Magic Hill is a family owned farm in Stoufville, just north of Toronto. The rest of the year they sell trees for landscaping, and christmas, and host corporate picnics. At Halloween, however, strange mists creep out of the surrounding forest and transform the farm into a farm of the dead! Magic Hill Haunted Adventure is in its 9th year, and is now offering four attractions: The Haunted Hayride, The Terror Trail Trek, The Black Cavern, and the Haunted Barn.
I only got to see two of the attractions, the Terror Trek and the Barn. The Terror Trek starts out promising with a wooden hallway (almost like a mine shaft) that leads up along the curve of a hill and opens into the forest. The noises emanating from outside the passage seemed to promise a good scare, but I was disappointed. The "trail" itself winds through the forest and is marked off by rope strung from tree to tree. This keeps people from wandering off, but takes away from the atmosphere. There were lots of people in costume jumping out, and some fake bodies hiding amidst the foliage. The maze near the end could have been better if there were more dead ends (no pun intended), and the chainsaw maniac didn't seem very interested in scaring people. I hope they weren't paying him too much.
The Haunted Barn was so much better than the terror trek as to be at the opposite end of the spectrum of scariness. While waiting in line outside, potential victims witness chainsaw wielding maniacs (very energetic fellows) chasing patrons out the exit of the barn. There were some good scares here, (especially when they came right out of the barn to chase a group of teenaged female "groupies" who were hanging around the exit). I don't want to give away too much, but I will say that the barn is a combination of quick scares, and haunting tableaus. The trip to Magic Hill is almost justified for the barn alone!
My only major gripe about Magic Hill, is the waiting time. There were only two booths set up to sell tickets, so on a Saturday night we waited in line almost 45 minutes to get in. Inside the lineups weren't any better. Even though they had two or three tractors running, we immediately ruled out the hayride, as the line up was horribly long. At the Terror Trail Trek the line up was done with ropes zig-zagging back and forth. Unfortunately the rope "aisles" were so wide that it was too easy for people behind you to move up beside you, and even in front of you in the crush. We even witnessed lots of ignorant people slipping under the ropes to jump ahead. Because of this it took almost an hour to get through the line.
Magic Hill is a great place that will hopefully get better each year. They claim to get 2000 people a night, so they would do well to invest in some better crowd control. I'm going to give it another try, since I missed the other two rides, and I LOVE the barn, but I won't wait too long to get in this time.
