Six Flags Fright Fest at Magic Mountain “goes to 11” to borrow and twist a line from the great Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap fame.
Six Flags Magic Mountain hosted the media and VIPs on Friday, Sept. 14 for Fright Fest Extreme that runs at the Valencia amusement park on select nights through Nov. 3.
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Magic Mountain is going for quantity over quality this year in hopes of catching up to and eventually overtaking Universal’s Horror Nights and Knott’s Scary Farm.
It’s an ambitious and audacious goal that Six Flags achieves this year on one front: The Fright Fest “more, more, more” approach outdoes Horror Nights and Scary Farm in sheer volume.
Magic Mountain’s Fright Fest has more haunted mazes (11) and more scare zones (9) than either of its rivals.
“More, more, more” is the right approach when you are trailing badly and need to catch up to the perennial gold and silver medalists. It’s also painful, tiring, slow and ugly at times and even seemingly fruitless.
But the sheer effort and boldness of the necessary endeavor is an important part of the process.
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Fright Fest Extreme proves it is worthy of being in the same ring as Knott’s and Universal this year — even if the results aren’t always pretty. The message: Magic Mountain is in the game to stay and it isn’t going away quietly into the foggy night.
The 1984 “This is Spinal Tap” mockumentary movie was famously filmed at Magic Mountain with the band performing as the second billing to a puppet show at a sparsely attended concert at a fictional theme park. The scene was filmed in Magic Mountain’s Showcase Theater — the precursor to the Golden Bear that is in the process of being demolished.
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Fright Fest certainly turns things up to 11 this year at Magic Mountain.
Step one in any comeback journey is to tear down the past. Magic Mountain is taking a wrecking ball to its reputation as the perennial bronze medalist in the annual Southern California Halloween showdown — just like it did to the Golden Bear Theater.
Fright Fest is going after longtime champ Horror Nights and tearing a page from its playbook with a handful of haunted mazes based on Hollywood horror film franchises.
Let’s look inside each of 11 Fright Fest mazes and rank them from best to worst.
The Saw film franchise movies follow the bloody trail of the Jigsaw serial killer who sets physical and psychological torture traps for his victims that he calls tests or games.
Magic Mountain needs to look to this year’s Saw maze if it wants to find the path forward in its bloody battle with Horror Nights and Scary Farm.
The Saw maze does everything right — from set design and storytelling to characters and scares.
The triggered scares where a “scareactor” hits a button to set off sound and lighting effects before popping out of a hiding place were executed perfectly — something sorely lacking in other mazes throughout the night.
There are a lot of long, dark and empty hallways in this year’s Fright Fest — but none as good as the one in the Saw maze that hits you with plumes of fog from above and blasts of air at your ankles.
The torture traps don’t show up until the second half of the maze – but they are worth the wait. Expertly designed and perfectly executed, you will want to help these poor souls escape their excruciatingly painful fate – and get out of there as fast as you can to avoid the same plight.
The Conjuring film franchise dramatizes the exploits of real-life paranormal investigators and creates origin stories for the spirits they encounter.
Last year, Magic Mountain dipped its toe into the water of intellectual property horror mazes with a Conjuring maze that felt one-third finished.
This year, the Conjuring maze feels two-thirds finished. Maybe next year it will be complete and ready for prime time.
The good news: This year’s maze is twice as good as last year’s version.
The scareactors help bring the Conjuring stories to life. The priest splashing holy water on passing visitors is great. The picture frame with a pair of hands coming out of the wall to reveal the monster behind the painting goes down as one of the best — and simplest — effects of the night.
A zoetrope scene creates a mesmerizing visual illusion that reinforces the storytelling and adds action without the need for a scare.
One big ding: The exterior does nothing to sell what’s inside the maze. Nailing a vinyl “Conjuring” sign up on the building facade is lazy — and won’t move Fright Fest ahead of Horror Nights or Scary Farm.
The Netflix show about supernatural forces and secret government experiments follows a group of 1980s kids as they try to get to the bottom of what’s happening in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana.
I came in with high hopes for the Stranger Things maze and needed to return a second time to fulfill those great expectations.
As with many of the mazes throughout the night, the scareactors were sparse to nonexistent the first time around. At times, Fright Fest mazes appeared to simply shut down for 15 minutes so the spread-thin talent could take a break.
The good news is the scareactors in the Fright Fest mazes and scare zones are simply fantastic. And that is especially true in the Stranger Things maze.
Without the scareactors, a maze can feel like walking through a museum. With them, the scenes come alive.
The storytelling is the draw with familiar franchises like Stranger Things. You want to see the familiar faces from the show. Fortunately for me, that happened the second time around.
The biggest takeaway: Magic Mountain needs to tighten up the spacing in the Stranger Things maze. The rooms are too big and need to feel more intimate and confining with no place to run.
The 2007 “Trick ‘r Treat” film follows a series of interconnected storylines with a demonic trick-or-treater named Sam tying the tales together.
The Trick r’ Treat maze hits a lot of the storytelling points from the movie — if you’ve watched the horror flick recently about a small town that faces real ghosts and goblins on Halloween night.
The focus is on storytelling rather than set decor in the Trick r’ Treat maze There’s a ton of blackout walls and long hallways where you wonder where you’re going and what’s around the corner.
Fright Fest tends to get better over time. This maze has incredible potential. Once again, it’s a simple story that’s easy to quickly understand.
Trick r’ Treat offers a great base to expand upon. Magic Mountain can add to this maze each year and build it out over time.
The story is generic enough to work for people unfamiliar with the movie, but can also go much deeper for fans of “Trick r’ Treat.”
The walls of a dilapidated home come alive with the spirits who once lived in this haunted house, taken over in past years by a Spring Break frat party.
You know what you’re getting with a condemned haunted house and it’s an easy story to tell — even without the backstory of a major horror franchise. The set dressing is solid throughout and works from year to year with slight storytelling tweaks.
The frat party is finally over, but there are still a few reminders of the kegger-gone-mad lingering in the halls.
The vibe in the Condemned house is utterly fantastic. It’s less about jump scares and more about in-your-face moments of way-too-close uncomfortableness.
The scareactors all look slightly deranged with wild Cheshire Cat grins on their faces as if the frat bros decided to swap a Coors Light keg for a tank of laughing gas.
The Condemned: Forever Damned maze gets the award for the best talent of the night. Which also helps make it this year’s best non-IP maze.
Step into an oozing underground world of terrifying tunnels filled with lost souls amid the dank air and the smell of dread in this disgusting trip through city sewers.
Yuck is the best word to describe the Sewer of Souls maze. Here’s another simple concept that’s easy to convey and visualize. The only thing missing is the smell.
I love the toilet plungers dripping with sewage that hang from the ceiling like putrid light fixtures.
The best effect: The inflatable walls squeezing in from both sides that feel like you are descending deeper and deeper into sewer water. A blast of smell here could help sell the illusion and make it even more memorable.
Step inside a haunted studio for a warped version of the “Truth or Dare” TV game show.
Truth of Dare is both the worst maze from a set dressing perspective and the best maze in terms of scares.
I jumped out of my skin a half dozen times as I walked through endless hallways of painted plywood walls. Nobody was taking a break in Truth of Dare. The scareactors get an A for effort in this one.
Another inflatable wall gag is played to great effect in the Truth or Dare maze with the bug-filled pillows of air seemingly going on forever.
The Army of the Dead maze based on the 2021 Netflix film remake visits Las Vegas during a viral outbreak lockdown as survivors battle the undead.
This new intellectual property maze takes over half of the Aftermath outdoor maze that has always been a highlight of past Fright Fests.
This one leans heavily on jump scares but lacks the triggered sound and lighting effects necessary to pay it off.
There is some backstory here centered on a Las Vegas zombie apocalypse, but the lack of scareactors once again does in this maze. A lot of gray walls — a recurring theme of this year’s Fright Fest — didn’t help propel any attempts at storytelling.
You’re left thinking: Six Flags paid money for this? It feels like they stuck the Army of the Dead on top of Aftermath and tacked on a little bit of indoor maze at the end.
Fright Fest needs to do better than this to compete with Knott’s and Universal. The natural next step is to trim back on the number of mazes and scare zones and focus on quality.
The reincarnated Willoughby family roams the harrowing hallways of their beloved mansion in this classic Magic Mountain haunted house.
Willoughby’s is always one of my favorite Fright Fest mazes with terrific set dressing. This year fell flat in large part due to a lack of talent.
What’s clear is Magic Mountain needs to hire more scareactors if it’s going to build more mazes and add more scare zones. If you take a “more, more, more” approach that needs to extend to hiring as well.
Fright Fest feels like it’s staffed at about one-third to half the level it needs to be. That’s unlikely to change this year, but it sure needs to if Magic Mountain wants to compete with the titans of terror.
The Willoughby family is working hard without much support. Two or three times the number of reincarnated family members would help bring the place to life.
Without the talent, Willoughby’s mansion just looks and feels old and tired.
Demonic relics cast spells on a dark and sinister antique shop and haunt those who try to steal the artifacts in this past-its-expiration-date Fright Fest maze.
Speaking of old and tired, the demon’s lair needs to be retired and reimagined as something new. It’s played out and has seen better days.
There are plenty of the potential “one of these things is not like the other” scares that don’t get paid off in the way you expect. Instead of one of the dozen mannequins coming to life, it’s just another jump scare coming out of a curtain.
The fog-shrouded post-apocalyptic city filled with life-size props, pyrotechnics and other special effects has been cut in half from past years to make room for the new Army of the Dead maze.
The Aftermath maze feels like the Afterthought maze this year as the Army of the Dead ends up with the better half of the outdoor maze.
This seems like Magic Mountain needed one more maze to “go to 11” like Spinal Tap and decided to tack this one on just for the sheer sake of volume.
