By CLARENCE TANG
I try to be honest in my dealings with my fellow man so I can keep my temple recommend, but I think we’re supposed to try to be charitable too, so let met try to break this to you gently:
The Haunted Mine is a flop.
I guess I should admit it right off the bat. I’m not a big fan of Halloween. Ghosts and goblins, witches and werewolves, vampires and victims — none of it really appeals to me. And so you can probably guess my reaction when editor (boss) Pete asked me to review the Haunted Mine in Park City.
“Excuse me? You want me to do what?”
I’ve never been to haunted anything before — house, forest, corn maze, nothing — much less a haunted mine. How do you go about reviewing something you don’t know or want to know anything about?
“Bring a date,” a friend at work suggested. “That always makes it more fun.”
My roommates agreed. “What’s the use of going to haunted house if there’s no one to cling to you in fright?”
“Ah,” I reasoned, “good point.” And immediately the perfect date comes to mind — Carolyn Kwok, 19 years old, an zoology major from Connecticut. She doesn’t like haunted houses, but she likes me, which makes for high clinging potential.
So on a Saturday night, we head up twisting U.S. 189 through Provo Canyon in search of adventure — “Adventure Mine Tours,” that is, as the Haunted Mine is officially called.
The Haunted Mine is 13 minutes of lousy, half-rate, below-average chills. The guy in front of me had it just about right: “This is lame. How are we supposed to be scared if we’re just standing around?”
I kid you not — Primary Halloween activities were scarier than this was.
It took us two and a half total hours of driving time to get there, find the mine and get back, and on top of that, we had to wait in lines for an hour and a half. Do the math — it’s about three minutes of entertainment per hour. An acceptable ratio if you’re, say, celebrating Halloween by bungee jumping with a jack-o-lantern on your head, but for a haunted mine? (Yawn.) I’m feeling sleepy already.
Well, you can’t fault the organizers for not trying. The hockey-masked convict occasionally breaks the tedium of standing in line with his (chainless) chainsaw, scaring the bejeebers out of girls by revving the motor in their ears. Fluorescent paint splashed on black-painted walls lends to a dark, unsettling atmosphere. Prerecorded voices, accompanied by background screaming, preach doom and gloom to visitors with warnings like, “You are about to embark on a trip through the Haunted Mine. Once you begin, there is no turning back.”
Most of the lines are above ground, but the haunted mine itself is 1500 feet below ground level.
We’re taken down in a cold, damp and dark utility elevator down to where the tour begins. Because this is a real mine, we have to wear hard hats and to be trained on how to use the emergency breathing apparatus — “But we haven’t had a fire in a long time, so there’s no need to worry.”
Not in a long time? ‘preciate the vote of confidence, sir, but what do you think of this idea: You tell me what your idea of long is, I’ll tell if I need to worry.
Sad part is, the idea of a fire in the shaft was about the most frightened I got. We walked through corridors of dangling spiders, dismembered bodies, misty cobwebs and plenty of puddles, and through it all, I distinctly remember yawning — multiple times, actually. Is this really what haunted attractions are all about?
If you go by price, this should be about the best haunted attraction around. The $10 you have to pay per person to get into American Fork’s Haunted Forest is pocket change compared to the $14.95 per ticket price of the Haunted Mine.
“Maybe they’ll let us keep our hard hats. We should get our $15 worth somehow,” one of the girls in my elevator said on the way up after the tour.
It’s not just the money. It’s the time, too. If you just have to do a haunted attraction some time this season, don’t bother with the Haunted Mine. Go somewhere closer. It can’t be any worse, and chances are it’ll be a lot cheaper. Just remember to bring a date with high clinging potential.
The mine opens at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday and noon Friday and Saturday. For more information call 1-800-467-3828.
