Rotten Apple 907 presents Death Triangle: 2019 Review
Rotten Apple 907, Burbank, CA
Ready for another epic home haunt? Today, we go and visit Burbank for one of our favorite home haunts of the entire Halloween season, the incredible Rotten Apple 907, a home haunt put on by Preston and Diane Meyer with big support from their family and friends, and one changes theme every single year.
We're relatively late in the media game in terms of covering Rotten Apple, having only first visited three years ago, when they presented a fairy tale nightmare in the form of their Not So Enchanted Forest maze. They followed this with a trek into demonic realms via Portal in 2017, and then returned to fairy tales with Killpetto's Workshop last year. This year, however, the folks at Rotten Apple have done a deep dive... deep into the ocean and its watery terrors with: Death Triangle.
Loosely mixing mythology related to the Bermuda Triangle with legends of sea creatures and seafaring tales, Death Triangle presents a far from typical haunt theme. But the ocean can be pretty scary, and the team's recreation of life and death on the waves represents some of their most elaborate and spectacular looking work ever!
The amazing facade of this year’s Rotten Apple is their most impressive yet!
It all starts with the facade, which this year drops jaws upon approach. A ship is seen running aground onto sharp, craggy rocks, pinning the vessel as it takes on water. Further down the street, a propeller airplane has crash landed onto the maze's roof, no doubt disabled by the strange frequencies and mysterious forces within the Bermuda. There's a sense of the old explorer's club adventure hunting in the aesthetic of the facade, and it provides a dramatic and stunning and elaborate front to the street.
Guests enter the maze by ascending a set of steps through a ragged tear in the ship's hull, where they knock upon an exposed door to review Preston as the Captain--and surprisingly not in drag this year! The ship has run aground, and it's taking on water quickly. Those who dare to enter must fend off hidden menaces from the deep. Be especially aware of the Kraken, which makes its presence felt throughout the maze layout.
Incredible lighting effects portray an undersea wonder… and terror!
The danger becomes immediately apparent in the following room, where the corpses of the crew are seen draped in their bunks. Beware, though. Forces are strange in this nook of the ocean, and those who appear to be dead may not necessarily remain that way. The threat is underscored in the room after the bunks, where another captain points to a second breach in the hull, with massive tentacles creeping in.
Venturing into the deep of the sea, guests quickly encounter various sea creatures, ranging from jellyfish to sharks to mermaids and more, realized in various media, be they projections or animatronics or theming or live actors. A few soft scares can be found within the layout, but the focus is clearly on the incredible underwater ambiance, aided by lighting assisted by Midsummer Scream and Ghost Train promoter, Gary Baker, who assisted with Rotten Apple's build this year.
The journey continues deeper into a crashed plane.
The adventure brings guests into the wreckage of a lost plane, complete with occupants still on board, struggling to escape the Triangle. This leads guests into the climactic moment--a face-to-face with the mighty cephalopod itself, the Kraken--sharp teeth and all. The set piece looks incredible here, and the teeth make for an ominous passage through the tight space. A scare-less pysch-out through a blackout U-turn eventually leads guests out of the maze and toward escape!
Once again, Rotten Apple 907 has put on a stellar production, featuring a theme that is not typically done at home haunts and the production value of a large-scale movie studio team collaboration. Except they hardly have the resources to rival the big studios, so it's even more impressive to see this level of atmosphere is done by such a relatively small number of people! The visuals and set design are much more elaborate than any typical haunt, and they showcase why Rotten Apple continues to be a home haunt barometer that inspires plenty of other haunts new and old to create something relatively comparable.
The Kraken has been released! What an incredible piece of theming!
This year, donations are once again being accepted, with proceeds going to the Volunteers of Burbank Animal Shelter. This great organization helps rescue and rehabilitate animals and finds new forever homes for pets under their care. It's always great to see the inclusion of a charitable aspect to a haunt, which reinforces the "scare because we care" mentality.
Rotten Apple 907 is located on 907 N. California St., Burbank, CA 91505 and runs tonight and Halloween night. For future planning, past couple of years, it has been open the last two Saturdays and Sundays before Halloween, plus Halloween night itself. The maze runs from 7pm to 10pm, but the often-long line is capped before closing, because they must be completely closed by 10pm by order of the city. Don’t dawdle if you want to visit this amazing haunt!
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
