Frequently featured on Travel Channel specials, Hundred Acres Manor in Pittsburgh, PA is among the country’s most popular haunted attractions. With six back-to-back haunted houses to walk through, including one devilishly disorienting maze, this experience fills an evening with plenty of fun moments and surprising thrills.
It’s often gory and over the top with its scenes, which often play out with exaggerated theatrics. From the very beginning, it’s clear Hundred Acres Manor aims to impress with in-your-face entertainment.
The experience starts by stepping into one of several elevators to “descend” into the haunt’s depths. It’s called Dead Lift, featuring a rockin’ good time for a few minutes. Those guests lucky enough to step inside with the creepy elevator operator in the video below will be treated to a particularly amusing rendition of “Do You Want To Build a Snowman?” from “Frozen.” Take a look…
Video: Frozen parody “Do You Want to Hide a Body?” at Hundred Acres Manor
From what I gather, that ghoul showed up for work one day ready to sing and hasn’t stopped doing his schtick ever since. Nor should he.
Hundred Acres Manor then traverses through four haunted houses: Damnation, The Family, Brine Slaughterhouse, and the newest and best – Torture Tank. Damnation certainly offers its share of scares, combining loud actor-driven moments with even louder animatronics and special effects. The Family combines every awful backwoods, inbred, cannibal stereotype into one stomach-churning experience. Brine Slaughterhouse is even gorier, amping up the scares with wretched smells.
But Torture Tank shines as the most enjoyable overall attraction at Hundred Acres Manor. Its theme, which clearly continues throughout, invites guests into a steampunk-style world to live out their darkest, freakiest fantasies. Beginning with a reception area and continuing past a delightfully disturbing barker, each scene plays out showcasing someone else’s twisted inner desires to torture others. It’s an onslaught of insanity that’s sheer fun to watch.
Take a stroll through Hundred Acres Manor in the video below, soaking in a few choice moments from each experience.
Video: Hundred Acres Manor haunted house POV overview in Pittsburgh, PA
Also featured at Hundred Acres Manor is a nearly pitch black maze that has the potential to leave guests lost for hours on end. Some make it through quickly while others find themselves crying in a corner, unable to find a way out. But since the haunts are sequential and the maze is the second to last stop, it’s necessary to figure out how to leave before making it into the final haunt.
For those looking for some interactivity, Hundred Acres Manor also adds zombie paintball this year, though with pop guns in a shooting gallery type environment it’s really less than thrilling. The concept is great, but the execution needs a lot of work. It ends up being more exhausting on the arms than fun.
Set in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania, Hundred Acres Manor does a great job at being creepy from the get go. The walkthrough experiences are inventive and fun, even if the scares are mostly “boo” type startles. Thankfully, the scenes that play out frequently are entertaining and always so over-the-top that all guests will leave thinking, “What did I just see?” That is, if they’re not screaming on the way out.
More information can be found at HundredAcresManor.com.