If you follow Fear Farm's Facebook page, you will continue to see notices posted this season "Fear Farm is closed tonight" due to weather.
Unlike the last few years where a general admission ticket was useable for any date and time the event was open, this year you are restricted to the date and time on your ticket and the website states "Tickets are valid only for the date you reserve. Should you fail to show up for your reserved date, your tickets will no longer be accepted. There are NO REFUNDS or exchanges of any kind.". I immediately saw this as a mistake on their part this year and felt it would create problems for their customers.
Shortly after reading that notice and purchasing tickets myself, over $530 worth. These tickets ended up being for a date which I was no longer able to attend (due to an emergency surgery in the family) and after contacting Fear Farm I was met with the response "Give them to a friend: and "Sorry that is our policy". Not much understanding at all from Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group's customer service team.
Well now the tables have turned and Fear Farm finds itself unable to operate or operate fully due to weather for a decent portion of the nights it sold advanced tickets. Some of these dates include October 4th, 7th, 13th and 14th. Additionally they have had to close one (1) haunted maze and so are only running 4 of the 5, as well as having closed the Haunted Hayride a number of additional nights.
They have posted "If you have any questions or have purchased tickets for tonight, Please contact:
info@fearfarm.com". I am interested in knowing how they are responding to customers now? I expect they are expecting compassion and consideration in modifying ticket dates now that the issue affects them.
This was not meant to be a rant, as much as it was meant to be advice to Fear Farm and Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group that General Admission should mean General Admission and should be good any date and time the event is operating. This would save customers like me hundreds of dollars if an emergent situation arises and surely would have saved their customer service a lot of man hours on resolving the issue of their closures.
I do see the the need for Fast Pass and Skip the Line tickets to be reservation date/time based because they should only be sold in limited quantities and so Fear Farm would still have to satisfy these customers due to these weather based conditions, but I also think pre-purchased tickets should be available for date/time adjustment by customers do to personal issues resulting in inability to use on original date. In short "There are NO REFUNDS or exchanges of any kind." is a bad policy, especially when it is clear both vendor and customer may have need for compromise.
Here are some comments on their Facebook from customers with similar concerns:
- Please email us back ASAP. I think you all should have proactively refunded tickets automatically after deciding to close for the night. We shouldn’t have to email and wait for a response.
- I don't live here, specifically bought tickets for fear farm as well as hotel near.. I emailed and was told I would get a refund if rain closure, as I saw weather reports several days ago. This is my daughters 18th b day and I sit here in a hotel room I couldn't cancel anymore and they seem to only respond and want to exchange tickets... :/ how am I supposed to come another day..I don't live here. Spent almost 400$ on tickets. None of us live here, we came here specifically for this. No rain in sight.
- This was the worst year yet! Not worth 10 bucks a ticket let alone 50 a piece. Not all the attractions we open, people smoking inside the houses and the actors were very young kids laughing mostly. Defiantly NOT scary and total waste of time and money.
My two Cents:
Now onto the actual Fear Farm Review... Yes, I purchased a ticket and went anyway to provide a review.
Admission varies based on date: $27.99, $29.99 & $33.99 (tax not included), last years rates were $26.99, $29.99 & $33.99, so price has increased slightly for the lowest cost ticket. Prices are up to $5 more at the door.
If the weather permits the Phoenix
Haunted Hayride can be added for an additional $10. This is nighttime ride through the cornfields in a trailer of loose hay being pulled by a tractor while experiencing a themed haunt. This generally is the part of this Haunted Attraction that makes it worth going to for me, since the
13th Floor is actually a better haunted house in my opinion. However the hayride was closed when I went this year and I am unsure what the theme is.
Additionally
Legends: The Witch was closed due to flooded fields as well. They did say you could go through one of the other Haunted Houses twice, but not sure that is an equal value in replacement, at least to me it isn't. There should have been a 20% refund maybe even as a food voucher or game voucher.
Fallout replaced the Clown Haunted Maze, which is good because who wants to see the same thing year after year. I like seeing when venues implement changes. I also think this was one of the best.
Slaughterhouse is basically strobelights and chain saws, nothing spectacular and my least favorite. I say it every year about most every Haunted Attraction, "chain saws are not scary, just loud and smelly", especially in enclosed spaces.
Undead and
The Bunker: Area X are the other two Haunted Houses this year. They appeared to be modified slightly as the corn fields were flooded, which also was a nice change.
The scenes and props are decent, where the fear lacks at The Farm is in the scare actors who pretty much stand in a corner screaming at you, rather than hide and jump scare you. Also this year seemed to be lacking in scare actors (hiring events must have had less turn out than usual) some rooms had no one in them at all. The scariest Monster Award this year goes to The Weather.
Increase your cost vs value by not spending the money on front of the line tickets (Fast Pass and Skip the Line), as there are separate lines for each of the
5 four (4) houses, which reduces wait time especially if you pick the order based on the length of the line.
One advantage over The 13th Floor is food vendors. Between food vendors and a few carnival style games (extra cost) like Zombie Brain Toss, you are able to hang out and enjoy all the scaredy cats running around screaming.
All in all what is normally an average attraction was disappointing due to closures and customer service policies and you may look to try something else in town! Here are some other
local Haunted Attractions.
