Hollywood Gothique

Halloween is approaching, and I am anticipating a certain message that I receive several times each October via email. In order to avoid answering this question over and over, I will address it right now and get it over with, hopefully once and for all.

The question people ask me is: Which is the best of the major Southern California haunted attractions? We’re not talking about yard huants or even professional haunts like Spooky House. We’re talking about the A-list attractions with lots of money to throw around - basically, year-round theme parks that redress themselves for Halloween: Knott’s Berry Farm’s Halloween Haunt, Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights, the Queen Mary Shipwreck/Terror Fest, and the Six Flags Magic Mountain Fright Fest.

My answer to this question is an elusive one: It all depends on what you like. Personally, I enjoy all of them for different reasons, and hardcore Halloween enthusiasts would certainly find it worth their while to attend all of them. Those who want to see only one or two may consult the following guidelines.

What it comes down to is two questions:

1. Do you want quantity or quality?
2. Do you want more than just scary Halloween stuff?

If you can decide upon answers to those questions, you can decide which haunts you want to hit.

Knott’s Berrry Farm’s Halloween Haunt is by far the biggest, and they have been around the longest, so they have the experience. This attraction boasts thirteen haunted mazes or rides, half a dozen shows, and three scare zones. There is so much, in fact, that even if you do not like half of it, you will still get your money’s worth.

However, you can really take advantage of this abundance only if you go early in the season, before the crowds.  Get there near opening time in the first week or two of operation, and you can hit everything; you can even, in some cases, walk out of a maze and go right back through a second time time with only a minimal wait in line.

If you do not attend until later in the season, you will spend an hour in line for each attraction, and you will be lucky to get to half of it, let along everything. This seriously neutralizes the haunt’s major advantage over the compettiion: if you’re going to get to only five or six mazes, you might as well go to any of the others.

Universal Studios is a Hollywood movie studios. That means they have an army of skilled craftspeople who know how to build sets, apply makeup, and rig special effects. You are simply not going to find another haunt that is this elaborate and beautifully done, and on such a large scale.

The downside is that their haunt is relatively minimal in terms of seasonal Halloween attractions. There are four walk-through mazes, one backlot tram tour, and three or four haunt zones. Without too much effort, you can get through everything in a few hours and still have time to kill; fortunately, the regular attractions (like Jurassic Park and The Mummy rides) will give you something else to do.

In 2008, Universal is adding a bit more to the pot: For a little bit more, you can buy a ticket that allows you to enjoy the studio tour during the day and then stick around for the night-time haunt. (Basically, they borrowed this idea from the next haunt, which has used it as standard procedure for years.)

Six Flags Magic Mountain Fright Fest is sort of Knott’s Scary Farm lite. You get a great amusement park with lots of roller-coasters, plus the Halloween stuff. In terms of quantity, you get a little bit less than you would at the Queen Mary Shipwreck (six five mazes instead of seven), and there are only two three haunt zones (as opposed to three or four at Universal and Knott’s). The mazes themselves are good but a bit generic, although they do feature some memorable gags, and we loved the 2005 maze called Brutal Planet (the title of an Alice Cooper album).

[UPDATE: The information in this paragraph is no longer true; in 2008 Magic Mountain began charging a separate fee to enter the haunted mazes, so your regular admission ticket no longer delivers both the daytime thrills and the nighttime frights.] The big advantage of the Fright Fest has always been that Six Flags does not charge a separate admission to see the night-time haunt. You just buy your regular ticket, go all day to enjoy the regular rides, and then hang around at after sunset to enjoy the ghost and goblins. If you’re only interested in Halloween, this haunt might not be for you, but if you enjoy roller-coasters and getting soaked in the river rapids, then the supernatural stuff may be just the icing on your cake.

The Queen Mary Terror Fest (aka the Queen Mary Shipwreck) gets a lot of bad reactions from some fright fans because it is obviously not as elaborate as Universal Studios or even Knott’s Scary Farm. There are fewer sets, props, and effects, and the land-bound mazes tend to be made of simple painted flats; the ship-board mazes use minimal decoration relying on the boat itself (and lots of darkness) to provide the atmosphere.

All of this may be true, but the simple fact is that those long, long corridors leading through the bowels of the boat (allegedly the longest mazes of any Halloween attraction) really are genuinely spooky, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that you are in a real place, not a set! I’ve never had a bad time at the Terror Fest; even if it doesn’t have the elaborate production values of Universal and Knott’s, the actors are enthusiastic, and the Queen Mary herself provides all the atmosphere you could need.