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9/30/2022 Review: Knott's Scary Farm 2022Happy Friday everybody and welcome to our yearly review of Knott's Scary Farm. This years event is a bit unique in that, well, it was completely dead (pun intended) the two nights we attended the event last weekend. This is due to the new Chaperone Policy and the extremely low numbers of Knott's Scary Farm Passes. I don't personally think the bag policy has anything to do with it. However, they have revamped the chaperone policy a bit for this weekend, let's see if it helps bring in more guests, or we'll see some other changes next week I'm sure. As for this years event, we were once again not a part of the media events at the park (as last year), but to us that doesn't really matter. We like to give you our honest view of events whether we are invited or not.  Everybody trying to get the same opening moment Thankfully, due to a happy accident, we were able to actually do our yearly maze videos which we'll display below. But first, let's jump right in and talk about the two new mazes, Grimoire and Bloodlines 1842. Bloodlines 1842 Armed with the latest Bellatorian weaponry, you can choose to heed the call to action and embark on a perilous journey with the immortal Daybreakers. Travel through the busy city streets of Valdonia while hunting the bloodthirsty Valhymphri in an all-out war. Bring light into the darkness, survive the vicious onslaught of vampires, and bring honor to your order!  Located in the former location of Paranormal Inc, the newest vampire maze at Scary Farm is visually stunning. Maybe one of the most visually stunning mazes at Scary Farm. Unfortunately, a maze that would easily be a B+ if it was a typical maze walk-through, is probably a solid D with the gun gimmick, which has no place in a Vampire maze. You are simply hustled through the maze far too quickly to appreciate the awesome work the set designers did here, it's confusing which Vampires you are actually supposed to shoot, as with Infected the guns don't always work, and at the end of the maze you have no idea what your score even is. Throw in a long pre-show that kills capacity and half of the maze talent basically telling you to hurry, and there you have it. Sadly, many of us saw this coming when they announced they were moving the guns here. I have to be honest, I really don't know how long the guns will last here, perhaps through the end of this season, but I would be surprised to see them back for 2023. If they felt they needed to use the Guns, they should have moved them over to Dark Entities and given that maze new life. The Grimoire Turn the page and enter the world of an ancient relic whose dark stories exist purely to turn your greatest nightmares into a reality. Try to escape the horror of the evil creatures released by the mysterious book, or have your soul eternally trapped within the pages of the next chapter!  The Grimoire is the second new maze of 2022 and is located in Mystery Lodge, where the final couple years of Infected were, and some classic Scary Farm Mazes like Terror of London, Blood Bayou and Forevermore called home. Unfortunately The Grimoire doesn't live up to the greatness of it's predecessors, but it definitely could at some point.  You arrive in some kind of campground in the Mystery Lodge lobby, but that's not explained much.  Our view of the preshow   The maze starts off with a pre-show video, but only in the stand-by line. If you are using front of the line passes, you get none of the backstory that is definitely needed with this one. A Bruce Campbell'esque character explains the history of the Grimoire, something that comes into play throughout the maze. Once you are in the Mystery Lodge lobby you head to a live pre-show, which once again explains next to nothing about the maze and is far too small for everybody to take in. This pre-show kills the capacity of yet another maze. Are you sensing the theme here? Perhaps playing the queue video in the Mystery Lodge lobby would help as well? Once in the maze, much of it is actually visually stunning. The black and white scenes are played out to perfection, and the timeline jumps (once you realize what's actually happening) are effective. The end of the maze is a bit confusing however. On Friday night we did stand-by with the pre-show video and enjoyed the maze much more. There was also some voice-over narration in the maze on Friday night that we either did not hear on two trips through on Thursday, or it wasn't on Thursday. At the end of the day, this maze feels like they took Stranger Things and Evil Dead, put them in a blender, and this is what they spat out. This maze has a LOT of potential however, and some minor tweaks like showing the pre-show video to all (we heard it wasn't even on last night in the stand-by queue) and eliminating the live pre-show would help. Alright, let's get to the returning mazes, we'll list them in our order of preference. Origins: The Legend of Calico Back this year, and great as it's been the past few years. This maze does not disappoint and is a love story to Ghost Town. This was our favorite of both nights.  Pumpkin Eater This maze has REALLY grown on me the past couple of years. It had the bad luck to debut the same year as Dark Ride (which is a top 10 all time maze for me) but unlike Dark Ride, this maze has continually seen touches added to it year after year. And this year is no different. I'm really going to miss this one and there are at least 3 other mazes I would rather see them replace for the 50th. Mesmer: Sideshow of the Mind In it's second year, Mesmer does not disappoint. Just continually creepy and disturbing, in all the best ways. This maze doesn't need the boo scare or people yelling in your ear, it's high marks are earned just through the chills you feel walking through it. Something I wish some other mazes at other events would utilize. Dark Ride Also in it's final year, this beloved maze still delivers. I do wish they would have changed this up a bit to give it a grand send-off, but the concept is just so fun. I hope it comes back in some form in a decade or so, just with a new dark ride. Kingdom of the Dinosaurs themed haunted maze dark ride anybody? The Depths The concept of this maze is so fun and so well done. This, along with one other maze seemed to suffer from not a lot of talent, especially in the first half of the maze. I do really hope they change things up here for the 50th. Wax Works I'm a big fan of Wax Works, but it just didn't work for me this year. Seemed to be a lot of effects not working on opening night (we didn't even bother on Friday) including the sign in front. Inexcusable for opening night IMO. Dark Entities I've gotten some slack for defending this maze the past couple of years, but sadly I just can't any more. I think this is an amazing concept, possibly the best overall concept of any maze at Knott's Scary Farm. But the execution is just severely lacking, and I think there were maybe 4 actors in this entire maze. Bring the guns over here and let's have an alien shoot-out. Scare Zones The Scare Zones at Knott's are just amazing, couple that with the lack of unsupervised kids running around trying to scare the monsters, or walking through the scare zones with their phone flashlight on, and that makes them even better. We spent A LOT of time in the Goring 20's and we definitely love the vibe of this area. The Hollows is also a favorite, although we're a bit sad it's going away after this year. Shows We're not big show people, but we're Puppet Up people. So that's the only show we saw, and we loved it. You can see all of our Puppet Up videos for 2022 below.
Overall, I have to say, it feels like a down year for Scary Farm. I realize it was opening weekend, but it just felt weird TBH. I thought it might have just been me due to my recent experiences with the park, but it's not. A lot of people I talked with opening night and since feel the same way. I'm not sure what it is, but I have every confidence the Knott's team will figure it out and this years event will be amazing as always. One thing I almost don't want to even mention ... with the current direction of both Knott's and Cedar Fair as a whole, as they're moving away from scary Halloween events and towards more interactive "Ghost Town Alive" type experiences, while also taking into account recent issues at a variety of parks, I really start to wonder what the viability of Knott's Scary Farm is after the 50th. The rumor is that the Scary Farm pass is not coming back in any form, and you just have to wonder if they may just call it a day after the 50th and do a more family friendly nighttime event moving forward. I hope not ... Related Videos
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9/24/2019 Knott's Scary Farm 2019 Opening Weekend Today we have the first of a few updates from this years Knott's Scary Farm. We attended all 3 nights of opening weekend and we are pretty confident when we say that this is one of the best years of Halloween Haunt ever (yes, we know it's not called that any more). Let's head into the fog and check out this years event. Written by Gregg Condon After our almost 3 1/2 hour drive down on Thursday afternoon (yeah) it was nice to check into the Knott's Hotel and enjoy some relaxing time at Amber Waves prior to media check in.  We ran into some friends
Amber Waves looks great all decked out (and the service was amazing all weekend)  Technically taken Friday morning, but we have to share the entrance. =)  We're all checked in and ready to get our scare on
The fountain display is amazing this year  Let's start our walk-through of the mazes, because they were amazing this year. Origins: The Curse of Calico I honestly don't have enough adjectives to describe how amazing this maze is. It's got everything. Amazing talent. Incredible sets. A stellar story. Easter Eggs galore. This maze tells the story of Sarah Marshall (not that Sarah Marshall) and the curse she set on Calico with her transition from human to, well, the green witch of course.  Even the queue line looks amazing  Picture slide-show of Origins Wax Works In ANY other year, Wax Works would have been the maze of the year, probably even moreso than my beloved Dark Ride during it's first year. I've always been a fan of Daniel Miller's work, and I think it's safe to say this may be the best maze he's ever done. It's creepy, exciting, tells a great story and has so many hidden things in it that you have to go through multiple times. We will be posting a tour we had of this maze in a couple of days.  Dark Ride Now in it's 3rd year, Dark Ride shows no signs of slowing down on the amazingness. Quite a few new things this year, including our favorite on-ride photo ever. We really do wish this was something we could buy. Also waiting to see if there are any complaints on this yet.  Dark Entities Now in it's second year, Gus Krueger's Dark Entities is setting itself up as one of the strongest mazes of 2019. In fact, our last trip through this maze on Saturday night was easily our best time through this maze ever. And may be the most fun we've had in any maze so far this season. Don't sleep on this maze, the talent is finding it's stride and there are a lot of great new lighting effects this year. The Depths In it's second year, the stand-out new maze from 2018 is also not showing any signs of letting up on the fun and scares. Some new additions this year including a pre-show that may make waits a bit longer than they normally would be. So get to this maze early. In fact, later in the night on Saturday they were skipping the new show scene altogether. So it will be interesting to see if it makes it through the season. Pumpkin Eater There are some mazes that are instant classics and yet others that kind of take a bit to hit their stride. Pumpkin Eater is one of those that really took about half way through it's opening season to hit all cylinders. But when it did, wow. This is a maze that has gotten better each and every year. Paranormal Inc We didn't go through Paranormal on media night so no video this year (we'll post last years below). There weren't any additions this year but the amazing ending from last year is more than enough to keep this maze one of our favorites. Still, we wouldn't be surprised if next year was the last go-round for this one. Shadowlands Now in it's final season, Shadowlands is still one of the most visually stunning mazes at the farm. This one suffers from being the first of the "new wave" of mazes that have taken over the past few years. Still, it's a lot of fun and we look forward to getting our last tours of this maze on upcoming visits.  Infected We didn't go through Infected on media night so no video on this one either. Infected is also in it's final season and again represents the first of the new wave of technological advances Knott's Scary Farm has implemented the past 5 or so years. When we went through on Saturday it just didn't seem like there were enough zombies in the maze. We walked out with 8 and 9 kills respectively.  Our favorite video of Infected remains our "Gun POV" that we did a few years back. Shows We'll start off with the Hanging, the proverbial "love it or hate it" show every year. I'll be honest, we're kind of in the middle this year. Unlike the last 2 years they didn't hang a "YouTube" or "Influencer" that 75% of the audience had to ask "who is that". So that was good. But this years show in particular has produced some interesting discussions as to what the ending could mean for the future of this show. We'll just have to see. Lastly, we want to take a second to talk about Puppet Up. I'll be honest, we had no idea what to expect from this show and even on media night we basically just wanted to sit down and take a rest so we decided to do it in the theater. We really aren't "theme park show people". So when we found ourselves back at the show the next 2 nights that should pretty much tell you how much we loved this show.  Basically it's "Who's Line is it Anyway" but with Puppets, complete with dirty language. We love that Knott's has allowed the show to go all out. Hopefully there haven't been any complaints about the content because word is spreading about how good the show is. The crowds were bigger on each subsequent night. On media night here is a great improv on an audience suggestion of a "Tiki Bar Fire at Disneyland". You can tell the cast truly understands Disney culture as this has reference to Annual Passholders, Pin Trading and much more. The show also features some classic Jim Henson puppet acts. They seem to switch it up at each show, the early show is typically "I've grown accustomed to your face". A highlight of each show is a performance of "Windy". So that's what we've got from our first Scary Farm update. We'll be putting together more pics and video from outside of the mazes and shows for our next update in a couple of weeks. The scare zones are amazing as always and deserve their own time in the spotlight.  Related Videos:
Related Updates:  Last weekend was the opening of Knott's Scary Farm 2018 and we were privledged to be able to attend 2 of the first 3 nights of the event. And we can tell you, we're already looking forward to our next trip. It's simply amazing. We got some great pictures both of the event and a couple of maze tours from the HorrorBuzz event thanks to Scott who attended. Enjoy!! Written by Gregg Condon Pics and Videos by Scott Linder and Gregg Condon Welcome to Knott's Scary Farm  We'll start off with a tour of our favorite maze of 2017, Dark Ride. It's pretty amazing in 2018 as well.  Be sure to check out all of our videos in this update, all in glorious 4k! Slideshow of the tour Next up was a tour of Pumpkin Eater, another of our favorite mazes of 2017. Which is also pretty amazing in 2018.  Thanks to Norm and HorrorBuzz for the awesome tour!!! And to Scott for sending us the pics!!   Not your typical red carpet  The fog is coming    The coolest  Our first maze of 2018 was the all new "The Depths" which is seriously so fun. And very fun to shoot pics and video in. (Just remember, don't disrupt the monsters, maze security or other patrons).       As the sun goes down, the fog rolls in   Carnevil has always been one of our favorite scare zones, but this year it's just on another level. The addition of HangTime has really completed this area.    Halloween Hootenanny is back, no monsters when we rode on Thursday, not sure if they will be back this year. But a fun, fun time for all!!  Paranomal Inc is back with an all new ending, which is fantastic!! This maze has NEVER been better.   Foggiesta Village  Who else wishes this ride was open for Scary Farm?  The Hollows is fantastic  And Pumpkin Eater is the perfect fit for the scare zone   Gabe is ready for Trick or Treat Lights Out  Always one of our favorites, and was easily the longest wait all weekend.   The hanging was also back this year. Always a fun look back on the past year. I'll admit, I'm getting to the age where I don't get some of the references. Eek. The last new maze for 2018 is Dark Entities. You could tell from the first weekend they are still finding their way a bit. Like Pumpkin Eater last year, I get the feeling that as the weeks go on, the crew here is going to find their groove and this maze is going to be fantastic!!  The effects and Lighting in Dark Entities are great!!   Some pics from around the park     Thanks Knott's for another great year of Scary Farm. We can't wait to get back soon!!   Related Videos:
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