Rapunzel’s twisted tale is full of many unexpected surprises – as long as you get a good parking spot.
The Haunted Road is a brand new ‘drive-through’ haunt, offering a physically distanced take on some classic Halloween activities. The event runs twenty-five select nights from September 25th to November 7th, 2020, every Friday, Saturday, as well as most Sundays, Thursdays and the last two Wednesdays of October.
While the main attraction is unquestionably The Haunted Road itself, a theatrical nighttime drive-through experience, younger guests and their parents can also enjoy physically distanced trick or treating from the safety of their cars in the alternative Family Friendly Event version during daylight hours.
Follow Rapunzel’s journey as she leaves her tower for the first time and enters a world of disarray.
Twisted takes on classic fairy tales are an always compelling narrative approach for a Halloween attraction – and this proves to be the area The Haunted Road most excels in. Following the well-known story of Rapunzel, the action quickly takes a hard left turn to a direction never before seen. What results is a narrative full of surprises and comprehensive world-building that gets richer and richer each time cars are put in park.
In a sense, The Haunted Road plays out a bit more like a seasonal theater production than it does a haunt, per se, and that’s not a bad thing. Passengers travel down The Haunted Road, parking at ten different vignette scenes along the way. Each scene follows the ever-flowing story of Rapunzel, the iconic young girl locked in a tower by her seemingly wicked adoptive Mother.
The conflict begins with Mother cutting Rapunzel’s long, flowing hair, causing her secret love, William, to fall from the tower, to his presumptive death. Blaming Mother for this, and with a desperate hope to find William somehow still alive, Rapunzel breaks free from her tower and wanders The Haunted Road through a world of overlapping fairytales. Many classics are presented in uniquely warped ways, from Snow White to Hansel and Grettle, with others more loosely resented by characters like The Big Bad Wolf causing a bit of chaotic conflict amid Rapunzel’s quest.
Along the way, it becomes clear that the King of this land, who is adamantly against magic, has instructed his son, the Prince, to lead an army of dark knights across the land to extinguish the last remaining bits of enchanted flame once and for all. The Prince and his crew will ultimately serve as the over-arching villains of The Haunted Road’s storyworld, popping up oftentimes when least expected throughout Rapunzel’s adventures.
In the end, like all good fairytales, Rapunzel must stand up for what’s right and defend her world from the Prince and his knights. With the unlikely help of Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel gains a means to control the trolls and other magical creatures to ultimately lead them into battle – and straight to a twist ending that’s definitely not to be expected in the original fairy tale.
The Haunted Road’s scenic is modest at best, but clearly not intended to be the focal point of each show stop. Minimalistic sets are meant to evoke the spirit of iconic destinations the likes of Rapunzel’s tower, Hansel and Grettle’s gingerbread house or Rumpelstiltskin’s troll bridge. If taken out of context, one would likely never guess what they’re meant to be on their own – however, as the storyworld unfolds around them, they prove to be “barely just enough” to set the tone and establish setting.
Each scene begins with a road sign displaying a clearly marked radio station. Drivers will change the channel scene by scene, allowing background music and narration from each show stop to play throughout the car’s speakers much like a vintage drive-in movie. Wisely, all the character dialogue throughout The Haunted Road is pre-recorded using professional voice actors – leaving the live performers to simply need to pantomime the action as it unfolds. What results is a product that feels a bit more polished, as it effectively eliminates the need for highly trained actors without losing the look and feel of having them present.
But it’s within its physical presentation that The Haunted Road also suffers the most. Let’s just blunt here – it’s highly likely you will not be able to see anything throughout the entire nearly hour long performance. The Haunted Road sends groups of seven cars through as a sort of convoy from scene to scene. In each, the first car is instructed where to park, and the other six fall in line behind it. This parked theater often takes place within a very tight u-turn, wherein only the fourth car in the line of seven actually has a view straight on to the set. Cars three and five will likely receive a relatively decent view, whereas the first two and last two cars “watch” the scene either from the extreme side angles, or sometimes, almost from behind its set pieces.
The biggest problem is that every car pays an equal ticket price, but receives drastically varying qualities of experience. The best example we could give is a Broadway theatre; Imagine if you payed full price for a front row center orchestra seat, but instead received an obstructed view ticket high in the balcony. You wouldn’t be happy, right? Well, that’s exactly what happens at The Haunted Road. And perhaps even worse, with such a long runtime – averaging 50-60 minutes – what you see is what you get for the duration. If you can’t see the first scene, you can rest assured you’re going to see next to nothing for the remaining hour of your evening.
We also found that given the small physical stature of the scenes and the typically extreme curve of the parking layout, you’d be hard-pressed to see anything happening on the opposite side of your vehicle. To pull back the curtain, I was sitting in the front passenger seat, but after struggling to see anything at all in the first two driver-side scenes, I found myself climbing over the seats to the rear where I could at least slide back and forth to get pictures from each window – depending on which side a given scene played out on.
Although The Haunted Road is more about its flowing storyworld, it certainly has its fair share of scares mixed in along the way. Each scene is made up of multiple live actors – typically two or three of which take the roles of focal characters playing out the action, with three or four (sometimes even more) acting as a free roaming horde. These wandering creatures are free to weave in and out of parked cars, sometimes coming startlingly close to passengers watching out open windows. Although this without question amplifies the ability to deliver effective scares, we’ll discuss the inherent flaws that come with it specifically for the 2020 operating season in our Health & Safety section below.
In a sense, The Haunted Road’s setting also plays into the scares. Despite being within Orlando, and just a stone’s throw from UCF, upon arriving, The Haunted Road feels very much like the middle of no where. It’s just far enough outside the city lights to have clear, black skies dotted with twinkling stars. The sprawling nature of the attraction’s footprint is amplified ten-fold by the number of tight twists and turns made throughout, evoking a sense of quickly becoming lost in the woods.
The constant, tightly packed turns between each scene also make it impossible to see what lies ahead, and very easy for monsters to sneak up out of the shadows from all corners of the vehicle – no matter which side of the road the scene itself plays out on. There’s very much a sense of always being watched – if not stalked – along The Haunted Road that creates a tangible feeling of vulnerability for passengers – all while the high-energy choreographed fight scenes paint a clear picture that these woods are a dangerous place to be.
This is not one of our typical Haunt review sections, but we feel that it’s critically important to address during the 2020 Halloween Season. We understand that a lot of you are still nervous about venturing out this fall, and may have questions about what venues are doing to keep you and your loved ones safe. It is our hope that we can assuage some of those very valid fears in our Health & Safety section of each Haunt Review.
The Haunted Road is a long, meandering dirt trail with many turns. Drivers are asked to maintain a speed of under 5 MPH while experiencing the haunt, and follow the directions of both cast, as well as audio cues received over their car radios to know when to park or begin driving on to the next scene. Both drivers and passengers are welcome to take all the photos or videos they wish while their vehicle is safely in park.
Although you will be asked turn off your car’s headlights during each show stop, they must be turned back on to drive between scenes. The road is clearly marked with signs and traffic cones to keep drivers from getting lost. There are ample amounts of fog effects used throughout the performance, but on the night of our visit, weather conditions allowed them to almost fully dissipate before a given scene ended, creating a clear and unobstructed drive forward. Most importantly, each passenger within the vehicle must have their own seatbelt.
When cars are stopped for a scene, Performers sometimes get very close to vehicles, at times completely disregarding the recommended six feet of physical distancing and coming within inches of passengers looking out open windows. While this certainly makes for enhanced scares, we fear it’s not the right course of action during our current health & safety climate. It’s important to note, just the same, that these performers are always wearing masks, and event attendees are also required to wear masks at all times while their windows are rolled down.
With all healthy precautions put in place not only for the safety of The Haunted Road’s performers, but also for their guests, we feel it important that the cast reconsider just how close they are coming to vehicles with open windows. In any other season, we’d rave about the intimate scares – but it’s difficult to not feel that doing so in 2020 entirely defeats the purpose of having a physically distanced event in the first place. Naturally, guests have the option of keeping their windows closed throughout the experience, creating a guaranteed barrier between them and the cast.
While the notion of ‘drive-through’ haunts may seem like a necessary evil resulting from our current world of uncertainty, they’re not entirely that unheard of. At their core, these experiences are a self-guided natural derivative of the classic haunted hayride. There, guests board large open-air flat beds pulled by a tractor through a series of outdoor scenes, often through the darkened woods on a cool October night.
Of the drive-through haunts we’ve experienced this season thus far, the theatrics and storytelling of The Haunted Road come the closest to evoking that classic hayride flavor. Although the modest, and at times non-existent scenic do hinder the ability to become truly lost within its storyworld, The Haunted Road crafts a compelling narrative that leaves audiences inspired to see what might happen next. Throughout the experience, it pairs the twists and turns of the road with those of the story unfolding in a solid way.
Although clearly inspired by those haunted hayrides, these new drive-through haunts are very much still making up the playbook as they go. There’s understandably a great deal of trial and error in this season’s shows, because simply put, this just isn’t something one could have gone elsewhere to benchmark before beginning production. Of the drive-through experiences we’ve visited this year, The Haunted Road is the one that left us most excited to see how it evolves and grows should it return for future Halloween seasons.
The simple truth is we would have enjoyed The Haunted Road far more if we were able to see most of it. We certainly hope that the team revisits the way cars are grouped and pulsed through the experience to ensure every car, no matter its order, is able to receive an equal experience – especially considering that they’re all paying an equal ticket price. Given how unbalanced the current experience is absolutely guaranteed to be depending on if you happen to be car #1, #4 or #7, this played heavily into our overall score of The Haunted Road. In truth, because of the inability to see – well – almost anything – during our visit, our personal experience probably deserved even lower than 3 Keys – however, the balance of well thought, compelling story-telling that flows throughout The Haunted Road certainly adds a level of forgiveness, and gives an at least somewhat justifiable reason to roll the dice and hope you land in parking spot #3.
You can find an extended photo gallery from our night at The Haunted Road in this exclusive album on the Escape Authority Facebook page! While there, why not give us a “LIKE” if you haven’t already? We’ll give you candy!
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Venue: The Haunted Road
Location: Orlando, FL
Dates: Select Nights September 25th – November 7th
Hours: Family Friendly Version 1:30pm – 5:30pm, Main Haunt Version 8:00pm – 12:00am
Cost: Prices range from $15-30 per person depending on event night.
We thank The Haunted Road for inviting us to experience this event. Although complimentary admission was generously provided, that in no way impacts the opinion included within this review.