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Tag: Scary Travel View All Tags

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A Hell of a Halloween Weekend in New York

November 1, 2009 at 3:26 PM | by Victor Ozols | 0 Comments

Halloween is always a party in New York, but this year several forces combined to make it even wilder than usual. First of all, it happened to fall on a Saturday this year, drawing that many more people out of their apartments and into the night. Second, the Yankees played the Phillies in Game 3 of the World Series - and won! - giving the barroom crowds a grand reason to order a few ill-advised rounds of shots. And third, the New York City Marathon took place the very next morning, giving the Halloween revelers some great human drama to wake up and soothe their hangovers to. Add to that the extra hour of weekend we got because of the end of Daylight Savings Time and you've got a city with every reason to cut loose.

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It's Halloween, Do You Have Your Silver Shamrock Mask Yet?

October 31, 2009 at 3:35 PM | by Victor Ozols | 0 Comments

Happy Halloween 2009, everybody! I've always loved Halloween, because it's one of those all-fun, no baggage holidays where you're pretty much required to party and be ridiculous. As the Geto Boys point out, this year Halloween falls on a weekend, ramping up the crazy factor in cities around the world. I'm fortunate to live in New York, home of the legendary Village Halloween Parade, and even luckier to have a friend who lives along the parade route, so we'll be watching from above the fray. It's fun to stand along the sidewalk too, but be prepared for a crush of bodies akin to Times Square on New Years Eve.

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2009 Halloween Theme Park Scare Guide: Canada's Halloween Haunt

Where: Vaughan, ON, Canada
October 15, 2009 at 9:33 AM | by kjb | 0 Comments

Our neighbors to the north love to celebrate Halloween as well, even if their spooky day is after Thanksgiving. For those in and around the Toronto area, the best place to get some thrills is at Canada’s Wonderland. Cedar Fair owns the place, the same theme park experts responsible for HalloWeekends at Cedar Point. It might not be as crazy spooky as things in Ohio, but they definitely get the job done.

Halloween Haunt at Canada’s Wonderland dares visitors to explore their way through the park while attempting to avoid possessed woodland creatures and vampires. All the major rides will be running, but it’s up to you to make your way to the coasters without being frightened out of the park.

Mazes are the big thing here, and there’s plenty of returning favorites as well as some new ones. The park seems especially excited about Club Blood. Visitors are led to believe that it is just a nightclub to celebrate the season, but unfortunately vampires run it. Just try to avoid being invited back into the VIP lounge; that’s where the vampires do their thing.

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Get Scared Senseless In Utica's Post-Apocalyptic Haunted House

October 14, 2009 at 4:33 PM | by cmb | 0 Comments

Upstate New York just got a whole lot scarier with the reopening of the horror attraction Cayo Industrial. The apocalypse-themed haunted house, or in this case, "haunted warehouse," is located in an old industrial section of Utica and word on the street is that it will have have you sleeping with the lights on for weeks.

The overall concept of Cayo Industrial is that it is a post-apocalyptic world in which a madman is luring people into an underground world and holding them prisoner while performing bio-technological experiments on them. Eventually, his victims begin to go insane. Visitors get to tour the cells and witness their torture as they walk through two fictional underground worlds, the Warehouse of Biowar and a second realm of the Warehouse of Biotech.

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2009 Halloween Theme Park Scare Guide: Mickey's Not So Scary Party

Where: World Drive [map], Lake Buena Vista, FL, United States
October 13, 2009 at 9:38 AM | by kjb | 1 Comment

You know Disney has some deep pockets when it comes to their theme parks, so visitors looking to celebrate Halloween have nothing to worry about if they make Walt Disney World their spooky holiday headquarters. For many years the Magic Kingdom has been shutting things down early and welcoming families to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.

It’s a Halloween bash that encourages both parents and their kids to dress up; however, some of the adults get a little carried away and that’s always slightly frightened us. As you take in all the seasonal decorations be sure to stop and fill your bags with candy. There’s plenty of trick or treat spots throughout the park and they are usually pretty generous. The best part of the party is that the crowds are manageable. Disney only sells a certain amount of tickets to the shindig, so it’s a great chance to ride Space Mountain like five times in a row without waiting.

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2009 Halloween Theme Park Scare Guide: Six Flags Fright Fest

Where: 1 Six Flags Blvd [map], Jackson, NJ, United States
October 9, 2009 at 9:28 AM | by kjb | 0 Comments

The best place to celebrate the spooky season in the New York City region has to be a trip to Six Flags Great Adventure in neighboring New Jersey. It’s a few hours from the city, but most theme parks are already boarding things up for the winter, so it’s your best chance for once last spin, dip, and drop on a roller coaster. Most of the Six Flags across the country offer a little entertainment, but the offerings at Great Adventure are some of the best around.

Celebrating its eighteenth year of freaking people out, Six Flags Fright Fest is well underway. This year’s events are sponsored by Snickers, so hopefully there will be some treats as well as some tricks for park visitors. There’s new shows, creepy decorations, and plenty of pumpkins and spiders to get you in the mood for Halloween.

The park is transformed into thrills by day and chills by night, so no matter what time you’re attending, you’ll get chills down your spine. Things during the day are a little tamer especially adventures like the Trick-or-Treat Trail. Here you’ll fill up your pillowcase as you get some free candy from the Looney Tunes characters. Hey Bugs Bunny, we’ll take the big size bars if you have any—thanks. Once nighttime arrives prepare Professor Zombini's Freak Show. Here you’ll be able to criticize and judge sideshow freaks as they perform their antics, let’s just hope they don’t escape.

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2009 Halloween Theme Park Scare Guide: HalloWeekends

October 8, 2009 at 10:34 AM | by JetSetCD | 0 Comments

If you're so over the usual haunted houses and Scream masks jumping out at you, you'd still better brace yourself for Cedar Point's haunted toy factory, "Cornstalker" scare maze which only opens after dark, and much more. Cedar Point's HalloWeekends veers away from the family-friendly fun in favor of the macabre and truly frightening.

The haunting has already begun at this amusement park, located on a peninsula in Lake Erie nearest to Sandusky, Ohio. During the summer season, the steep drops from some of the world's highest and fastest roller coasters, surrounded by sparkling water of the lake, is perhaps the scariest thing. But on September 18 through November 1, the park transforms every nook and cranny into a pants-wetting scream zone with 4 haunted houses, 5 scare zones, and 9 live shows.

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2009 Halloween Theme Park Scare Guide: Busch Gardens Williamsburg Howl-O-Scream

Where: 1 Busch Gardens Blvd [map], Williamsburg, VA, United States, 23185
October 7, 2009 at 9:31 AM | by kjb | 0 Comments

For those in our nation’s capital looking to celebrate Halloween without Obama and Palin masks, there’s always the option of taking a ride down I-95 to Williamsburg, Virginia. Busch Gardens Williamsburg has been doing the scary theme park for over ten years now, and this year’s Howl-O-Scream looks to do more damage than even their roller coasters.

Like some of the parks we’ve featured before, Busch Gardens transforms the park into a scary land featuring costumed characters lurking behind every corner. There’s six different haunted houses to terrify and torture, especially when a few of them are more maze than haunted house. Good luck if you’re trying to get out. If you’d rather have a chance to escape, you can always run through one of the park’s nine scare zones.

If you need to take a breather there’s plenty of scary shows to entertain you. Sit back and relax, or try to, and take in the scene. There’s one for your little pumpkin as well—starring Elmo—but we won’t tell anyone if you need to watch that one instead.

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2009 Halloween Theme Park Scare Guide: Knott's Scary Farm

Where: 8039 Beach Blvd [map], Buena Park, CA, United States, 90620
October 6, 2009 at 4:28 PM | by juliana | 0 Comments

It's hard to believe that California could be home to anything labeled "The Oldest" but at Knott's Berry Farm in Anaheim, the theme park's Scary Farm is the world's first haunted theme park attraction in the U.S., having opened in 1973.

Drawing mostly from gory horror movies and crafted by professional "scare-masters", the park fashions itself into a giant haunted house with mazes, scary zones, frightening attractions--like the Slaughterhouse, The Asylum and The Doll Factory--and showing off short horror films.

Additionally, the park sets up "specially employed" monsters throughout the place who sole job is to scare the living bejesus out of you. Fun, right?

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2009 Halloween Theme Park Scare Guide: Halloween Horror Nights

Where: 6000 Universal Boulevard [map], Orlando, Fl, United States, 32819
October 6, 2009 at 9:28 AM | by markj | 0 Comments

At this year’s event you will be trapped by “SAW’s” maniacal serial killer Jigsaw, come face-to-fangs with “The Wolfman” and be chased by the twisted “Chucky” doll.    

And that’s just the beginning: All eight haunted houses, six scarezones and two live shows are inspired by blockbuster horror films. Until now, you’ve only been able to watch the action in horror films like “SAW,” “The Wolfman,” and “Chucky.” But at Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights, these films and more have been transformed into live experiences that put you in the middle of your worst cinematic nightmares.   

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Forget Snakes In Planes; They're In Our Rental Cars Now

September 15, 2009 at 12:23 PM | by kjb | 0 Comments

We’ve all received rental cars that had a less than stellar appearance, especially when it comes to the car’s interior. Besides the many lovely odors, stains are the rule rather than the exception. Above all, our favorite is when former drivers have decided to install some type of foodstuff into the upholstery. Thankfully, despite all our rental car troubles, we’ve never received a car with a living critter inside. However, that’s exactly what a Florida woman found when she rented a car from Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

Last week a college student hopped into her rental ride, and immediately hopped right back out. There was a red rat snake just hanging out on the dashboard of the car, and at over a yard in length, it was not a welcome surprise. Luckily, the snake wasn’t poisonous, and the rental car company sent out an animal trapper to capture the stowaway.

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Creepy Travel: Japan's Abandoned Hashima Island Now Open for Tourists

Where: Nagasaki, Japan
June 20, 2009 at 2:24 PM | by Victor Ozols | 0 Comments

Abandoned towns are always fun to visit, and they're even more enticing if they've been off-limits for decades. Such is the case with Japan's Hashima Island, more commonly known as Battleship Island. This speck of an island about 15 kilometers from Nagasaki was once home to the densest population in the world, housing thousands of workers between 1887 and 1974 who harvested coal from the sea floor for the massive Mitsubishi company.

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