Aug. 10--Knott's Berry Farm will add a new haunted maze for Halloween Haunt 2015 featuring a vengeful ice queen and will bring back an interactive zombie-killing experience that arms visitors with simulated military assault weapons.
The 43rd Knott's Scary Farm will start Sept. 24 and run on select nights through Oct. 31.
The granddaddy of Halloween events will feature 11 haunted mazes, three scare zones and two shows scattered throughout the Buena Park theme park. Elvira Mistress of the Dark will return as the face of the perennial event.
New for 2015, the Dead of Winter maze will put visitors in the icy grasp of a snow queen who sounds a lot like a vengeful version of Elsa from Disney's "Frozen."
The maze will include an army of resurrected Viking warriors hellbent on avenging the murder of the queen's family and determined to destroy anyone who enters her ice palace.
The returning Special Ops: Infected zombie apocalypse attraction taking over six acres of Camp Snoopy will feature all new missions, more monsters and improved laser guns that can be reloaded and upgraded throughout the interactive experience.
Guided by squad commanders, teams of Haunt visitors will set off into an infected zone swarming with zombies. The mission: Kill as many zombies as possible and rescue patient zero. An expanded queue for Special Ops will be set up in the former Slaughterhouse maze location.
So far, Knott's has announced only three of the 11 mazes planned for Haunt 2015 -- the new Dead of Winter plus two returning mazes, Tooth Fairy and Gunslinger's Grave. I will update this post with the latest details as more mazes are revealed.
It's a good bet that Haunt's upcharge maze, Trapped, will return with all new challenges for 2015 -- although nothing has been announced. The fate remains unknown for the other mazes from 2014: Voodoo, Black Magic, Forevermore, Trick or Treat, Pinocchio Unstrung, Dominion of the Damned and the Witch's Keep.
Reviews of returning mazes from best to worst:
Tooth Fairy
New in 2014, the Tooth Fairy maze mashes up two rites of passage: the legendary creature that sneaks into children's bedrooms in the middle of the night and an agonizing trip to the dentist's office.
The bizarre and twisted story got a little muddled in the middle but that didn't take away from a wonderfully detailed maze that delivered plenty of scares. The highlight of the maze was an animatronic version of the wicked tooth fairy herself in the final room.
This season, Tooth Fairy will add a Skeleton Key room, a pre-maze scene offered with several mazes that provides an intimate explanation of the back story for visitors who opt to pay extra for the Fright Lane front-of-line upgrade. Dead of Winter along with three other unannounced mazes will also feature Skeleton Key rooms.
Gunslinger's Grave: A Blood Moon Rises
With a well-conceived back story and impressive sets, the Wild West-themed Gunslinger's Grave maze suffered from one major problem: The masked cowboys wielding revolvers just weren't that scary.
A woman kidnapped by a lawless cowboy gang at the beginning of the maze was never revisited again. The lifeless saloons and corrals that visitors wandered through cried out for bar fights, shootouts and an old-fashioned hanging at the end. A new story line dubbed "A Blood Moon Rises" promises a werewolf invasion of the Wild West town.
Haunt 2015 will also feature two shows. Elvira Mistress of the Dark will return with an all-new music, dance and comedy show called "Elvira's Asylum."
Although it has not been announced, you can almost certainly count on "The Hanging" being the other show for Haunt 2015. The perennial pop culture evisceration of celebrities and their foibles mixes comedy and music with disembowelment and a noose-swinging finale.
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