so yeah that may be something you might need to do is find ways because most of them i think we got but on some of them make sure that the lines they use to get people to interact are are clear yeah like instructions like if we are supposed to stay in that that room say oh if you want to play the game take a seat here you know given and given an instruction and then we'll know. But maybe we weren't supposed to. Maybe we're supposed to just keep going. I don't know. I don't know. One person did sit down and play tic-tac-toe with me. Yeah. Then the bitch cheated. I told her I wanted to go in the middle. She drew the X on her.

[1:14:07] Which is fucking clever. I gotta admit, I control the board so that way I can't win. It's actually fucking ingenious. It's the only way to ensure I'm gonna lose tic-tac-toe. I was just jealous that you got to sit down.

[1:14:20] I got it also in the chapel. They pulled you up and made you kneel at the altar, and I got to sit in one of the pews. I know, with the backrest. But that's okay. Like I said, it was nowhere near as physically demanding as the Beast. No. Now, the thing we realized after it was all said and done was we noticed that two of the the women that were in the um the the tent not the actors but two of the people who were customers supposedly yeah um stood out yeah they did not look like locals they did not look like people would go to haunts yeah i don't know who would wear that nothing looked right about them maybe they stood out um we both had thought that maybe they were planned i thought maybe they were friends with someone yeah you know i was trying to figure out what the deal was they didn't look like they were they were nice to us they were very incredibly nice both of them this isn't a knock on but they did stand out found out that one of them was tori spelling, And it's bad, because I mentioned earlier that I had the task of insulting people. The reason I mentioned that was I glommed on to Tori Spelling, and the first thing I said is, your fashion sense is so stuck in the 90s.

[1:15:37] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God, I'm going to have nightmares about this. Yeah. The bad thing is, like, I've never actually watched anything she's done. No. know i i legit could not recognize her even if it were more obvious so i have no idea it was just hilarious to learn that later yeah because the only way we found out is that i went to the facebook page and saw a reel that she was tagged in and i'm like oh oh well there you go and i'm like that can't be the tori spelling that you know fact yes yeah yes it can yeah so So, that happened. Tori, if by some miracle you're listening to this, sorry, not sorry. I don't think I'm supposed to actually apologize for that. Sorry, not sorry for what I said.

[1:16:31] No, but seriously, legit, I had no idea it was you. How about that? Which is bad, because I barely recognized Aaron Bozeman. And I expected him, I knew there was a possibility he'd be there. I didn't expect him there. And I've seen pictures of him recently, you know? Well, yeah. And on the way up, I asked, doesn't he live near there? And you're like, no, he's in California. No, all the mail came from L.A. Yeah, there's no way he's going to be there. Yeah, I knew there was a possibility, but I was not expecting it, and I did not think it likely. No. But I was still marginally on the lookout for it, and I still barely recognized him. Yeah. Oh, and they also had a very cute little gift shop. Oh, God, their gift shop was one of the best. Yeah, and it was also very cheap. Yeah, I mean... That was one of the things, but this and the next time we're talking, I both had really cheap gift shops, but this one, it was crazy. We bought a lot of stuff, including a shirt. We bought a shirt, a doll. A voodoo doll thingy. Well, it was like a red-painted baby doll. Yeah, it's weird. It's cool, but weird. A robot-looking thingy. Yeah, a plastic piece of artwork. I don't know how else to describe it. And a keychain. And a keychain, yeah. Yeah, and we got it out for $24. Yeah, for four things.

[1:17:55] Yeah. Including a shirt. Like, in a lot of places, a shirt alone would have been $25.30. Yeah. So, yeah, that was incredibly inexpensive, and I'm grateful for it because they did a good job mixing merch booth stuff. They had their T-shirts. They had their hats. They had their hoodies. They had their stuff with their logo, but they also had stuff from local artists and artisans and some very interesting things that I could not find anywhere else, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. And, yeah, we enjoyed it. It was all reasonably priced, which is so weird because I would have assumed, because this is, like I said, an expensive haunt.

[1:18:31] It is a pricier haunt. I fully expected it to be an expensive gift shop, but it wasn't. Right. But that brings us to our last night of haunting, Where we drove over to St. Louis, scooped up Ellie's brother, his daughter, and Ellie's mom. So six of us total. Mm-hmm.

[1:18:53] To revisit for us, for three of us, revisiting for those three, the first time, Waterloo Haunted Trail in Waterloo, Illinois. Now, we talked about Waterloo eons ago, and we'll talk about it multiple times, as one of our favorite, if not our favorite, trail haunt. And the way we discovered it all those years ago was we were at a random costume shop in the Belleville area, which is outside of St. Louis. And we just saw this crudely printed flyer for a haunted house in the middle of the woods. And we're saying hey let's go exactly fuck it we're going and it ended up being this charming.

[1:19:29] Very long haunted attraction um that was inexpensive but also tons of creativity and tons of inventiveness and what makes it really impressive to me is hey they're one of the longest running haunts ever i mean i think they've been at it in damn near at least 40 years now i think 45 years or more yeah i don't know i can try to look yeah look it up they've been open for a long time and realistically they only do it six nights a year this whole this season they're doing it three fridays saturdays and they're not doing it halloween and the reason or the week before halloween um and basically it goes up the two weeks before and it comes down the week after they close because they are a sportsman club and this trail is used for camping it is used for hunting, fishing, all kinds of sporting activities. Yeah. So, yeah, they, so, yeah, it's impressive how much they do in that little time. It really is, and everybody had a lot of fun on it. Yes.

[1:20:40] So I can't find the history of the haunt right quick, so we'll have to look that up later. Yeah, it's been around for a long, long, long time. Yeah, they don't have it on their flyers this year. I know they recently celebrated one of the big anniversaries, so... Yeah, I think it was 25 years when we went, like, 11 years, or 10 years ago. Yeah, it's been a long, long time that they've been doing this. And it's absolutely wonderful. It's a very long haunt. Um...

[1:21:11] And one thing I noticed this year is that they flipped it. Yeah. And I kind of wish they hadn't. Same.

[1:21:21] Because, okay, the first year we did it, like I said, damn, probably a decade ago now, we went, you would actually just go right onto the trail from where you turn your ticket in, walk onto the trail, do the trail, and then you would return via a hayride. Right. And that worked out pretty well, actually. With this one, we took the hayride to the start of the trail, which meant the rest of the trail was done in reverse. Well, I think that's pretty cool that you can do that. It had a very big topography problem.

[1:21:57] Yeah, because the last probably quarter mile. Yeah, not long distance-wise, but felt long. Yeah, was uphill. Very steep uphill. hill and this is after you've been hiking for about a mile and a half or so yeah because the exile um my watch counted that i had done three and a half miles walking around on that yeah because the trail itself was an hour an hour yeah by itself yeah when they say you get three hours out of that that ticket they're not kidding because it's about an hour at the carnival an an hour in the elite tent, then an hour on the trail. It's almost exactly that. Yeah, which is weird because we don't usually like when they say that stuff. But for us... Because nobody meets it except them, apparently. Yeah. Yeah, for them, it worked for us. It would not have worked if we had been young and running through scared.

[1:22:54] But that's not what you should time your hunt on anyway. Yeah. Yeah, so with Waterloo, it took a little over two miles. That ended in the hill. Yeah, it was really, it's a long, long hike, and it has some uphill and downhill, but because of the way it went, that last quarter of a mile was up a very steep hill where previously you would have started and gone down it and then did the rest of the trail. That, I think, is much easier. And we were not the only ones huffing and puffing trying to get that last hill done. No, there was somebody trying to do it on crutches. Yeah, I don't know how the fuck they're getting up that hill. No. To my knowledge, they're still there at the bottom. Yeah.

[1:23:46] But I got to say, the reasons we went were still very much intact. Yeah. Tons of creativity. We found a few ideas we're stealing. Yep. Going to tell you that right now. One idea in particular is ending up in the haunt this year. Yeah. Because we've still got so much work to do. We didn't even talk about the fact that we finished the yard display before we left. No. I've got to put some spotlights up, but that's it. Yeah, everything was in the ground and, like, ready for people to walk through, which they did while we were gone. Yeah, so it got out on camera. It was great. Yeah. No. But anyway, back to Waterloo.

[1:24:24] It was every, other than that topography problem, everything was great. But then again, like, when we went the first time, it ended kind of weak, too, because they did the blackout maze. Yeah that was really frustrating and really kind of out of place with everything else they've been doing this time around the lat it ended week because it was up a hill with nothing on it and it was just really tiring and really difficult yeah and you know Ellie had to take a hit off her inhaler she, doesn't have asthma but she can have asthma attacks like attacks with stress physical stress right and I really should have brought mine or should have asked for a hit off of hers because i was having a lot of trouble yeah because i have been prescribed one too for exercise which i've checked trail haunts definitely are yeah this and it's interesting because like the physically demanding if i had to put them in order the b slash gates of hell was the most demanding yeah waterloo was second and the haunt that openly warns you about about how physically demanding it is was the easiest physically. And maybe some of that is that we just over expect it. We expect it too much. And they set the expectations, the physical demanding is too high, so it feels lower. It could be that, I don't know. I'm not like a exercise scientist or anything, but my God.

[1:25:46] You know it that's how it seems so yeah i think water waterloo would be wise to go back to the way they had it because that way you're working with the terrain a little better.

[1:25:57] And also having an empty spot like that at the beginning is way better than having it at the end yeah because that's giving people time to sort of sink into the woods and sort of get away from that carnival and the fair and the other stuff going on right and sink into the actual trail on I think it's much better to have you got a blank space like that one under the other I think it's got to be at the beginning and honestly I really enjoyed the nice hayride at the end of it last year the time we went previously yeah because it was time to sit time to relax you feel the cool breeze on you get to look at things honestly I liked it much better that way but but everything else I mean we glommed on to it for very much present yeah tons of creativity great actors great scares amazing timing yeah bring cash for the uh snack bar yeah bring cash for the snack bar and the fair in the car slash carnival yep um i've got to say we didn't we've never done much with the carnival there i'm glad we did we had a great time i learned that i am capable of tossing anything that is not a ring with a great deal of accuracy yeah i apparently suck at ring tosses this was learned at both the the exiled carnival and the one at Waterloo. And I'm the opposite because I got ring tosses down. Yeah, she got ring tosses in both but couldn't get anything else. The funniest one was they had like a beanbag toss set up where you try to get them through the little holes.

[1:27:27] And I tossed the first one and it like hung on it. And she's like, I'm counting that one. And before she could say anything else and before she went to grab it, before she could grab it, I just threw the second one and like it was playing cornhole. Not the first one and the second one went straight through. Yeah. It's just like, holy. And I'm like, you know what I'm not even gonna care on the third one I peaked there's nothing I can do with the third one that's as cool as what I did with the second one yeah well and the thing is is that you and her are the only ones that saw it I know it's so fast oh yeah it was very quick to look it was just like because like she was trying to grab like no I take it but man and I gotta say I I had enjoyed that. Once again, they had a merch booth, not a gift shop. But they also had an incredibly full snack bar. You could get everything from the best caramel apples I have seen. Yeah. Like, they...

[1:28:24] They cubed them. They cut them up. Like chapel chunks, basically. Yeah. Yeah. So not slices, not in half, not whole. Then little chunks and then drizzled the caramel. With a really good caramel sauce. Yeah. Because I like caramel apples. I like the flavor. But usually caramel apples are impossible to fucking eat. Yeah. They've solved it. Turns out the answer was there all the time in the Ikea aisle with the apple core cutters. No. Who knew? So, yeah. It was a wonderful experience. Everyone there was so friendly. Um the only other complaint i have i do want to mention this briefly, was one of the werewolves was wearing a donald trump making america great again hat yeah and i've been trying to decide is this pro or anti-trump i can make a case for either i legit don't know what that says politically yeah and i i don't it it was in a cage and i don't i don't i just wish it wasn't there yeah because that's the only political thing that was there Yeah, exactly. It really stood out because of that. Yeah.

[1:29:27] It's like we said about the mortuary. I'm going to haunts for escapism. One of the things I'm trying to escape is the wall-to-wall election coverage. Yep. So please let me have my werewolf without having to discern whether that's a pro- or anti-Trump thing. Because like I said, you can make a compelling argument either direction. Yeah. So anyways, yeah, that was a wonderful experience. And both Ellie's brother and his daughter loved it. Yeah.

[1:29:55] Her mom was more on the fence about it. Her mom's not a haunted house person. At all. Yeah. She did enjoy it. I think she especially enjoyed the fair and the food and the other stuff going on, too. So, I mean, all in all, there was still stuff there for her is the main thing. And I'm glad we took them. I'm glad they got to come. I am very glad that the eight-month pregnant mother-to-be did not come. Yeah, she was originally thinking about coming out for it. And then she changed her mind at the last minute and we all went... Yeah, because that would have been a baby on the path. Call him Baby Waterloo. Yeah. All right, well, that's all we have for this week. It's a double episode, basically. I'm sorry for giving you way more content than planned. Mm-hmm. Okay, but anyways, definitely if you're not bored of Haunt Weekly yet, please check out more at HauntWeekly.com, HauntWeekly on X slash Twitter, Haunt Weekly on Facebook, and YouTube.com slash Haunt Weekly. Catch us wherever you get your podcasts from. Until next time, I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And we will see you all next week as we talk about more haunted houses that we visited and the haunt we're trying to fucking build. See y'all then.