I have just returned home from Busch Gardens halloween event. I won’t say it was great fun but it was fun. I did four of the five haunted houses and rode a few roller coasters. The mazes I hadn’t done before were good. Some were better than others and the one I did first I should have done last.
The first maze I went into was the Killarney Diner. They went all out on this one from in line entertainment to special areas set up for the maze which makes me wonder if some of this won’t be part of a new permanent attraction. I can’t imagine that they built a very nice diner set just for a one-off haunted maze but who knows. There was even a fake town street. This has to be for something else. I almost asked one of the zombies in the diner if they knew but I didn’t think I’d get an honest answer.
The other two new mazes I went through were Nevermore and The Witch of the Woods. Nevermore is based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe and this excited me but it was hard to tell what was what except for a few things and this is when the zombie pirates started to make their presence felt. They must have just had pirate customs left over and I guess everyone had to be a zombie or something as ghosts or monsters aren’t popular enough.
The one thing that happened during Nevermore that garnered me some strange looks was when we got to The Pit and the Pendulum room I blurted out, “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” which is a joke that both require knowledge of the works of Edgar Allen Poe and Monty Python. No one around me had this knowledge.
The last maze I went through was The Witch of the Woods which was the most disappointing. That’s because this is the maze used in the advertisements and they show the witch that is supposed to be at the end of the maze. That witch wasn’t there but there were lots of zombie pirates and somewhere in the middle of the maze were two older ladies talking to each other instead of trying to scare guests.
I almost didn’t go to Busch Gardens this evening. I actually didn’t want to but felt this was my opportunity to go and if I didn’t I would regret it. So I went. The highlight of the night was the dude sitting on the bench among the chainsaw people in the Canadian Meat Market just texting on his cellphone. I also saw a few parents that clearly couldn’t read the signs that the park was not suitable for younger guests after 6:00 PM having to hold their crying and screaming children.
It was a good night. I left my cellphone in the car and felt completely untethered from the world.
David Huzzard Writes 