We had a great time at Evil Twin Studios Raymond Hill Mortuary last year in Pasadena, CA. The Evil Twin Studios production crew brought some serious scares as well as delightfully uncomfortable moments, and we couldn’t wait to experience their haunted house for the 2015 Halloween season. Enter: WARD 13. The Raymond Hill Sanitarium (ran by the same owners of the aforementioned, ill-fated mortuary) is now open for tours after a troubled history and we got the chance to go in for what would turn out to be a wild ride. As you can imagine, the tour devolves fairly quickly into anarchy and we ended up at the mercy of a whole cadre of mental hospital patients.
Focusing less on monsters/paranormal entities and more on, for lack of a better word, “crazy” people, WARD 13 goes for more twisted scares than last year’s Raymond Hill Mortuary. WARD 13 is also a little more physically-demanding of able bodied guests as you will have to crawl as well as fit through small doors and access ways. If you are unable to perform any of these tasks (as one of our party members was) just pull a “monster” aside and let them know you need to use the disabled pass-through and they will direct you around. WARD 13 makes heavy use of character actors right from the beginning of the experience onward, with the monsters of the house committing to their roles of being, well, committed.
Groups are another reason why Evil Twin Studios is tops in my book – they understand the need to space out groups so everyone gets the best experience possible. In WARD 13, you will enter the sanitarium in groups of no more than 6 people at a time. This isn’t some cattle run where you are but one in a huge assembly line of guests. You and your groupmates are placed central in the experience. The sanitarium patients interact heavily with guests, all while balancing the need to move groups along. Another thing I love about WARD 13 is that Evil Twin Studios is great at being thrilling and twisted while not pushing into the realm of more “extreme” haunted houses that require guests to sign waivers. At times, we were taken to the outskirts of our comfort zones, but never so much as to feel violated or angered – they keep the boundary pushing fun!
Overall, Evil Twin Studios WARD 13 haunted house in Pasadena, CA is a wonderfully twisted tour through the scary cells of the Raymond Hill Sanitarium that will leave you breathless. Evil Twin Studios has done a fantastic job this year and we can’t wait to see what their twisted minds can think up for next season!
WARD 13 runs from 7pm to 11pm on the following dates:
October 9, 10, 16, 17, 23, 24, 30, 31
1020 El Centro, South Pasadena, CA
