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Drum roll, please – or should that be a funeral dirge? Whatever soundtrack you choose to play in your mind or on your computer while reading this, it is time to bestow our annual accolades for the Best Los Angeles Halloween Events. As with last year, I will dispense with rigid categories in favor of [...]

Dates: October 5-9, 12-16, 19-23, 26-31.
This year, we approached the Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt with an edge of fear in our soul that had little to do with the eager anticipation of ghost town ghouls, fallout shelter mutants, lock-down asylum lunatics, or apocalyptic wasteland warriors. Rather, advance word had sinisterly suggested that the annual Halloween theme park attraction was but a pale, ethereal shadow of its formerly spirited self – a “creaky, middle-aged zombie that’s lost its will to rise from the grave every night,” in the words of this Los Angeles Times review of opening night. To our ghoulish delight, however, these dire prophecies of doom turned out to be ephemeral warnings of a disaster that failed to materialize. True, there is little that is innovative or ground-breaking this year; nevertheless, the depth and breadth of horrors on display continue to make this annual ritual a must-see for Halloween acolytes.

Location: 8039 Beach Boulevard, Buena Park, CA 90620
Link out: Click here
Description: True to form, Knott’s Berry Farm launches their annual Halloween Haunt during the last week of September, getting a jump on the competition, most of which waits until October. As in 2010, the Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt makes its debut on a Friday, [...]

Dates: September 24-26, 30, October 1-3, 6-10, 13-17, 20-24, 27-31.
Location: Knotts Berry Farm
Description: After my mournful despair expressed over the lack of originality on display in the’ 2010 incarnation of Halloween Horror Nights at at Universal Studios Hollywood, it is ironic to note that the 2010 Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt offers even less that is new and novel: only two walk-through mazes and the Sleepy Hollow Mountain Log Ride. Nevertheless, this year’s Knotts Scary Farm manages to impress with sheer quantity and variety: the Halloween theme park event not only offers dozens of mazes, shows, and scare zones; it also provides a wide spectrum of themes and tones, ranging from grim and grizzly to moody and ethereal to clownish and campy. Although Knott’s Berry Farm cannot match Universal Studios in purely technical terms terms, the wide range of imaginative hauntings includes something for every Halloween-loving soul.

Much of the 2010 Knotts Berry Farm Halloween haunt is recycled from previous years; in particular, all of the mazes that made their debut in 2009 are back. Some of them may have been tweaked slightly, but their overall presentation remains essentially the same. Click through to see videos of all the returning mazes.

The two major theme parks launch their battle for Halloween supremacy.

The Halloween season begins in earnest tonight with the opening of the two major Halloween theme park attractions in or near Los Angeles: the Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt in Buena Park and Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. Also opening today is the Halloween Harvest Festival at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, which includes the Fright Fair Scream Park at night.

[ September 24, 2010; 7:00 pm; ] Title: Knott’s Scary Farm 2010
Location: Knotts Berry Farm, 8039 Beach Boulevard, Buena Park, CA 90620
Dates: September 24-26, 30, October 1-3, 6-10, 13-17, 20-24, 27-31.
Description: The annual Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt returns with three new attractions for 2010: two walk-through mazes (Virus Z and Fall Out Shelter) and a ride (Sleepy Hollow Mountain, on the Log Ride).

You have idled away the Halloween season; your best of intentions have dwindled away to almost nothing, and now you find yourself on October 31 with too little time and too many haunts. You cannot get to all of them on Halloween night, and unfortunately most are not taking advantage of the weekend to stay open an extra day on November 1. What are you going to do? How can you prioritize? Well, it is your great good fortunate that you are reading this article, because we are about to enumerate 2009’s must-see Halloween events in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. These are the best Halloween haunts, rides, and mazes – the ones you will regret missing if you do not make the extra effort necessary to enter their murky portals before the witching hour sounds tonight. Be bold and brave, dear traveller, and as you ride through the night, urged on by ghosts and goblins, do not despair of reaching your final destination before dawn, for remember: “the Dead travel fast….”

Well, we saved the best for last! We found the 2009 Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt to be enjoyable, but the new mazes were not quite as full of new and exciting stuff as we had hoped. Lockdown The Asylum and Uncle Bobo’s Big Top of the Bizarre were fun, and we appreciated the old-fashioned Victorian atmosphere of Terror of London, but the real highlight was Dia de Los Muertos: Day of the Dead, which is the subject of our fourth and final video from this year’s Knott’s Scary Farm.

Crazy Clowns for Halloween – they just won’t go away! Two years ago, we were unimpressed with Killer Klown Kollege at Knotts Scary Farm, so we were not particularly looking forward to this year’s variation on the theme, Uncle Bobo’s Big Top of the Bizarre. And yet, to our surprise, it turned out to be a pretty decent maze. It was not particularly scary; however, as you can see from this video, it was zany and manic, with something happening around almost every corner. As you would expect of a 3D maze, it was also bright and colorful, providing a little variety, after walking through numerous dark and gloomy mazes, such as Terror of London.

Here is the second of our videos detailing the four new mazes at the 2009 Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt. Terror of London is set in the Mystery Lodge, which used to house one of our favorite mazes, 13 Axe Murder Manor. The replacement fills the bloody shoes of its predecessor with all the thrilling [...]

Hollywood Gothique is a little bit slow with its video editing this year, but never fear – we have mass quantities of great video footage from this year’s Halloween attractions. For example, here is our first video from the 2009 Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt: a trip through the new maze, Lockdown The Asylum, which [...]

In Universal Studios challenges Knott’s for Halloween domination, Los Angeles Times business writer Hugo Martin takes a look at the attempt by Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios to cut away a slice of the pumpkin pie so long dominated by the Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt. It covers some of the same ground that [...]

The energy level was definitely low at the Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt on the night of September 30. No doubt this was partly due to the thin crowd: without a multitude of victims, the electrifying feedback loop between the scarers and the scared was short-circuited; the chain reaction of screams galvanizing adrenalin in nearby [...]

Circumstances beyond our control prevents us from attending the opening of Knotts Scary Farm last night. Fortunately, a Hollywood Gothique reader writes in with his impression. The news is not as good as one might have hoped:
I just came back from opening night of Knott’s Halloween Haunt, and Zombieland was disappointingly nowhere to be found. [...]

Believe it or not, the 2009 Hallowen season begins this week. As usual, the annual Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt gets a jump on the competition by opening on the last Thursday of the month, September 24. After that, the haunted theme park attraction runs Wednesdays through Sundays until October 31. Even if you went last [...]

It’s not unusual for Knott’s Berry Farm’s annual Halloween Hauntto feature a maze or two inspired by a recent Hollywood horror movie; the last few years have seen mazes based on THE GRUDGE 2, BEOWULF, and QUARANTINE (the later of which will be back this year). However, in a relatively new move, Knott’s Scary Farm [...]

Knott’s Berry Farm has been announcing some new mazes for its 2009 Halloween Haunt. Details are scarce, but so far they have promised us four new attractions, two of them in 3-D.
2008's version of the Asylum
LOCKDOWN – THE ASYLUM (set near the GhostRider roller-coaster). This location has been known as the Asylum for a few [...]

It is time for Hollywood Gothique’s first annual Halloween Haunt Awards. This is the time – after the last scream has echoed away, the last lightening has flashed, and the last monster returned to its godforsaken tomb – when we sit down and assess the best events and attractions that we experienced during Halloween in [...]

Here is it: my last video from Knott’s Berry Farm’s 2008 Halloween Haunt.
The Asylum has been around for a few years. First time we saw it we were quite impressed. It has quite the atmospheric entrance: a Gothic-looking arched gate in front of a facade for an old building that looks as much like a [...]

We were plenty disappointed earlier this year when we heard that Lore of the Vampire would not be back at the 2008 Knott’s Scary Farm. Fortunately, it turns out that Labyrinth (which is housed in the same Balloon Race area where Lore used to be situated) is a more than adequate replacement, as you can [...]

Another new maze at this year’s Knott’s Scary Farm is Cornstalkers. We gave it high marks in our review of the haunt, so it’s pleasant to see that it holds up well to second viewing on video.
This one is set outdoors on the Stage Coach Trail, where Dark Realm was situated last year. Fortunately, Cornstalkers [...]

Here is another video from our trip to the 2008 incarnation of Knott’s Berry Farm’s Halloween Haunt. Alien Annihilation is set in the 3D laser tag facility that house the Beowulf maze in 2007. The bright colors suggest that the Halloween attraction was intended to exploit the 3D potential, but we did not see anyone [...]