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A proper greeting, Fear Fest, and The Ol' Mexican Standoff
I meet Justin at the exit from customs at the Toronto airport around 4:50pm, roughly an hour later than anticipated. We exchange pleasantries and then make our way to his car. I throw my stuff in the trunk, and we're off! Oh, wait, we have to pay for parking before we leave, I guess. This sets Justin off, he starts ranting in his uniquely charming way about the absurdity of paying before you get to your car. To highlight how ridiculous this is, he points to a sign and says "Look, all these signs even tell you to leave your ticket in the car! Oh...wait, they say to NOT leave your ticket in the car. I guess that makes sense."
I've missed Justin.
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My love of Halloween is a matter of public record, so Justin had mentioned that Paramount's Canada's Wonderland has an event running called Fear Fest, a late-night haunted amusement park affair. I was cautiously optimistic about this, but it turned out to be pretty outstanding. The entrance area has a huge fountain that had been modified with red lighting for maximum creepiness, and there was morose organ music coming from unseen speakers. It was an overcast night, perfect weather really. There were fog machines placed strategically throughout the park, so everything was sufficiently foggy. The lights on all of the rides were turned off so I initally assumed that none of the rides were running, but screaming girls and clanking machinery soon dispelled that notion. We passed the partially lit "antique" merry-go-round and Justin and I both had Silent Hill flashbacks.
The park itself was impressive, there were at least ten rollercoasters of varying intensity. The Fear Fest proper seemed to be isolated to one end of the park that housed a few "haunted" areas. The first was made up like a decrepit mansion, with the standard people-opening-doors-to-spook-you bits. Unfortunately we hit this at just the wrong time so every scare happened to the people in front of us and kind of spoiled the experience. There was a corn maze next to the mansion which was more impressive, and the staff was attempting to control the flow of people in order to avoid what we experienced in the mansion.
The best of these, however, was something we just stumbled upon. We were walking away from a ride we'd just finished down a path and we saw some pretty dense fog and decided to investigate. As we got closer, we noticed a number of crumpled cars piled on top of each other, with zombified people shambling about. An impromptu haunted area! It was top shelf.
Unfortunately I kept spotting people right before they'd jump out at me, so they'd just slink back to their corner while I shrugged apologetically for being observant.
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Justin, Amy, their friend Anna, and I were sitting around idly chatting. Justin and I were describing the Stephenson Hall obscene art show to Anna while Amy was playing with some of the soldiers from the Zombies board game. It's important to note that while these two events are happening simultaneously, across a table from each other, neither party was paying attention to the other. Amy finishes placing one soldier holding a rifle in front of and facing an identical soldier, as Justin is explaining that our friend Caleb made some paintings inspired by double and treble penetration porn. Amy looks up, beaming, and proclaims:
"Ah! the ol' Mexican standoff!"
This is met by stunned silence, and about five solid minutes of breathless laughing fits. And constant repetition over the next few days.
Posted at: 22:15
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