Last week, we decided to return to Jacksonville for another round of local haunt goodness!
The 13th Floor
The self proclaimed “World Famous” haunted house in Jacksonville, FL has other locations around the US, including Chicago, Colorado, Texas, and Arizona. These haunted houses have all won different awards and accolades for their achievements in set design, make up, and overall guest experience. We at HHNU would say that these were indeed all deserved!
This attraction, unfortunately, does not allow photos or videos of any kind, so this article does lack the photos that we do love to include in our reviews.
Beginning with the set design, it was honestly comparable to Halloween Horror Nights, if not better! Imagine going to HHN and seeing all of the astounding set decorations and lighting design, but take away all the conga lines and missing all the scares because it happened in front of you or behind you. That’s right, 13th Floor Haunted House takes guests through in small groups, making sure there’s a gap in front of you and behind you, maximizing their actors abilities to scare you throughout the experience.
Much like a lot of local haunts of this caliber, there is a halfway point between the houses, allowing you to go to the bathroom and perhaps take a sit break before continuing the haunted house experience. However, this halfway point didn’t have any foodtrucks or drinks available for purchase like we’ve seen in some other haunts with a halfway point (looking at you, Netherworld!). This didn’t take away from the experience, though, however we were thirsty.
Why were we thirsty, you ask? Well, we had to wait in this line:
Yup. That line you see above took two hours to wait in. That’s as long as Stranger Things at HHN28! In fact, one of the only complaints we had about this entire experience was the damn wait! The line moved so insanely slowly that we were really considering leaving and letting them keep our money. But we stuck it out and waited the whole two hours, and we didn’t regret it.
But Once You Finally Get In!
The experience is completely, 100% worth it. We loved every second of this haunted house experience and would recommend it to any horror lovers that have an itch to see other haunts! This haunted house experience, which took us about 45 minutes, included three haunted house themes:
Taking place in what seemed like an abandoned house in a countryside, much like the Sawyer house in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this haunt took us through what seemed like a demented family’s house. This one began with an impressive two story facade of the family’s house, creating an ominous atmosphere before stepping inside. The members of the family took a liking to mangling human bodies with a chainsaw, of course, and eating their remains BBQ style. This house was full of rickety wooden floors that moved, actors playing victims as well as violent family members out to get us, and one really huge and impressive animatronic monster eating someone alive! Definitely a great way to start off the haunt, not to mention the fact that this was the longest house at this location. The exit spit us out into the halfway point. In fact a staff member opened the door to the exit, waving his hands towards him yelling “come on come on! This way! You’re safe this way! Hurry!”
The main character of this haunted house, as seen in the banner above, hangs out either at the main entrance queue or at the halfway point. Guests may or may not see him inside the actual house attraction, as we did not.
Next up was Dead End District, a zombie themed haunted house that took place mostly in the sewers of an apocalyptic cityscape. Yet another very well designed and decorated haunted house experience, this one included more awesome animatronics that had us saying “whoa that’s neat!”. Our favorite sets in here were all the sewer scenes, all very well decorated and really made us feel like we were inside a legit sewer, surrounded by plastic bottles, sewer water, all the while being relentlessly chased by zombies and creatures.
Probably our favorite of the bunch, Cursed Voodoo has a lot of really neat tricks up its sleeve. The entire house takes place inside a sinking paddle boat (HHN27 Dead Waters, much?) and there are a lot of effects and moving floors in here to keep that illusion going throughout the walkthrough. There are even more larger than life animatronics in here, but these ones get MUCH closer to you and your face. Our favorite moments in this one included the room with the moving floor and the octopus face dude, as well as the swamp maze. Now, let me just take a moment to give this swamp maze the time it deserves, because it was probably our favorite thing here. Imagine a very large room full of a dense cloud of fog all the way up to your belly button, and inside this dense cloud of fog is this big maze that you can’t see that you have to make your way through. The fog is lit up by green lasers, creating the illusion that you’re wading waist deep in a swamp. Guests must use their arms and hands to find the walls of the maze to find their way to the exit, with scareactors ducked down in the fog, standing straight up and scaring you the whole time. This part was a lot of fun and really sticks in our heads.
Overall, 13th Floor Haunted House in Jacksonville, FL is a highly recommendable haunted attraction. We got scared multiple times and were pretty cautious while walking the entire way through, which is saying a lot for us seasoned haunt goers. We would recommend spending the extra money on the “skip the line” or “fast pass” options however, just so you don’t have to wait at least two hours to enter. The long wait did effect our overall experience, though.
At the end of the day, we’ll give this haunted house 4 out of 5 stars! If you ever find yourself in Jacksonville with at least an hour to kill, take you and your friends here. You won’t regret it!
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