Toluca Lake Pumpkin Festival: 2020 Review
Toluca Lake Pumpkin Festival, Toluca Lake, CA
Halloween night in Burbank wasn’t exclusively filled with home haunts. I was actually able to include a rare (for this year) commercial haunt in my itinerary when I stopped by the Toluca Lake Pumpkin Festival after finishing off the yard displays on my list that were in the local neighborhood.
I discovered the Toluca Lake Pumpkin Festival last year after two years of visiting my girlfriend/fiancée in Burbank and never realizing this quirky gem of a Halloween attraction was just sitting there, right off the 134 freeway and Cahuenga Blvd. A longstanding staple of the community, this pumpkin patch located behind a flower store features a unique haunted maze that changes a little bit each year.
The figures in the Toluca Lake Pumpkin Festival haunted maze were macabre and bizarre.
To be honest, I wasn't even sure if it would be open this year, due to COVID-19 and the County of Los Angeles' ban on haunted houses. When I was putting together this year’s SoCal Haunted Attractions Guide, I couldn’t actually find any confirmed information on whether the maze or pumpkin patch would be open this year, so I didn’t include the venue on the list. But I guess since the maze was somewhat an open air course, it ended up exempt for L.A. County’s rules?
The setting was very similar to last year’s ambiance, though on Halloween night, the pumpkins had all been picked clean by earlier guests in the month. The petting zoo was still open, interestingly, though I wasn’t about to volunteer physical contact with unknown surfaces in the middle of a pandemic. Instead, the haunted maze was my target, with an interest on whether it was exactly the same as last year, or if anything had changed. I went up to the cashier, paid the $6 ticket fee, and headed over to maze entrance, where an attendant was waiting.
Curious creatures seemed to crawl out of their coffins for a creep.
What I found when I entered this intimate haunted attraction was familiar yet different—a twisted layout full of all manner of movie figures and horror mannequins. Weird freaks, ghouls, ghosts, monsters, creatures, and more abounded in this walkthrough Halloween display. Many of the characters were well known in cinema lore—Michael Myers, Jack Nicholson’s Joker, Frankenstein, and even the chimps from Planet of hte Apes made an appearance. There wasn’t much in the way of explicit sets, but the setting was arranged in a way that felt like a warped trip through a haunted wax museum. Would any of the characters some to life?
Well, some did. Some were animatronics, but there were a couple of live actors inside, offerings soft scares that are more spooky than intense. But they made for a fun game of "spot the real monster." This would be child’s play for any haunt veteran, but less experienced haunted maze visitors might get a startle. And it was interesting to see the characters rearranged just a little here and there, with a couple of new additions but much of the artisan aesthetic that characterized last year’s experience.
The Toluca Lake Pumpkin Festival offered a kitschy brand of Halloween that felt entirely at home in this Hollywood-neighboring community. The scares were light (and on a dead Halloween night, there probably wasn’t much keeping the scareactors occupied and in rhythm anyway), but the entire environment was just offbeat and fascinating. I’m glad I got to stop by and do it again this past Halloween night!
This meat wagon was back from last year, with a variety of limbs for sale. No apparent finger food, though, at least compared to last year’s menu.
The Toluca Lake Pumpkin Festival is located at 10601 Riverside Dr., North Hollywood, CA 91602, and was open daily through the month of October. If a pandemic couldn’t shut this venue down, it’s a good bet that this quirky pumpkin patch / petting zoo / haunted maze will be back next year!
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
