Wumbology

Here's one: Could it be worse?

^^ I think that Pumpkin animatronic also may appear at Lake Compounce... I've seen video. Can't say for sure, though.

WOW! Now I NEED to get there. That is way, way much more involved than Scared by the Sound.

I went to "Scared by the Sound" at Playland Park in Rye, New York, on Friday. That was my first haunt. I posted a trip report: http://themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=57155 There's a possibility of seeing "Haunted Graveyard" at Lake Compounce before Halloween comes along but who knows. Halloween decorations in Playland's fountain.

Hey, everyone! I'm Hale, and I haven't posted on here too much, but I love reading all the reports and seeing all the pictures on TPR. I do post on MiceChat pretty often, but there's no way that place could satiate my needs for good ole' theme park fun. My birthday is next Wednesday, so I was planning a trip to go up to Lake Compounce yesterday, Friday, to see their Haunted Graveyard and ride Boulder Dash with some friends. Unfortunately, it became hard to plan as the weather forecast kept changing all week. Then, when the day came, plans fell through for most people and it looked like we weren't going to be doing anything in the wind and the rain. Later that afternoon, we met up with some of our family visiting from Tennessee, and we made plans to go out to dinner and visit Playland Park in Rye, New York for their Scared by the Sound haunted house. Rye Playland is much closer to our town in Connecticut- maybe 15 minutes as opposed to over an hour. We hopped over the CT-NY border to Port Chester where we had dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. Can't say we'll be going back any time soon. The adults sat at their own table and my cousin, two of my friends, and I sat along the upstairs railing. There were NO lights above us so we could hardly see our food. The food was pretty cold too- but we met up with some mutual friends and had a nice time hanging out. Afterwards, my cousins decided that they would be skipping the haunted house so they could be sure they'd catch their train to their hotel in New York City. So then our group became my dad, my friends Eamon and Erin, and I. Rye was only a few minutes away and we made our way down the Playland Parkway to the Park. Now, I've never experienced any real Halloween event before. This was a first for me. For a while, I've loved reading up about Halloween Horror Nights and all the other big events on websites like this. I love the environments they create and the stories they tell. However, Playland's Scared by the Sound is not quite as big of a deal. First of all, the park isn't actually open. None of the rides are operating. It's just one haunted house, that is set up in the park's picnic areas. Still, as we drove in- I hit a wall of "Oh jeeze this is gonna freak me the hell out." Apparently, the same thing happened to Erin. My dad dropped us off at the main entrance to go park and Erin was already freaked out. Inside the main gate, the big fountain was turned off and still. They had some netting around the fountain and a centerpiece of creepy skeletons. It reminded me very much of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, actually... To the right was Long Island Sound. The misty drizzle and the winds really added to the atmosphere. A generic spooky Halloween sound effects track was playing over the speakers and every couple minutes a deep voice would say, "Welcome to Scared by the Sound," and laugh spookily. People were going in the Ice Casino, presumably to skate. Two ticket windows were open for Scared by the Sound. We bought our tickets, and entered through the walkway on the left side of the mall. Near the gate, a food truck was selling hot dogs and a table offered drinks from some sponsor I've never heard of. One water gun game was operating. Around the corner, we passed the go-kart track and used the restrooms- the park's largest ones. A large banner said "ENTRANCE," and lead us to one of the picnic pavilions. Inside, a queue was set up, and a small projection screen was showing REALLY random clips from old Sci-Fi movies, (Dine-in, anyone?) Our wait was only 15 minutes. At the end of the queue, an entrance arch was all lit-up and the security guards left guests in the care of a zombie butler. When we were let through, this zombie let us inside and we were immediately surprised by one of his buddies. These two guys got us up against a wall and were really in-our-face as they let us know the rules: "Keep moving," "we won't touch you if you don't touch us," "no pictures or video," etc. The scares started quickly. We definitely, definitely kept moving. Most of the house followed a structure of: turn a few corners, people are banging on the walls, dark hallway, big room, (repeat.) Here are a few highlights, (I'll try not to give away too much.) Highlights of Scared by the Sound: - Big, brawny, bounty hunter guy shows us the way. Eamon: "Oh, good, Billy Ray Cyrus is here to save us." - A girl in a white dress with a candle followed us for quite a while. - I was in the front of the group for practically the ENTIRE THING. - Hale: "EAMON, YOU'RE GOING IN FRONT THIS TIME." (Eamon goes in front.) Scareactor (to room): "Eamon's here..." (We enter Wine Cellar room, Eamon crumples to the ground in fear as people start popping out.) - Head on table screams for a long-ass time. Us: "Nice lung capacity. Are you a swimmer? In glee club?" - One room featured a gypsy giving us a Tarot reading, and quite a surprise. Here, the in-house photo was taken. - Erin nearly crying in the clown room. - One room, featuring "little girls" in their play room, was really awesome. The twenty-five minute house emptied out into a graveyard with a few zombies (perfect in the fog and rain!) and there was a booth selling in-house photos at the end, along the boardwalk. It was a really fun experience. Being a "virgin" to these types of experiences: I must say, I was pretty scared in the beginning. For the first few minutes, I was thinking, "Oh, there's NO WAY I'd be able to survive one of these, twice as long, at Lake Compounce!" Now I wish I could have done it again to pay more attention to those first couple of scenes. Throughout the house, I was trying to crack some jokes about what we were seeing. In the beginning, Eamon was, (and he's a pretty funny guy,) but later on he was far too busy literally ducking under Erin's jacket and practically crawling to say anything. One scareactor said to me, in one room, "So you're the one who's tellin' the jokes..." Later in the house, though, there were a few rooms that did freak me out- the little girls' playroom, for example. And I had to run through the final hallway. Now that I've experienced this house, I think it would be awesome to go to a larger-scale attraction. However, I don't know how they would compare. How does this compete with the "fear factor?" Is it as scary as, say, HHN? I'll find out someday. It definitely left me wanting more. Then, that was it. That's Scared by the Sound. Excuse my long-winded-ness, but I wanted to put all my thoughts out there. I really have heard very, very little about this event and I thought some people would be interested. I'd recommend it to anyone within a short drive of Rye- maybe if you're in New York City, you could take the train in? There's still a possibility that we'll visit the Haunted Graveyard this year, so look out for a report from there! I also have a trip report in the works from last weekend of a park that has apparently NEVER been featured on TPR, so look out! Scared by the Sound's website can be found here: http://www.scaredbythesound.com/ Here are the couple of pictures I took. I used Picnik to make them a little easier to look at: Orange/black=open, Yellow=queue, Red=house?, Green=photos, game, etc. A look through the main gates at the classic Ice Casino and the fountain. (It wasn't this dark... Darn flash.) The centerpiece in the fountain, one of the few special decorations. The gate, on the right side of the mall. It was NOT crowded. Inside the gate, the empty go-kart track and posters featuring some unknown drink as the sponsor. Eamon in front of the bathrooms. Note the rain and fog. The queue. The three of us, while we waited. The view of Long Island Sound awaiting us upon our release from the house. Looking back down the mall towards the Music Tower. (WOW It was actually this bright.) A hearse in front of the fountain. This is a better idea of how bright it was.

Nice pictures! Question- Why isn't Bloody Mary represented in this event at all? She was a pretty strong icon, right?

The "Citrus" Tower looks a little off, but pretty cool. The House of Presidents Hall of Fame/whatever just looks like a WTF-overload.

Funny. I was at Six Flags New England the Friday before you. I was actually part of one of those evil school groups, actually... (But we didn't have matching evil t-shirts.) I got two rides on Bizarro, probably a class record, but that meant running there before anyone else in our group and waiting in line, crazy with heatstroke, for an hour and a half, with the risk of missing the bus.

Nice trip report so far. My family has a house near Mount Snow, Vermont, so I'm hoping that we can see some of these parks like Story Land and Santa's Village this summer. Nice post on Attitash. Our Mount Snow Season Passes work at Attitash, so we'll have to check it out, (and the mountain coaster,) this year. And eat at that awesome McDonald's! You say that Story Land went overboard on the boat rides, (no pun intended,) but that still is less than the number of craft on Disneyland's Rivers of America. Oh, and I just want to call it now, the "never-before-seen on TPR" park in the next post is going to be Santa's Land in Putney, Vermont.

That looks amazing. It must have been awesome riding Screamin' with that view!

Don't forget Frontierland and Main Street at Disneyland Paris! You could count that.

I believe it was Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at WDW, last August. But I've penciled in Bizarro at SFNE for a class trip next Friday.

Wow, it looks like a pretty crazy place. I'd love to see it one day. Dubai as a city almost looks like a park... And those two indoor parks look like a lot of fun. I think it's funny that they held a contest to name the fountain and they ended up naming it "Dubai Fountain." Really? That was the best name submitted?

Cool Hersheypark pictures. I hope to get back there this year or next. I haven't been for a long time. And I've never checked out Chocolate World, I gotta get that omnimover credit!

Thanks for the advice. The only park I've been up to that far north is the Alpine Slide & such at Bromley Sun Mountain Adventure Park. However, I could see a nice summer season with Story Land, Santa's Village, Canobie Lake Park, and Santa's Land together- all parks I've yet to see. And I'll be on a class trip to Six Flags New England anyway to kick off [my] season this June, so it all works out! I'm curious about that crazy "Rocket to the Moon" type thing in one of the first pictures. I noticed, on the Story Land FB page, that the "cannon" was being removed, and many users were talking about the memories they had of that attraction. What was it?

Exactly. And I think you're thinking of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, those little "Disney Dish with Jim Hill" boxes under some attractions? I think in one of them he said something like that. Ooh, and Erik, you forgot to mention the Oasis. The Oasis is a fantastic example of great Imagineering and immersion, by Joe Rohde. The parking lot of DAK is purposefully meant to be hot and unforgiving, so when you enter the park through the cool, green and lush Oasis, you slow down and start preparing yourself for the kind of experience you're in for when you reach the actual park. Then, you come up the bridge and you have the reveal of the Tree of Life. It's a lot more dramatic when people aren't all rushing straight up the hill.

This looks like a really nice park. My family has a house in Southern Vermont, and if we're up there for a while this Summer I'll have to convince my family to drive up there and we can spend a few hours. Isn't this owned by Kennywood Entertainment? Like Lake Compounce? Lake Compounce is my semi-home park and my family loves that one. [Oh, I recognize this is six months old. I was just looking for a Story Land TR to see what it looks like. Thanks!]

I've got... Bromley Sun Mountain Adventure Park (It counts, in my book.) Busch Gardens Europe Dorney Park Dutch Wonderland Fun Forest Amusement Park Hersheypark Lake Compounce (Semi-Home) Rye Playland (Home) Quassy Six Flags Great Adventure Six Flags New England (Semi-Home) Magic Kingdom Epcot Disney's Hollywood Studios Disney's Animal Kingdom That's not counting a carousel at a mall or a carousel at a zoo.

Thanks for the Africa photos. Kilimanjaro Safaris is an awesome attraction, and the whole Harambe town is very cool. I have bad memories of Harambe... On our last trip (first time in AK,) my family was walking through Harambe to get to the Safari, and a little boy was running in front of his dad right behind us. By the face-painting booth (pictured,) he ran into a rope set up for a line and smacked onto the ground. It's hard to see a little kid get hurt and then try and go enjoy a safari ride. It goes to show ya', don't run in the parks! And I don't know if I agree with the 60% well-themed idea. Disney's Animal Kingdom comes from the creators of Tokyo DisneySEA, and I'd say the Animal Kingdom could be just as amazing as DisneySEA if they had a foreign company willing to dump money all over it. You can't deny that Animal Kingdom is well-themed. The only place I can think of is Camp Minnie-Mickey; that isn't so great with theming, but that's because it was meant to be temporary. Dinoland U.S.A. is often a point that AK-haters like to bring up, specifically Chester & Hester's Dino-Rama, but this area has a deep storyline. It weaves through the Dino Institute, Restaurantosaurus, and the Dino-Rama store. People that think it isn't well-themed really just don't like the theming, I think.

Can I bring in a Disney one? Okay. Well, my family was visiting Epcot last August, and we were getting off the bus right as the rope dropped. As we walked through the entrance plaza, I talked about some of the meanings of the architecture and how walking under Spaceship Earth was supposed to make us feel small, like we're just a part of something bigger, and such. You know, Imagineering concepts. We went on Test Track and Mission: SPACE first thing, and then as we were crossing Innoventions Plaza to get a Soarin' Fastpass, my parents were saying things like, "Oh, isn't this interesting? Look at the concrete! How it has different colors, and the shapes..." For he rest of the morning, they kept pointing out silly things and mimicking my interest. Meh.

That looks like a cool ride. I just wonder how long the theming will be relevant. I think "BrainSurge" is a childrens game show on Nickelodeon, and I doubt it will be on the air even for a few more years, if it's not off already. Then again, they put "Tak" in some ride and that show must have only lasted two months in 2007, (or sometime.) At least, if BrainSurge goes off the air, it still looks like cool theming that might not be based on a television show.

That makes sense. I guess they must be trying to focus families with young children over there. This does look definitely like a step above the Carpets in the Magic Kingdom. I assume no camel to be spitting on innocent guests?

Cool! Thanks for reporting on this. Corkscrew Hill was a little weird. I didn't enjoy it very much. I'll be excited to see how "Europe in the Air" (very DCA-esque pun there, huh?) is received, although I expect there's going to be a lot of comparisons with Soarin'.

Nice pictures. Thanks for these! I hope I can get to Lake Compounce this summer. I haven't been since May 2008, and I much prefer Lake Compounce as my "home park" than Rye Playland... *shudder* I see you were out and about during that terrible storm on Saturday. We lost power on Saturday night and didn't get it back until... oh look, fifty minutes ago. Pretty bad damage down here, but I guess farther north it wasn't as bad.

Meh. It looks like the kind of thing that will be cool for a few weeks and then will be kind of annoying. I wish that they could just leave them plain for a while. That way, it would actually be special when they decorate the monorail.