When I arrived at Dark Hour Haunted House in Plano, I was given a warm welcome by a man with an axe.

The rest of the experience was moderately scary, but the venue had a good system set up that ensured everything ran smoothly.

This smoothness was evident in the short wait from the entrance of the venue to the haunted house inside. The time it took to scan tickets, get people where they needed to be, and then wait in line was 20 minutes at most. The FastPass tickets I got ended up being pointless because people with regular tickets went inside the haunted house nearly at the same time.

Walking into the haunted house, there was spooky music and pitch black darkness that immediately created an ominous vibe. The walls were covered with demonic decorations. There were no jump scares in the first couple of minutes, so there was time to allow the customers to control their nerves a bit.

The rooms in the haunted house were all unique and had different features in each one. In one room, there was a “creature” with long, black hair and a nightgown that ran on the walls right above people’s heads. It had a teddy bear that would be shoved towards people’s faces as they tried to quickly move on to the next room.

Another section had a railing to walk across with bright, colorful lights set-up to create a rotating tunnel illusion. This gave people the feeling of the room turning onto its side and had many grabbing onto the railing to remain steady.

The actors and actresses who were jumping out at people in the haunted house were not as scary as they could’ve been due to the fact that they didn’t follow people around. Some may be grateful for this if they already hate things popping out. However, for those who aren’t affected much by jumpscares and would like the creepy element of having the witches and zombies chasing them, there are other haunted houses where actors interact more.

It seemed like the haunted house ended way too quickly– it was about 35 minutes long for each group. Nothing felt missing or incomplete, but there could have been more parts to it. However, Dark Hour is working with limited space, which contributes to how long they can make the haunted house last.

Although this wasn’t the scariest haunted house and there are spookier ones, everything was executed efficiently and there were no complications. There wasn’t a long wait to begin the house, and there were scary moments throughout the house– it just wasn’t as frightening as it could’ve been.