So now that I hopefully have everyone fully freaked out with the true story of Jacob Kell and his rampage, let me expand a bit on the haunted house itself. Once we walked across a dirt lot with lots of broken down farming equipment and old remnants of buildings we hopped into the line for the haunted house. We went around 8-9pm at night on a Sunday and the line was very short, only about 10 minutes to get into the first attraction (in other words don’t blow the cash on the VIP pass to pass up the line).
Once you get into the house, there is a short video with all the rules of the house before you go barging in. This haunted house seemed about typical, people wearing “scary” masks leap out at you and follow you around getting as close to you as possible. One thing that I enjoyed about “The Nest” was the fact that the entire time we were in there it felt like the ground we were walking on was suspended in mid air so that everything constantly moved and swayed just enough to make you a bit uneasy. A few of the rooms had some pretty decent animatronics that leapt out at you from beds and chests and were good for a jump or two. My poor girlfriend was clinging to me as tight as she could the whole time and a few of the actors really got to her (note to self, take the girlfriend to more scary places!).
After a while, you are forced into a small corridor that is pitch black, when I say this I don’t mean it was kinda dark but your eyes could adjust, it was darker than I have ever seen. When you get to this area I highly recommend walking slowly and trying not to touch the walls with your fingers, I got an incredible shock 3 or 4 times in this area when my fingers tips touched the wall, it was a bit more painful than static shock but not as bad as an electric fence. I think the coolest part of this haunted house, and the most frightening for those with claustrophobia, was a part of the house where you had to walk about 30-40 feet between two walls of material that pushed tightly against you. I am not claustrophobic at all but by the end of it I have to admit a bit of panic had set in.
Once you make it out of this portion of the haunted house you go into “The Cemetery” which is incredibly well done but too short to really be considered part of the haunted house. In this area the website advertises a 20 foot flying beast but it is a bit of a letdown. It is very large and you can tell they put a lot of time into it, but it doesn’t really fly, it just lifts up a bit. “The Cemetery” was the most ascetically pleasing area of the trip, but it was incredibly short, I’d say maybe 100 ft before you hit a tiny line to get into “The Carnage”…
“The Carnage” is where I think most of the budget for the entire haunted house has gone, and when it comes to realism, it’s pretty hard to beat. As you enter this part of “The Nest” you are greeted by a ghostly image of Jacob Kell giving you more warnings about not touching the actors, I really wish they had used this time to delve into his mind and try to psych people out a bit more. “The Carnage” is supposed to be another area of the farm where Kell tortured all of his victims before killing them. While this is not part of the true story of this killer, it does make for a better haunted house and the animatronics in this area are amazing and on the same caliber as some Hollywood productions. There are quite a few scenes in this area where a person is electrified, or in great pain and the bodies move like you would expect a real human to move, if you can stomach the scenes, I highly recommend that you take your time and pay attention to the reality (I am trained in Visual FX and Special FX, no I’m not morbid, I just enjoy a good effect!). Of course, what haunted house attraction would be complete without a chainsaw wielding maniac runnings after you at the end of the tour, and you guessed it, out comes the guy with a chainsaw getting way to close to your personal bubble! The biggest thing that was missing from “The Nest” in my opinion was Jacob Kell. The whole theme of this was Jacob and never once do you see a huge actor portraying him, I think this would have made the trip for me.
This haunted house definitely had it’s upsides, and if you’re a huge fan of haunted houses it is worth looking into, but frankly it really wasn’t worth the drive out for me. I feel the $25 a person could be much better spent as it only took us about 30 minutes to make it through the entire attraction. For the same price I paid for 30 minutes in “The Nest” I spent an entire day at Schnepf Farms. If you are already in the Queen Creek area, or if you’re going to visit the farm for a day and have the extra cash swinging by “The Nest” is not too bad of an idea. In order to be fair, after a bit more research on haunted houses in the Phoenix area, it seems like almost all of them are running right around $20-$25 a person and offer small discounts and coupons based on the day you go. This attraction is just not worth the time you spend driving out to it, if you’re in the valley and want to hit a haunted house, go to a local one and save on gas.
