Knott's Scary Farm returned tonight at Knott's Berry Farm for the park's 52nd edition of its industry-making after-hours, hard-ticket Halloween haunt event.
With two new mazes this year, Knott's once again showed why the theme park industry's first Halloween event remains one of - if not the - best. With no studio IP to deliver fans to the event, Knott's relies on its original storytelling and top-quality stagecraft to create compelling and thrilling stories in its mazes.
New this year is The Zoo, in which "the government" is trying to create super soldiers through genetic manipulation, including fusing with animal DNA. What possibly could go wrong? Especially with us as the "volunteers" to serve our country by becoming fodder for this experiment.
Giant puppetry and some thrilling aerial work distinguish The Zoo, which becomes a blackout flashlight maze at 11pm, adding to the thrills.
Also new this year is Mary: The Haunting of Worth Home, Knott's retelling of the classic Bloody Mary myth. It's a slow burn compared with The Zoo, relying on us saying that name we are not supposed to say, three times, before the carnage begins. But we see plenty of evidence of what awaits as we proceed through Worth Home on our way to our destiny. Again, Knott's offer giant puppets, along with the most entangling corridor I've ever encountered in a haunt.
For the returning mazes this year, click the year for our review of the event, then the maze names for our walk-through POV videos.
Class of 2023:
Class of 2022:
Class of 2021:
Class of 2019:
Knott's Scary Farm continues on select nights through November 1.
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The new mazes fell short of my expectations, unlike the new Scary Farm mazes from 2023 and 2024. Maybe the maze experience would have been better after dark or a couple of hours after opening-- Bloody Mary had some tech issues right after 6:30 with non working computer screens.
I might have made a mistake in listening to the creators' panel at the Nightmares Revealed event in August at Knott's. As I went through Bloody Mary most of what I noticed were similarities to The Grimoire (same designer, Jon Asperin?), which opened in 2022.
I appreciated all the design elements of The Zoo and thought everything was really well done, but I didn't love it for whatever reason. Next time I hope to stay late enough to try the lights off version.
Enjoyed the other six returning mazes quite a bit but several of them seemed understaffed with scare actors. There was a spider creature puppet/ actor in the next to last room of Widows at around 10:40 that was not there at 6:45 pm. Was done with all ten mazes plus a couple of short shows by 9:30 pm and left by 11 pm.
Also, Robert, I saw you standing near the GhostRider building just before 6:30 and wanted to say hi but then they opened the gates and the people I was with wanted to go inside.