Good Time Rating: 4 out of 5 screams
Wheelchair Rating: -1 out of 5 claustrophobically tight spaces
10/05/24
Buffalo, NY
I knew I wanted to start this blog off with a bang, and, boy howdy, did Frightworld deliver. And by deliver, I mean if you aren't ambulatory don't even flirt with going here. I managed through a combination of my manual chair, a cane, and lots of help from my friends, and I didn't manage all that well.
Seriously, Frightworld pulled out all the stops for this one. It featured...
Too narrow hallways!
Too tight corners!
Staff who spoke to my friends about me instead of addressing me directly!
Steps!
And a scare actor that pushed me without asking!
All that said, I can't pretend I didn't have a blast because I totally did. Their haunted houses may not be accessible, but damn are they fun.
I went with my beloved, Matt, and two friends. Our evening got off to a rough start when we discovered there's a problem with my power wheelchair, Virginia. (Power connects, but she doesn't move. I suspect there may be a loose wire in her joystick.) With Virginia out of commission, we dusted off Darla the manual wheelchair. Later- I'd be VERY glad we did.
Frightworld has five haunted walkthroughs situated inside an old K-Mart like an opportunistic Spirit Halloween store. It's loud, but quite spacious. They have a few scare actors working the floor, including an Art the Clown impersonator who looked like he was having the time of his life. We started with...
Carnival Boneyard
The queue was nice and wide, no problem with my wheels. When we got to the front of the line we asked the staff member if I was going to have any issues going through in a wheelchair. She didn't know, offered to find out, but I elected to figure it out the hard way and rolled on in.
I agreed to go first. Bad call. Almost immediately a bloody clown popped up on my face and I just about jumped out of my seat. This was no budget Halloween haunt. This was a proper production, with terrifying tableaus, plenty of scare actors, and nightmare fuel animatronics. It wasn't theme park haunt quality, but it was damn near it, and at $42 a ticket still a fair bit less than Six Flags.
The biggest problem I faced in there was also my favorite part. There was a hallway completely enveloped by two huge inflatable tubes. Picture being sandwiched between two bounce houses. In the dark. For what felt like miles (really it was more like 20ft). I don't have claustrophobia, but by halfway through that thing I was starting to develop it. I've never experienced anything like it.
Yes, I did go through it- with my trusty cane. A scare actor was quick to point out a hallway that bypassed the suffocating black tubes. If the entrance to the bypass was an inch wider I could have steered my wheelchair through. My friend collapsed Darla and pushed her through the bypass for me.
We came to one more obstacle - a too tight corner, so again I had to get my cane out and my friends collapsed my chair and negotiated it through. It was frustrating because if just those two things were fixed it would be fully accessible (provided you skip the squeezing tubes).
I kept thinking, what if we had brought my power chair? Virginia does break down for transportation, but not easily. If I had tried it with the power chair, I would have made it most of the way through and then gotten stuck.
Nightstalkers Reloaded
This one had cool tableaus and plenty of screams. Although the theming on Nightstalkers was a little all over the place. Again, some neat tricks I've never seen before, like a fog filled room that looked like you were moving through a river choked with corpses.
The first too tight corner we came to the people behind us asked if we needed help, but by this time we were old pros. Popped out the cane, collapsed the wheelchair, problem solved! (At least for ambulatory wheelchair users like me). There were quite a few more, and I ended up walking portions of it waiting for the hallways to widen again.
And then there was the part where a scare actor grabbed the handle bars on my chair and started pushing. I shouted, "Help! I'm being cripnapped!" but I don't think anyone heard me.
Insanity
By the time we got to our third haunt it was clear the staff had been discussing my presence. We were greeted with, "I understand she can use a cane." The staff member told my party, never speaking directly to me (which was extra problematic because it was crazy loud in there!), that there was no way I could navigate a wheelchair inside. She pointed out that the exit was next to some seating where I could rest while someone brought me my chair.
Words cannot express how much my friends and I hated this one. It was a proper maze of chain link fences flooded with fog, with a handful of roaming scare actors. That sounds cool on paper, but in practice it was a tedious nightmare. We got lost. Everyone we encountered was lost. The actors stopped being scary after seeing them so many times, and we resorted to asking them for directions.
It did scare me, but decidedly not in a fun way. I have chronic pain, and that means I'm very calculated with my movements. There's nothing I dislike more than not knowing how much further I'll have to walk. Insanity was my nightmare.
Grind House
First thing, there's a step up to get inside. I asked the staff member if there were more stairs, she said she didn't know, and I asked her to go find out. When she came back she started to tell my friends about the lack of stairs inside. I had to say, "Can you address me, please?" Maybe I was feeling a little bitchy by then.
Anyway, no more stairs! I did have to walk through several sections and I was still tired from Insanity.
A++ for consistent theming on this one. I rolled in expecting crazy cannibal rednecks and I got crazy cannibal rednecks in spades. Speaking as someone who was genuinely freaked out watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Grind House was UNSETTLING. My personal favorite was the trophy room where several of the mounted heads were human. This was also by far the goriest walkthrough.
Eerie State Asylum
Saved the best for last! Grind House might have been the scariest, but this was the clear favorite of everyone in our group. Instead of just yelling in your face, these scare actors, playing asylum patients, had a little more room to get creative. One woman shouted at me, "What do intestines taste like?"
I found it kinda funny that wheelchairs were used for decoration all over this one. Also, it was by far the most accessible! I don't think I had to stand even once, although my beloved did have to lift the back wheels and muscle me around a few corners.
The Emails
Next day I woke up and sent Frightworld a White Lady Email. I gave them a lot of details about how they could improve their attraction for wheelchair users. They were surprisingly quick to respond! (Maybe because I used the subject line "ADA Compliance") It wasn't the first email I'd sent them. About two weeks prior to my visit I'd asked if they were wheelchair accessible and got crickets in return. This time I got a message back from the Director of Sales and Marketing. She issued me a full refund. She apologized for the actor that touched my chair and said, "This will be addressed immediately with the house manager." As for the accessibility of their attraction, "Your feedback has been sent to our partners and staff to review further." That's not exactly a promise to improve, but it's a good start. My hope is that by next Halloween they'll be designing these with wheelchairs in mind. In the meantime, I wrote them back asking that they add an accessibility section to their FAQ - something they have no excuse not to do in a timely manner.
Thank you for reading the inaugural blog post for Accessible Buffalo! It was longer than I meant it to be, but I had some THINGS TO SAY. I'll be donating my refund to Hurricane Helene relief.
If you enjoyed this blog, consider giving them a few bucks.
Happy Halloween to all my fellow spooky bitches.
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