Expecting a thrilling evening, you would think a group of teenagers at one of the supposed scariest nights of the year would be screaming and scared out of their minds, but no, Knott’s Scary Farm was unlike what we’d all expected. We were super disappointed with the mazes and horror aspect because what’s advertised as a frightful event to look forward to every Halloween turned out to be a busy, slow-moving evening.
The spooky seasonal attraction is ultimately not worth the price of $85 per ticket. A Knott’s Scary Farm ticket includes access to the rides of the park and their 10 horror mazes. The regular day-time amusement park closes at five P.M. and opens the spooky festivities at seven P.M. All of the mazes are reused with the exception of two mazes making their debut: “Widows” and “Eight Fingers Nine: The Boogeyman”.
When walking into the amusement park with a group of 10 anticipating a fulfilling night with friends, we were quickly let down by how packed the amusement park was. Approaching our first ride, Ghost Rider, the buildup of people was huge, making it over a two-hour wait by the first 15 minutes of opening. Usually, when we go to Knott’s on a standard park day, the wait time is below an hour within 30 minutes after opening.
The first scary maze we entered was “The Chilling Chambers,” located in Camp Snoopy with a wait time of three minutes. The maze’s predictable jumpscares and hard-to-follow theming dampened the overall experience. Though the idea was to pay tribute to Knott’s old maze themes, it felt like the designers threw every cheesy horror setting into one room. Filing in a single file row from a church to a hallway covered in stuffed animals made it easy to expect the coming jumpscares. Since we were going with a big group, it gave us a target on our back, as scarers tend to go for bigger groups, but nobody really got scared. The scarers had different types of costumes ranging from gorey to uncanny themes, and to differentiate guests and scarers, costumes are prohibited for guests
Afterward, we decided to get a refresher from the mazes and hit a ride, but even some of the least thrilling roller coasters were around a 45 minute wait. The ride we chose, Coast Rider, is considered a short, low-thrill coaster with its only fun aspect being a few sharp turns. Realizing that the wait times for any of the rides were not worth it, we decided to see if our second maze experience would be better than the first. The second maze, with a 70 minute wait, was the “Cinema Slasher” maze. The concept of this maze was a lot easier to follow than the first, mimicking any classic slasher movie theme, and had scares that were difficult to predict. We found the movie theater setting to be immersive and definitely a highlight of our night, as the scenes had our group going around a movie theater, through the theater screens and into the scary movie being shown on it.
We were often left waiting between corridors for the scarers to reset, which not only ruined the mood but also spoiled the upcoming jumpscares. Despite that, the scarers were our favorite part of Knott’s Scary Farm because of their interactions with people who pass by. Watching how the scarers interacted with people was definitely amusing, whether they were trying to make them flinch with a fake weapon or laugh with a snarky comment. Though a common issue in the mazes was the spacing, the scarers were able to stay in character throughout the waits.
Returning to Knott’s Scary Farm next year is not something that we would enjoy. The real scary part of Knott’s Scary Farm was the constantly stopping maze line or the amount of time spent waiting for a half-decent ride.
