Los Angeles Haunted Hayride: 2022 Review

Griffith Park, Los Angeles, CA

After the unusual, pivoting nature of 2020 and the uncertainty-laden question of normalcy of last year, it seems like Halloween season has finally returned to its full, typical form this year--and then some! We've seen a large amount of haunted attractions already--so much that it's been difficult to keep updated on them, but we're going to plow through and provide our usual commentary and massive photo spreads to help you enjoy these attractions from afar or make a decision on which ones to visit!

The L.A. Haunted Hayride is back for another year and is unchanged in site and format for the first time since before the pandemic!

Today, we're heading to Griffith Park to visit what has become a Southern California staple and the now-fifth longest annually-running, multi-attraction haunt in the LA/OC metro area! The Los Angeles Haunted Hayride welcomes guests back to Midnight Falls this year with its usual collection of twisted citizens, spooky mazes, and, of course, the hayride attraction itself. Now owned and produced by 13th Floor Entertainment, this attraction has seen a lot of expansion and changes over the past years. 2019 brought a completely storyline overhaul, introducing the town of Midnight Falls--where every day is Halloween in 1985--into Hayride lore, and drastically increasing the quality and production on the entire event. 2020 was the pandemic-inflicted pivot to a "Drive Up" Experience, mixing a drive-through display setting with a drive-in movie and interactive scare production. Last year saw a return to the regular pedestrian format, but in a completely new setting across the road from the Old Zoo site that the L.A. Haunted Hayride had occupied for so many years.

It stands that 2022 warrants a break from all the occasionally hectic changes of the past few years, and that's what this year's Hayride event provides. All of last year's attractions--the Hayride, Monte Revolta's Band, the town and citizens of Midnight Falls, and three mazes--return, with last year's new maze, Dead End Diner, surprisingly being replaced by a new maze, (S)Laughterhouse (though not exactly that new, as we'll explain later).

A look inside the newest maze, Laughterhouse.

The site is the same as last year--the Crystal Springs picnic area--which means that guests parking in the Merry-Go-Round lots 1, 2, and 3 have a loooooong walk down to the Hayride entrance and back up at night, about 15-20 minutes' worth. There's also a shuttle from northwest corner of the old L.A. Zoo parking lot that drops guests off near Spokes 'n' Stuff, which shortens the walk by half, but the shuttle only runs Fridays and Saturdays and Halloween night. Last year's relocation definitely brought on a lot of discussions about whether this was better or worse. For the event, it provided a larger, flatter, easier to set up space to fit its very tight load-in period. For guests, the prolonged walk to the entrance and the widespread territory making wayfinding confusing to some guests led to understandable gripes. The site can also get pretty dusty, so even though the pandemic has largely settled into a "live with it" phase, guests may want to consider mask-wearing not to minimize exposure to COVID but to keep their nasal passages cleaner and less irritated at the end of the night! But our experience last year was very positive--our best experience ever at this event--and we left in high spirits after enjoying detailed, high-energy haunted attractions and the more open, less packed-feeling environment.

An axe-wielding murder lurks inside Midnight Mortuary to help drive up business.

Unfortunately, our experience this year at last Friday's media and VIP night event proved to be a step down. Perhaps it was a sort of "break" year after three consecutive seasons of a lot of changes for the Hayride team, but this year's L.A. Haunted Hayride felt more lethargic and less exciting than last year's, with less energy in mazes and the hayride, a reduction in set design and complexity in some of the mazes, many effects not seeming to work, and lower crowds on this night seemingly sapping the sense of rhythm from the scareactors. Although the event is still a notable improvement for anyone who hasn't been since the Midnight Falls transition, 2022 felt like a dip in the overall long term improvement that the L.A. Haunted Hayride has over the past several years.

Lets take a closer look at each of the attractions at the L.A. Haunted Hayride.

The Monte Revolta Show

Last year, we missed Monte Revolta's undead performances due to the timing of our entry. Fortunately, Mayor Monte is back this season, and this gave us an opportunity to catch him this time around, performing his assorted twisted takes on numerous recognizable rock and pop and Halloween-centric songs with his motley crew of musicians.

Monte Revolta electrifies the crowd a few times throughout the night.

His performances are raucous and sarcastically entertaining.

Monte Revolta may not be the most dulcet vocalist (then again, your voice would be shot if you were dead and rotting as well), but he brings a lot of fun, sarcastic, satirical tribute to his shows--which utilized different sets throughout the evening. Monte's concerts might have been cover band performances in the technical sense, but each song was its own theatrical production, featuring costume changes and pantomimes and really fun musical mash-ups of different songs into riffs that managed to be cohesive and entertaining!

From Monte acting as the Ghost Host and doing a Haunted Mansion medley to Norman Bates' skeleton mother coming out to The Shining and general axe murderer references to odes to the many slasher villians of horror film history, the Monte Revolta Show was more than just a simple concert. It was a wry and energetic musical dazzle that provided a highlight for the Haunted Hayride guests--not to mention a fun dance party for the various citizens of Midnight Falls to engage during the shows! Kudos go out to Monte Revolta and his Band of the Living Dead. It's not easy playing musical instruments and belting out tunes when you're decomposing, but they manage to do it in style!

Trick or Treat

Traditionally, Trick of Treat has been a huge fan favorite maze. The original concept was ingeniously creative: stroll through a unique and creepy Halloween town and ring the doorbells of various famous movie monsters and scary beasts who inhabit it for a frightful game of trick or treat. Inevitably, a creature would burst out for a jump scare "trick," then reward guests with a candy "treat." The premise worked to provide a unique haunted maze experience unlike any other.

Over the years, though, operational priorities have eroded the original idea, first reducing the amount of candy handed out, then omitting the candy altogether to ease the constant stop and go traffic that could clog up the maze movement on busy nights. This year, even the "ring the doorbell to pretend to trick or treat" premise seems to have gone away, as many of the houses either lack a door trigger entirely or were empty during the trips we took through. In addition, the maze itself has been reduced, with less houses to stop by and admire and extended stretches of plain, minimally-themed settings compared to past years.

This was our first maze that we went through, and seeing the status of what has often been our favorite maze of the event reduced to this extent was disappointing. All mazes run their course, but this year felt like a significant devolution for Trick or Treat, which has always at least felt fun and whimsical. That charisma is lacking this year with the latest changes, and while this may be to set up for a new maze to take its place last year, it's still a little disheartening to see what Trick or Treat has become. It was not the best start to the maze line-up, especially since our experiences last year were so high quality across the board last year.

Laughterhouse

Over at the far, eastern end of the event grounds, Laughterhouse is this year's new feature at the Hayride. Replacing Dead End Diner, the maze depicts a part of Midnight Falls that hasn't been seen in the past, an old meat-packing plant that has apparently been taken over by clowns! The mash-up is unique--we've seen lots of slaughter house mazes and clown mazes in the past, but never one that combined the two. So the concept certainly felt intriguing--even if it still felt odd that Dead End Diner only ran for one year (we did not feel it was a poor maze at all last year).

Going through the maze, however, it becomes evident that the "new" maze is mostly in name, as the layout and much of the sets bear a lot of similarities to last year's attraction--just dressed up to focus more on the human meat slaughter portion of things. Even the first room is basically the diner--just with a new (and very nice looking) facade.

The first half of the maze is relatively light on theming and talent, and it also features the chainlink fence-palooza section that feels very uneventful for an extended stretch of the maze. Things pick up once guests make it to the farm area, where the meat harvesting is sourced. There are a lot of caged, maybe not-so-organic human carcasses here, plus more jump scares and gory ambiance.

Fortunately, this outhouse does not have any poop smells or water spray effects.

Though a better experience than Trick or Treat, there were a few issues we had with Laughterhouse. The section starting at the chainlink fence run through the entrance into the farm was extremely fog-filled--which is normally great--and also strobe-filled, which made for a very disorienting experience. Normally, this isn't an issue, and the use of fog and strobes is a common staple of haunted houses. But the strobes in Laughterhouse were so bright, intense, and quickly repetitive that they actually created cognitive issues and difficulty with orientation, especially when mixed into a strong blasts of fog that reduced the walking trail to white out conditions. This was the first time I've ever actually had difficulty with strobes in any haunted attraction I've visited, and guests with any sensitivity to flashing lights should unfortunately sit this maze out. It can be potentially very aggravating for more sensitive visitors.

This area can get quite disorienting with the abundance of fog and harsh strobes.

The frequent use of disorienting lighting also made it tough to actually register the story of the cannibalistic meat-packing clowns, which were dressed more like plainer, dark, murderous clown-like fiends than overt, colorful, sadistic circus clowns. In addition, we also noticed a lot of animatronics and motion-trigger scares not seeming to function--an issue that would become a pattern over the evening. This was especially noticeable in the climactic finale, where the triggers even didn't work at all or engaged late and well after guests had passed.

Midnight Mortuary: Evil Earth

By far the best maze of the three this year is Midnight Mortuary, which takes guests back to the most gothic part of Midnight Falls. The maze is pretty much the same layout as last year. Guests first enter the mortuary lobby--with its iconic axe murderer posing in a photo-worthy scene before his jump scare--then head into the chapel and then the undertaker's office before emerging out to the Midnight Falls Cemetery. This spooky graveyard still retains the same elegant, creepy charm that came from the Plague Production improvements a few years ago--complete with some fun tombstone Easter eggs. Then it's back into the mortuary's second half, where guests meet a mortician performing a most violent autopsy, plus several other disturbing sights and even a giant arachnid infestation. Scenically, this maze still holds up to the elevated level to which it's risen over the past few years.

The facade of Midnight Mortuary is stellar.

On the side of improvements, the quantity of scareactors and that energy level seemed to be reduced compared to our experiences last year. Though there were ebbs and flows (again, the axe-wielding fiend at the start of the maze was fantastic), there were also noticeable lulls in places like the graveyard and the creepy giant doll room. Here too, we also noticed that animatronics and motion scares that were part of previous years' maze did not seem to be operating this time around. A guest who hadn't visited in a few years might not notice, but as fans of the event and regular attendees, we couldn't help but observe these attributes.

The graveyard scenes are fantastically lit and fortunately not over-strobed.

We will say, though, that though our maze reviews are a little harsher than we'd normally like to have (we can't sugarcoat what isn't there), when we returned for second runs later in the evening the activity and the scares did pick up and improve from our first times through. This does speak to the "luck of the draw" nature of haunted house mazes. Sometimes, a run through might coincide with staffing breaks or a monster reset or just poor timing with guests before or after being the ones targeted. But these typically average themselves out over the course of the night, which wasn't quite the case on our particular visit last weekend. Hopefully, the upward trajectory of our maze experiences means that as the talent settles in, and the Halloween season progresses and becomes busier, that rhythm can help return a more thrilling experience.

The Haunted Hayride

The star of the entire event, the Haunted Hayride has always been a bit of a hit or miss for us. On one hand, it's a captive audience that's ripe for monsters to come out and scare. On the other hand, it's hard to safely have a truly surprising hidden jump scare on a moving vehicle experience, and once someone in the wagon is frightened, everyone can see the rest of the scares coming. As a result, the Hayride has become more a showcase of the different environments and sets that are produced for each of the scenes.

I thought this was a cool, cinematic capture.

This year's Hayride is also pretty similar to last year's. The course is the same--a flatter, more condensed loop that has less quiet moments in between sets, because they are spaced closer together. Most of the last year's scenes return, from the Bloodsuckers vampire club to the alien spaceship imprisonment to the chainsaw pigs to the haunted carnival and more.

This set harkens back to the 2020 Drive Up event.

Halloween is always alive at Midnight Falls!

What isn't the same compared to our experience last year is the energy level and functionality of several of the animatronic and motion-triggered effects. We never intend to criticize haunt talent, because their work is difficult, grueling, often thankless, and risky because of the unpredictability of guest reactions and the general annoyance of a select few asshole guests. However, through two rounds of the Haunted Hayride, the talent seemed listless and more sparse than in many prior years. This wasn't universal--the hog monsters and cultish natives were persistent and haunting--but this observation was not limited either. In addition, motion effects that we recognized from prior years were not functioning through much of the hayride, making this experience more static and less engaging than prior years.

We wouldn't be surprised if they Hayride undergoes some changes to liven things up next year.

Midnight Falls

If there's one area of the Haunted Hayride that continues to run along at a high, entertaining, dynamic quality, it's the folks of Midnight Falls and the general ambiance of the area itself. The citizens--a diverse band of different and fascinating characters--love interacting with guests and walk a well-balanced line between creepiness and friendliness that make the guest experience richer and more enjoyable. Midnight Falls is almost a dark version of Disneyland in that the folks there might be a little horrid and disturbing looking, but they retain their own charm and enjoyable characteristics that make interacting with them a lot of fun.

Their energy and cheerful spookiness liven up the even immensely, which is ironic, since they’re all kind of dead.

The town layout itself is unchanged from last year, with the exception that the age-old pumpkin tower set has been moved from outside the entrance of the L.A. Haunted Hayride to off to the side of Trick or Treat to the right half of the event grounds. The Midnight Falls General Store still offers a variety of souvenirs and goods for guests to take home. To the left, there's a revamped line of food and beverage stalls. And that marks another highlight from this year's event--the food quality has noticeably improved, with a nice variety of savories and sweets across several different vendor stalls scattered across the Midnight Falls area. The food that we sampled--birria quesadillas and tacos El Chef's Mobile Kitchen food truck--was superb. And though the pricing is admittedly elevated (reflecting the general level of event food in Los Angeles), at least the quality is much more worth what guests are paying.

A no-longer-lit MFAM radio station is endemic of one of the glaring observations at this year’s L.A. Haunted Hayride, which seemed to have a lot of less-than-fully-functional set and attraction pieces.

Food like from El Chef food truck was one highlight at the event. The prices are L.A. event level high, but at least the quality makes the cost better worth it. El Chef’s birria everything was delicious!!

We have to be honest that this year is a down year for the L.A. Haunted Hayride compared to most of the year's we've attended, especially in the context of the great thematic, story, and technical improvements that 13th Floor Entertainment has made for the event over the past several years. We hope that next season will see refurbishment to the mechanical elements of the different attractions, more scenic development in the mazes and in the Midnight Falls general area to make the setting feel even more immersive, and new additions to the event.

It's tough to always exceed the previous year's performance, and off nights also happen. But fans in the Southern California haunted attractions market are fickle and spoiled with abundance of great haunts in the area, and we've come to expect great features at our favorite haunts that have proven themselves year over year in the past--especially given that many haunted attractions are a notable investment on the evening out these days with today's economic times. This year's L.A. Haunted Hayride pricing starts at $29.99 for the one-time admission to the Hayride only on non-peak nights and goes up to $109.99 for Platinum passes that grant immediate front of line entry and unlimited trips through all attractions. We've said that the Haunted Hayride pricing is expensive for what guests get in earlier years' past, but in our opinion, a typical $39.99 or $44.99 (depending on the date) one-type all-attractions pass is actually a pretty fair and comparable value to most haunts across Southern California this season. Paying VIP pricing for the experience we received, however, might be tougher to swallow.

The L.A. Haunted Hayride remains a prominent and high-level haunt. If our remarks this year have seemed more critical, they are borne out of care for the high quality and high expectations this event has garnered over the past few years. When a haunt shows that they can up their game, we as haunt enthusiasts and supporters want to see that continue, so that the haunt can also grow and thrive. Midnight Falls isn't going away anytime soon, and that's a good thing. We look forward to seeing how it continues to evolve.