Six Flags Magic Mountain Fright Fest 2021: Mazes

Six Flags Magic Mountain, Valencia, CA

Happy #Flashback Frightday! Today, we're taking a step back a couple of weeks as we bridge the gap to our next set of haunts (we have ten total for this weekend, so, um, it's going to be busy...). We're doing another deep dive (i.e. excuse to post a bunch of photos) at one of the big theme park haunts, specifically Six Flags Magic Mountain's Fright Fest and the mazes at this year's event. Although Fright Fest introduced a lot of new attractions this year with two new scare zones and two new shows, mazes weren't part of that menu. However, the Willoughby's Resurrected maze did receive an unexpected refresh thanks to a partnership with the Discovery+ show, Ghost Adventures, and their "Ghostober" promotion.

If you've never gone to Fright Fest before, all six mazes are new to you, and you might be surprised that their quality isn't the low-grade, mediocre home haunt stereotype that the event used to be known for. The park has made a conscious investment over the past five years into their Fright Fest maze to compete with their splashier counterparts like Knott's and Universal. So lets take a photo tour into the 2021 line-up, ranked roughly by our most favorite to our least impactful.

As usual, maze experiences can vary wildly, and a really good walkthrough for one person might be lackluster for another. That is part of the chance of timing for these things.

Willoughby’s Resurrected

We've only been attending Fright Fest since 2016, so our five year sample size is relatively small, but even back on our first visit through, the Willoughby's Resurrected maze was already a pretty veteran maze, having first opened in 2012. That maze replaced the even older Willoughby's Haunted Mansion, so really, the Samurai Summit maze location near the queue for Ninja has had the same theme for two decades.

From our first visit, we've always thought that the Willoughby's Resurrected maze had the bones of a very high quality experience--if only you could see anything. The dim and moody interiors maintained an ominous tone, but the ambiance was also dreary and dull because the lighting never seemed to vary to contrast or emphasize certain elements. Of all the Fright Fest mazes, Willoughby's was always the most difficult to photograph because of the lack of light, which was a shame, because the talent always seemed to be energetic, with great timing and a penchant for engaging guests with some nice scares. It also struck us odd that there was never really any soundtrack for Willoughby's, because while that was generally the case for most Fright Fest mazes, having zero audio in a haunted house-themed maze really took away from the atmosphere.

Do you like dolls? Because this maze now has a bunch of creepy dolls.

Well, similar to our (joking) credit-taking for the improvements at Dark Harbor and L.A. Haunted Hayride over the years, we think someone must have been reading, because those issues were directly addressed in a surprise makeover for the maze this year. Sponsored by Discovery+'s Ghost Adventure show, this year's Willoughby's Resurrected features a ghost hunting theme (as expected) with the complete revamp of two of the maze's rooms and a partial refurbishment of another. In addition, the lighting of the entire maze has been noticeably cleaned up, brightened, re-directed, and enhanced in order to actually provide visual drama and highlighting in each of the scenes. A few new projection effects have been installed, and a small amount of audio has been overlaid to help make the supernatural search story a little more immersive.

It’s amazing what a roomful of candles can do to a place.

The result is a maze that feels like new, with the two new scenes serving as beautiful focal points for story of the cursed Willoughby family. The doll room is creepy and full of unnerving dread, while the occultish shrine in the second to last room is absolutely stunning and a wonderful tip to the quality Six Flags is aspiring to as the chain continues to upgrade the image of its Fright Fest events. The monsters throughout the maze were also great with their timing and scares, mixing a variety of tactics from the standard "boo box" type with statue scares or lulling into false sense of security scares to deliver a very enjoyable experience.

We came away pretty impressed with a maze that we originally expected to be another ho-hum one-shot, especially since none of the improvements were advertised. Instead, this was easily our favorite maze of the night.

Aftermath 2: Chaos Rising

Returning for its fifth year over by the Apocalypse roller coaster, Aftermath 2 continues to thrill and impress with its cataclysmic atmosphere and epic sets. Sprawling and open, the largest maze at Fright Fest is an established veteran at this point, but its high quality and sheer magnitude of scale keeps it near the top of our maze rankings.

Although this maze did see the impacts of Fright Fest's noticeable reduced staffing issues, the maze is large enough that even the remaining cast could buffer the impact. For the most part, there was talent at most of the scene stations, which helped maintain the frenetic tone of a world engulfed by disaster and being overrun by a mysterious and hideous infection that turned its victims into members of the undead.

Fire good. Fire contributes to a large part of why we love this maze.

We don't see Aftermath 2 receiving improvements anytime soon, but fortunately, this is a maze that remains pretty strong without any plussing.

Sewer of Souls

From the top two, the mazes take a tangible step down, mostly because of the unfortunate issue that all haunts are facing this year with relative lack of talent--but an issue that felt more exacerbated at Six Flags this year compared to some of its competitors.

Yes, yes, you can make a lot of jokes about how Fright Fest is the sh!tter, and this maze seems to play upon all of that.

Sewer of Souls, a favorite for its bold visuals and cheeky, almost self-referencing humor when it opened in 2018, has slipped a couple of notches this year. The maze is unchanged from previous years, and it offers the same fun and inside joke opportunities as previously. However, the maze is less dynamic because of its relative shortage in scareactors, leaving the resulting walkthrough feeling shorter than before and less interactive.

Same can be said about a graffiti’d up wasteland. But the tongue-in-cheek nature of this maze is what makes it fun.

This maze is also a 3D maze, but we didn't receive any 3D glasses when we visited a couple of weeks ago. We're not sure if this was standard across the board or an oversight (and some guests who don't care for the 3D gimmick may actually be relieved), but it did take away from the impact a little bit. On the other hand, with COVID still active and locations generally trying to limit contact with physical items, it would make sense if the absence of distributed 3D glasses was done in an effort to reduce the spread of germs via physical contact.

Vault 666: Unlocked

Vault 666: Unlocked has seen its share of themes over the years, starting out as an experimental lab with deranged creatures on the loose before receiving a makeover with the film, Hell Fest in 2018, then reverting to the Vault 666 look two years ago but with more of a dark magic overlay.

This year, the maze remains unchanged from its 2019 remakeover. Visually, this remains a strong presentation, with a variety of great scenes that reflect the run-up of investment that Six Flags has made in its Fright Fest parks over the past seven years. The scenes mix in variety from vibrant to foreboding, and the overall story of the occult-tinged experiments on creatures who end up breaking loose and rampaging through the facility is largely coherent.

Hands… so many hands… this is actually one of the cooler maze moments at Fright Fest, and creepy AF.

Did you miss the dolls in WIlloughby’s? Well, great news…!

Unfortunately, this maze was also marred by a relative lack of monsters, and though they were distributed as well as they could be, they couldn't prevent one from feeling like a trip through was more about admiring the scenic details than actually being frightened. As we've said before, we'll give Fright Fest a pass for this, because the general marketplace conditions are kind of out of its control, but that doesn't mean the impact wasn't felt.

Condemned: Forever Damned

Across from Vault 666, Condemned also returned with no observable changes. This 2018 successor to the former Toyz of Terror maze continues to be a stark aural contrast to its predecessor by being largely silent, and its general haunted house theme still feels like an odd redundancy with Willoughby's Resurrected remaining on the line-up.

Mom invites you over for dinner, and you just walk on through because YOU’RE SO UNGRATEFUL!! What, roach risotto isn’t good enough from your ma?

Although the overall quality of the set design isn't bad, this maze has never really had the impact for us that Fright Fest's other mazes have held. Though there are high points--the woman in the dining room was a great mix of entertaining and scary with her banter mixed with sudden startles, and some of the rooms are very photogenic and pop visually, the overall maze is too disjointed and in tone and storytelling to achieve an effective narrative. We get the idea that the inhabitants of this house are cursed, but what's happening beyond that?

Clowns are also cursed around here. The overhead startle moment triggered by strobes is a nice touch.

Condemned is a maze that could benefit from a tightening up of the concept and aesthetics to be more consistent, and a potentially sponsor-assisted half-renovation of this similar to what Vault 666 and Willoughby's have received could definitely help improve this maze, which we figure isn't going anywhere either because of its young age.

Red’s Revenge

Finally, Red's Revenge has been a favorite of ours in the past--telling an alternate story of Red Riding Hood whose journey to visit her grandmother ends in a grisly demise, only for her soul to be resurrected as a vengeful spirit bent on exacting retribution from her village because no one bothered to accompany her and protect her from the wolf. Unfortunately, of all the mazes at Fright Fest this year, this one felt the most severely impacted by lack of monsters. There was barely a handful throughout the maze, including the most jarring and obvious of the absences, Red Riding Hood herself at the climactic scene at the finale of the maze where she summons her creatures to further exact doom. The preshow that sets the story has also been foregone, which makes the maze a little more random-looking because there isn’t a guiding narrative to tie the mix of forest creatures and spiders and other monsters together.

This is now Fright Fest's oldest maze that has not received any sort of redo (since Willoughby's--which is two years older--did get made up this year), and if Six Flags intends on keeping it, Red's Revenge is definitely the maze that needs it the most. Maybe a sequel to the story showing Red expanding her reign beyond her village could work. Better yet, since next year would be its eight season, a complete revamp and reconstruction into a new maze feels overdue.

That wraps up our look at this year's mazes at Fright Fest. Given the largely repeat faire, we have to say that the mazes weren't really a highlight in here in 2021, which might explain why lines for the mazes seemed a little less crowded this year than in past years. Given that the mazes are the upcharge at Fright Fest, which is included in general park admission, it seems many guests opted to just enjoy the complimentary shows and scare zones.

If the park hopes to improve profitability from the event, it's time to take another step forward with financial commitment to the mazes, similar to the great initiative Magic Mountain started in 2014 with three brand new mazes that year, followed by the wildly success redo of Aftermath into Aftermath 2 a couple of years later.

The event has definitely improved by leaps and bounds over the past decade, getting to a level that is respectable against Knott's and Universal (and the late Dark Harbor) through its investments. But as Knott's and Universal have continued to polish their haunt games, so Six Flags needs to keep up to remain competitive in the market. The scare zones are a huge hit with the public, and the investment into entertainment this year will definitely help attract guests in the future. But ultimately, it's the mazes that bring the biggest appeal to guests of haunted attractions. Without that allure (and if Fright Fest remains a non-separately ticketed occasion), Fright Fest may stand to lose traction once again, which would be a shame, because it's definitely come a long way to become a respectable haunt in and of itself!