After Dark Harbor at the Queen Mary and Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood, we still had one more stop on our SoCal Halloween run: Knott’s Scary Farm in Buena Park. Three haunts in three nights sounds like a lot, but by the time we got to Knott’s, we were fully in the Halloween groove.
Another breeze-through weeknight
Like the rest of our trip, we went on a weekday, and it paid off again. Waits were short both getting in and moving between mazes — a pattern we were more than happy to see repeat for a third night in a row.
All ten mazes, two clear favorites
We ended up doing all 10 mazes on the 2025 lineup, and two stood out above the rest:
Cinema Slasher — walking through the movie screen and into a different slasher trope each chapter is such a clever concept, and it never got old
Widows — the arachnid-infested nursing home turned lair of the wicked queen spider, complete with a genuinely massive spider prop out front
Beyond those two, we also went through Mary: The Haunting of Worth Home, The Zoo, Eight Fingers Nine: The Boogeyman, Origins: The Curse of Calico, The Grimoire, Mesmer: Sideshow of the Mind, The Chilling Chambers, and Room 13.
Ten mazes in one night is a solid haul, and Knott’s really does earn its reputation as the birthplace of the modern theme park haunt. We skipped the rides this time around — three nights of haunts in a row was plenty ofstimulation without adding roller coasters to the mix.
Dessert before heading home
Before calling it a night, we grabbed The Queen of the Undead, a black velvet mini cake layered with raspberry jam, chocolate mousse, and orange buttercream frosting, finished off with a dramatic bat-faced mousse topper. Rich, a little dramatic, and exactlythe kind of over-the-top presentation you want from a Halloween dessert.
And, of course, no haunt weekend of ours is complete without another t-shirt. We’re building quite the collection at this point.
