Last weekend I stopped in at Red Vein, one of a handful of farm haunts in and around Ashland, VA. For a few years now I had been watching from afar as their reputational stocks in the region seemed to be on the rise and, after a failed attempted to visit last season, I'm glad to say I finally was able to give it a go this year.
Overall, I think it's a strong farm haunt. Their strengths are definitely in the scenic and storytelling departments. Each year they add a new angle to the event's lore—definitely recommend reading the backstory on their website before attending. The cast throughout did a great job of avoiding any generic "get outs" and the like—instead consistently delivering actual story-based lines.
The event has developed a reputation online for their scenic and their scenic is strong—especially by farm haunt standards in my experience. The best regional theme park haunts still maintain an edge here (KD down the road definitely included), but visually, Red Vein is still quite good. Mechanically, the event is very strong too. The scares aren't terribly sophisticated (boo holes, drop doors, a few intimidation scares used as successful distractions for another actor, etc), but they are executed well in houses that are well designed to facilitate these scares—and oftentimes multiple opportunities from a single actor. I didn't see anything that I thought was particularly clever or innovative, but not every event needs to be on the bleeding edge. There's a place for an event that just does the fundamentals well and that was my assessment here.
If I had to highlight a point of criticism, I'd say the atmospherics here are pretty weak. I definitely felt like I wanted more sound, more elaborate lighting, and more fog throughout the experience. I am very much someone who needs a house's environmentals to knock me off guard in order to feel any anxiety and tension. Maybe it's my fault for spending such an inordinate amount of time in haunted houses, but knowing there are startles somewhere up ahead doesn't do anything for me—I need a house to confuse me, make me focus on navigation, make me have to think about where to put my feet, overwhelm my senses to prevent my brain from instinctually, fully processing my environment—that's how you make me uneasy and, ultimately, scare me.
There were good moments in this regard, to be clear—some dark corridors and cornfields, a bit of a crooked house segment, a (very effective) spinning tunnel, etc—but none of them were really paid off with scares and the tension was never really maintained or, better yet, built upon. I think bringing on some strong lighting/audio experience could really go a long way to significantly plus this experience.
Hopefully I'm not coming off as too much of a haunt snob here. I do think Red Vein is putting on a strong event with some really notable and respectable strengths and I enjoyed my visit, to be clear. If you're a Kings Dominion local and you're looking for a change of pace from Haunt, I think it's a compelling offering. It's not an event I'm likely to frequent, but I'm very glad to have experienced it and they are, broadly, doing a good job here in my assessment. Better yet, the care, attention, and passion from the designers and casts really shine brightly here. To provide a potentially practical comparison for locals, I'd say the vibe was very Bitten-era BGW HOS-coded—strong focus on scenic and story, effective but rudimentary scares, and simple, dated-feeling atmospherics.
Would love to hear if anyone else has given it a try!
Overall, I think it's a strong farm haunt. Their strengths are definitely in the scenic and storytelling departments. Each year they add a new angle to the event's lore—definitely recommend reading the backstory on their website before attending. The cast throughout did a great job of avoiding any generic "get outs" and the like—instead consistently delivering actual story-based lines.
The event has developed a reputation online for their scenic and their scenic is strong—especially by farm haunt standards in my experience. The best regional theme park haunts still maintain an edge here (KD down the road definitely included), but visually, Red Vein is still quite good. Mechanically, the event is very strong too. The scares aren't terribly sophisticated (boo holes, drop doors, a few intimidation scares used as successful distractions for another actor, etc), but they are executed well in houses that are well designed to facilitate these scares—and oftentimes multiple opportunities from a single actor. I didn't see anything that I thought was particularly clever or innovative, but not every event needs to be on the bleeding edge. There's a place for an event that just does the fundamentals well and that was my assessment here.
If I had to highlight a point of criticism, I'd say the atmospherics here are pretty weak. I definitely felt like I wanted more sound, more elaborate lighting, and more fog throughout the experience. I am very much someone who needs a house's environmentals to knock me off guard in order to feel any anxiety and tension. Maybe it's my fault for spending such an inordinate amount of time in haunted houses, but knowing there are startles somewhere up ahead doesn't do anything for me—I need a house to confuse me, make me focus on navigation, make me have to think about where to put my feet, overwhelm my senses to prevent my brain from instinctually, fully processing my environment—that's how you make me uneasy and, ultimately, scare me.
There were good moments in this regard, to be clear—some dark corridors and cornfields, a bit of a crooked house segment, a (very effective) spinning tunnel, etc—but none of them were really paid off with scares and the tension was never really maintained or, better yet, built upon. I think bringing on some strong lighting/audio experience could really go a long way to significantly plus this experience.
Hopefully I'm not coming off as too much of a haunt snob here. I do think Red Vein is putting on a strong event with some really notable and respectable strengths and I enjoyed my visit, to be clear. If you're a Kings Dominion local and you're looking for a change of pace from Haunt, I think it's a compelling offering. It's not an event I'm likely to frequent, but I'm very glad to have experienced it and they are, broadly, doing a good job here in my assessment. Better yet, the care, attention, and passion from the designers and casts really shine brightly here. To provide a potentially practical comparison for locals, I'd say the vibe was very Bitten-era BGW HOS-coded—strong focus on scenic and story, effective but rudimentary scares, and simple, dated-feeling atmospherics.
Would love to hear if anyone else has given it a try!
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