NJ85102925

There is the Pumpkin booth where you pay for the purchase of a pumpkin that you pick out of a bunch. We
picked out three very small ones. Johnathon knows a trick on carving pumpkins so that as they get old and
start shrinking, they change, but still look like carved pumpkins. You can also purchase t-shirts, sweatshirts,
hoodies, etc., with the name and cool pic signifying Hobb's Inn and Gardens. We got some. Splurged actually.
I got a zip-up, a T-shirt and a tank top. The tank looks great on Fleur. *chuckle*

And sparklies. Like glow sticks and such. I love the blue, of course. Silly glow stick earrings that we wore all
night, with a bunch of other glowey things. *grin*

So we got here right at opening. Five thirty is when folks can start arriving. We parked and flowed in with the
rest of the salmon. Upstream! Upstream!

We wandered around and nibbled on pizza and corn dogs. We teased each other outrageously - and Johnathon
- with those silly corndogs. *hee hee hee*

And when I wasn't looking, Johnathon bought me the coolest choker. It had a rose quartz in the center of it
about the size of a quarter but behind the carved stone were electronics that caused it to glow and change
colors, traversing the colors of the rainbow. It's really quite pretty.

Now, about the events. Really neat. The House really looked like an old house. Maybe it was but while
walking through, I suspected otherwise, having had contractor friends in the past. I think it was a really big
steel building made rather expertly to look like a real house. It was wonderfully rickety and it had a theme.
Fairy tales. Get that? I read a little pamphlet they had, while I waited for Fleur to find Fable. It gave a brief
rundown on the history of the house. How it's haunted and has a mind of it's own, pulling in unsuspecting people
and spirits for it's own amusement. And every year, when the wall between the worlds grow thin, said spirits
and captives seem to act out different desires of the house.

Creepy.

So this year it was Fairy Tales. Every room symbolized a different tale and I saw that in every room sat a copy
of a story, it's pages open. I wonder if that's how the house got its ideas and kept them solid? *grin*

I don't know if I can remember it all but I'll see what I can do. The front of the house had an old man who
wore a very very long grey beard, asleep under a newspaper filled mailbox. (Rip Van Winkle?)

And the front of the house itself was decorated with oversized cookies, candy canes and other confections.
(Hansel and Gretel, I think.)

A very disturbing little redheaded girl greeted us at the door, demanding a story. The first room held a very
dead old lady laying sprawled over a table. She'd been stabbed with a Barbie doll! And a sofa was covered
with dolls. Little ones. Big ones. And one of them moved. Her face was stitched together and she had a
rosebud mouth on a very pale face. She just moved her head, staring while the other little girl demanded we
read her a story. We moved quickly on.

The second room...trying to recall. I think it was Pinnochio. Or it was supposed to. This mad and desperate
man was holding onto a hodgepodge of little wooden blocks, cardboard and plastic tubes all strung together.
He started talking to the "doll" calling it his son and asking why it kept saying he'd killed it.

There were pigs feet in a stew pot along with little legs still wearing striped socks.

Fleeing from there we passed a young maddened looking woman holding an adorable, if blood covered lamb.
Mary? She kept wanting to show off her "new baby" and then she'd scream "MINE!"

Hee hee. From there we went passed a hanging woman. She was hanging by a very long blond braid.
Rapunzel. It was then that I realized that I'd been seeing a braid winding it's way all through out the house.
Subtle humor.

Passing the forever hung blond we entered what looked like a room to a castle. In it appeared to be an old
wizard. And in a stony window sat, believe it or not, a dragon!

An absolutely amazing and hilarious dragon named Clarence. A sign hung below him saying, "Do not feed the
Dragon." And he started begging us for pizza. He was beautiful and extremely realistic. I think he was an
arm/hand puppet but he could have been more audio-animatronic. I don't know. All I know is he was magical.

We left him, with regret, around the corner, to find not-so-little Jack Sprat. He was standing on a ledge with
hollowed pumpkins all around him, and in them sat body parts. In his hand was the head of a woman who
would not cease her incessant chattering. His

Then he grinned a charming but alarming grin. "Put 'er in a pumpkin shell and there I kept 'er very well. Heh
heh."

We did not pause in our passing of him, but ascended some stairs. We passed a mailbox with the word
"Granny," and "Hood" on it. We entered what looked like Granny's bedroom. She was torn up all over the
bed with cats around her, sleeping peacefully. A huge wolf leapt out at us, wearing a sleeping bonnet. I'm
guessing Granny was his meal. We ran. He was quite large, and growling. Perhaps he was still hungry.

From there we went through what looked like a bathroom, or once was a bathroom. In the tub were two large
dead men. One with candles stuck in his eyes and mouth and the other wearing bakers clothing. Both were
horribly dead. That only left the...butcher! He rounded the corner, weilding a cleaver, blood covered, and
yelling about idiots who can't make up their minds on where to go. *giggle*

We fled past him, past a leaping hydraulic that looked suspiciously like the evil queen from Snow White. She
must have been because in the next room was that gal. Snow White. And around her were seven tiny beds. In
those beds were tiny, very dead, dwarves. Looked like she'd had enough of them. And their names were not
quite the ones which with I am familiar. These were more like, Snotty, Doc, Sleazy, Gimpy, Gropey, Stinky,
and Mickey - who just happened to be wearing a Mickey Mouse costume.

She was at the end of the room, on a charming bed fluffed with soft colorful pillows. But she was older and
looked VERY haggard. And grumpy. She tried to smile. It was scarey.

We went down some stairs and passed card guards. I kept expecting one of them to come to life but instead
out popped Alice, screaming at us, carrying a knife. Wanting OUT of the damned Wonderland! "Get me
OUT of HERE!" she kept yelling.

We went through a door leading to outside, past the houses of the three little pigs. Two, of course, were
collapsed ruins. The brick stood quite nicely. From there we entered a tiny, tilted house. Dorothy's I imagine.
I'm sure of it because Glinda was outside, offering us 3D glasses. Ooooh! A 3D room! Cool! And Glinda was
a crack up. Especially because he was singing songs from the movie and staying in falsetto voiced character.
Hilarious!

We entered the first 3D room. And there was Dorothy, knife in hand, dog in basket, muttering about
munchkins. I could hear them hiding in the huge grasses and corn and flowers that stood all around us. Vivid
flowers. She was very unhappy. Saying something about those tiny voices always talking. Always singing.
That she would stop them and kill them all!

She led to a hallway filled with flowers and a tin man stood rusted amongst them. And the Cowardly Lion? He
was skinned and hung on a tree. That left the scarecrow who hopped out from the darkness and chased us
down the forested corridor toward an awesome 3D mural of the Emerald City.

We passed some horrid flying monkeys sitting and screeching at us. Puppets but exceedingly horrid. They
looked real. As they hissed at us, blowing compressed air at us, we fled into the 3D tunnel. Now THAT was a
trip. Walking through it definitely tossed your sense of balance out the window. It was covered with vines in
shades of colors made to pop out at you in 3D. Very neat.

Exiting the tunnel we came up to what looked like a dummy of the Wicked Witch. Nope. No dummy. She
jumped up at us, long clawed fingers, chasing us to the next room which held Emerald Guard guards all
about. One of them HAD to be real.

And it was. He jumped out at us while, I think, controlling the voice of the next thing we saw which was the
head of the Wizard of Oz, leaping out at us from another mural. There was some device behind it pressing
the face toward us. Very cool. We escaped the attention of the guard into the outside world, and handed the
glasses to a little dour dead woman. I think she was Jack's mother. As in Jack in the Beanstalk because we
came up to the biggest fake beanstalk I've seen. Jack jumped out with a chainsaw to chop it down, flailing
the chainsaw in our direction as well.

Most folks ran from him. I just laughed and watched him fake cut the beanstalk and cause it to fall toward
the patrons. Very nicely done!

And that was it...for the "inn", anyway.

Oops, time to make dinner!