Los Angeles Haunted Hayride: 2020 Review

Bonelli Regional Park, San Dimas, CA

Happy October, fiends! Welcome to the first proper haunt review of the season—a solid three weeks after we would have normally posted one thanks to the unique circumstances of 2020 and life with the novel Coronavirus. With no Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights, no Fright Fest at Six Flags Magic Mountain, no Knott’s Scary Farm (though their Taste of Fall-O-Ween is pretty fantastic), and no Dark Harbor, it falls upon the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride—now a Halloween season mainstay itself—to anchor the most frightening time of the year.

This year, like pretty much all haunts, the Hayride is different. Not only is it in a different location—Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas, right next to Raging Waters, instead of its usual Griffith Park Old Zoo location—it is in a different format. Instead of offering the traditional haunted hayride attraction and a few accompanying mazes, the creative minds at 13th Floor Entertainment have introduced what they’ve branded a Drive-Up experience. What does that mean? Well, it’s basically a drive-thru haunt and a drive-in haunt combined into one. Guests can experiences chills and thrills and a welcome amount of spooky fun without having to leave their vehicles (unless they select the top of the line, super-special Platinum Experience).

The iconic Haunted Hayride entrance returns for this year’s Drive-Up experience.

It certainly sounded intriguing when this format was announced a couple of months ago, but how would it translate into real life? We were fortunate enough to attend the L.A. Haunted Hayride’s media night last night, and we’re here to break down the experience for the unique circumstances.

The Drive-Thru: All Hallows Lane

Guests to the L.A. Haunted Hayride should make their way to the 57 freeway and exit Via Verde in San Dimas. Turn left (it works out regardless of if you were coming in northbound or southbound) and head east before turning left shortly afterward on Raging Waters Drive. This is the only entrance for the Hayride.

Welcome to Midnight Falls. Darkness dwells here.

There is an initial soft ticket check at the head of Raging Waters Drive to separate VIP and Platinum Experience vehicles from Standard and Preferred vehicles. The actual entrance into the venue occurs further up the road, where tickets will be scanned and an section-identifier is provided to the vehicle. Guests are encouraged to arrive 15-40 minutes in advance, but they will need to queue up in advance of the entrance to wait for the previous show to let out.

Familiar scenes of trick-or-treating line All Hallows Lane.

Some residents have had more tricks than treats.

From there, the first half of the 2020 Los Angeles Haunted Hayride experience begins. This first part is a leisurely and scenic drive through “All Hallows Lane,” a creepy and dark stretch of wilderness road on the “outskirts” of Midnight Falls, leading into town. This is effectively the drive-thru portion and features a series of sets that may be familiar to guests of last year’s Hayride. Facades from the Trick Or Treat maze, the Midnight Falls Cemetery, and even some ghoulish creatures lurk around each corner.

One of the new sets is his pretty gnarly boating scene with sea creatures that seems to evoke designer Jon Cooke’s The Depths maze from Knott’s Scary Farm.

There are no live scaractors, though. For safety and logistic reasons, All Hallows Lane is a static experience, with a few triggered animatronics effects to add some visual interest. Guests can proceed along the drive at their own leisure, and those further back in line will likely have a lot of time to observe the scenery in stop-and-go traffic cascaded from vehicles pausing and being directed to their rows at the end of the drive. In some ways, the procession feels like the traditional Hayride, in that guests are in a moving vehicle slowly by multiple scenic elements. It’s only missing the theatrical show moments and monsters crawling from the woodwork.

One of the few “scares” along All Hallows Lane—all of the animatronic kind.

Sharp-eyed guests can pick out some fun Easter eggs scattered along All Hallows Lane. One of the new sets is called Club Blood—an nod to the old Knott’s Scary Farm maze. The cemetery features gravestones with the names of some of the designers and creators from Plague Productions—Jon Cooke’s original production design company. Another fun fact: the silhouettes in the window of the MFAM radio station building are actual writer and producer Ted Dougherty and creative director Jon Cooke.

Club Blood brings vampires and spooky jam vibes to Midnight Falls.

Midnight Falls radio features a variety of fun audio bits.

The scenic drive is definitely best after dark, so avoid the first show, when there is still a bit of fleeting daylight in the dusk hour, if you prefer the full atmosphere. There’s a certain feeling of whimsy and spooky Halloween charm through the cruise—the same nostalgic and enchanting manifestation of slightly scary autumn fun that the Hayride recaptured when they enlisted the services of Plague Productions last year that’s present. Though a lot of the content returns this year, given the extenuating circumstances of COVID-19 and its cancellation of so many events in 2020, the establishing atmosphere is still sinisterly delightful.

Demonic creatures lurk around Midnight Falls.

The Drive-In: Midnight Falls Film Festival

The drive rounds the corner to the old Midnight Falls Drive-In. Just before entering, guests encounter the emcee of the hour himself, Monte Revolta, bantering through a ticket trailer and being his hilariously obnoxious and antagonizing self to each group of guests coming through. The show portion only features the musician in a pre-recorded role, so it’s fantastic to see him live and performing in his own witty and cheesy insult comic way each night of the event.

Monte Revolta greets vehicles as they arrive—and razzes them too.

From there, vehicles are routed to their respective section rows and parked. There is always at least one car stall worth of space between groups, and guests are not allowed outside their vehicles throughout the experience. The only exceptions are the Platinum Experience ticket holders, who park next to an open air trailer with capacity for up to 8 guest and then board their seats on the trailer, and guests who need to use the restroom (there are portapotties on premises, though guests aren’t allowed out their vehicles while cars are still being parked for safety reasons).

Fancy schmancy Platinum Experience guests get to drive through this gory set.

The Platinum Experience comes with its own open air trailer with eight spots. Only one vehicle per trailer, though, so most groups aren’t actually getting eight people unless they’re in a full sized van.

The layout of the drive-in portion of the Haunted Hayride is in the overflow parking lot of Raging Waters. Four drive aisles with seven total parking rows accommodating up to 70 vehicles lay out across the field, with an drive-in theater-style inflatable projection screen front and center. Videos and vignettes offer a bit of entertainment during the loading process. They’re like the pre-movie commercials and trivia games that we’re all used to be accustomed to.

A familar mechanic’s garage to guests of last year’s Hayride or Midsummer Scream.

Though there are speakers positioned throughout the grounds, guests can also tune into the show audio on their own car radios.

To either side are a couple of set pieces—one, the familiar Midnight Falls garage that served as the portal to the loading area of last year’s actual Hayride; the other, a new diner facade that would have been the front of a maze for a normal iteration of the event. And even as people are entering, there are already atmosphere scaractors prowling the grounds, imitating drive-in workers and going through various cleaning and preparatory tasks—often with exaggerated and hilarious pantomime!

After everything is settled, the lights dim, and the show begins in earnest. Monte Revolta, our not-quite-a-ghost host for the evening, appears on the big screen, delivers a few signature wise cracks, and quickly launches into a high energy rock performance welcoming everyone to the show. Dancers take their spot in elevated positions at the front, and strobes and colorful spotlights whirl around like a chaotic carnival rave. Under this fearsome festival, the monstrous residents of Midnight Hall come out of the… strawwork, prowling the grounds and creeping up on vehicles—and hopefully unsuspecting guests distracted by the performance in front!

One of many fiendish residents of Midnight Falls.

The format of the show follows Monte Revolta through several cinematic musical sequences and skits and serving as a curator of the three short horror films that act as the feature at this drive-in. The movies are the only portion that aren’t completely original to the Haunted Hayride production. They’re licensed shorts from Crypt TV, including a story about a little girl at bedtime and what lurks under the bed and inside the closet, a tale about a jealous and murderous best friend of a high school alpha, and a retelling of the classic Peter Pumpkin Eater legend.

The Crypt TV interludes are fun for those who aren’t familiar with them, and they even conjure up some Halloween Horror Nights vibes, since Crypt TV shorts play in the queues of the Terror Tram. But those who subscribe to the horror channel may find themselves watching something they’ve seen before.

This is probably not a sanitary cotton candy even in non-COVID times, let alone during a pandemic.

The horror variety show-esque sequence continues for about half an hour before a rousing Monte Revolta finale. Through it all, Revolta’s wise-cracking humor and hideously charming personality keep the action running along. And though a couple of the songs might have felt a little out of pace and dragged a little bit, overall, it’s a fun and enjoyable time highlighted by the interactions with the live talent, who mix light startle scares with moments of monster silliness to provide as close to a traditional haunt experience as possible while still retaining that classic Halloween whimsy and light-hearted terror.

Logistically speaking, the L.A. Haunted Hayride has its positives and negatives. The guest procession into the drive-in area is generally pretty straightforward and organized, at least when we were there, and exiting the grounds by leaving back up All Hallows Lane isn’t too time consuming either. Vehicles in the back obviously have worse views than those in front, but even those in front may have poor views if they are parked closer to the center of the venue and have passengers in the back seat. Unless they’re in a convertible (or a pick-up truck; guests can turn the truck around and watch from the flatbed, offering a more open experience), the low framed angle means that the big screen is framed in tunnel vision through the front windshield. To that end, parking more to the side would actually be better for vehicles with guests in the back, because at least one of the guests can look out the side window without discomfort. Alternatively, additional big screens on the sides of the venue for a greater variety of views would have alleviate the view issues a lot.

The monster interaction is also more concentrated to rows in the higher price tier. The most attention is focused on the Platinum Experience guests in the open air trailers, and that means the VIP row adjacent to the front receives interactions by proximity too. There are a decent number of monsters through the drive-in, but the reduced-staff nature of COVID-19 operating conditions means that they’re still spread out.

Health standards-wise, the event feels comfortable and safely run. All cars are safely parked before any of the action begins. Guests must stay inside their vehicles at all times and must keep their face coverings on at all times. Their windows can be rolled up or down, and having windows down will definitely invite more investigation by the talent, who will creep inside of the 6 feet social distance from time to time, but they are wearing filtered face coverings under their character masks as well, and the interactions are fleeting, similar to simply walking past another person—a condition of minimal viral load exposure even where face coverings are not utilized, and thus lower risk. The monsters also never shout or scream; their actions are purely kinetic, and the scare generally fall upon the creeper category and the prop scare category.

Visually, the L.A. Haunted Hayride Drive-Up experience looks fantastic.

Understandably, the biggest hesitation some may have is the price tag for the product offered. Tickets start at $50-$60 depending on date for the lowest “Standard” tier, which allows for two “front seat” guests to attend and places them in rows 6 and 7. Preferred tickets are $70-$80 and place guests in row 4 and 5. VIP tickets range from $90-$100, and the Platinum Experience is $200-$250. Except for the Platinum Experience, vehicles with more than 2 occupants will need to purchase and additional “Back Seat Pass” at $10 a head. Divide that by, say, four people per vehicle, and that brings the price to anywhere from $17.50 per person all the way up to $30 per person for an approximately 45 minute experience. Under those terms, the value isn’t that bad, but for cars with only one or two guests, the cost per person is a little higher and maybe not as great of a value.

Interestingly, when the constraints of multiple people in a vehicle are factored together, the Platinum Experience actually emerges as possibly the best option for a group of Halloween fans looking for an optimum experience. The Platinum Experience is $200 to $250 for up to 8 people, and it is the only tier that doesn’t require Back Seat Passes to be purchased for any group greater than two guests. Bring an SUV with six passengers, and the cost per person is $33 to $42 per person, which is not bad at all for a extra perks haunt experience that brings extra attention and more open, exposed views.

I’ve always felt that the L.A. Haunted Hayride has been slightly overpriced due to its Los Angeles location and “Hollywood-adjacent” glamor association, but for the time offered, I don’t think the pricing structure is as outrageous as some online have complained. But different fans will evaluate off different thresholds, and the information broken down above is provided simply to help interested parties make a decision. The biggest catch is just having the proper expectations for the experience.

Monte Revolta poses with Jon Cook at the L.A. Haunted Hayride.

Ultimately, that experience is a solid, creative, unique celebration of Halloween tailor-made for one of the perhaps the most extraordinary circumstances of our times. In a worldwide pandemic, with fears of the cancellation of Halloween, the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride shows that the fall holiday is very much alive, and its spirit lives in the creativity and innovation of passionate creators who care about maintaining a wholesome and exciting experience that can still deliver the essence of October. It simply isn’t possible to create a haunt to the full intimacy, immersiveness, and enveloping quality as a regular pedestrian walk-through during a pandemic, but the crew behind the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride have certainly put together a satisfying alternative that makes the best out of its challenging circumstances!