13th Floor Chicago Haunted House 2018
Melrose Park, IL
Reviewed on: Thursday, October 18, 2018
The 13th Floor is a legendary name in the haunted attraction industry. A part of the 13th Floor Entertainment group, the namesake attraction also has five additional locations in Columbus, Denver, Jacksonville, Phoenix, and San Antonio. Lucky for us, we have one that is fairly close to the City and were very excited to see what they had in-store for us for 2018!
Walking in, you immediately get the feeling that you are entering something epic. With rotating spot lights, metal music booming, and nearly a dozen roaming characters and monsters, it almost seemed like we had walked onto the red carpet in Hollywood! But, what really caught out attention before we even entered the attraction were the HUGE facades and scene work. We aren’t talking 8-feet, 10-feet, or even 15-feet. We are talking 20-30-foot sets! There is certainly nothing like a huge set to make you feel completely engulfed in the fantasy!
We immediately met “Jojo the Monkey” who quickly became our best friend. Working to generally disrupt 13th Floor handlers, he kept us smiling and laughing until we were escorted to the cemetery gates to begin our tour through their first attraction, “The Possession.”
The experience is something like few other attractions can provide. It is completely visually engulfing and could possibly require multiple trips to appreciate all the hard work and details. Scenes are large, and leave almost nothing untouched. For indoor scenes, they even built a 2nd floor just to help complete the scene! Ceiling floor boards were even used to help close in that often-open ceiling portion of the tour.
Our tour consisted of a variety of traditional haunted attraction scenes that were just overfilling with detail. Highlights included the cemetery and graveyard, church, swamp, and our encounter with the witch doctor!
As we exited, we weren’t quite prepared for what was next. Revamped for 2018, the second attraction is now known as, “Dead End District: The Cell.” Modeled after a “Cabin in the Woods” movie concept, we are included in a tour of an experimental lab and horrifying creatures are in the process of breaking free. By the end of the tour, all hell has broken loose and has spread outside of the facility including casinos and garages!
Monsters of Note: JoJo the Monkey
The Bottom Line: 13th Floor is certainly one of the top places in the Chicagoland area to go for full immersion into the fantasy of the haunted experience. With a host of dynamic actors, and endless scenic detail, this might actually be better than walking onto a movie set! A staple on our “Top 13” list, come see why this is one of the legends of the haunted industry!
– Official Haunted House Chicago Review Team Review
