Mt. Healthy Haunted Hall (Cincinnati, OH)
“30 Years of Fear and Phobias”
By Noah Wullkotte: jollypumpkin@aol.com
A big round of applause should be given to Mt. Healthy Haunted Hall. They’ve been open for business for 30 years. This makes them Cincinnati’s longest running haunt and one that’s great for the young and young at heart. A dragon can be seen on top of an old haunted house. Do you dare to walk past the spooky graveyard that’s protected by one crazy grave digger?
Mt. Healthy Haunted Hall is a favorite of City Blood’s. There’s just so much variety. This year’s theme was “30 Years of Fear and Phobias”. It was basically all your fears and phobias rolled into one experience. Mt. Healthy Haunted Hall is part haunted house, haunted trail and part dark maze. We’ll talk about the dark maze later in the review.
Most of the cast is made up of young adults, but they do a good job for the most part. You’re not going to find many characters that resort to screaming in your face or just blindly staring at you. This is a haunt that has a diverse cast of characters. You’ll meet a pirate who is protecting her gold, a very enthusiastic chainsaw maniac, killer clowns and much much more. A Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type character interacts with people in the Hellevator. It’s definitely not the most realistic hellevator, but the actor did a good job none the less.
Classic characters like Satan, Dracula and of course Bug Boy returns. His room is infested with roaches and other creepy crawlies. Mt. Healthy Haunted Hall has indoor elements and outdoor elements. It’s like a small haunted house and haunted trailed rolled into one. There are also a few interactive scenes. The walk through jail is electrifying. You’ll need to sit down in an electric chair before being allowed to leave. The baby doll forest is one of our favorite new scenes. The doll heads with glowing eyes were just too damn creepy for their own good.
There were a few scenes here and there that missed the mark. The girl with her killer raven seemed out of place. Mt. Healthy Haunted Hall isn’t a big budget haunt, but there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s plenty of eye candy for you to enjoy. In fact, Mt. Healthy Haunted Hall has one of the best Vortex Tunnels around and it’s homemade. There was a new black spinning tunnel which added nothing to the experience. At first we thought it was an incomplete vortex tunnel, but we were wrong. Mt. Healthy Haunted Hall has a spinning floor that had us hanging on for dear life and also had us laughing hysterically.
There’s something that Mt. Healthy Haunted Hall is very well known for and it’s of course their dark maze. We’re notoriously bad at finding our way out of mazes and this is one of the most difficult ones we’ve encountered. We know some of the tricks to escaping and we still barely made it out. It’s an intense experience and get ready to test your navigation skills. The dark maze is changed on a weekly basis and it’s very difficult. If you think that you’ll be lost in there forever or it might be too intense for your children then they’ll let you skip the maze.
Mt. Healthy Haunted Hall is a classic Cincinnati haunt. It’s one that I’ve grown up with and one that families bring their children to. It’s fun for all ages and can be a little spooky at times. Total tour time was 22 minutes, but this depends on how lost you get in the dark maze. Tickets are $10 a person and a $2 discount is applied with a canned good donation. Fastpasses are available for $15 and you can’t use discounts.
Bring in two cans of soup (must be soup) on any Sunday to get $5 off your ticket. It’s known as Soupy Sundays. Other canned goods still get up to a $2 discount. Click here to get $3 off, or $5 off with a canned good donation during their first weekend. There are concessions like popcorn, candy, soda and more. The popcorn is only 50 cents and you can’t beat that. Lights Up Night is on Oct. 20 from 6pm to 6:45pm. This is great for kids who are afraid of the dark. It’s $5 for children and free for adults.
Mt. Healthy Haunted Hall is something special. It’s traditional scares and a good value. It wouldn’t feel right missing this Cincinnati favorite. It gets two severed thumbs up!
Length-9 Design-6 Props/Animatronics-6 Acting-7 Scare Effect-7
Final Stab: 7.0
www.hauntedhallinfo.com