Scare at the Fair and Dark Raven Manor Team Up for Final Fear

October 3rd, 2009

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Take two Haunted House owners, each with a couple of Haunted Houses. Throw in the Hamburg Fairgrounds and a lot of cooperation and you get an event like Final Fear. Final Fear is five individual Haunts located a the Hamburg Fairgrounds in greater Buffalo, NY. Its a great collection of Haunts – each with their own theme and atmosphere.

Buffalo was cold and rainy when I got into town so I was pleased to see Final Fear was inside and wouldn’t be rained out. One half of Final Fear is Dark Raven owner Jim Hughes. You may have seen Jim at Transworld where he hada booth as Dark Raven Designs – they had the cool vine creatures and an animated dog. It was nice to meet Jim and his colleague from Scare at the Fair and was also nice to see them working together. They explained that they had some hefty competition in the market and thought they would fare better working otgether and co-locating. As a result they now have five haunts in one location that makes for a fantastic Screampark.

The first Haunt I went through was Big Top Terror. I loved the sign (see pic) by the way. This is a 3-D Haunt and you know how I feel about them. The people I was with did enjoy and it had a section that was a fence maze and then fence was painted which looked pretty cool. The next Haunt was Soul Remains – a gothic themed Haunt with a good looking facade. This Haunt had some interesting bits to it. A large manor room with a big fireplace and no obvious way out. After a startle, one of the actors flipped a switch, the wall behind the fireplace opened up and we walked through the fireplace – the mechanism was done well and the whole thing looked like ascene from a movie. Later in the Haunt, there was a wood walkway with rails that would rock left to right as you put your weight on that was fun too.

Dark Raven Manor was next and was probably my favorite of the Haunts- I think – I saw a lot of Haunts last night so I may be mixing rooms from these two together so I apologize, but will give you the highlights. The Asylum had a elevator ride that was done very well – probably the best i have seen so far.  Then we were stopped in a room by an actor who told us to watch the television in the room. A young girl climbed out of the tv while a light binked on and off and she approached the group. I know The Ring movie isn’t a new release, but the execution of this gag was so perfect I had to mention it. The last time the light blinked out the actress closed the distance between us and scared the hell out of the people in our group. The Manor had an attic scene where we walked across rafters to get through the room and everything else was a bottomless pit type effect – I love this effect and liked how he used it for an attic scene – a a nice creative twist. One of the other great spots was a hallway where he shot a laser across the right hand wall with some fog creating a sheet that looks solid – it covered up the scare spots spots perfectl yand actors came out of a window and an ampty doorway. I was in the back so I didn’t get the scare, but it was still really cool to see the actor’s head suddenly break the plane of the laser and see the head merge from what looks liek a solid wall.

Slaughterhaus was next and is gorier and more intense than the other Haunts. Once again it has a great facade – all of them did actually as you can see from the pics. The Haunt was the scariest of all for the group I was with and one of the girls almost didn’t make it through because she was so scared and just wanted to quit.

Final Fear was a great event with some unique scenes and effects and some great scares too – I almost saw a person cry in a Haunt this season. The good people of Buffalo are spoiled when it comes to Haunted Houses. They have an incredible selection of events to go to and each event seems to be trying to improve their show to keep up with the competition. The end result is three awesome events. If you are in Buffalo, you have got to see all of them as far as I am concerned.