Fright Night at the PNE
As day turned to night, hundreds of excited thrill seekers made their way to the PNE’s annual Fright Nights.
The PNE hails its fright nights as “Western Canada’s scariest haunt,” on its website. Come every Halloween, Fright night is Vancouver’s most anticipated attraction. Due to its popularity though, the line-ups for all of the six haunted houses, and numerous rides, tend to get extremely long as the night goes on. By nine o’clock, they can be long enough that the wait is at least two hours.
Is it all worth the wait?
“It was my first time and I was kind of disappointed,” said Roxanne Soliven, who came with a group of friends, in hopes of a fun night full of terror. “It wasn’t worth the $35 or the long lineups.”
The number of costumed workers walking around and preying on nervous-looking individuals seems to have decreased a lot over the years, and the haunted houses seem less frightening than they have been in the past. The majority of them consist of mostly supposedly frightening scenes, with mechanic figures and fake blood.
“That wasn’t even scary,” said Mark Augustynowitz after coming out of the park’s haunted house called Darkness. He looked bored rather than scared.
Not only has the number of workers in costumes walking around dropped but so has the number of them inside the haunted houses. That’s important to the whole of the attraction: They’re the main reason people make the trek out to that part of Vancouver.
The major downside of the night was the lines. They were discouraging, as they are with all major attractions. Unless people arrived at the opening time, 6:30 p.m., it wasn’t possible to experience all of the six haunted houses. There were lines not only for the haunted houses, but also for the rides, which made for a night filled with waiting.
With at least an hour-and-a-half long wait for the haunted houses, you would expect the quality of the houses themselves to be amazing. You would expect it to last at least four or five minutes long when walking through, but most of them took no more than three minutes, an insubstantial amount of time when compared to the wait.
(Although fast passes are offered as a way to skip the lines, they cost twice as much as the regular passes which is an extra cost that not many are willing to pay.)
Was Fright Night worth it?
If you were willing to spend hours of waiting in line for a mediocre three-minute scare, yes. But if not, you were better off watching The Grudge in the warmth and comfort of your home.
The PNE better step up its scare game or their lack of visitors next year will give them something to be afraid of.
Cindy St-Laurent
l love your title and your last line of the article. Definitely true and to the point. I felt exactly the same way when I went to Fright Night this year. I managed to do only three haunted houses because of the wait and two of them were exactly the same as last year. Only one that I hadn’t done before actually managed to really scare me and had me feeling like it was worth the wait. I honestly think that I will skip a year and maybe go back the following year. They need to do more and different things if they want people to keep coming. Also the Fast Pass is a joke because yes you can skip the line but you can only use them once. Definitely not worth the money. The problem is though if it was a lot cheaper than everyone would get it and that line would be the same length. Such a conundrum.
Joao Vitor Correa
Now I’m really feeling relieved for not attending this year’s halloween, haha!