299 Montgomery Road, Montgomery, IL
Year: 2015
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CommentaryMAP
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Also, special mention must be given to Pedo the Clown, who not only was hilarious and creepy, but also befriended our group and showed up at various points throughout the haunt just to give us the benefit of his one liners and witticisms. You can tell that Pedo really loves his home at the Massacre and takes great pride in leading people through it. We love Pedo!
As great as Pedo was, though, we did miss our interactions with the other actors in the Massacre, including the sarcastic clowns, the creepy guy in the theater (he was there but the scares didn't work too well since we really couldn't see him), the creepy Exorcist-like child in the mental ward and our all-time favorite Massacre character - the twitchy Silent Hill nurse in the medical ward. We were very much looking forward to seeing her but wound up missing her entirely due to the fact that we were directed away from her room. Although the haunt was advertised as "free roam", where visitors could wander around at random, our group was directed into and out of various rooms, sometimes to vary the experience and other times to get us lost in the darkness. Thankfully, we have been to the Massacre enough that we know our way around, so we avoided getting lost despite the misdirection, but we also wound up skipping the entire mental hospital/medical setting and thus we missed our favorite character!
As we have mentioned before, we're not big fans of blackouts, and our experience at the Massacre is precisely why - both the visuals of the set design and the nuances of the actors' performances were lost in the darkness, and two of the things that make the Massacre great were unfortunately missing. Thankfully we avoided getting lost or misdirected (mostly) as that really would have made it worse, and we did enjoy the actors we did see, so it wasn't a total loss, but we miss our "regular" Massacre!
Let's put it this way - there were a number of haunts open Valentine's weekend, and almost all of them were blackouts. To be honest, since blackouts take away most of the lighting, you've got to be creative in order to make them unique and fun, otherwise they tend to be the same as every other blackout haunt. In our opinion, the Massacre doesn't need a gimmick to make it great - it just is. Such a visually stunning and creative haunt doesn't need to be in the dark - it needs to be seen to be appreciated. Thus, while we love the Massacre and will definitely return, we weren't too thrilled with the blackout version. Our advice? If it ain't broke, don't fix it!