ThrillRide! Special Features

Alice Cooper Goes to Hell 3D

As mentioned earlier, this is Alice Cooper's second USH HHN maze, but it is entirely different from last year's Welcome To My Nightmare. First, as you might have already guessed, it's in 3D. (And it has also taken up residence in the home of last year's House of 1,000 Corpses 3D maze.) Second, this maze is less directly inspired by songs in the Cooper catalog.

Third, what an exterior! This ticket booth and the animated "ballyhoo" skeleton won me over instantly.

And look at this portal; SWEET. They must have emptied about a million cans of Day-Glo paint to dress this maze, and it made the "3D" effect work better than I've ever seen. And there's the rub: to really get that 3D pop, you need a lot of color and a lot of light, which sort of cuts down on the scary factor. Not a bad thing, though, when there is cool stuff to look at, and there is a lot of cool stuff to look at in here. Plus, this is a rock and roll maze, baby, and the riot of blacklight color feels appropriate.

We walk through chambers that express the Seven Deadly Sins and while all were nifty, two rooms stood out clearly in my mind: Gluttony and Lust. The Gluttony room may take the prize for the grossest scenes I witnessed this night, dear lord, the awful, terrible things going on in there, SO GROSS! Lust, well, if you're a straight male or a gay female, trust me, this is also a fun room.

Welcome To My Nightmare was more traditionally scarier, but ...Goes To Hell is a blast. Don't miss it.

The Walking Dead: Dead Inside

More zombies, bring it on! So right out front, there are a whole bunch of bloody body bags on the ground and if that gives you the willies, you are in for a world of hurt inside this maze.

Because the blood and the gore and the stench of death and the scares come at you fast and furious throughout. If I recall correctly, this location housed the Friday the 13th maze a few years ago, and this bad boy is as aggressively mean-spirited as that one was. Akin to the Silent Hill maze, I would imagine that if you've seen every available episode of the TV series, some small details might be more meaningful. But if you haven't, no matter; the dead have risen, they're pissed off, and they're hungry for human flesh; that's all you need to know.

We do start off in a hospital and in that context, there's something extra-horrific about a set of doors barred shut, painted with the now-familiar admonition: "Keep Out - Dead Inside"... That made my skin crawl. And it just gets worse from there.

We all came out of this maze shaking like leaves.