RECAP:  This year's Dent Schoolhouse experience begins in similar fashion to recent years inside the picketed fence area just beyond the queue line, where a Fall Festival returns to town featuring a seasonal photo-op, and booths offering various carnival-like activities including bobbing for apples, costume contests, pumpkin carving, etc.  Cornstalks and scarecrows comprise the surroundings that introduce a giant “Kurbis” monster peering downward from his elevated perch, and a discontented "Pumpkin Smasher" stalking the Autumn carnival, armed with an enormous club-like hammer! Strolling past the flashing caution lights of an abandoned school bus, spooky sounds invite entrance into 3-time OVH Haunt of the Year, The Dent Schoolhouse, where an immediate living statue surprise awaits.  Morphing photo’s, wrecked desks, surprise emitting lockers, mechanical skeletons double teaming a girl pulling her from side to side, and disobedient students forced to stand facing a classroom blackboard as punishment are among early horrors.  The adventure interrupts human dissections in a barbaric science lab, then maneuvers through a room inhabited by life-size living dolls, as lights flicker off and on, loud, spooky sounds fill the air, coat racks and various other objects move about of their own accord, and dead souls hover over endless  hallways!  Descending into the deplorable basement, bloody, victimized bodies, suspended by chains clutching onto their wrists dangle as obstructions in the path ahead as the course progresses through dimly-lit archways that hide a number of attacks by killer clowns emerging from all angles and directions!  Sparks fly as an axe-carrying fiend suddenly appears from out of nowhere startling all who have ventured down into the cellar.  Ghostly, living chairs, and illuminated, recently-carved pumpkins chaperone the route beyond enormous, animated spiders spinning their webs over old, rusty caskets!  Short-circuiting electricity, strange creatures coming out of the wall, and an oversized, carnivorous insect swallowing a person whole all must be avoided, then it's onto a devilish creature levitating a possessed girl high into the air, and a face-to-face run-in with a 12 foot tall “Impaler!”  Running for safety departs alongside a cistern of flowing water emptying toxic waste through large sewer pipes and hiding a surprise or two before the excursion visits a demented carnival that's rolled in to town.  Loud circus music fills the air as practical jokers laugh wickedly while inviting visitors to play a game and win a prize by spinning a wheel that always stops on, “You lose!”   Still to come is an infested area that witnesses roaches crawling across an opened bag of potato chips, a freezer preserving human remains, a giant saw splitting a human torso in two, and a squealing, snorting pig springing up out of a barrel.  Squeezing through a claustrophobic garbage dump of cadavers and dismembered body parts soon accesses a ghostly prom, a smoldering electrocution, an exploding toilet, a smoke-filled boiler room, and the reanimation of Frankenstein courtesy of Dr. Dent's death-defying Experiment DS6!  Pneumatic monsters attack from every direction imaginable in advance of a large, man-eating python slithering down from the branches of a tree, encircling its mortal prey, lifting her off the ground, and choking the life right out of her!  Navigation outside consists of a rodent infringement out of the back of a bus, a maze filled with foamy bubbles, and an ultimate chainsaw chase-out!

ANALYSIS:  Scarecrow and Pumpkin Smasher did a fantastic job serving up scares while entertaining The Fall Festival and Kurbis  asserts a dominating presence.  Levitating gal did a great job of portraying a "possessed" girl, first speaking some sort of gibberish, then yelling out, “You’re all going to die!” (OVH actress of the year candidate).  Basement axe-carrying fiend also gets credit for capitalizing on misdirecting props to deliver a perfectly-timed startle!  Remainder of the house often saw weaker than usual dialogue, with 4 characters asking, "How are you doing?"

Professional lighting, scene-specific soundtracks, theatrical makeup, and elaborate costumes made on-site that include a number of custom-designed full or partial prosthetic masks have been utilized at Dent for several years now, separating them by leaps and bounds from most of the competition.  This year, the prosthetics in use are even more elaborate and advanced than ever before.  The attraction is famous for its highly decorated scenes, where attention is paid to the slightest, most minute details.  Props are too numerous to mention, but most visually effective include levitation, flickering lights, hanged teachers, sparking circuit boxes, live subject being victimized by saw, Mongo springing forth from behind a drop-down panel, mechanical rat, decaying pumpkins, and of course, Dr. Dent making the most of his advancements in preserving human tissue to restore life to DS6, his version of Frankenstein's Monster!

Recent losses of victimizing incinerator, excavated coffin, and especially green monster bursting through a brick wall alongside a cesspool of spewing water, are unfortunate, and haven't really been replaced by anything nearly as visually impressive.  Ingenious body part claustrophobic passage, Dr. D, and python snake scenes are steps in the right direction toward getting The Dent Schoolhouse back to “Haunt of the Year” status.  Some more big, animatronic monsters like Kurbis wouldn't hurt either.  Charlie The Janitor is most conspicuous by his absence given his longstanding, legendary history as the site's main villain.  Bubble scene, while fun and amusing, doesn't necessarily add anything to the scariness of the attraction, and has been seen elsewhere locally.  Cost of general admission remains unchanged.  Fast Pass and Front-of-the-Line options are a bit pricey.  "Cincinnati's Scariest Haunted House" moniker has been questionably abandoned.  The event cleverly exits into the site's secondary attraction, Queen City Slaughter Yard.

Known for its annual changes and introduction of fresh scenes and scares, there's always more city-wide, perhaps nation-wide anticipation about Dent than nearly every other haunted attraction anywhere!  Pay them a visit this Halloween season to see what all the buzz is about!