This is an entry that I’ve always had good memories of since I was a kid. I’m excited to revisit this Goosebumps entry and find out if the concept of Horrorland still holds up. As a bonus, this review is STD free, you have to go to the other Horrorland for that.

Synopsis:

Lizzy, her brother Luke, his friend Clay, and her parents are on a family trip to Zoo Gardens. Only problem is, her dad forgot his map at home, and they are now hopelessly lost in a desert.

The parents argue over whose fault it is for getting lost. Which doesn’t really help, but at least we know how the marriage is going.

Luke is bored, and when he’s bored, he becomes the mad pincher. This results in him pinching everyone. Pinching gets a lot of attention in this story, so it’ll probably be important to the plot.

As they argue, a billboard suddenly appears with a giant mechanical monster on it. Only the kids see it at first, but they point it out to the parents.

Luke, Lizzy, and Clay want to check out Horrorland which is listed on the billboard as being nearby. Clay, despite being easily scared even wants to go check it out.

After a brief discussion, the parents agree to take the kids to Horrorland. As they near Horrorland, they notice dense trees. Pretty wild for a desert in the middle of nowhere.

The first thing the characters notice is Horrorland is huge. The second thing they notice is the parking lot is nearly empty. If this isn’t a red flag, I don’t know what is.

Everyone gets out of the car; the car disapproves and proceeds to blow up. This leads to everyone being freaked out, but the dad in this book decides he needs to call the police as his first reaction.

The group goes up to the front entrance where a horror greets them. Yes, the Horrorland workers are horrors, crazy.

Their dad asks to use a phone to call the police, but the monster informs him they don’t have phones. As a caveat they do get free entry into the park, which is definitely equivalent to a blown-up car.

The first place they see as they enter is Werewolf Village. There are horrors everywhere, with one of them carrying a severed head, fun.

The dad and mom go off to find a phone. While Luke, Lizzy, and Clay get to go explore on their own. They are immediately jump scared by a wolf, and not Wolf from Werewolf of Fever Swamp.

Lizzy notices a sign that says, “No Pinching.” This is soul crushing for Luke, he’s the mad pincher after all. More importantly, this will come back up in the plot later.

The first thing the kids find is the Doom Slide. They discover there’s a total of ten slides, but one of them will go on forever and take you to your doom.

This doesn’t perturb them, as Luke, Lizzy, and Clay all pick different slides to ride down. Lizzy notices that the slide is really fast and pitch black, since the slides are enclosed. Luke and Lizzy reach the end where they are bounced out.

Only problem is Clay didn’t come out of the slide. They go searching around the park for him. Eventually, Lizzy and Luke decide to ride the slide he went down. This is a horrible idea, since if he went down the doom slide, then all of them are doomed by making that decision.

As they go down the slide, it seems to go on forever. They go down through a ring of fire at the end and wind up on the other side of the park. Luckily, Clay decided to wait around for them, so he isn’t lost anymore.

Lizzy, Luke, and Clay are all a bit frightened, but Luke refuses to show how scared he was, which is a returning trend. However, to save time, Luke is scared by everything and then pretends not to be scared afterwards throughout the rest of the novel.

Next, they go to the House of Mirrors. Before they enter, a horror warns Lizzy they should get out while they can. Anyways, this doesn’t faze them as they enter the House of Mirrors.

Lizzy gets separated from Luke and Clay, since they run off in the house. This is really dumb for multiple obvious reasons. This is immediately shown with Lizzy hitting her head on a mirror.

She finally catches up with them and can see them. However, clear walls separate all three of them into their own rooms. They all then realize there are no exits to their clear rooms. To make matters worse, the walls start closing in on them. Then shoots open up under them, which takes them outside.

The House of Mirrors sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. However, considering almost nobody is at Horrorland, maybe it’s not that big of an issue.

All three of them decide the House of Mirrors was too scary. Lizzy asks a horror if anybody has died at the park. The horror replies only once, then clarifies, since you can only die once at Horrorland. Great, cryptic and scary, I think this is the part where they may want to leave.

The next part of the book follows Lizzy, Luke, and his friend Clay as they look for their parents. The highlights include falling tree snakes, alligator lazy pool type thing, a bat barn, a carnival, and vampire village. None of these get much time spent on them.

During this they are unable to find their parents and mistake two adults for their parents. Finally, they find their parents who were unable to find phones. If only they had waited 5-10 years to visit Horrorland when everyone started to have mobile phones.

The plan going forward is to get food and go on a ride altogether. However, Lizzy, Luke, and Clay are ready to leave.

The ride they decide to go on as a family is the Coffin Cruise, this can’t possibly be ominous in any way.

Each person gets an individual coffin on the ride as they go down a river. The coffins close on everybody, which scares the family. It gets worse when the coffins appear to fill with insects and spiders. Before it can get too scary, the coffins open and the ride is over.

All of them are now ready to leave Horrorland. They get to the front exit, but it’s locked and they can’t climb the gate, since it’s 20 feet high.

Things get worse as dozens and then hundreds of horrors appear. Luckily, the horrors are just there to thank them for visiting.

They’ve been on a hidden camera show the whole time featured on the monster channel. The dad says he’s never heard of the show, but then again, he doesn’t have cable.

As the family leaves through the yellow exit door, it slams behind them. Now they’re in the Horrorland challenge. They have one minute to get through an obstacle course, they’re also playing for their lives. At this point, things aren’t looking so good, but what did you expect out of Horrorland?

A bunch of monsters show up and the family runs through the obstacle course. Some of the monsters include giant birds, insects, and beasts. Also, a furry snake, I wonder what it’s fursona is? I doubt many, if any, get adapted into the TV episode.

They run out of time, but luckily everyone survives. Lizzy isn’t happy about all of this and tries to pull the mask off of a horror. This doesn’t work, as it’s the horror’s actual face.

The show ends, and the family didn’t escape. They are taken to a purple pond. To demonstrate the power of the purp, a horror throws a rock in, which gets sucked into the pond.

Lizzy has a plan; she tells Luke it’s the return of the mad pincher. This is the one weakness of the horrors who deflate when pinched. The family is able to run away and reach the parking lot.

Since their car was blown up, they have to steal a bus. The horrors chase after them. However, they’re too late and the family is able to escape.

Somehow, the dad is able to make it back to the house, so I wonder how many days that took? A horror jumps off the back of the bus. He gives them free passes for next year. The book ends.

Review:

This entry of Goosebumps holds up pretty well. I think the idea of the Horrorland amusement park is pretty cool and leaves a lot of room to explore it more in the future.

My only complaint is that Horrorland is revisited in a Goosebumps book until series 2000 and then not again until the Goosebumps Horrorland series, both of which are super far off from this entry.

I think there are a few negative aspects to this story. First, Luke is annoying, Clay doesn’t add much to the plot, the parents seem to be pretty dense, and the game show part is the weakest part of the book.

The pros include a great setting, a fast-moving plot, tons of cool attractions, the horrors are unique, and I think this can be seen as a bit more of a frightening entry of Goosebumps when compared to the last few entries.

I doubt much of the book will be faithfully adapted, for example, no way are they going to have the bat barn, tree snakes, or doom slides.

I also have to question how Horrorland remains open. Probably not many repeat visitors, taxes must be crazy, land cost would probably also be insane, maintaining trees and plants would also be very expensive, and finally, how do they not go broke in like two days?

This was a fun and fast read. I quite literally read One Day at Horrorland in one day, or to be more accurate, a part of a day.

I’ll give this entry of Goosebumps an 8/10. I had a lot of fun with this one.

Twist ending:

The horrors are real, and the family gets an invite back to Horrorland. The unintended twist, the dad can actually navigate home.

Memorable line:

“We will take care of you.” I bet you will Mr. Horror.

Memorable moment, cliffhanger, etc:

I liked the doom slides. Fun!

Bad parenting:

Let’s do one more ride, as a family. Nope, clearly nobody else wants to do a ride. Also, maybe thinking Horrorland is a good idea is actually a bad idea.

Random References:

Toyota, Chicago Cubs, and Zoo Gardens. Wait, Zoo Gardens doesn’t exist, hmmmm.

Tropes in book:

Sibling pair, pranks, wolf jump scare, crazy cliffhanger, and chicken.

TV tie-in:

The tie-in starts out pretty faithful, but a lot of the Goosebumps book to episode adaptation gets lost in translation or changed.

The biggest problems are the second part of the episode where it becomes a cheesy game show, horrible green screen, bad dubbing at points, really bad acting, the episode ends on a literal cliffhanger, most attractions aren’t in the episode, and the same horror costume is used over and over again for different horrors.

Other changes include no Clay, the car isn’t blown up but instead remote controlled, and they have a map, but the dad can’t read a map, fix AC, or use common sense.

I think the first part of the episode is pretty good and a relatively faithful adaptation, but they get lost in the sauce on the second half. I think the horror elements work decently well, but it just doesn’t live up to the book. Also, what is with the random monster in the House of Mirrors?

One of the funniest parts is a goof in the episode where the actor of Luke gets hit in the head by a falling coffin lid. Big ouch.

I’ll give this Goosebumps episode a 5/10. It’s a mixed bag.

Memorable episode line:

“What’s a horror?” There’re a few answers for this question, but I’ll hold off answering that question here.

Famous cast:

Neil Crone.

Come back soon for more Goosebumps fun and reviews.

To read the last Goosebumps review: https://goosebumpsblogger.com/goosebumps-15-you-cant-scare-me/

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