This is going to be a very boring review of The Bates Motel Haunted Attractions.
Why you ask?
Well, let me see, we’ve been to Bates 2 times to review it since 2009 (and once before we started doing reviews in 2008), and the reviews for those visits are here and here.
So why will this review be boring?
Because Randy Bates couldn’t put on a bad Haunted Attraction event if he tried. Bates Motel is one of the most consistently high quality haunted attraction events we’ve ever been to on our tours. His hayride, corn maze, and house walkthrough attractions are always top form for the genre.
So, while this will be a boring review (cut to the chase: Go to Bates Motel, it’s excellent) let’s run down yet again why Bates Motel kicks ass.
Haunted Hayride
Bates has always had one of the better Hayride attractions. It’s filled with very elaborate set pieces, great quality scare actors, and plenty of unexpected scares. This is true yet again this year, and they’ve added some small tweaks to amp things up even more than previous years. We do suggest sitting more toward the front of the cart so you can hear the audio track better though (but I know there are many hardcore back row people out there). Many of the best parts of the hayride experience have giant animatronic monsters, so expect to be towered over by many beasts and creatures on your trip.
Bates does allow for limited touching so expect a few hair strokes, (or in my case, bald head cuppings) and plenty of in your face actor interactions. It can be pretty intense at points, so this ride might be a bit much for younger teenagers (and certainly too much for young children).
Haunted Corn Maze
In a similar fashion to the hayride, Bates Motel’s corn maze has some of the best set pieces and setups of the genre. Scares take place within the corn maze section, but also within the many inside set pieces you walk through. There are plenty of scare actors throughout both, and sometimes even hovering above. There’s even a great implementation of a clown/circus area that takes things in a different direction than any we’ve seen (and we’ve become pretty bored with clown areas since they usually break down into crappy clown makeup lunge scares)–so that’s a major plus.
Just like the hayride this area can be intense, so be warned. By the end you can easily be exhausted by all of the jumping at scares you’ll be doing.
The Bates Motel
I love the Bates Motel house attraction. Randy always manages to tweak things to keep this attraction fresh. It was similar this year to last year, but with many new angles on the scares to make it feel totally new. The house looks small from the outside, but believe me it’ll feel really long while you’re in it due to the constant scares that keep you on your toes. Just like the other experiences at Bates, they can and do touch you here–in fact they do it the most in this attraction from our experience–so be aware of that if you have issues with this sort of thing. They don’t grab all over you though, more a leg grab or a shoulder grab (or yet again in my case, a shine job on my bald head). At the end of this attraction I was practically doubled back over a casket by the intense interaction with one of the scare actors that literally put his face right up to me and continued to lean in until I was almost all the way on my back. It was good times.
This is (in our opinion) the most intense attraction at Bates, so you will get the most jumps and shocks here. It can be pretty relentless, so if in any doubt make sure your teens are cool with this type of thing first.
Other Stuff
Bates Motel doesn’t have an extensive midway like other places, but it does have a merchandise shed, a food concessions truck, and typically an artist doing some cool artwork for sale. That being said it’s still a fun spot to hang out and plenty of people like to do so while listening to all of the havoc happening in other parts of the event.
The Bates Motel is a great haunted attraction and has yet again managed to retain it’s best parts while adding in some new parts to make things even better. We could literally point to our previous reviews and just say “yup, as good as last year” and leave it at that.
See, I said the review would be boring (as in nothing unexpected given their consistent high quality)–but Bates is anything but boring and will be a great night of scares for even the most hardcore of haunted attraction veterans.
(One side note: We are in the process of doing a new Youtube series of our trips to Haunted Attractions–Bates Motel was the first attraction we visited with our cameras and was chosen specifically because we knew it would be kick ass….so that should also tell you something of our opinion of the place. As a result though we didn’t end of taking any normal photos, so that’s why this review isn’t filled with our normal photo collage–but when it’s up I’ll add the video here.