Six Flags broke a niche corner of the Internet on Monday by announcing a full-fledged foray into Intellectual Property-based haunted attractions at its newly rebranded Fright Fest Extreme Halloween event. In normal person, that translates to: Movies you’ve heard of, perhaps even like, will be represented as haunted houses at a Six Flags near you.
This isn’t completely out of left field, of course. Six Flags tested the waters in 2023 with the introduction of Saw and The Conjuring to Magic Mountain and Great Adventure. The inclusion of The Conjuring stung for long-time Halloween Horror Nights watchers, who suspect Universal Studios was quite close to bringing the James Wan film to a previous event.
But if 2023 was an opener, this is the full act. The Conjuring Universe (The Conjuring, Annabelle and The Nun), Saw, Trick ‘r Treat, Stranger Things, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Army of the Dead. Great Adventure and Magic Mountain will again be the biggest IP beneficiaries, with the former getting Texas Chainsaw Massacre exclusively (hmm… I wonder why that might be!)
With the onslaught of IP attractions coming to Magic Mountain, the park in the most competitive haunt market in the country, it’s worth taking stock of Six Flags’ gamble. Along with the aforementioned maze announcements, Six Flags announced a restructuring to its Fright Fest ticket offerings. Most season pass holders will, as usual, need to buy a “haunt pass” for $35. No season pass? Your ticket will cost at least $75.
That’s $15 more than Knott’s Scary Farm tickets started at in 2023 and is just $2 less expensive than the starting price of a Halloween Horror Nights ticket. You see where I’m going with this.
I covered Fright Fest, now Fright Fest Extreme, for Theme Park Insider in 2022. It was fine, if rough around the edges. But it was, by and large, competing with Knott’s Scary Farm — a park that’s approximately 500 miles away from. It wasn’t competing with Halloween Horror Nights on price, quality or vibe. It was a different thing and customers attended with different expectations.
That luxury is gone. Six Flags wants to tackle branded horror in Universal Studios’ backyard without offering a significant discount. This may matter little to the dozens of attendees with Magic Mountain season passes, but it will almost certainly matter a great deal to those shelling out for a regularly priced ticket. As I noted in my review, price has always been an issue for those uninterested in 12-month access to Magic Mountain, but in the past it was more challenging to make an apples-to-apples comparison.
This gamble can, of course, be a smashing success if Six Flags properly invests the time, money and personnel into making these haunts a success. It sounds like they’ve at least secured proper personnel on the art direction front. Whether that commitment will carry over to proper budgeting for these mazes or for the actors to populate them, well, color me skeptical.
But it would be great for the haunt landscape in Southern California if it pays off. Knott’s Scary Farm has not been its best self since the pandemic, allowing Horror Nights to lumber forward as something of a hegemonic force. The event remains great, exceedingly popular and, yes, a bit pricey. What could true competition, for the first time since the early 2010s, force Horror Nights to do? I’d love to find out.
* * *
To keep up to date with more theme park news, please sign up for Theme Park Insider's weekly newsletter.
If I lived in the area I probably would have a season pass to SFMM and would definitely try this event since I love Halloween. If I didn't have a season pass I probably would try it at $75 but would have pretty low expectations. Is Fright Fest as packed as HHN? If the crowds are smaller might still be worth the cost.
Coming from Canada we typically always go to Orlando since its bigger but always wanted to try HHN in Hollywood. This event at SFMM wouldn't draw me in as an outside visitor. We would most likely go to Knott's if I managed to convince my husband to come to another Halloween event on the same trip which isn't very likely haha.
The Horror Made Here event at WB was fantastic. Do I think SF will live up to that? No. But I'm hoping they can get there within a few years time.
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
I have ZERO confidence that Six Flags is going to pull this off. While the chain has invested more in comprehensively theming their newest attractions and lands, I worry that the shear cost of licensing these horror IPs will result in attractions with cut corners and cheap set design. I would love to be proved wrong, but we've seen this story far too often over the past 2 decades of Six Flags' history. The the chain appears to commit to improve the guest experience only for executives to force shrewd business decisions that prioritize optimizing revenue and cost savings over customer satisfaction, leaving operations managers high and dry.
Also, given the high price, I really wonder how many non-season passholders will actually pay for this on a single day ticket. Perhaps the nominal upcharge for season passholders will help the chain sell more passes, and if the quality of the event is decent, maybe a lot of season passholders will actually pay extra for the Fright Fest attractions. However, given how far both of the "Extreme" parks are from the center of their respective metropolitan areas, it's going to be a tall task to draw single-day guests to these events even with these recognizable and popular IPs.