The USS Nightmare Haunted House in Newport, KY

September 22nd, 2009

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With the evening still young, we headed to visit the USS Nightmare Haunted House in Newport, KY where they promise to “Scare the Ship out of you!”  The USS Nightmare is very unique in that it is actually on an actual old steamboat. It provides for a great atmosphere being down on the river and then walking past all the authentic metal gears and equipment.

When we got on board, we immediately had our picture taken on a green screen and you guessed it, at the end we could pick it up in the gift shop. I like the idea of this and would be interested in knowing how many other haunts do this. Once we got to the front of the line, we got a great view of the Cincinnati skyline form the boat – once again, just something that makes this Haunt a little different. We walked inside the boat and immediately appreciated what they did with the steamboat.

They obviously had to put up walls to make the Haunted House, but they took great care in putting up the walls so that a lot of the steamboat features still came through. Old wenches, machinery, railings, etc that are unique to this kind of location were integrated into the show and it gave the Haunt a great feel. The scenes were lit appropriately but the Haunt maintained plenty of dark spaces and pathways to make customers nervous.

I think the scenes that stand out the most were the rat scene (you’ll have to go and see it yourself), the vortex tunnel – I am not often affected by these but they’ve spent some time making this one work well, and the drop balcony where you stand on a balcony and it drops a few inches giving a good startle. There are plenty of other scenes too that have great scares too – one particularly creepy little girl was very good at freaking customers out. All told it was a lengthy walkthrough but never felt slow or boring.

Afterwards, I ran into the man responsible for the show, Allan Rizzo. Allan has been dedicated to the show for many years now and has really done a great job with it. I am sure it is not easy building a haunt on an old steamboat, but the USS Nightmare team has done a wonderful job integrating the Haunt with the features of the boat to make for a fun, scary, and unique Haunt experience!