HAUNTED SCHOOLHOUSE & LABORATORY, AKRON OH

The second stop of the night was to the North in Akron Ohio: Haunted Schoolhouse and Laboratory. The attraction uses the previous Elementary School and Guggenheim Airship Institute as settings for two well-themed elements. The approach is up a driveway with plenty of parking to the right. Making your way around the building, you come across a very Carnival looking Admissions trailer and a wall of Trailer containers fronted by a branded photo-op and two giant skeletons.

 

Between the trailers is the pathway to the literal Midway past the Boo Bus. From the Midway directly attached to the Schoolhouse, you can look down on the Laboratory outside this fence. My dad and I met with Box Office Manager Tonia, General Manager Dave and Assistant Production Manager Matt for a time before making our way to the Schoolhouse.

 

The Schoolhouse opens with the queue line running past the second location of All American Axe Throwing. There is also an excellent animatronic of a murderous Jack O'Lantern Monster. Without knowing the attraction, you would think there is an immediate entrance to the house but, after a set of steps going three stories up, there is a second queue line going into the house.

 

Once inside, you're greeted by floor to ceiling small detail pieces and animatronics through a few school scenes. After an extensive library and some classrooms, you're turned out into some of the best execution of a plethora of human environments I've ever seen. This features a shifting Swamp House, an air-conditioned Meat Locker, a beautiful church, a bathroom with a talking skeleton and a Vampire Crypt housing a Dracula-like Vampire Patriarch. All scenes rise to the height of the ceiling, no 8 ft walls here.

 

The Basement is a fantastic execution too. It even starts with executions in the Dungeon. Throughout this floor, there are just about every Occult scene you can think of including glowing Brimstone walls and rituals of doom. Here, you get the most scares from actors. It seems about twenty of the thirty-five in that house that night. I was most impressed by the aesthetic of the basement out of the three floors that are used.

 

Back out into the Midway, you're once again blasted by “hot jams” from the last two Decades: a Millennial's drive down Memory Lane; here as well. They have a small Merchandise building, a Castle themed bar and a delicious food truck!

 

Heading down a decent sized hill around the front of the Airship Institute entry door, you get to the queue line for the Haunted Laboratory. This place is four floors of consistent and wondrous Experimental, Alien and Mutant theming. The first queue line makes way to another three story climb up stairs. Once you enter the house, you're in for a solid thrill ride. Off the wall mutants, insane electrical effects and full-on structural sense of danger are the name of the game in this house.

 

Each floor is a slightly different kind of impact. I'd say the “scare of the season” so far (given I'm so afraid of heights) was on the second floor with the three story deep hole to the basement by which you must walk around eighty percent of the room's outer wall to get past. Within the third floor though, there is another catwalk you must walk around to get level with the floor on the stairs of which I was blocked by a mutant as my heart was in my throat.

 

The actors everywhere in the attraction are of a very improvisational nature. The only ones who go for a jump scare usually have a fully costumed role or a unique Boo Pedal. I definitely felt the characters live in this place I was currently walking through. The last marquis scene is the presence of one of the world's largest Tesla Coils as you traverse a circular cage around it.

 

The Prices for the last weekend are:

• PEAK Nights (October 27, 28):

• On-Site: $37*

• Online: $35*

• Sundays (October 29):

• On-Site: $27*

• Online: $25*

I would give this attraction a value worthy of a single day/night four and a half hour drive. Thank you for reading!