Non runnin' weekend to end the month

Yup. Nuthin!

So what did I do?  Well, Friday night . . . I can't remember . . . (cough)

Saturday, I spent the morning taking care of a bunch of errands I needed to take care of before the nights festivities.  I'll get to that in a bit.  I needed to fill the car, wash it, clean it out (it's a friggin mess) and head over to the my moms restaurant to finish some bookkeeping.  Once that was done, I headed home thinking I'd have time to clean out the fish tank.  NOPE.  Forgot I needed some items to finish the look on my costume for tonight and a couple more blacklight tubes for extra creepy factor.

Got home in time to shower up (a bit warm and didn't want to be all icky all night) shave.  Threw on some comfy clothes and headed out to pick up the cuz and daughter . . .

We were going to Californias Great America Haunted Halloween!

It's was the last weekend of the event and the kids wanted to go.  Unfortunately, the godson's a bit of a wuss and wouldn't have been able to handle the scares.  It was dark and costumed ghouls were creeping up on everyone and freaking everyone out.  Awesome.

We got the online deal where the tix were about $29.  If you go that route, get as many as possible.  They charge $5 on top of that for the "convenience" of e-mailing it to you.  Parking's another $12.  And make sure you eat something before going in the park!  $4 for 20oz bottle of water should give you an idea of what to expect as fars as prices.

When we got inside, it was DARK.  The lights are only there to give enough light to see where you're going.  The lines weren't too bad and some of the rides were open.  I think the Vortex, Demon, DropZone, Psycho Mouse, Tiki Tumbler (old Survivor boat) were active.  The Log Jammer was open under the haunted banner of the Arachnid something or other.  Didn't get on it.  Didn't want to get wet.  It was comfortably cool, but could'a been cold if water was added.

The "Mazes" weren't really mazes.  They're guided paths.  You start at one end, get scared in between and end at another.  And repeat the process 5 more times for the other "Mazes".  I would say only one of the mazes sucked. Toy Terror or something along those lines.  It. Was. Lame.  Even the daughter wasn't frightened.  She even thought one of the monsters was cute (teenage crush cute).  She smiled and said bye to him.  I think I frightened him when I gave him the Evil Eye.

Two of the "Mazes" were pretty well done.  The Cornstalkers Maze started out negatively when one of the "scarecrows" accused the daughter of cutting in line.  We'd already been walking for a while and when we got in line she sat down on one of the bales that happened to be near an opening in the hedge.  I have no idea where the opening opened to, but when my cuz took a picture of her, the "scarecrow" bitch demanded to know what the daughter thought she was doing.  At first we thought if we thought it was part of the role and everyone around us began nervously laughing.  Until she asked if she had cut in line, even louder.  Still thinking it was a role the cuz said she was just taking a picture of the daughter on the bale.  The bitch then said she'd "kick her ass out" if she got out of line again.

That's when the crowd started heckling the "scarecrow" bitch as she walked away.  After that, things went much better.  The scarecrows were dressed in such a way that they could blend in with the corn.  Awesome!  They were popping out of everywhere and making people scream out.  For some reason, I was left alone.  I guess I was scarey enough.

The Werewolf one was pretty cool, too.  Those guys had chainsaws and LOVED to use them to really put a scare into you.

The live shows.  Hmm.  The magician/freak show was really good.  The drummers, excellent.  The hypnotist, eh.  The zombie one . . . OMG, don't get me started.  That was the longest hour of my LIFE, and it was a twenty minutes show!  It was supposed to be a musical.  The dancers were decent.  Even the daughter who is highly critical of dancers was impressed.  The singers were decent, except for the effeminate guy.  I remember when the shows put on by GA were well made.  Even if the performers were, umm, physically unappealing, they're was effort in making the performer look awesome for the role.

NONE of the performers made an effort to look like zombies!  There was tattered clothes and some make-up. That's it!  The guy needed to know what kind of songs to sing.  He had a couple of good performances, but he was under the impression he could sing whatever he wanted.  NO!  Stick to what you're good at, buddy!  The girls singers were ok.  One of them was excellent, I think her name was Brianna.  She was memorable.  She was supposed to be human I think.  Zombie queen wasn't too bad, but she also needed to know what style to sing.  The blond newly-zombied, was ok.  She stuck to what she was ok at, but a bit to nasally.

I've gotta go, but there are some characters I've REALLY got to commend in the next post.

GD

p.s.
too lazy, gotta go.  run smiley :)