Terrortorium, Oxford, AL

Terrortorium was another stop on one of our Alabama weekends searching for good haunts.  It is located in Oxford, Alabama and was probably one of the easiest haunts to find that we went searching for.  Our navigation system didn't really have any problems with their address either, which was a huge plus since it had a hard time with EVERYthing else in Alabama. 

Terrortorium is a haunted attraction that combines both a house/maze and a "dark" ride.  We really enjoyed standing in line, but not because of the usual characters who interact at most houses.  There was a disco ball that worked and the songs were fun.  We chose to go through the house first.  The theming in the first room was incredible and really set the standard high for what we were going to anticipate throughout the rest of the attraction.  I'm not sure that I can say they lived up to that expectation though. 

There are some reasonably good scares, some great themes, and it takes a reasonable amount of time to complete (based on price of the attraction).  There are a few things we think you should know before going:
*  There are steps involved inside, which are not well lit.  Some of theme aren't even steps, but just minor drops that could easily cause you to twist an ankle if you aren't being careful.
*  If you are a person of some size (yeah, that's us bigger folks) then you may not enjoy some of the tight fits.  They really tried to use their space well, but in doing so they have some really tight spaces that are hard to fit through if you are larger in the chest, waist, or hip areas.  The wooden corners in some of those tight squeezes are also not as well sanded as they could be, so watch out for splinters.
*  Tennis shoes are the best choice for footwear here.  Trust us.  Leave the flip-flops and sandals at home for this one.

After we completed the house/maze we rode the dark ride.  A dark ride is basically a simplistic roller coaster that goes up small inclines and does curves.  The scenes are set up throughout the journey in your little two seater car.  They do use some actors within the ride area, but there is a lot of space where they are missing opportunities to scare in that area.  Again, if you have some meat on  your bones you may find that you have a snug fit to get in the car and that it goes up inclines REALLY slowly (to the point where you worry about it deciding to go backwards instead).  It was definitely fun, and worth the time and money, though we could see that they have plenty of room to reinvest in the theme and staff for this part for next year.

Having done both events we decided that we couldn't rank them as separate haunts as we would normally do, since the ride isn't enough of a haunt for it's own rating that reflects what it is.  Our overall rating for Terrortorium, after some discussion and debate, stands at 3.5 severed heads.

We're looking into creating a scale/score sheet that we can use to make the rating process more universal and fair, but we haven't worked the bugs out yet so that it gives a rating we feel is deserved.  Maybe we will have it in place before the next haunt season.