Twisted Dreams Haunt presents The GSW Final Frontier: 2021 Review
Twisted Dreams Haunt, Buena Park, CA
After a bit of a break following another very busy Halloween season (in just the last two months, we visited nearly 80 haunted attractions!), we’re back on the horse to try to finish off the remainder of the season’s spooks. Yes, I know it’s November, and all the Christmas carols have already sprouted up, but this is what we do. We make sure we shine some attention to all the great haunts we visit, even if that means staying with the scary while everyone else is moving onto the merry.
Today, we visit a home haunt in Buena Park that we actually went to three years ago: Twisted Dreams Haunt. When it comes to the different styles of haunts out there, this one won’t nab any pretty style points. That’s because it’s of the more traditional, 90s and early 00’s-style blood-and-guts aesthetic. In an age where some of today’s most prominent haunts go the polished, sophisticated, media-laden, technology-infused, beautifully photogenic route, Twisted Dreams is a slashing call back to the “old school” haunted maze, which focused on the scare and the gore and the carnage.
Gruesome, violent, and bloody—Twisted Dreams does not hide what it is!
Created by Lief Swenson, the haunt centers around the Great Sierra Western, a train run by a murderous conductor who bludgeoned countless victims and transported their body parts across the rails with the help of his equally bloodthirsty accomplices. Fittingly, the haunt is packed with graphic and blood-stained scenes of grisly mutilation and savagery. Mutilated corpses, ragged body parts, and crimson splatters reign throughout the maze, as though the Texas Chainsaw Massacre had swept through each scene and left behind a trail of bodies and limbs.
Twisted Dreams Haunt is brimming with monsters springing out of all sorts of dark recesses.
Of course, all show and no scare makes for a boring maze, and Twisted Dreams is anything but boring. The home haunt has an incredible number of monsters that make use of a winding layout to scare guests multiple times, from multiple locations. The jump scares are intense and relentless, focused on terrorizing the souls out of those brave enough to venture through. The sprawling layout through Swenson’s side yards, back yard, and garage allow for a lengthy trip through these haunted rails, and that extended course accentuates the frights and the fear.
This year’s maze featured a lot of the same scenes as our last visit, but the sets and furnishings also felt more polished without losing their grit and roughness. The detail contained within was very impressive, with plenty of props and decor telling the murderous story of the Great Sierra Western through countless examples of mayhem.
Of course, in any super-intense maze, you gotta have a chainsaw pig monster!
Twisted Dreams Haunt is proof that a slick production and popular tactics like trigger scares aren’t mandatory to produce a dreadfully horrid haunt experience. Lief and his team are committed to the essence of a haunted house—the shock and dread and horror of the experience that races the adrenaline and keeps guests on edge. The scope and scale of this home haunt is extensive and impressive, and the “old school” alternative that Twisted Dreams offers is a ravenous and satisfying juxtaposition to all the “pretty haunts” that are also so well done.
This welcome to the Great Sierra Western may be your last!
Twisted Dreams Haunt is located on 5815 Panama Dr, Buena Park, CA 90620 and was open only over Halloween weekend, Friday October 29 - Sunday, October 31, from 7:00 - 11:00pm each night. For those who like their haunts gritty, not pretty, this was definitely the haunt for them!
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
