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Following is a link to my review of the Bates Motel and Haunted Hayride in Gradyville, PA. The attraction has three haunts: a corn maze, haunted hayride and The Bates Motel.

http://tinyurl.com/the-bates-motel

That looks awesome! Thanks for sharing this information with us!

I believe the owner of Bates Motel and haunted hayride named Randy, right?

Yes, Randy Bates. The day I conducted the interview with him, he took time out of his busy schedule to answer all my questions and give me a behind-the-scenes-look at The Bates Motel, the corn maze and the Haunted Hayride-- despite the fact that there was an illness in the family.

When he talks about the various features-- the new scenes, the digital effects, sound tracks and animatronics, he does it with a gleam in his eye and real excitement in his voice... You can tell he loves Halloween and really gets a kick out of seeing people get scared. He strikes me as being very sincere when talks about the importance of people having a good time when they visit his haunt-- and you can tell he works hard to keep the place "fresh" with new ideas.

Do you feel my review did the place justice? I really tried to give people a taste of what Bates offers-- without giving too much away.

It amazes me at the amount of time, effort and money it takes to get even the smallest haunt up and running. I have nothing but respect for the people that make it happen. That's passion!

OctoberChill wrote:It amazes me at the amount of time, effort and money it takes to get even the smallest haunt up and running. I have nothing but respect for the people that make it happen. That's passion!

Yeah, I know what you're saying. There was another haunt in my area called Scare World in Wilmington, DE. I'm going to estimate that it was at it's last location for maybe 4-5 years. They rented out a large section of a nearby shopping mall's parking lot each year.

I was blown away a couple years ago to see them begin setting up right after the fourth of July. It was the height of summer-- and here they were building a haunted house in the middle of a mall... lol

That place was open the last few days of September, I believe, then all of October... and every time I passed by, they were packed with long lines and crowds of cars. They certainly weren't shopping in the mall that had closed an hour earlier... So why did they go out of business? No idea.

I checked out their website a couple months ago and found it's basically non-operational. There was a link that said you could buy the website... Another link I followed took me to a website that apparently auctioned off large lots of equipment... I scrolled down the page and saw tons of restaurant equipment, then a brief mention of Scare World and haunted house related merchandise, but the links on that page were useless.

In comparison, The Bates Motel has been running strong for 18 years now. They get bigger and better every year. While the owner was showing me around a couple weeks ago, he was already telling me about ideas he was working on for next year... In other words, nothing is going stagnate there. Constant change, I suppose, is key to bringing people back year after year. I was really impressed by the effort and creativity that goes into it all.