After dearly departing in 2020, Halloween Haunt is an annual event that has returned to Canada’s Wonderland, promising frightful delights year after year. But for an event steeped in tradition and engrained in the (possibly traumatised) memories of many a park-goer, how have necessary pandemic-era restrictions and changes affected the overall experience? Upon hearing that more local bands, musical groups, and performers were to be included as part of this year’s event, we were intrigued to see how Canada’s Wonderland tackled a safe return to live performances as well as what new additions can attendees expect to enjoy this season. We attended on multiple days on Opening Weekend to bring you our opinion on how this year’s event went.
For an abbreviated/TL;DR version of what we thought, here’s a quick run-down:
Pros:
- Fantastic Opportunities to enjoy Live Music throughout the park, after dark
- Relatively lower wait time for rides and attractions compared to the summer season
- Great outdoor installations and theming design
- Talented performers scattered around the park as scheduled entertainment
- New and Exclusive Halloween-season food offerings
- Family-Friendly Fun for the kids (if you’re bringing kids/are a kid)
Cons:
- Family-Friendly Fun for the kids (Seriously, be prepared for a lot of kids.)
- No indoor mazes, but an increased number of scare zones with significantly fewer monsters populating them to scare you.
- “Scare-Actors” / Roaming monsters in the park all wear face masks (the protective kind, not the latex costume-kind) and don’t look that scary with it on.
- A significant amount of pre-teens and teenagers roaming in packs unsupervised shining flashlights at the performers, recording TikToks
- The aforementioned younger park guests were seen assaulting scare actors, smashing pumpkin decorations, and filming everything.
- It’s just not that scary overall!
Is it worth it this year?
Read on to find out more as we break down what worked well and what might’ve ruined the experience this year.
A Very Different Scare Experience This Year
According to the official description on the Canada’s Wonderland website, they describe the event as follows:
“Witness a sinister transformation at Halloween Haunt, when the theme park turns into a scream park filled with unforgettable things to do for Halloween and unspeakable horror. Immerse yourself in the nightmare of Haunt where the streets are filled with terror, including more than 500 monsters, terrifying haunted attractions, ghoulish street performers, live music, thrilling night rides, and electrifying live shows.
Due to COVID-19, all indoor mazes will be transformed into new outdoor experiences… leaving you fewer places to hide!”
In the “before times”, the park map would be dotted by a handful of “Scare Zones” outdoor locations with props for slightly higher-paid Scare Actor performers to stalk you out in the open, and typically around 7 – 10 “Indoor Mazes” or Haunted houses that were often very elaborately themed with lighting and sound effects and music that ominously set the tone as you braced yourself and stood in line (for sometimes over 2 hours on busy Saturday nights) to walk through and get frightened by the often equally-elaborately costumed Scare Actors/Monsters inside. Each usually took about 2- 5 minutes to walk through, depending on your speed, level of fear – or at least that of the group ahead of you. The worst of it all would be on exceptionally busy evenings where you’d essentially be in an unscareable “conga-line” of humanity just chugging through these mazes.
For obvious reasons, this is all no longer a thing that can safely be done at the moment (unless there was any guarantee that all park guests, employees were fully vaccinated and tested negatively prior to each event night).
Speaking on the bright side, if you’ve experienced brutally long lineups for Mazes in the past, you can definitely say that Halloween Haunt at Canada’s Wonderland has done a great job of eliminating these completely. Over each day that we experienced Halloween Haunt this year, we never had to wait once to experience any of the Scare Zones, both New and Returning. And while there are a few from the past (CarnEVIL, Ghostly Pines), the set designers have put much more effort into fleshing out these areas with added props and scenery for the performers to lurk amongst and hide behind. Some of these seemed specifically crafted for the event and were quite impressive to see the craftsmanship close up: large hopefully-not-working catapults and fairy abodes with flickering lights to name a few.
What worked well for the Indoor Mazes was that the park guests would be coming at the Scare Actors/Monsters all in a linear way (shown via the green arrows in the diagram below) , allowing for them to scare you and then “Reset” for the next unwitting victim:
Mazes would therefore be designed with strategically-placed walls and concealed spots for them to hide in and anticipate each group as they pass through, and also for the park-goer – have an element of surprise and reveal for whatever was lurking around the corner. It was easier to get scared if you didn’t see what made the group ahead of you scream – and the combination of darkness and thematic sounds made this be executed successfully.
However this year, some Scare Zones (notably Forest of Fear and The Farmstead) have attempted to create somewhat of the same experience by utilizing walkways around the park, which did make them comparatively (slightly) scarier than the other Scare Zones that were more of an open space with no real flow. Looking at the diagram below, these would be similarly designed with walls and structures in the way, with a two-way flow of traffic (indicated by the arrows) going in either direction (as these were in fact, necessary pathways for guests to head through to get to various rides and parts of the park).
This, unfortunately, requires the Monsters to scare in both directions and allows them to easily be surrounded. Throughout our multiple walkthroughs, we found many instances of performers who would’ve been otherwise well-concealed were it not for them being given away or exposed by the incoming guests from the opposite direction. That said, these were the closest to the “Haunted House”/Indoor Maze experience that most would be accustomed to or remember and also the only times where we were actually startled – except where in a traditional Maze pre-pandemic you would likely encounter a cast of 20 or so Monsters in each one, here we only ever counted 10 or less on any one walk through.
Another drawback is that – by nature of being pathways in a theme park – they’re still required to be lit up, and instead of the immersion of being in a themed indoor environment – you would feel the coasters around you, see the bright lights of rides in the distance and hear the park’s spooky generic background music (or worse, Gangnam style from the nearby DJ set) – all removing you from the moment. None of which really contributed to any real, scary atmosphere in the same way that trick-or-treating in your neighborhood might have the occasionally really well-decorated house and a fairly scary neighbor in a costume, but nothing too frightening overall.
The Irony of Masks not being Scary at Halloween
When you think of what makes for a scary costume on Halloween- what’s on your face typically is what sells it the most. Doing a quick Google search for “Scary Costume” – you’ll find an assortment of makeup and masks that really pull the look together; and if you could imagine any of these costumes with just the clothing on the bottom, they’re often not as scary. This is, we find, one of the biggest reasons why the characters might not seem AS terrifying this year.
Imagine walking down a street wearing a face mask, while you’re constantly being approached and followed by slightly aggressive people (also wearing face masks), but with worn-out, bloody clothing and some serious eye makeup. In a normal situation outside of a theme park – that could be a pretty scary and dicey situation if they weren’t respectfully wearing masks and also simultaneously entering your personal space. At Halloween Haunt? Not as frightening – and sadly part of this is due to the fact that the face mask obscure so much. It is here that we really realize how much we take for granted the ability to see the expressions on the faces of the people that are trying really, really hard to chase you down and scare you.
Another drawback is that some of the park guests – whether wearing all black, big hoods and/or spooky-themed cloth masks, can be almost indiscernible from some of the performers, and we noticed several people taking advantage of this to jump out at people and scare them on their own – normally a huge no-no at these events.
Considering the safety restrictions in place in Ontario, there’s not too much that they can do – but we’ve seen instances online at similar Halloween-themed events (even those run by the same parent company as Canada’s Wonderland, Cedar Fair), where the masks have printed designs or were incorporated in a way that wouldn’t be so distracting. Or where a mixture of prosthetic and full-face masks might do a better job, however at the expense of performers’ visibility.
The Scary amount of Children running around
Officially, Canada’s Wonderland’s messaging when buying tickets for Halloween Haunt is: “Not recommended for children under 13.” However, as a recommendation and not an actual restriction to entry, this certainly did not stop a large number of parents and families from bringing in young children who were visibly and most definitely not 13 years of age. Opinions on different styles of parenting and sheltering children from horrors aside, there did seem to be many kids taking advantage of special light-up necklaces that prevented anyone from intentionally frightening them (for an added fee).
Note: If the idea of being near unvaccinated children under-12 was something that you might’ve prevented you from going to things over the summer during the day, know that Halloween Haunt is definitely not a kid-free event by any means.
While we did experience some children genuinely having a blast being able to enjoy the rides at night, and considering the Scare Zones and overall experience were not as terrifying overall there was definitely enough of a presence of kids to make the vibe seem like the older teen/adult-oriented Halloween Haunt event of years past and more like a nighttime festival. Think Nuit Blanche except with spooky music, copious amounts of fog machines on full blast, and the occasional person popping out at you between rides and performances.
A great example of this was the Vampire Disco – situated by the Kingswood Theatre and close to the former site of the significantly scarier and now-defunct “Club Blood” Maze – became a place for youngsters, families, and crowds of pre-teens huddled together to dance from classic Halloween Hits like Thriller to Gangnam Style. The vibe here was more of revelry and fun (and very likely the first dance experience at night for many in a long time / the first nighttime dance experience for many of these young kids period).
What Worked for Wonderland?
Once of the standout things that really made this year’s event different and notable from previous years, is the commitment to providing more live entertainment around the park to make up for any missed experiences. This we think, is something that Halloween Haunt should focus more on while they try to make the best out of a tricky and restrictive situation. Not listed on the Park Map (nor the Canada’s Wonderland app) were talented musicians and performers who were strategically placed in unannounced locations around the park. Unfortunately, nearby Cast Members (park employees) were unable to provide information on their set schedules, if any.
However these performances really helped amplify that night-festival vibe, and if Halloween Haunt was looked at as less of a terrifying event and more of a fun evening out, they really helped flesh out the experience and make the park feel so much more alive (despite being overrun by so much of the undead). Incorporating more of these not only enhanced the ambience in otherwise empty parts of the parks and create a “safer space” for folks to sit back and enjoy without being somewhat-scared, and allowed parents a place to spend a few hours not watching their kids run around the park.
Stay Tuned to MartysHUB.com as we bring you Part Two of this Review – including more details on rides and wait times, and some of the bad behaviour they witnessed on the first two days of this Event.
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