Philipsburg Manor — Attraction in Town of Mount Pleasant

We attended today for the spring sheep to shawl event, primarily for the benefit of our 7 and 4.5 yr old daughter and son. The highlight was definitely the first sheep and, later, duck herding by border collies. Sadly, one loudspeaker - the one facing us - of the PA system was not working, so we could not hear 90% of what the seemingly engaging dog trainer was saying. The crowd was thick, so a working PA system was a must for us and others more than 20 yards from where he was standing and addressing the crowd. Our kids did not give a hoot about the sound, since they had a good view of the action, but only because we were lucky to be positioned right at the rope line. I felt bad for the many kids with no view and, like us adults, no possibility to hear the interesting explanation of the herding techniques being used.

The food kiosk for lunch was difficult to navigate. We checked out what the prices were beforehand, and what we wanted. My wife waited on line and had exact change in cash. But when the order came, a hot dog - for example - was not the $3 advertised on the signboard menu, but $3.22 including tax. So, she had to leave the line with my daughter and come find me to get extra money. Since when do attractions based on such fleeting consumerism as hot dogs, pretzels and soft drinks charge sales tax as extra? With us juggling kids it was an insane dance to go get change to cover the extra tax, with two overhungry toddlers in tow. This is such a minor thing, but made needlessly painful. So, how about charging $3.25 to cover the tax, but do not advertise prices with hidden costs, like normal rural fairs in every part of the world I have lived (US, Finland, Canada, Russia, Denmark)? I cannot think of any place in NY that adds tax to street sales of food, and I grew up here, about 3 miles from Philipseburg Manor.

Other visitors with toddlers arriving by car should be warned. We showed up about 10:45 for an event advertised to begin at 10 am. The main parking lot was already long-since full, not surprisingly because it is tiny. However, the traffic into and through the lot was heavy when we arrived and there was no one to direct us to the overflow lot, well past and behind the manor. Best to drop the toddlers with one parent off at the main entrance, then go park in the satellite field, which takes time to find and walk back from. But besides the girl scanning tickets at the gate, who my wife got out to question, and then hike back to me, there was no one staffing the parking lot, which was super busy and none of the drivers arriving seemed to have a clue what they were doing or where to go when they realized the lot was full.

Given that we had toddlers, it was hard to listen in detail to the tour guides in the residences and outdoors within and among the mill and the barns. However, what I did see and hear was impressive. It was important to learn about the slave labor used to run the mills, which I had not known about before. There were both black and white tour guides and the information was presented in a straightforward manor. I greatly appreciated the multi-racial staff, their professional demeanor and ability to answer questions. Now that I know where to park, I would like to go back with my wife, with no kids in tow, and have enough loose change to handle the undeclared sales taxes at the food kiosk. It should be noted that the neighboring kiosk selling home-made ice cream from Croton charged an even $4 for a cone or cup, not $4.38 or some other odd amount due to silly extra...

TL;DR: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Discovery Walk is overpriced for the experience and should be marketed to families with young children. Our interactions with staff at Philipsburg Manor were very positive - they were all quite kind and accommodating. Twilight Market is disappointing - only 4 booths, not what I would call a market.

My sister bought our tickets to the Legend of Sleepy Hollow Discovery Walk for $40 a piece. I will now copy out the description of said tour from the Historic Hudson Valley Website and interject our experience in parentheses: "Our fun and friendly tour guides (+ our tour guides were both very fun and friendly!) will take you on a colorful, photo op filled (- photo-ops were all wooden cut outs of characters and two views of the pond), immersive romp (- there was loud music playing from a Bluetooth speaker that at times made it difficult to hear the tour guide) through the property at the historic heart of Sleepy Hollow, where you will see key landmarks of this special place made famous by Washington Irving in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (- we saw the manor that inspired Irving's characters, the Van Tassels, but we did not get to go inside or learn more about it). This one-hour tour takes you through the hidden corners in the landscape (- we were taken through the outskirts of the property that was mostly just overgrown vegetation) at Philipsburg Manor that inspired settings in Irving’s amazing tale. You’ll encounter a variety of immersive scenes (- the "immersive scenes" included one tour guide trying to get our tour group to ride around a field on a stick pony. My sister was the only one to participate). This illuminating daytime experience is the easiest and most fun way to get deep inside the true Legend!"

I want to be very clear that I think the tour guides did as good a job as humanly possible to make a tour around a stand full of Walmart bags (this stand was used as the food stall during the Twilight Market event later that evening) as fun as possible. My sister and I always make our own fun so when we were asked to vogue next to a scarecrow and dance to disco music, we obliged. It was pretty awkward though because pretty much no one else in the 20ish group of people participated in the "immersive scenes". I really think this tour should have been advertised to families with young children. There was only one child in our tour group, and even they were a little too old to want to willingly participate. To charge $40 for this tour, in Mr. Irving's words, "causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts."

The Twilight Market event was also sadly lacking as there were only 4 booths - 3 standing together and 1 off by itself next to the alcohol booth. The formation of the line to get into the timed entry event was pretty bad - we were in the middle of the line between two sets of doors. The set behind us had been properly propped open but the set in front of us had not. My sister, who used to be a docent at a historic property, was appalled by the safety issue and found a door prop nearby and asked a gentleman in front of us to prop open the door. A few people behind us thanked her for taking this initiative - the guests should not have to do this.

The gift shop is very well curated and is worth visiting, but I cannot recommend the special seasonal...

The Horseman's Hollow as a haunted Halloween attraction was in all honesty, a huge let down. Normally I don't review but for the cost of the attraction and the boasting advertisement it wasn't scary in the least. Don't get me wrong, the atmosphere was amazing and very creepy but the actual haunted trail just wasn't scary. Waiting in line it looked like it was going to be great but we didn't hear anyone screaming in fright. Every person who came out looked bored and were complaining. It was definitely only PG13 styled. 7 year olds could have done it and maybe gotten a kick but if you're looking for an actually good scary event, sorry to say but you should pass this up. We were very excited because the past reviews seems great and we've always wanted to come to Sleepy Hollow but it wasn't worth the $. Maybe we just went on an off night where the actors didn't seem that into it or they were taking breaks or something but it was just 2 days before Halloween so I expected there to be some enthusiasm. Most of the actors just stood there in their masks as you walked by. Only got 2 jump scares and there were lots of room for actors to be placed for a good ol' fright! However, it was were far between actors who didn't seem that into it or acted as if they would towards younger children (not really trying to scare them) but it was all adults in our group. After a while we stopped expecting to be scared and just tried to enjoy the atmosphere. And at the end the Headless Horseman just stood there. It sucked worse because he turned away because some inconsiderate people were trying to take photos even though they were asked not to from the start which ruined the Horseman for the rest of us but he was just standing silent and still as we passed anyway. :/ Everyone just seemed tired but it was only 8pm. Couldn't afford to do many haunted attractions this year but we picked this one and it was a big let down on the scary scale. If you're a little kid or a newbie to haunted houses/hayride type events this is a good one to start but us who really want a scare (or even a little bit of a scare)...