Goosebumps book 16: One Day At HorrorLand - Enter, if you dare...

Brief Summary: 

Lizzie and her brother Luke and his friend Clay and also their mom and dad get lost trying to find Zoo Gardens so they settle for HorrorLand, a theme park they've never heard of. When they get there, their car immediately explodes! It seems like they might be stuck in HorrorLand forever! They go on rides like the Doom Slide where they might slide forever, and the House of Mirrors, which tries to crush them, and there are some bats and lots of employees in scary monster costumes and all the families have crying children and lots of stuff goes down. They finally find Mom and Dad and go on one last ride down a river in coffins before heading home, but the gates are locked!

Spoilers and Review:

Theme park horror is one of my favorite genres ever so obviously I was thrilled about this one. The ambiance is incredible and all of the rides were so well done and I would LOVE to go to HorrorLand, seriously it's the best.

But before they even get to the rides their car actually for real explodes, which I thought would somehow be a lie like most of the scary things but it isn't! It's wild. 

I loved this one so much that I don't even have much else to say because it was just so incredible, except the ending. I mean it wasn't bad necessarily but in many cases the end of the book makes the entire story better, but in this case I think it ruined it a bit.

First, in the middle of the action with the family trying to escape, they have the monsters come out like, "thanks for your participation in our TV show on the Monster Network!" Or whatever, which is so classic, and then they take it even further and they end up trying to escape from the park in some sort of horror game/race challenge scenario, and they barely escape from some horrible creatures and then an announcer is like, "3/5 survived!" -- chapter break -- "no, scratch that, 5/5 survivors!" and they all have to make a run for it again and find out that if they pinch the monsters they will deflate which is awesome and then they steal a bus from the park and drive home, only to find a hitchhiking monster that's like, "we forgot to give you your free passes for next year!" 

Actually looking back on it, the ending wasn't so bad. I think my opinion is just tainted because I watched the TV episode before writing this and the TV episode skipped all the good parts of the book and ended in a horrible stupid way. 

The Rating: 

I loved it, it was so action-packed, so much was happening the whole time which is honestly unusual for these books, and it's my favorite sub-genre of horror, I'm giving it 1st place.

1. One Day At HorrorLand (#16)
2. Welcome to Camp Nightmare (#9)
3. Night of the Living Dummy (#7)
4. Stay Out of the Basement (#2)
5. The Haunted Mask (#11)
6. The Girl Who Cried Monster (#8)
7. Piano Lessons Can Be Murder (#13)
8. Welcome to Dead House (#1)
9. Say Cheese and Die! (#4)
10. Let's Get Invisible! (#6)
11. The Werewolf of Fever Swamp (#14)
12. The Ghost Next Door (#10)
13. Monster Blood (#3)
14. Be Careful What You Wish For... (#12)
15. You Can't Scare Me! (#15)
16. The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (#5)

Join me next time for Why I'm Afraid of Bees. Spooky.