The Nightmare on 13th Street looks impressive from the outside. The building is surrounded by a very cool iron fence with spiders, there is always an impressive display on the side (although the huge eye-rolling skull is gone, which is sad...) and the sign is visible from the freeway. I've been dying (cackle, cackle) to go for a long time now. We stood in a line outside; an actor dressed as a very, very tall death "greeted" us, in a spooky way, but ignored us after it realized we weren't terribly freaked out, and instead focused its attention on the screaming teenage betties around us.

Once inside, we waited in yet another very, very long line, while an animatronic Beetlejuice and some ghosts danced around, farted, sang, etc. Some of this was cool, most of it was dumb. I liked the mirror effects, but the Beetlejuice was weird, in a bad way -- his head was too big, or something, and fart rings? Come on!

Finally, we were allowed in to the house itself, where we wandered through a series of very rote, typical settings -- a Jason glowing mask room, a neon spinning wheel, a clown room, chainsaw wielding maniac room, etc. There was nothing particularly captivating or scary about any of the sets.

The snack room at the end serves drinks and lame concession foods. There's nothing even vaguely spooky about the concessions! Every 3 minutes or so, we were treated to either an execution (animatronic guy rattling around in an electric chair, smoke pouring from his ears) or a "radioactive spill" of some sort. Pretty dumb and somewhat offensive; I don't find electric chairs amusing OR scary, just sort of disgusting and sad.

Park to the west and north of the building. The parking lot is rough. Expect crowds and a long wait on the weekend. Fine for children, unless they get easily freaked out.