I Stood in Line For 5 Hours For Blackout at the 13th Floor Haunted House

Long title, but it's true. Get ready for a long story of my night on November 9th.

My friends and I decided we were going to hit up the last haunted house of the season, Blackout at the 13th Floor. The premise is your group shows up, you get one glow stick between all of you and you are thrown in to total darkness and need to find your way out. There are monsters that scare you and try to take your glow stick, leaving you to find your way out with no help.

Cool concept right? That's what we thought, so we headed down. I knew there was going to be a line for this event, but I sadly underestimated how long of a line. I expected maybe waiting an hour, maybe even 2 hours. Wrong.

We parked and stood in the first line of the night for tickets at 7:20pm. After about 30 min or so, we purchased our tickets at $25 a piece, laughed collectively at the $45 VIP pass and moved on to the next line.

This line had about 10 or so switchbacks with it ending at stairs that led to another line to sign the waivers.This line is also where we spent(wasted) most of the night. Not really focusing on time at first, just enjoying each others company and talking about random stuff. After standing there for a while, barley moving, we checked the time. Already 9:30pm and not really any closer to reaching the stairs to the next line. Not fun.

When the half way point of that line came around, the cold start settling in and pain started in our feet and lower backs from standing so much and the irritability. Not at each other mind you, at the other people who have no class, no manners and no line etiquette. There wasn't a whole lot of room to move around in this line so the fact that people(mainly kids) were treating it like they were the only ones there was a little irritating.

There was nothing but groups of kids whose parent's dropped them off in that line it seemed like. The group in front of us hugging on each other, pushing each other around bumping into us an not saying sorry. Then another group that was screaming for no reason. We asked them to politely stop, and they actually listened. Then the biggest pet peeve of the night, the smokers and the cutters. If you smoke, I am not bashing you, I am just hoping that you are more courteous than these people. If you are in a packed line, all bunched together, weaving your way in a serpentine motion to the front, don't smoke. Please. It doesn't do anybody any favors. Plus you could have easily just stepped outside the line to take a break to do so. Secondly, if you see that there is a long line and your "friends" are up ways, just stay where you are and talk to them after. Don't cut. We all have to wait and so should you. That happened a couple times and the final time some security was actually paying attention, thanks to us calling them out, and those people got cut. I don't care if you think I am a snitch or what. You cut in line, I will call you out. Nay, we will call you out.

Finally we get to the stairs, we can see the entrance and we enter the final line, or so we thought. At this point, it is about 11:50pm or so and we are sooo close. False. We have to wait about another 50 min in that line and we get to the part where we get our one glow stick and sign the waivers, then we enter the building and... there is another line!!!

This one only took about 5 min or so, no big deal and we finally enter the haunted house at 12:40am. It's dark, smokey and one glow stick in heavy fog just bounces the light back on you, not really lighting up anything. Twist and turns, battling monsters for our glow stick while trying to keep together is a cool experience for the most part. We finally find our way out, after a lack luster ending, and make our way to the car. It is a little after 1am, meaning it took us about 20 min to get through the haunted house.With tired legs and sore backs, we made our way back home with a stop at Johnson's Corner for a late night (early morning?) meal and to get some energy back.

Standing in line for almost 5 and a half hours for only 20 mins???? Seriously, not worth it. Plus, in all seriousness. If it took our group of 6 only 20 min to get through it, why the hell was the wait time so freaking long????

A couple of suggestions that would help with this. Post how long the wait time is at the ticket booth. I don't care if its not exact, an estimate would have helped us decide if we wanted to stay or not. Secondly, there was a stage there. Why not have a band play or maybe show a movie to help pass the time? If there would have been some sort of something going on, the 5 and a half hours would have still been bad, but not as bad.

Side note: The kids that were in front of us, their parents came to pick them back up at about 11pm or so and the kids told them it wouldn't be much longer and complained how they would be out money. They ignored their parents and those parents waited another 2 hours to take them home. My parents would have just said "too bad, so sad" and made me leave. So youth of today, don't make your parents wait. It's pretty disrespectful.