Unethical Haunt

It was bound to happen eventually, but we didn't expect it to be like this.  We have found a haunt that we both want to tell you about and don't want to acknowledge their existence even with negative publicity.  It's such a difficult situation to find ourselves in.

What we are willing to say is what it is that makes them unethical and immoral asses.  They used plants.  We don't mean the green leafy kind!  Plants are people who work with the haunt, but come through with groups as if they are other customers.  That's not a bad thing by itself, and it is a fairly common practice for haunted attractions.  They may hire actors to walk through as customers and have them scream as if scared at certain points in order to add to the scare level of other visitors.  This is perfectly fine.  What wasn't okay was that they used their plants in a very horrible way.  We were sent in with a "mother and two sons," or at least that's how they portrayed themselves.  During one scene a false wall slides away and a character jumps out and abducts one of the young boys before shutting the wall and locking it.  The "mother" freaks out and is banging on the false door.  She's screaming about how this isn't part of it and how wrong this is.  She's asking for help.  We were basically stuck in this one room waiting for some sign to move on for 3 to 5 minutes.  You can't help but wonder what in the hell is going on.  There were no actors encouraging us to move on and nobody who was giving the "mother" any encouragement of any kind.  It got to the point where I decided that we would just keep walking until we could run into another actor in order to find out what was going on.  When we did he just started talking as if we were the only ones in our group.  I basically told him to shut up and listen to me when I was describing what we had just been witness to.  Now, keep in mind, this isn't exactly scary since you know that there is no legal way they can touch you in a haunt...so something is automatically "up" when this happened.  While we were talking to the guy the manager appeared in the rafters yelling down at us that this was all a part of the experience and that they were actors and to keep moving.  What?!  Did he just take us even further out of the haunt experience that we already were?  Really?  How stupid can you get?  We basically ignored the rest of the haunt and just walked straight through and all of the way out.  When we were outside we stated how horrible the haunt was for trying to use a child abduction scenario that they use plants for to scare people and the response we got was the most unprofessional crap ever:  we were told to get off their property!  Really?  Yes!  Rather than try to hear us out and discuss their rationale, they would rather yell at us to leave.  Well, aren't they a bit defensive?!  People don't get defensive like that unless they know they are doing something wrong.  The scenario might have worked out if they had thought it out and planned something a little differently (we have ideas of how this could work, but since they wouldn't listen we won't share it for them to find now).  Too bad for them.

We felt that we wasted our time and money on this haunt and we sincerely hope that if you accidentally find yourself in a place like what we have described you will tell them your thoughts on how they are treating you and what kind of example they are setting.  Imagine the logic of a naive teen going through here and hearing that if you don't touch the monsters they won't touch you and then seeing a monster touch someone to the point of abduction.  I hope they get a protective father in one of their groups when they try to pull this crap and someone either gets decked or their fake wall doorway gets busted through because a protective father tries to save the child.  Oh, how I REALLY hope that happens to these horrible people.

They wouldn't listen and they wouldn't respond with respect.  We hope that this haunt doesn't survive their first year to subject others to their misguided attempts at creating fear.