Knott’s Scary Farm keeps up with rivals in 51st season – Orange County Register

The natural order of Halloween remains unchanged this year as Knott’s Scary Farm kicks off its 51st spooky season in gruesome style, continues its bloody pursuit of a relentless rival and fights off an attack by an upstart contender.

Knott’s Scary Farm returned to the fog on Thursday, Sept. 19 for its annual haunted event that continues on select nights through Nov. 2 at the Buena Park theme park.

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This year, Knott’s Berry Farm rolls out two new mazes, updates “The Hanging” stunt show and brings back a familiar face from past Halloween Haunts.

The new Eight Fingers Nine and Widows mazes join a lineup of eight returning haunted houses that still hold up well after years of service.

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The Eight Fingers Nine: The Boogeyman haunted maze takes Scary Farmers inside the dark fantasy realm of a twisted children’s storybook tale.

The Eight Fingers Nine maze is entertaining and scary whether you dive into the backstory or not. The boogeyman shows up in many scenes and forms — but he needs to push back his bushy mop of hair to be even scarier. It’s hard to be afraid of someone if you can’t see his eyes.

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The Widows haunted maze brings together two types of widows: Black Widow spiders who burrow into the bodies of widowed women living in a convalescent home in the midst of a catastrophic arachnid attack.

The best scare of the night came from a spider “scareactor” scurrying along the ground at visitors feet. Ginormous animatronic spiders pop out of hiding places throughout the maze to fantastic effect. The Spider Goddess in the Cave of Arachne in the finale is truly spectacular.

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Here are the overall rankings for the 10 haunted mazes at Knott’s Scary Farm 2024 with their debut year.

1. Eight Fingers Nine: The Boogeyman (2024)
2. Widows (2024)
3. Origins: Curse of Calico (2019)
4. Mesmer: Sideshow of the Mind (2021)
5. Room 13 (2023)
6. Bloodline 1842 (2022)
7. Cinema Slasher (2023)
8. Grimoire (2022)
9. Chilling Chambers (2023)
10. Wax Works (2019)

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The Origins: Curse of Calico maze tells an essential origin story filled with Scary Farm lore. It still holds up well after five years of service and could easily be rebooted in 2025 to take Scary Farmers even deeper into the legendary event’s complex backstory.

Room 13 remains the best of the new mazes from last year that haven’t aged very well. Cinema Slasher and Chilling Chambers suffered from conga lines typical of opening night. The talented and hard-working scareactors bring the mazes alive — but that’s hard to do when visitors grind to a halt in overstuffed mazes.

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“The Hanging: The Errors Tour” comedy and stunt show slaughters a new lineup of pop culture celebrities — including Taylor Swift as the title suggests.

“The Hanging” feels poorly paced, slow and — worst of all — boring. It’s never good when the audience is heading for the doors during the big closing number.

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Fortunately, Knott’s always tinkers with “The Hanging” during opening weekend and should be able to reduce the dialogue and increase the action with a few tweaks.

Too much time is spent on an artificial intelligence takeover during the show. It’s unsatisfying to kill AI in a bloody and violent way that “The Hanging” audience has come to expect and demand.

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The “Yours Cruelly Elvira XXperience” celebrates Elvira’s 20 shows over the past 40 years at the annual Halloween Haunt event.

On most nights that means video highlights of the Mistress of the Dark playing in the Walter Knott Theater. Knott’s employees turned fans away from the theater on opening night while Elvira star Cassandra Peterson signed autographs for an upcharge fee.

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Over the years, Knott’s Scary Farm has settled into the role of chief rival to perennial champ Universal’s Horror Nights and fought off attempts by Six Flags Fright Fest to move up the leaderboard. The natural order of Halloween won’t be changing this year.

The rankings remain unchanged for another Halloween despite Horror Nights trimming back on its Hollywood horror franchises and borrowing from Scary Farm’s homemade horror playbook.

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Six Flags Magic Mountain made an attempt to take on Horror Nights with big horror franchises and more mazes than its rivals. But the push to escape the perennial third place finish failed yet again — with Fright Fest Extreme biting off more than it could chew this year.

Next year will be interesting to watch as new corporate partners Magic Mountain and Knott’s sort out how each park will pursue its Halloween goals.