Black Island Farms — Attraction in Syracuse

$14 each for two adults, $11 for a 4-year old. $39 before tax.

It rained while we were there. There's no covered areas anywhere, so we walked around in the rain and got bitten by mosquitoes. All the slides were wet, so our little one couldn't really do anything. They have a playground area that she had fun on, but you can find better ones at any city park for free.

$11 for kettle corn, $6 for a soggy, tough pretzel with cheese.

$58 for some pumpkins and gourds. This is where it really got to me. They charge per item, which is great when you're looking for massive carving pumpkins. But we just wanted some of the tiny ones to decorate our table and mantle--the ones that are a little smaller than a baseball. The girl at the counter had no idea what she was doing and said as much. She rang everything up and said "does that look right?" I had to explain that no, it didn't; I had fourteen items, and she had wrung up fifteen. She just stared at me and said "so...does this look okay?" After a "Who's on First"‐sort of exchange, I was finally able to convince her that fourteen is not, in fact, fifteen. But then I asked why I was being charged for a Specialty Pumpkin when I was getting one regular ol' orange pie pumpkin. She said, "oh, I just rang it up like that." Okay. So...either "specialty" pumpkins are, somehow, the same price as regular ones or you're just openly telling me that you're overcharging me.

And look. I get it. Service and retail work is tough. Especially for typing adults who aren't used to the workfoce. Can be a lot of pressurr. I'm sure she was anxious. But times are tight, too. I'm not expecting anything crazy; you don't have to treat me like royalty or provide service or goods for free. Just. Please, don't take more of my money than you are supposed to. And when it comes to other people's finances, make sure you're counting correctly.

All in all, over $100 for a couple hours of walking in the rain and a dozen mosquito bites each, plus a snack that was on par with McDonald's or a gas station roller-grill in quality, but at triple the cost, and some items to look nice on the table for the next month or two.

With the cost of living being what it is these days, that's far, far too rich for me. We won't be back. We can't. I'm sorry. I want to support small businesses, and I really want to believe that these outrageous prices are set so high simply to make ends meet. But whatever the reason, it's way too...

** Reply to owner’s response: you wrote “This isn’t about questioning anyone’s service, it’s a standard policy that ensures fairness and prevents misuse.” Your whole response is an insult. If you require us all to be there, it IS questioning one’s service. Furthermore: if you truly DID care about our service members, ONE person with a valid ID should be able to buy as many tickets as they want as is standard practice at other establishments who honor their members. For 6 people, it would still be only 8 dollars off an over $200 purchase. We will not be back. **

We’ve been coming here for quite a few years now and tho our kids are grown & married we all STILL try and get together to come every Halloween. So this past Friday night we all decided to meet up once again to recapture that ‘ole Halloween spirit! Only it was ruined by your attendants who apparently don’t like giving military discounts. You see, we’re retired but our two kids (-and their spouses) are still active duty tho they’re affected by the furlough right now! So we wanted to buy their tickets but apparently it’s policy to make us ALL show up with ID’s. We managed to have two of the 4 kids show up in time to meet us at the line to show their ID’s but the other two got stuck in traffic. So two of us got BACK IN LINE and bought their tickets but your attendant refused to honor the discount since they weren’t present. Here’s the thing: if you all feel that way about extending a small measure of appreciation to our armed services then be HONEST about it. Because when it all adds up: even without the mere $2 discount it STILL COST us over $229 for 6 people with the fast pass which we splurged for. And had we known how you REALLY feel about us, we would’ve gone somewhere else to spend our hard earned money on those business that truly do appreciate us. Now that we DO know, we’ll definitely...

The best part about it is that it's open Sundays (literally the only patch that is!). But even with it being the only one that's open, it wasn't overcrowded at 2PM (in fact, the tractor ride and two smaller slides didn't even have lines). There's parking on both the West and East sides of the street, but the maze and everything are on the West side. When you first walk into the gates, there are ticketing booths to the South and the Hayride line to the West. Buy your tickets first before going to the Hayride. Once past the ticketing booths, there is a small "farmer's market" with several types of squash. Then comes The Courtyard, a big open field surrounded by pens of animals (calves, turkeys, pigs, goats, chickens/roosters, geese), a Turkey Race track, Piglet Race track, tire swings, three sizes of slides (slick plastic sheets overlaying haystacks or the largest is a big tube 2.5 stories up), a barrel tractor ride (adults under 200lbs can ride, too!), a corn kernel "sandbox," and one little food truck. There's live music by the food truck, which was kind of unfortunate placement in that ordering was made more difficult by the loud music. The food is a bit overpriced and my chicken tenders were still cold in the middle, but it was palatable. The Corn Maze is fun, though by this last weekend there were well-worn "shortcuts" from people just walking between the stalks, so it wasn't as challenging. Overall, we had fun and my toddler nephews loved it, so we have made note to go back again next year! Maybe we'll try to the Hayride because it looked fun (and it's not a bad deal since it comes with a pumpkin that you pick out...