The Beating, Twisted, Heart of SoCal’s Haunt Scene Endures: Knott’s Scary Farm 2026 (The NoPro Review)

It’s been a couple of years since I last took in the Spooky Season singularity that is Knott’s Scary Farm, my last run was in 2023 when the event celebrated its 50th anniversary, cementing its status as the longest running theme park haunt in the world. 

Where the other big amusement park haunts in California lean on film and music properties for their creative inspiration — complete with name and likeness rights — Knott’s remains a uniquely home grown event which gives the teams who make the various mazes and shows a full palette of options to twist into whatever macabre shape tickles their fancy. 

Haunts are in many ways the ur-immersive experience. Some of the greatest immersive theatre creators have cut their teeth working in haunted houses, or adapted the bag of tricks into their own works. After all, immersive is a spatial art, which means it’s about making meaning in spaces and what’s a more straightforward version of that than “This place is haunted, dude”?

Missing two whole years of Knott’s meant missing four new mazes, which has completely turned over the backlot area which had housed mainstays like Waxworks and The Depths. This year sees the debut of an additional two new mazes — Unearthed and the much buzzed about Inked — and will see the long standing Origins: The Curse of Calico end its eight year run along with the shorter lived 50th anniversary celebration Chilling Chambers. More on those two in a bit, but let’s start with the big new efforts.

Some things to keep in mind as you bump along the haunt trail with me today:

• We were there with press access on opening night, which means while the crowds were healthy and the fog was extra thick, it also means we sported Fast Lane access so the longest wait we had was about 25 minutes. The experience is different where you are in queue for 30-40 minutes for a fair chunk of the mazes at a time. 
• That said, many of the lines moved at a pretty good clip, but the crowds meant it was conga line action all night. Lingering isn’t really an option on a busy night.
• There are multiple stage shows that happen across the park, but that’s not our focus here. Although I was tempted to catch the Occultum show that was produced in association with the Magic Castle. Enough so that we stood in line for a minute before doing some math and realizing it would be an hour before we could stand for another maze.
• That said, I feel no such temptation to catch The Hanging, the signature show that happens each year and courts controversy seemingly for the sake of doing so. Intentionally bad taste comedy for the sake of bad taste comedy about pop culture hasn't been my bag since college.
• Our concern here at NoPro is simple: how well does the haunt convey story and/or theme — aka MEANING — in its use of spaces, props and performers. Are we transported to somewhere else for those few moments we’re in the maze?

THE NEW STUFF

UNEARTHED

Hey, kids! What if the queue for Disneyland’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye was a haunted maze?

SIGN ME THE HELL UP.

I went into this year’s Scary Farm thinking that I would be over the moon with Inked and a slightly disappointed by Unearthed and to my surprise the polar opposite happened. 

Unearthed’s story is as simple as its premise: an expedition into an ancient ruins has gone wrong and you’re asked to go find the missing expedition. Once down in the catacombs cultists, mummies, and traps galore reveal the fate of the explorers and you might be next. Press me for details and I’m going to come up short aside from a few big beats as I was mostly agog at the set and the whole shtick.

The final part of the queue had a TV interview setting up the story playing on a loop, although this is something Fast Lane access whizzes you by. It’s a double edged sword, as who knows how many times the long, winding GA line had to watch that loop.

Right off the bat there are some escape room vibes with glowing hieroglyphics on the walls. Could these be ciphers? No time to tell, it’s on to the next set piece. Inside there are interactive levers and press plates. Am I certain they actually did something when I pulled/pressed them? I think they might have! The conga line of a busy night means it’s impossible to tell but the beauty of this being a haunt is theres just enough smoke and mirrors to leave you with the impression that something did. The illusion of agency in service of the art of presence at its most quintessential. 

Now Knott’s has some signature features with its mazes, which for the longest time has meant a big “Boss” monster at the end. Usually an animatronic puppet or maquette of some size, the formula seems to have drifted in the past few years to allow for multiple big monsters in a maze, which does wonders for the pacing and gives a real “But I thought it was over!?!?!?” beat to the whole affair.

Unearthed plays with this new formula in fun ways, and if I have any real regrets from the night its that I didn’t march us back into Unearthed after we caught our breath. I’m certain I would have caught on more delightful details, even at the risk of catching the stray effect that didn’t quite work. (In this case a cool idea: a portal to the netherworld with mummies crawling up out of it doesn’t quite land when the screens delivering the effect glitch off and on. Those are the breaks, and in this case the thought counts.)

INKED

I went into Inked with two things on my mind:

One was the tantalizing prospect that the 1930’s animation era themed maze was going to go HARD on a certain friendly competition down the street, and the other was about the unforced error that was a merchandizing T-shirt for the maze that has what looked like an AI generated racist caricature on it.

I’m sure Six Flags PR won’t be happy with the mention, and the company pulled the t-shirt from sale once it was pointed out. But once something is on my mind it is on my mind and that was the frame I took into the most anticipated maze of the night. The whole ugly incident left me on alert for AI assets and influence – and wary that something of the 30's casually racist iconography from that pulled merch was lingering – in what was a rather ironic setting story-wise: a classic animation studio whose founder, Mortimer Morbid, had done some kind of deal with the Devil.

So like, actual irony and not the 10,000 spoons kind.

The thing is that the premise is FANTASTIC, and the three animated lead characters — Clancy Cat, Ginny Ghost, and Petey Pumpkin — are a practically bioengineered blend of 30’s style and Spooky Season vibes. Giving the benefit of the doubt for a minute that the Morbid Studios characters are the product of the blood and sweat of the haunt team and not the demonic hallucinations of water addicted silicon, its a real bummer that the sulfurous scent of generative computing was around this one as the home grown horror vibe here works well.

Indeed if there were AI assets in the attraction itself they slipped by me, and instead I was impressed by how homemade much of it felt. It seems the choice was made to keep things deliberately in an earlier era of haunts, in a way that gave the haunt a goofiness that underscored the sinister parts which in turn made them more twisted. 

I also didn't catch any pointedly racist iconography, but then again I'm a middle aged white guy who hasn't studied up on it all in a minute. Someone more versed in the evils of the era might have a different, not-so-charitable, take. If you dig into the history a lot of the whole early animation aesthetic was downstream of some pretty rancid stuff. There's a reason why the big studios put content advisories in front of some of the old works. Maybe I'm naïve, but I'm of the camp that holds it is better to dig up the context than try and just bury the past. That it is possible to work with this material, but one has to be mindful of what is being reintroduced to the culture at large. It might look like a cute character, but it could actually be an actually cursed object.

Those caveats in place I felt like the storytelling could have been more ambitious here, with a better throughline around the efforts of the disgraced Mortimer Morbid as opposed to just going for vibes. Inked replaces Mesmer, whose first year was ambitious and sublime, only for the following year to back off and offer more carnal thrills. Literally. Like piles of meat. Inked doesn’t shy from the carnage right from the start, and I think that jump straight into literalism before slipping into the cartoon world of the characters undercuts a potential build up into sheer madness. 

But I get it! This is a horror maze and people want their jump scares and corpses. I’m the weirdo who wants a walk-thru allegory about animation unions, ambitious studios heads, and deals with the devil that corrupt childhood innocence and converts it into a global capitalist empire. Odds are the meat is the smarter way to go.

It was nice to see the Mesmer Monster make a cameo appearance. A Clancy Cat performer beckoning me over telling me to “Go To Hell” right before the maze morphed into fire and brimstone, and repurposing the mirror bridge from Mesmer into a fiery inferno were all beyond excellent. In fact there’s enough here that I suspect a few more turns through the maze would yield up more of the story that I’m looking for. (Without tripping over anything I hope isn't in the maze.)

On balance I’m glad the creative teams at Knott’s are reaching for strange, layered ideas as they build their horror imaginariums. Even when digging down into the societal subconscious can bring back some very real hobgoblins on the road back.

THE NEW TO ME MAZES

Thanks to my two year break four more new mazes awaited me, which is kind of an awesome way to experience Scary Farm. These happened to be the four mazes on the back lot, and as tradition holds the mazes back there are what I hit up first.

Across the board these four are steps ahead of the pieces they replaced, unless your metric is MEAT in which case nothing will ever replace Waxworks in your carnage loving heart. As it is I’ll take the improvements in scene building, storytelling, and most important of all light lock (i.e. how dark the mazes can get, even before sundown) that accompanied all four. There were times, particularly in Mary - The Haunting of Worth Home, and to a lesser extent Widows (although that may be because of my memory) where it was so dark that I had to hold up a few times and let a lightning style effect go off so I could see the path forward again. Love it. We’ll tackle these in the order I did.

MARY - THE HAUNTING OF WORTH HOME

Whatever you do, don’t say her name!

Bloody Mary is waiting for you behind every mirror of the Worth Home, and right from the start we are in a scenario that seems campy at first but gets increasingly dark and gore soaked. This one is quite literally a haunted house, even if the house is one for wayward youth. 

On the vibes level the darkness, the tormented teens, and the nods to a simpler era of horror are immaculate. I’d probably have a lot more to say if we didn’t quickly head into…

WIDOWS

So on the surface I thought “Another house, but this time an old folks home?”

That was thought one before going in. The other two thoughts were that while I don’t have arachnophobia, I don’t love spiders. They’re otherworldly to me. I’ve also found old folk homes depressive since I was a kid, and the reason I wasn’t at Knott’s for two years was I was caretaking for my mother who passed away last year. I had the thought “maybe I can’t take this one on” before I found myself walking through the doors and into a hellscape tailored just for me.

Okay, kinda. 

The “I don’t like spiders so much” of it all definitely meant this is the maze that is still giving me — admittedly delicious — willies days later. The escalation of the maze as we go deeper and deeper into the home which then turns into a spider warren. The actors — shout out to the one who was real good at skittering along the walls with their hands — who just raised the stakes as it went on… and on… and on… But in a good way!

This was also the maze where I started to note that the Knott’s formula was being altered in terms of how its big monster effects were deployed, and it certainly features my favorite boss character of the whole park: the mother spider at the center of the web – an actor attached to a huge black spider costume backlit by the sickly green light that is Knott’s signature Scary Farm color. It was the biggest wow moment of the night for me.

I left thinking of Widows as a perfect theme park haunt maze.

THE ZOO

This “Island of Doctor Moreau” meets prison complex setup replaced the well meaning but garbled Bloodline 1842, which spent its first year as an interactive vampire shooting gallery and then quickly pivoted to normal walkthrough when that was deemed a bad idea. Then it was shuttered. There’s still some of the vibe of Bloodline, and maybe that has to do with the footprint of the building or the rusty color palette of the maze. 

The upside: the variety of mannimals — that human/animal hybrids for those who don’t speak bad 80’s TV — is pretty impressive and gives the haunt actors a range of fun behaviors to play with. At least, for the ones who do. A lot of the guard characters just play with basic aggression.

The Zoo doesn’t lean on story but vibes, and it goes it has some impressive set pieces even if the scale is a bit smaller than the other mazes. When compared with the other offerings even on the back lot it doesn’t have too much to offer but the industrial grime aesthetic and a stench I couldn’t quite place. 

EIGHT FINGERS NINE: THE BOOGEYMAN

Somehow this felt like the most oppressive — non-derogatory — haunt of the night, with its fairy tale gone literal story and creepy tree aesthetic. There’s something that feels almost “true” about Eight Fingers Nine, which feels like a story born out of a medieval European plague by way of Japanese horror films.

Stiltwalkers, a Wicker Man aesthetic, low ceilings, and moments where the read of the story make you NOT want to enter the next room all build into a masterclass in dread. All in what might be the least gory of the mazes in the current set. Eight Fingers Nine handles story in the way that the more elaborate and larger Grimoire wanted to, but nails it here by having the heart of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale. 

In the end this is a story about death, and what becomes of us when we die. Which in this case is “food for trees.” Well what happens when the trees get hungry?

Just writing that line made me grimace. Great, dark stuff from the team.

THE OLD FRIENDS, AT THAT ONE WE WISH WOULD GET ITS ACT TOGETHER

ORIGINS: THE CURSE OF CALICO

We start with one that I wish we didn’t need to say goodbye to, but an eight year run for a theme park maze means that a kid who went through Origins to learn how the Green Witch came to curse the town of Calico and thus unleash the horrors of Scary Farm on the land when they were a Freshman in High School will be graduating college this year. Possibly with a themed entertainment degree.

So, I get it.

Origins has the best storytelling in the park’s assortment of mazes, hands down. Nothing matches the progression from the opening scene where a woman is condemned by the judge through jail and flashbacks that show a transformation into Scary Farm's signature character. 

Nor does the maze sacrifice scares and creepiness for the story, Origins might be more PG-13 than R, but the narrative is so clear that you wind up wondering why all the storytelling in the mazes can’t be that good. If there was one maze I’d like to take an hour to slowly go over the details, it would be this one.

ROOM 13

At the other end of the spectrum is Room 13, which is still here after its lackluster debut in 2023. What was frustrating at its debut — that it is the maze tied to the brilliant Gore-ing 20’s Scare Zone outside the big Walter Knott Theater with its mythology about the green elixir that turns men into monsters but doesn’t deliver on the lore’s promise — remains true today.

What could be a build from a illicit speakeasy into mounting horrors instead is a freak show from the word jump with a monotonous soundtrack and one good bit where a monster chef “throws” a knife at guests and it embeds in the wall behind them.

The rest is just tableau after tableau in an art deco hotel and within the walls of said hotel that doesn’t really feel like it goes anywhere. A few tweaks and edits so that the stakes start low and escalate into something truly horrific would have made this one a classic. I do still like the big weird head in the boiler room. 

To be honest, I went into Room 13 this year hoping they had done something with it but knowing they wouldn’t. The vibes outside in the streets, with the hinted at story of bootlegging gone all wrong, are still beyond reproach.

CHILLING CHAMBERS

I’m back just in time to say goodbye to this retrospective maze that mixes highlights from across Scary Farm’s 50 years and crypts and coffins labeled with the names of the mazes left behind in the past. 

There’s a third C-word I’d use to describe the Chilling Chambers: Charming. 

It’s just nifty to see how it was done once upon a time, even if some of that might be the stuff of actual nightmares. Like the Carnival of Carnivorous Clowns which… well I may not have coulrophobia but if I had to go through that section six times in a row I might develop it.

The biggest kick I get out of the maze, and maybe this is one of the reasons they’re retiring it, is to check out all the crypts, coffins, and headstones marked with the names of dearly departed mazes past. This year a headstone for my beloved Mesmer was waiting near the end of the run, and I almost grabbed a picture with it but succumbed to the conga line. (Even if I could have with media credentials.)

A part of me hopes that they just retool the concept and put more greatest hits in the space next year, and keep the markers of mazes past.

CINEMA SLASHER

I’ve saved the best of the old guard — yes, as much as I love Origins and don’t love MEAT I know a grade A choice maze when I see one — for last.

Cinema Slasher, for those who don’t know, starts off in a movie lobby that reveals some sinister details under a flash of blacklight and then invites you to walk INTO the movie screen where the slasher pic playing in the movie theater is happening “in real life.” It’s a wild, dream logic piece that ups the stakes as we cross into sequel after sequel in a long running slasher series, hitting up different slasher genres as we go.

Some of my favorite bits are the patrons of the movie theater, which are other film serial killers who really, really want you to be quiet so they can watch their stories.

All of it culminates in a delirious scene where you reemerge from the silver screen into a cinema that has been transformed into a nightmare landscape. The horrors of the movies having infected the real world. A massive projector monster at one end and between you and the exit — and I’m not entirely sure but this may be brand new — a diminutive POPCORN BAG MONSTER complete with carving knife. (I thought about posting an image of Poppy, which is what I just decided to call it right now, but I want you to see the little beast with your own eyes.)

It’s hilarious. It’s disturbing. It has something to say about how what we watch changes how we see the world. It is, as always, utterly brilliant in a way that only a horror maze can be.

MAKING MEANING IN A AGE OF PURE CORPORATE MEDIA

It’s tough to LOVE things these days in ye olde media sphere. Especially when you’ve been around the block as many times as I have.

Everyone is consolidating. Everything is getting commodified. Everything is a tie-in to something else. Heck, even if you like the later — and I do — it can start to feel constraining. 

Which is what makes hitting up the mazes at Knott’s so much of a tonic. There’s so much detail and effort put into every single one of the ten productions. The sense of enthusiasm coming off the walls is palpable. That authentic enthusiasm also makes missteps and line crossings feel like something that can be addressed in community and not as an adversarial process wherein the townsfolk yell at the big impersonal corporation.

I don’t know how long such things can last in the era we’re in, but I hope that the folks who cut the checks up the corporate chain come to understand what it is that keeps audiences coming back year after year. It’s more than merch drops, revamped shows, and a steady two new mazes a season. It’s the quality of those works, and the sense that this is an expression of Southern California's real love for haunts that makes the difference. 

Powered by the fact that Knott’s gives its creative teams license to dream.
Dark as those dreams might be.

Knott's Scary Farm runs through Oct. 31st on select nights at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park. Tickets start at $69 with additional charges for Fright & Fast Lane access.

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