Oni and I visited Brighton Asylum on October 18th, we went through both of it’s attractions and also did it’s brand new “Escape Rooms”. We were amazed at the wide range of changes that had occurred since last year, and dramatically since we first went to Brighton Asylum in 2012–we’ve always found it to be an excellent attraction to visit.
This year was no exception. If you’ve been to Brighton Asylum before, you might as well consider this a new first time–practically the entire set up and design has been reworked, except for the nice facade of the Asylum itself when you enter the second attraction.
A new beginning area has been added called “The Tunnel”. This starts your journey into the depths of the building, with a very creepy hospital theme set in a forgotten sub basement–which allows for all of the scares associated with being in underground tunnels and steamworks style set pieces. It was a great beginning and was very original in it’s set up and scares (and beyond it’s regular array of good scares, had one stand out really great scare that we’d never seen before that was very effective).
Moving on you then enter the asylum itself. Again, this area has basically been entirely redone–to great effect. There were plenty of exceptionally great visuals added, with plenty of over the top set pieces (and one set piece trying to break in….). We had a great time the entire way through. Everything worked well together and it had some nice uses of above and below scares–something we all say is a hallmark of a well thought out haunted attraction design.
After doing the haunted attractions we went in to their 2 Escape Rooms “Dead Escape” and “Lab Lockdown”. These are a brand new addition to their line up, and are part of a new trend to adding extra events to haunted attractions. In these cases you are given 4 minutes to scavenge a room to discover clues and work out a puzzle (either language style puzzle, or a combo math/visual puzzle). I’m pretty crap and those sort of things, so Oni took the lead, and we got very close in both of them to working things out before we ran out of time. If you like these types of things you’ll have fun trying it out, and they are only $5 each, so they’re a pretty inexpensive add on.
Brighton Asylum was absolutely worth the trip, and I’d suggest it to anyone in the New Jersey area as one of the better attractions to visit. The Haunts and Escape rooms are indoors, so you’ll be safe from the weather–they have covered waiting areas, so that’s a bonus as well. They were packed the night we went, so it’s a very popular attraction–so you might want to consider adding on their inexpensive VIP upgrade if you’re pressed for time.