Halfway to Halloween at Fright Kingdom

It’s halfway to Halloween, so you know what that means—we just do Halloween things. It’s not a huge surprise. I’m adding the banner up top too.

But yes, May is that time where we sort of get stir-crazy and want to celebrate something fun. Summer approaches with all of its mosquitos and ticks, and the lesser holidays have passed, leaving us with a need to jump into something, even if actually beginning the countdown is a bit premature. Best to save that for the end of July naturally.

We’re no stranger to Fright Kingdom, having been going during Halloween season proper over the past few years, as well as the Christmas Krampus one. Maybe I’ll do another article on that in December and pretend it’s current.

Like many others, it’s a haunted walkthrough. I wish there were a better name for these sort of attractions. Haunted Houses or Haunts don’t really convey what they are. You’d be more apt to think of an actual haunted house in those cases, so I stick with the more cumbersome yet accurate label.

In any case, you walkthrough and either admire the scenery or jump when someone says ‘boo’. Most of the time it follows this formula, except for the few extreme examples where you need to sign a waiver and promise not to contact the Title IX department when all is said and done. I do plan to do a write-up of all in the area, but for now, we’ll stick to this premise.

The main difference this these cases is how the labyrinths are constructed and decorated. The actors can’t touch you, so aside from some banging and yelling, the actual element of fear is somewhat absent. At least in my case since my reflexed to the macabre have all been erased after accidentally watching the Chechclear video over twenty years ago.

The nice touches are when you have something to do when waiting. Haunted Overload a bit north does this well, being in a forest and giving you plenty of things to look at before even entering. Here there are galleries of horror icons, and animatronic band, and some hints at the seasonal one-off events that happen throughout the year.

The biggest find—aside from the random Adam Sandler cutout of course—is the Vincent Price shrunken apple kit. It was firmly behind glass, as is should be, but brought me great joy since it was the source of the famous X-E shrunken apple head from decades ago. Don’t know what that is? Well click here you ignorant heathen.

The walkthrough was generally the same. The Krampus one was nice due to all the added Christmas lights, but even being back to vanilla, they did add a complete blackout section. The wobbly floor section was a nice touch.

Once done, there’s food vendors and some merch booths outside. Plus the ever spooky porta-potty if one dares to enter. Additional actors roam here too, so you can grab a photo-op or just watch them mill around. Sometimes you can get them to take your picture, but that sort of defeats the purpose.

I believe this is the last one-off before the actual Halloween season. There was supposed to be a Cupid one in February, but it was called off do the bigger boogieman that had scared people a bit more over the past few years.