Nightmare Acres — Local services in South Windsor

I was very excited to go here, because I love haunted houses. Unfortunately, I left disappointed. There were not many scare actors at all for such a long trail- I saw so many "hiding spots" clearly made for actors that just weren't there. Of the few actors that were there, quite a few of them had been "wasted" in my opinion: used to honk a horn instead of engage with the customers, placed too close to another actor right after a long stretch without any actors, etc. The trail seemed pretty long and the set design was really cool, but it feels empty and hollow without scare actors to breathe life into it.

One segment of the trail is completely dark, so you cant see and have to feel the walls to get out (basically). In this segment, my group was walking toward what we thought was the exit, and we came across a door. So, we opened it and were quite confused since we seemed to not be where we were supposed to be. One of the staff came over and kept telling us to go through the dark room and we kept repeating that we did, but he said we couldn't have because we weren't at the exit. Finally, he looked at the door and said "oh that's the emergency exit, it was suppised to be latched". This seems like a pretty big oversight to leave a visible exit in the labyrinth where your whole goal is to feel your way out and assume nobody may accidentally take it. This broke immersion, sadly.

I still think it was a decent haunted house, but it goes to the bottom of my list because so many others are better. If you're local, it might be worth checking out, but I wouldn't drive the 45 minutes again. Fine haunt but...

I enjoyed this trail overall. It was well thought out with cool scenes. Some of the scenes could have used a smidge more light to see their creations a little more. Good scares, fun actors doing their thing. However, 2 fast passes to avoid a 2+ hour line in drizzling rain for $95 seems pretty greedy. We did it once to avoid the long wait but $95? Come on. I was expecting a lot more from Nightmare Acres for that price. There was one room, a blackout room, which was REALLY uncomfortable. Not scary like a haunted house. Physically and mentally uncomfortable. It smelled of gas generator and it was absolute complete blackout. A bunch of us caught up with other groups struggling in this room. A lot of people not moving whatsoever, screaming, random kids turning on their flashlights (and it was so foggy it was absolutely impossible to see with these random lights too). It honestly felt like an impending dangerous event in there. People were legitimately panicking and creating a huge crowd in this area. Everything else was in good fun, this room was not. As a healthcare professional, my mind goes to, “what happens if someone was having a medical emergency in there.” I think this room should be removed. At minimum, staffing needs to be in this area and be monitoring the crowds better and ensuring it doesn’t turn into a traffic jam and that...

I can't believe I've lived near this place and never checked it out!

We went on the last Sunday that was $25 each ticket since it was our first time and we didn't know what to expect.

There weren't very many people which was great since there was no line and we got all the scares, which is hard to do when there's a sizeable crowd.

The haunt itself is pretty long, we were inside for about 25 minutes although our time was padded out by the blackout section. That unfortunately is my only complaint about the maze. Not sure if we took too long to figure it out or if it was actually long, but the blackout section should be shorter. We were in there for a while and it seemed neverending. I can't imagine being in there with a long line of people.

Regardless, the maze was so much fun, all the actors really gave their all. The courtyard area was fun with a small gift shop, drink bar and a food truck. One of the clowns hanging out there recommended the buffalo chicken tacos so we got those and they were delicious! They were also blasting metal music and as a huge fan it was awesome to listen to songs I knew as I hung out.

Overall, we had a blast and would absolutely come...