oooo, scary

"Pirates of Emerson" was a lot of fun...and quite frankly, kicked Gyro's 3-D ScreamFest's zombified ass for total experience. Gyro's was good, got the adrenaline pumping a lot, and had a lot of booga-booga, people-jumping-out-at-you, chains-smacked-against-walls moments, but it was rather haphazard and disorganized...we frequently didn't know which way to go, where the next turn was, and a few times accidentally walked through one of the many emergency exits to the outside, which tended to break the immersion and the mood. Surprising, considering it is touted as "the Bay Area's premier haunted house", and one of the three houses in it is designed by Rob Zombie.

"Pirates", on the other hand, was all about the immersion. Six different "haunted houses", ranging from very cool to slightly lame, but all with their appeal. Narrow passageways, different floor textures and varying degrees of unevenness, and one house had a very disorienting passage of very close air-filled walls that you had to push your way through in total darkness [I can't describe it sufficiently, but I found it interesting that the most psychologically challenging part of the whole thing was the one that was the simplest and the one that you couldn't see at all]. That and the walkway through the rotating tunnel [with 3-D glasses on, no less] were the two parts that made the biggest impression on our group tonight...definitely memorable.

One thing that Gyro's had over Pirates, hands down: the performers wandering the grounds. Somehow a buxom wench saying "'Ello, love...gi' us yer ticket, then" just doesn't inspire much fear, and while the costumes were good, the performers were just wandering, not really interacting much. Gyro's, however, gives you the creepy zombie guy who comes lunging at you with a running chainsaw, or the scary clown who slaps a quite-substantial metal chain against the wall just as you walk by, or the skeletal man in ragged clothing who runs past you screaming maniacally, waving a shovel...then as he gets past you, he flips the shovel over, puts the blade down against the pavement, jumps onto it, and surfs it for a few feet, spewing sparks behind him and making a horrendous screeching noise. Awesome.

Gyro's was about the people and lots of booga-booga moments, while Pirates was the more immersive experience with occasional booga-booga moments. Both good, but very different from each other...and both worth the money.