Knott's Halloween Haunt has always been about the scares.  You go there to get scared.  You go there to see other people get terrified.  While most guests see monsters, fog, mazes and loud, obnoxious shows on the surface, more astute Haunt fans will recognize that very often, there is a whole lot of innovation behind the scares at the Farm.  The technology and techniques are impressive and in many cases, ground-breaking.

Such was the case with Dark Realm.  The idea was to have a maze-like environment where guests could interact with the monsters by shooting at them as well as at prop targets throughout the experience.  Shooting the props would cause chain reactions - explosions, loud noises, secret "passage ways" to open.  All in all, a clever idea.

And then we could argue that it looked better on paper than it did in person.

The first problem that we personally had with Dark Realm is that it is an up-charge attraction.  That means that you pay to park, pay to get in to Halloween Haunt and then if you want the laser guns for the full experience, you pay another fee to be able to shoot 'em up.  Up-charge is a bad word in our opinion.  Granted, some people have no problem - and according to Knott's, Dark Realm's financial performance was very impressive - but for us, we would never pay at any theme park for an up-charge attraction.

For the record - that includes 3-D glasses; it's probably been four or five years since we plunked down the cash for 3-D glasses at Haunt.  It's just a personal thing - we've seen the mazes in 3-D once; we don't need to see them in 3-D constantly or each year.  And we'd never pay for the glasses each year.

However, lots of people apparently did plop down money for the Dark Realm experience.  Was it successful?  Knott's says yes.  The week that we were there, it seemed very slow at Dark Realm.  We've heard mixed stories - so who really knows?

Was it good?  That is what our readers want to know.  That is the bottom line.

Dark Realm was very light on scares when it came to being a "maze" experience.  As a shoot 'em up experience, it seemed mediocre compared to other similar attractions throughout the country.

The talent in Dark Realm was good, however - they really stepped it up and worked with what they had to create the best possible experience for the guests.

Other than some good talent, a decent and interesting idea, that is about it.  Dark Realm is a forgettable experience that was a GOOD idea - but translated a bit on the light side to actually compete with other Haunt mazes and attractions.  We do give Knott's designers props for giving this a go, however.  If you don't push boundaries and expand ideas, you will never grow and will always be stagnant instead of being the industry leader.

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