Cedar Creek Haunted House 2021 Haunt Review

On Friday, October 1st, Cedar Creek opened their doors to their first unsuspecting victims for the 2021 Haunt Season, which would feature a haunted trail and maze all wrapped up into one!!

This was our first time attending this attraction as last year we did not manage to make it out there. This house was sort of off the radar and not advertised as much as we believe it should have been! Luckily for us, when you arrived in Bishopville, SC, there were several signs pointing to 3 different haunted houses, “Scream Acres” and “Kreepy Hollow” on one side, and then on the other side the mysterious house “Cedar Creek Haunted House”. We were so caught off guard by this as it never appeared in any of our online searches for haunted, but we were instantly intrigued and had already had several letdowns that evening, so we figured we’d give Bishopville a chance to redeem themselves by attending.

What would we find here? Would there be any redemption at all for Bishopville, SC? Or would our whole trip feel wasted on our drive home? Did we actually find a house that could deliver a halfway decent scare? Let’s find out as we have a look inside….

Cedar Creek Haunted House

For this year’s haunt review, we have broken down each haunt that we are visiting into

6 Categories: Sets, Costumes/Makeup/SFX, Technical Effects, Scares, Pacing, and Actors.

Each category is rated on a scale of 1-5 Screams and then averaged out to give an Overall Rating. This new system is to ensure that we are not in any way biased and are giving each attraction that we visit the same fair and equal treatment that they each deserve.

With this new system in mind, let’s break down each of our 6 Categories for Cedar Creek’s 2021 Haunt!!

Initial Thoughts – Upon arriving at Cedar Creek Haunted House, you are a little unsure of what to think of this location. Having seen it briefly the year previous, we still were unsure about what kind of experience we were about to have, but we can safely say that we were absolutely shocked!! Now, this haunted house is not your typical haunt that you will find in the big cities. There are no giant fire machines, crazy laser lighting, giant animatronics, or things like that. This is a good old fashioned haunted house like ma and pa used to make back in the day. The team here relies on practical scares rather than technological scares, and in my opinion, that is usually the better way to go. We’ve been to one other haunt that we know of that used more practical scares and it was one of our Top Rated Haunts for both 2021 and 2020. That being said, we knew that this would provide a unique experience for us, but what we didn’t expect was that it would be the redemption haunted house for the evening.

Sets – 4/5 Screams – The sets at Cedar Creek Haunted House are not anything immaculate or even very elaborate. They are simple in nature but don’t give the impression of a dingy backyard haunt. At least not all the way through. There are a couple of places in the haunt where you can definitely make out the 2x4’s and black painter’s tarp and if you’ve read my other reviews, you know that I am a STICKLER for that. However, these don’t show up as much as one might think in this haunt. In fact, the first location you enter is an actual house façade and it’s rather impressive. Now, it’s not a towering 30 ft. tall structure, but it is plenty enough to impress the heck out of me. Then after that, you enter the haunted maze, which you can’t even tell how that is done because it is pitch black, but it holds well and does the trick! Then on the trail portion after the maze, there is one part that was mostly black tarp and wood, but the other parts worked with the way they were incorporated into the haunt. There was a small camping tent setup that you went over, you went through a campground and encountered Jason, and then you even went by the Texas Chainsaw Massacre gas station. These set elements that were encountered were enough to impress us because it shows that even the smaller haunts can do a great job!!

Costumes/Makeup/SFX – 5/5 Screams – All of the costumes and makeup that I saw were pretty good at this attraction. There seemed to be a good mix of what you saw and experienced here with some people being dressed in Horror Icon costumes (ie. Micheal Myers, Jason Vorhees, Leatherface), and others were more unique characters that were not know already. They did a great job with this and ensuring that the costumes were done nicely and those that were wearing makeup had some very nice makeup done.

Technical Effects – 5/5 Screams – So one of the things that I always rate on the houses is technical effects, and rather than rate them based on how many uses of technical effects were in the haunt, I rather rate in what way were they used to establish a clear and concise theme in the attraction. At Cedar Creek Haunted House, it is safe to say that they didn’t have any giant animatronics, no moving sets, no fires exploding. But the tech that they did use was their audio and lighting and they did a remarkable job with that! All of the lighting throughout the attraction was used in such ways to really create a feeling that matched each of the scenes that you would enter. When you entered what was supposed to be The Myer’s House, there was a great use of lighting on that façade to make it almost seem like a scene out of the movie. Then there was the music playing throughout the different parts of the haunt which would help to establish where you were and what was going on. These smaller technical effects are still proven effective in the overall haunt and allow the haunt to continue to scare people. It’s the old saying quality over quantity. You don’t have to have a million different technical effects, but it’s how you use them to effectively create the appropriate emotion of the haunted house.

Scares – 5/5 Screams – So as I said before, this haunted house relied more on practical scares rather than technicalscares. That being said, this was one of the houses that actually had me on edge the whole time and left me screaming A LOT. From the minute you enter the first room, which is the Myers’ House façade, you are already on edge because you feel like you’ve walked from the real world to the set of a Halloween film. The music is playing, the lights are real low, you wander around trying to figure out where to go in this house, and you see in different places Michael Myers!! And the way they used him in this room, it was like it was the movie where he would appear and then disappear and then pop up where you least expected him and it was only ONE PERSON, and those scares were VERY EFFECTIVE. Then when you enter the pitch black maze, you have NO IDEA where you are going or WHAT you are going to touch, and because of this, you will get the crap scared out of you in here. I jumped at every corner because the actors would flash their light on their face to scare you and then it was pitch black darkness again. These scares definitely had my heart rate soaring. Then finally on the trail portion, you get some more great scares out there with each scene that you enter. They did a really good job with making sure that you were going to jump or run. I was DEFINITELY scared in this one.

Pacing – 3/5 Screams – So unfortunately, I will give pacing a slightly lower rating, and it is for one logistical reason. The length of the haunted house is decent, but it is not as long as I would like it to be. Judging from the location they are at, it looks as if they have more room to play with then what they are utilizing. Maybe this is a cost thing, or maybe they don’t have as much land as what appears to be there. Either way, I would love for different sections of the attraction to be a little longer. It’d be really cool to see the Myer’s House expanded and maybe extended a little bit in some way or even make the maze a little bit longer and more challenging to get out of (even though it was difficult enough as it is). But the part I would really like to see expanded is the trail portion. There are so many different things that could be done with the trail and so many potential scenes that could be played out. I would love to see this idea get explored and see what could be discovered. However, I do realize that maybe they do not have the adequate number of actors to cover a larger haunt, but perhaps there is a way to do it. The other reason I rated pacing as a 3 out of 5 screams, is because with the haunted maze happening in the middle, this can lead to a rather large backup in customers. Now, luckily when we arrived there was only one group in front of us, but we still had to wait a little longer than we thought to get in the haunt because they make sure that the group is out of the maze first. Because of this, there can be some pretty excruciating wait times and that can get tedious after a while. With the idea of potentially expanding the first part of the haunt before the maze, this would allow for a little bit more time to get people out of the maze and potentially have more people in the haunt at once and dimmish the backup of patrons. I will say that the overall pacing did not negatively affect our experience in any way, these are just merely suggestions to improve upon and things that we think could be changed or bettered.

Actors/Team – 4/5 Screams – Finally, we have the Actors & Team of Cedar Creek Haunted House. So first of all, I just want to say that all of the staff that I talked to are the NICEST people on the planet and you will not change my mind on that. From the minute I arrived, every single person I spoke with was more than excited to be working that evening and very excited that I decided to come check out the haunt. I had an opportunity to actually speak with the owners and they were very kind and very proud of their haunt as they should be. You can tell they take great pride in what they do, and their actors do as well. Every actor I came into contact with in the haunt was at the top of their game making sure I was scared until I exited the trail. When I got to the end of the trail, all of the team from earlier in the haunt was actually waiting at the end to see how I enjoyed myself because I was the final patron and I thought that was pretty cool that they care about what people think with their haunt. Not only that, you can tell they want every single person to get a great and scary experience when they come to this haunted house. Now, for the one negative that I had, I was being very knit-picky. Throughout the entire haunted house, all of the actors were on point and remaining in character. However, there was one portion of the house where an actor basically came out of character to watch me go through the attraction, and unfortunately, he was not slick enough to where I didn’t see him. Now, I will preface this with the actor was a younger child and maybe did not know any better, but I did see him at one point of the haunted house standing in plain view of me lifting his mask and smiling to see my reaction. Now this was not something that I was going to freak out about, but it was something that I noted while I was there and it did distract me from the haunt for a brief moment. So because of that one reason, I had to dock 1 point from Actors & Team.

Overall Rating: 4 Screams

Overall, Cedar Creek Haunted House is a very good haunted house to attend if you get the chance and we are certainly glad that we got that chance. The night that we had prior to visiting Cedar Creek was very disappointing, but once we arrived there, we were able to salvage the night to end it with a BANG. Everybody there was very complimentary and very excited to be there and they definitely are proud of their haunt. It is very safe to say that they have something rather special at this attraction and I do hope that they continue to grow into a much bigger attraction. Maybe even one day rivaling some of the others haunts in their area. They truly do deserve great things and I do highly encourage anyone and everyone to go check it out as soon as you can, and if you don’t make it out this year, I’m sure they’ll be back next year!! If you do make it out there, feel free to send us your thoughts and let us know what you thought of Cedar Creek Haunted House.

Congratulations to Cedar Creek Haunted House for a FABULOUS FOUR SCREAM RATING!!

It is truly well deserved and we cannot wait to see what great things you guys will do!!

Cedar Creek Ticket Info:

You can purchase tickets when you arrive at Cedar Creek Haunted House.

Tickets are $10.00

Hours: 8:00PM – 12:00AM14.00

Cedar Creek Haunted House will be open every Friday & Saturday from October 1st – October 30th and will be open on Sunday, October 31st for Halloween!

Follow Their Social Media For More Information & To Keep Up With Them:

Facebook: Cedar Creek Haunted House

Instagram: @cedarcreekhauntedtrail

Website: https://cedarcreekhauntedtrails-hauntedhouse.business.site/?utm_source=gmb&utm_medium=referral&fbclid=IwAR3eKizKlIqQNH17KiqNbHF_y_54dQm0RguT2xjKIuhWzbz4PFVXHM_OC84#summary

Location: 2681 Camden Hwy Bishopville, SC 29010 United States

Be Sure To Go Check Out Cedar Creek Haunted House

This Season And Let Us Know What You Think!!

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Until Next Time,

Be Safe Out There,

Don’t Text And Drive,

And Be Excellent To Each Other!

Take Care Everybody!!