I knew, through rumor and a few firsthand accounts, that the Whispering Pines Hotel on Route 1 in Saco was haunted.

Get ready to eradicate some unwanted guests. One of the scenes riders see during their journey through the Whispering Pines Haunted Hotel dark ride at Funtown Splashtown USA in Saco. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Badly haunted. Cursed, even. 

And yet in my wildest imaginings, I never suspected that I would be called upon personally to help save the doomed hotel. 

When I first stepped foot inside its dark and cavernous lobby, I knew at once that there was trouble afoot. I knew, because the harried old woman behind the desk told me so. 

“Oh, whatever am I going to do?” the distraught woman cried. “The witch’s curse has turned my hotel into a madhouse!” 

It was a madhouse all right — a madhouse of growling beasts with glowing eyes, of monstrous faces that appeared out of mists, of all manner of skulking horror, cackling, growling and lunging out of the shadows that plagued the hallways of the old hotel. 

And then the troubled old woman beseeched me, in a high and quavering voice, to help her to break the witch’s ancient hex.

“Please,” she implored. “Please try to dispel this evil curse and save my hotel!” 

And so, sitting in a cart with a curse eradicator clutched within my trembling hand, I rolled into that madness to do battle with a witch named Lilith and all of her noxious minions.  

I was pretty brave in there. You should have seen me. 

The hotel proprietor pleads with guests to help her “dispel this evil curse” at the beginning of the Whispering Pines Haunted Hotel ride at Funtown Splashtown USA in Saco. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF SCARY 

I was introduced to all the creeping terrors of the Whispering Pines Haunted Hotel on a hot Tuesday afternoon visit to Funtown Splashtown USA. 

The Haunted Hotel dark ride is Funtown’s first new attraction in 20 years, and already it has gained national attention. After opening in late July of 2023, the ride has been named one of the top 10 best new theme park attractions in the United States by USA Today. 

A scene from inside the Whispering Pines Haunted Hotel ride at Funtown Splashtown USA in Saco. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

For the people who run the park, the Whispering Pines Haunted Hotel ride had been a long time coming.  

“It took us a while to get the project going,” said Maintenance Manager Cory Cormier, whose family has operated the park for three generations. “The timing never seemed right. The budget never seemed right. Finally, we had a really solid year after COVID and we just decided to go for it. 

“It was about two years from conception to opening,” Cormier says. “A lot of that was just development of the story line, the layout of the ride and then fine tuning things all the way until the fabrication and installation.” 

For Funtown, it was a return to fright. Back in the 1980s and ’90s, the Splashtown side of the park was home to a live-action haunted attraction considered among the scariest in all of Maine. The problem was, it was TOO scary. 

“It was a very intense haunted mansion,” Cormier said. “The people who worked there were really into it. Their mission was to scare people and they were really good at it.” 

The Haunted Mansion closed in 1996, in part because the risk of running it was deemed too high, since so many visitors left overwhelmed by the experience.

No, really.

Inside the Whispering Pines Haunted Hotel dark ride at Funtown Splashtown USA in Saco. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

So, as Funtown planned its newest attraction, they knew going in that this time around they weren’t out to deliver such full-throated scares. 

“We wanted to bring a haunted house-style ride back as kind of a nod to that old ride,” Cormier said, “but we really wanted to kind of dial down the scare factor to make it more family friendly — if you’re 6 years old, you’re not going to lose your mind on this ride, whereas on the old one, you probably would have run for the exit.” 

The Whispering Pine Haunted Hotel ride might be the perfect amount of scary. Featuring some of latest in animation technology, it has more frights per square foot than similar attractions I’ve experienced in the past. If anything, there may be too much to look at inside this Haunted Hotel — it’s hard to take it all in on one ride through, or even two.

In those dark hallways, there is something coming at you at every turn, whether a shrieking cat with glowing eyes, walls that seem to fall in on you, or a group of terrifying creatures clawing at the windows. 

There are chairs that move around by themselves, wall portraits that transform themselves before your eyes, and at least one tentacled thing that comes slithering out of the walls. 

Moving eyes are just one of the creepy things about this portrait in the hunted house ride at Funtown Splashtown USA. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

There are doors that swing open to reveal horrific creatures behind them, inhuman faces that leer out of the darkness, and things that seem to just explode into horrifying existence. 

All of this while witches cackle, pipes seem to thud unnervingly behind the walls, lightning crashes and clocks chime to mark your time in this unholy hellscape.

The ride is roughly 3 1/2 minutes long and the designers seem hellbent on not wasting a single second of your time. 

The Haunted Hotel was designed by Sally Dark Rides, a premier ride group that has designed attractions for parks all over the world. When they began working on the newest ride for Funtown, Sally Dark Ride planners had four custom story lines in mind for the Haunted Hotel. 

Those story lines were studied and tweaked and then tweaked some more by the Funtown team until they got exactly what they wanted. 

“Guests of the Haunted Hotel are introduced to the story by a professional curse eradicator,” Cormier explained, “who weaves the story of Lilith, a wicked witch who was angered when the Whispering Pines Hotel was built on her land. She expressed her displeasure by cursing the hotel, and accidentally trapping three original guests with her spell.” 

So you can see why this Lilith character has got to go. 

With that in mind, Funtown and Sally Dark Rides also introduced an interactive element to the ride in the form of “curse eradicators,” wands that each rider holds to try and zap the various abominations coming from all directions. 

“As you go through the rooms you’ll see the targets and if you hit the targets, they might interact with different things in the room,” Cormier said. 

There are hidden targets worth big points and by the end of the ride, the riders can compare their scores with those of other riders. 

For non-gamers like myself, this component might not mean much. But for kids who grew up competing with strangers through online games, the curse eradicator element might be just the thing to keep them coming back.

It was a genius move, frankly. 

A scene from inside the Whispering Pines Haunted Hotel ride at Funtown Splashtown USA in Saco. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY

There are all kinds of nice touches — some might call them Easter eggs — throughout the ride. These are things you might not catch your first time through, but will jump out at you on your second ride. Or third, or fourth.

One of the family portraits hanging on the wall at the hotel lobby, for instance, features Cormier’s grandparents, who started the business way back when. When you clap eyes on this photo, keep gazing at it. Get a long look at the happy couple and see what happens.

PRO-TIP: When you first walk into that haunted hotel, also be sure to look at the carpet beneath your feet. I mean really look at it, son, and consider whether you’ve seen it before. There are no clues as to the origin of the rug so you either recognize it or you’ll have to ask someone else and look a fool. 

The ride operator gives a thumbs-up at the control station Tuesday before sending another group through the Whispering Pines Haunted Hotel dark ride at Funtown Splashtown USA in Saco. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

The music and the sound effects as you ride through that phantasmagorical space are just right. It sets the mood and gets the hairs on the back of your neck to stirring. There are whistling winds and clanging bells and you’ll find yourself unnerved even when there is nothing presently flying out of the walls and into your personal space. 

The animatronics are so good that in at least two different areas, I had to squint my eyes and tilt my head this way and that way to deduce whether I was looking at a live person or a nicely crafted robot. 

I ain’t telling you which was which, neither. You can figure that out for yourself. 

The attraction, sprawling across 7,200 square feet, features six cars each carrying up to four passengers at a time. Another nifty touch: When you and your friends are rolling through the Haunted Hotel in your cart, there are no other carts in sight. There are none to be seen ahead of you and none behind. For all practical purposes, you and your buds are alone in this demented place, so you better get good with that curse eradicator or I don’t know what will become of you. 

The ride has jump scares and a whole bunch of animatronic creatures that are disturbing to look at, and yet it still manages to remain family friendly. 

Scot Grassette, of Rumford, rolled through the Haunted Hotel with his wife, mother-in-law and nieces. It was, Grassette seemed to think, just scary enough. 

“Not sure if you’ll wizz yourself,” he said, “but I was impressed with the quality. It was very cool, but not so spooky that little kids would cry.” 

Personally, I didn’t wizz or cry, either — not that you can prove, anyway — but a few things made me jump for real as I rolled through the twists and turns of that old hotel. I won’t spoil anyone’s ride by describing those particular scares in any great detail, but should you visit the hotel, keep an eye on the walls and if a heavy mist falls ahead of your cart, brother, you better know how to work that eradicator or you’re in for bad business. 

I fear I’ve said too much.                                                                                                                                    

In the end, I don’t know if I helped that nice old lady any with eradicating the curse, but I’m not much concerned about that. 

Build a fancy hotel on the property of a witch, you should expect a few nightmares, and the Whispering Pines Haunted Hotel has plenty of those. 

One of the many scenes in the Whispering Pines Haunted Hotel dark ride loaded with potential scares. When the small round targets are activated by trigger-happy riders, even more frightening action takes place. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal