Lake Shawnee Abandoned Amusement Park — Attraction in Princeton

As a photographer of the abandoned, Lake Shawnee has been on my list for quite a while. I signed up for the photography tour through the website and immediately received a text with instructions to text a number about one hour prior to arrival to ensure a guide would be ready. This gave us the impression that we would be touring/photographing the location with just our party, as many permission locations do. When we arrived, we were surprised to see a line of cars backed up at the gate. Apparently, the photography tour is also a paranormal tour, which we had absolutely zero interest in. The tour guide, Chris, was very personable and fun, and luckily allowed us to go off on our own after signing waivers and hearing a brief history of the location. He had a lot of interesting and entertaining stories, although I doubt the validity of most of them. For people interested in the paranormal, ghost stories, ghost hunting, etc., I give this place a 5. For photographers just interested in shooting the abandoned location, I give it a 2. (Met in the middle for a 3.) The cost is too high for what there is to photograph, which is just a ferris wheel and swing, and the swing is completely covered in dolls and toys that people now leave as offerings for the ghosts of all the children who probably never really died there. I enjoyed shooting the ferris wheel, which took about 20 min, but not for $40 and not for the amount of time it took us to get all the way out there (7 hour drive). We shot as much as we could to try to make it worth it, but it was quite disappointing. (For comparison, there are lots of other places, such as Indiana State Asylum or Joliet Prison, that both charge $25 to tour the entire property and shoot for the entire day, with much more to shoot.) This is definitely geared towards ghost stories and I don't think it should really be advertised as having much for photography. The ghost hunters were having a blast though, with a lot of them excited to share their own stories, and camp overnight as well. In my opinion, they should offer the same time slots to photographers but charge $10-$15 and just give them an hour to shoot separate from the whole ghost-tale experience. On a side note, I liked Chris and am happy to see him keeping the place "alive" with any kind...

Me and my friends do these haunted places and haunted houses every year, and let me say this was the lamest one we ever seen. When we first arrived there was no one to tell you where to park or where to go to get tickets. They had us walk around unguided, the history tour they sold us was a old lady with pictures spread over a old picnic table talking bout them, again not much of a tour. There was a man by the swings that gave some good stories, he also said the other story tellers where sick. After the history "tour" we continued to the haunted house part of the attraction, when asked where we could purchase some drinks before we went over we was told that there was no concessions, they said normally there are but the woman that does that is sick also. We went through the haunted house section which was even more horrible than the tour, it seemed short of personnel due to it's constant recycling of characters, there was no line and took forever to start. To sum it up this WHOLE operation is TERRRIBLE! This is definitely the worse place I've ever visited from it's bumbling employees to the more than terrible haunted house constructed from pallets and sheets. Don't get me wrong the history of this place is very cool, but these people don't seem to be putting the effort in the place to make it the scary attraction that it could be. My advice is steer clear of this place or you will be severely dissapointed like...

I hadn’t known about this place previously. I looked into it and thought it would be cool to photograph and experience! It was pretty easy to find. Plus they text you photos of where to park. You have to get tickets online ahead of time because they are guided tours and they must show you around before you go off on your own. It is private property so you can’t just show up and walk around.

I did the daytime tour. There were a few other people on the tour with me but they were all nice. Our tour guide Chris was very nice and respectful! He answered all our questions, got to know us all.

You tour around the entire property(about an hour or so) and after that you are allowed to walk around on your own, once you are done you leave and let them know you are leaving. I appreciate that we got to walk around on our own and take as much time as we would like. I was there for a total of 2.5-3 hours. There was a lot to photograph in my opinion. I wasn’t there to only photograph the Ferris wheel and swings. There were also some cool abandoned cars/buses and playground sets. The lake is also beautiful.

Overall I had a good experience! But I think it can depend on what you go there for. I wanted pictures of everything but some people only care for the Ferris wheel and swings. Those are the only rides left because they sold the other ones they had...