[Review] Knott’s Scary Farm Returns With Best Year Yet

It may not be October, but the Halloween season is in full swing as Knott’s Berry Farm has kicked opened it’s barn doors and unleashed all the ghouls and goblins on their traditionally family friendly park.  Charlie Brown himself invited us down to check out the park and I’ve returned with a trip report for, what could be, the best Scary Farm yet.

I’ve been attending Knott’s Scary Farm for the last three to four years, just a fraction of how long the event has actually been open, and each time I’ve felt the park has been great in one area while falling short in another.  This year, though, things seemed to gel together better than they have ever before.  Even with a few hiccups.

Here’s how the trip went in good ol’ “Best to Worst” fashion.

Mazes

Shadow Lands

In this maze guests have to escape the tortured souls of disgraced samurais and the ancient mythological Japanese creatures that hide in the darkness.

This could be the best maze the creative team at Knott’s has ever conceived. It’s not intensely scary, but it’s production value and set design was absolutely stunning.  This is definitely one of those set pieces where you want to hold up the line so you can marvel at the work that went into capturing the spirit of Japanese mythology and lore.  From giant monster puppets, to creepy kabuki people, and even samurais doing wire stunt work this maze has a lot of tricks up its sleeve.  I know people aren’t fond of repeat mazes, but this is one I’d like to see return to the park a few more times.

Special Ops: Infected

Laser Tag collides with the zombie mode from “Call of Duty” as guests pick up “guns” and blast their way through zombies all with commandos yelling at you and getting you hyped up.  The “guns” are actually laser tag weapons that cause zombies to light up when you hit their collar in the right spot.

This one was kind of a novelty idea in years past that felt a little thin in execution.  This year they wisely took the concept from a giant open area and condensed it into a smaller venue.  General wisdom might lead you to believe that smaller equals worse, but not in this case.  Now that the maze is more compact the density of zombies and pace of action is far greater.  You’ll rush from one encounter to the next with plenty of zombies for your band of misfits to take potshots at.  Of course, the guns still have a bit of jank to them with not all my shots registering as accurately as I liked, but it still captures that arcade-come-to-life experience that they’re going for.

Red Barn

You’ve wound up in the barn belonging to a bunch of crazy hillbillies.  Of course all they want to do is have you for dinner.

This is by far the most traditional maze of the year and while it doesn’t bring a whole lot of surprises, I think it’s a nice throwback maze that’ll appeal to horror fans.  It’s pretty much “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” with a few crazy pig monstrosities.  You’ll weave around bails of hay and farm equipment as rednecks leap out of the shadows and try to give you a jolt. It’s entirely predictable, but there’s a bit of nostalgia at play that makes it feel inviting.

The Returning Mazes

The returning mazes this year were a bit of a mix bag.  I know the Green Witch and the “Trick or Treat” maze are staples of the event, but I feel like a complete overhaul of the concept is due.  There’s only so many times I can go into that house and see slightly different gags and scares.  I don’t think she could be removed from the event at this point, but a new home for her would be nice.  “Gunslinger’s Grave”, on the other hand, is ready to be put out to pastor.  It’s  a fun idea, but I think it’s finally run its course.  I think “Dead of Winter” felt more finely tuned and was definitely a much more enjoyable experience than last year.  Unfortunately I still can’t get into “Voodoo.”  It’s a neat concept, but it never grabbed me in its first iterations and it still hasn’t.

Skeleton Key Rooms

Now, sadly, for the part that I least enjoyed.  In years past the Skeleton Keys were used to unlock special sections of certain mazes.  This year the rooms were set aside as their own separate attraction.  In theory this is a great idea, but in execution it felt a little lacking.   For one thing, each Skeleton Key Room was a bit of a wait ranging from 30 minutes to an hour in line.  But a more troublesome aspect to the rooms was that they all relied on similar gags, but with varying degrees of success.

The best of the bunch was probably “Visions” which placed you in haunted room with a special paranormal device.  Essentially it was a tablet that had night vision and augmented reality technology.  You used these devices to walk around the room in darkness while “Paranormal Investigators” try to guide your experience.   The whole experience, like many of the other ones, ends with a big jump scare that relies heavily on timing and execution.  So when they’re not properly executed, they can be a real let down.

In total there were four rooms this year, I’ll quickly break down the last three in order of best to worst.

Zozo- Take part in a seance to make contact with a questionable spirit named Zozo.  This one was easily my second favorite as the execution and performances were spot on.  It’s a very simple concept, but the way they play it is smart and fun and is probably a bit more complicated than it seems.

Prey- Was one that I really really really wanted to like, but it just did not have enough to it.  The concept is that you walk around a maze with a faulty lantern that goes dim and turns off randomly all while being chased by some kind of half pig/half monster thing.  They warn you at the start of the maze you’ll encounter dead ends and be forced to backtrack. I thought it would be a legitimate maze.  Instead I walked in, hit a dead end, turned around, and found the exit.  It took longer for the scare actors (who were brilliant) to explain the maze than for us to go through it.

Slasher- As the title suggests you find yourself in a slasher movie-type scenario where you come face to face with a masked killer.  Essentially you stand in a small room while the lights fade in and out and the lone scareactor appears and disappears all while telling you his creepy story. Despite having a fantastic actor working the experience, the whole thing was super lackluster.  It all amounted to a grotesque thing hanging from the ceiling and then being forced to haunch over and almost crawl out of the room.

Overall the Skeleton Key Rooms are really hard to recommend this year.  I think there’s a lot of potential in the concepts, but I can only recommend spending your time in line for two of them.

Overall, this is the best Scary Farm has ever been for me.  The scareactors seem to be putting in great performances this year and the mazes have jumped up in quality drastically.  I think if Knott’s can build upon what they’ve laid out this year and bring in a few new mazes next year then we’re in store for a promising future.

If you’re thinking about going this year I feel safe in recommending it.  Just be warned about one thing: the park actually seemed way more crowded than ever before. Which is great for Knott’s but not so great if you hate standing in lines.  Suddenly that front of the line pass is starting to look a bit more appealing than it did before.