This is Halloween: Raw Meat

Raw Meat

Let's see? Where did I leave off? Oh yes. Attraction two. Raw Meat: where mutant sewer people are going to chop you up and feed you to their pet alligators.

This one was shorter but decidedly gorier. While Nightmares concentrated on sensory distortions and scary monsters, this attraction featured dismemberment, alligators, snakes and bloody dogs. Here, you have to jump at pressurized air around your ankles, leaping gators and push past body bags and basically corpses f'ed up beyond all reasoning all the while dealing with actors and animatronics.

The only real flaw in the design was the sheer amount of people that were sent in at a time. Raw Meat was such a short attraction that if you send in too many people, you bottleneck in the narrow pathways. Then the scares are wrongly timed and you don't get a chance to get thouroughly creeped out by the scenery. And may I just say: if you know that you don't like to be scared, then maybe you shouldn't go to the 5th most popular haunted attraction in the United States!!! Nothing was worse than feeling like you're being rushed through the attraction because a little scaredy-cat behind you is pushing you forward trying to get through the attraction as fast as she could.

So, did I snap at her to stop shoving me forward? No. Did I wonder at her being in such a place when she obviously needed to be trick or treating instead? Why yes. Yes I did. Did I get frustrated with her pulling on my arm and using me as her human meat shield? Slightly. Did I play a prank on her that will probably send me to Hell? Don't judge me! It was funny.

So, we were walking down this corridor that just happened to have body bags hanging from it. You have no choice but to brush past these realistic dead bodies unless you wanted to take the risk of an actor roaring in your ear by walking around it. Depending on what was happening, this girl was either holding onto my arm and pulling me in front of her or pushing me forward so that she could get out. So, I decided that I had had enough. I thought, "The next time she needs to run, I'm going to let her." Little did I know that when that happened, it would be the funniest thing that I would see in a long time. The actor jumped out, she reached out to grab me and I honed my ninja skills and side-stepped her. She then stumbled forward past me and into a decapitated body where she screamed like she lost every last bit of her senses. Best... thing... ever!!

As you stumble out the door, in terror- and in wonder at how short it was- another actor is kind enough to clear the door by wielding a chainsaw. As I let my blood pressure calm down, I felt a strange sense of bravado surge through me. I laugh at Brittani and tell her, “Oh, that could have been so much longer! That wasn’t so bad!” (Yeah, right! As I check my pulse and keep close watch on the street monsters to make sure that they were a safe distance away...)

So, if you’ve read this and thought to yourself: Holy crap! That sounds flipping awesome! Where do I sign up? Sorry party people! November 5th was officially the last night of the Netherworld season. But tell you what: if we can all pinch our pennies until next year, you can come with me because I know where I’m gonna be! Standing in line and hanging out with the monsters!

(In fact… the drive really wasn’t that bad. I may be one of the monsters lurking in the shadows….)