Castle Dark at Castle Park: 2022 Review

Castle Park, Riverside, CA

Welcome back to another day and another haunt update. With Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights, we focused on the event for three consecutive updates. But with more haunts attended this past weekend (and more to come each weekend the rest of the season), we're going to step away for just a moment from Knott's Scary Farm after yesterday's general review to cover two other haunted attractions we visited before returning to the Halloween Haunt.

Castle Park, originally started as a family fun center with miniature golf course and arcade games.

First up is Castle Dark at Castle Park, located out in Riverside. We've now visited this smaller and more intimate amusement park several times now, including attending its Halloween event in 2019 and last year. This year sees the event under some amount of transition, with a new creative, design, and technical team that has taken steps toward reimagining the mythology behind the event and adjust the three mazes slightly to move them toward a new vision.

The changes are immediate for guests entering Castle Dark when the separately ticketed nighttime event opens at 7:00pm. An opening ceremony sees an evil queen--presumably the new icon for the event--come forth in a ghoulish processional featuring a horde of monstrous creatures and undead knights and fearsome beasts in apparent victory from a recent battle. With grave and dramatic announcement, she proclaims her intentions to lay a new, malevolent rule over this land, spreading her dark forces throughout so that no one can escape the terror. With a flourish, she proclaims the "gates" to Castle Dark open, and the monsters rush forward into the crowd, aided by an army of twisted clowns that have flanked from the side and behind who join the fray.

This lays out the two scare zones for this year's event, simply entitled Midway and Medieval to represent the amusement park and arcade / miniature golf halves of Castle Park respectively. It's a consolidation of the four scare zones last year, with only The Midway surviving the culling. On opening night, it was sometimes a little difficult to tell the boundaries for each scare zone. While there were clowns throughout the Medieval side seemed a little more mobile, venturing forth into the Midway side at times. The street monsters themselves were quite energetic, restlessly prowling around and searching for new victims to scare. We also saw an occasional monster venture from a maze to the scare zone area, as advertised, increasing the fluidity of scareactor territory.

The clowns of Midway, in particular, were very active and reveled in their maniacal, zany performances. And perhaps owing to spending less time outside on the castle side, we didn't seem to spot as many monsters from the Medieval half after the opening ceremony. They certainly did not appear to be inside the arcade or in the miniature golfing zones either, leaving them with a limited proximity around the castle in which to operate. Still, whenever we did see a street monster, they were usually engaged and charismatic. Though we missed some of the storyline conflict from last year's set of scare zones--such as the interactive theater-esque battle between the supernatural witches and consumed witch hunters looking to bring their reckoning, we nonetheless saw the scare zones as a strength at Castle Dark.

The street monsters were a highlight of Castle Dark.

Unfortunately, the mazes were in a general greater state of need, at least on opening weekend. The good news is that all three mazes were open, improving upon last year's struggles, when the third and longest maze, Phobias, was not open at least the first or second weekend. However, the maze construction and sets themselves were largely sparse, with extended areas of blank or unfinished walls, and minimal monsters to liven up the frequent plain corridors.

Morgana’s Revenge

This year's longest maze, Morgana's Revenge, located behind the Buccaneer Cove water park area and on the backside of the castle, was the most glaring example of this. Taking the place of Phobia last year, the story of the maze was promising: "Step into a nightmare where Merlin has been taken captive. Make your way into Morgana’s lair filled with her army of goblins and monsters. Face your darkest fears."

Unfortunately, the actual maze itself did not offer much to reinforce the story and functioned largely as a generic scary medieval-themed maze with a few haunting characters, some animatronic props, and a very long spider lair with static arachnids. This maze featured multiple extended stretches of inaction and lack of theming, with fog and strategically positioned lights shining into guests' faces to disorient them serving as the only elements of tension and misdirection. The animatronic dragon and the towering wraith were pretty cool figures, but they were not enough to offset the extended moments of emptiness. Although it was initially advertised for its length, Morgana's Revenge could have benefitted greatly from being shortened and made more efficient.

A sense of Merlin being imprisoned or additional storyline clues on how Morgana was spreading her army would have also contributed to a narrative context. There was a female character in the maze who could have been Morgana, but she did not speak much, nor was she presented in any elevated manner that would have distinguished her from a more routine character. It was also unclear if perhaps Morgana was actually the evil Queen roaming the scare zones. As it was, the more remote location of this maze limited any scare zone synergy that Castle Dark might have been seeking with this season's approach.

This towering reaper figure was imposing.

The House Next Door

Similarly remote and difficult to find without a map or pre-established signage was The House Next Door maze. Located next to the currently standing-but-not-operating Log Ride attraction in a dead-end area of the park, The House Next Door requires guests to cross the main midway area near the Castle Park Railroad and head toward the Antique Car Ride. A little beyond is the only wayfinding signaling the location of this haunted house, a construction wall with some painted on lettering with the name of the maze and an arrow pointing further ahead to the limited maze facade present. Only guests who have visited in the past could have known to find this location, since it is the same as Home Sweet Home last year.

The maze itself is shorter than Morgana's Revenge, but that is not a bad attribute, because it means a lesser proportion of empty walls. Last year's theme revolved around a house with a family that didn't not seem as they appeared, hiding dark and horrific and murderous secrets. This year's story is similar, but tweaked to take advantage of the mostly-passed 1980s revival that has featured prominently in pop culture the past couple of years: "Halloween night, 1988, we find ourselves walkingtowards an abandoned house at the end of the road. You can hear 80s music playing. Once inside we find something is missing, the party goers! RCal7 News is on T.V. reporting on strange things taking place in the area as the blood moon rises."

In execution, though, The House Next Door seems very similar to Home Sweet Home and serves as a general haunted house-themed haunted house. The talent within also seemed to be more committed to character, compared to Morgana's Revenge. The sobbing victim in the first room was convincingly hysterical, while a life-size haunted doll character was exceedingly creepy, with an almost abstract interpretive dance utilizing contortions and twisting to enhance a nearby audio track asking guests to play with it. A funeral scene at the end had some promise, but it fell short of a climactic finale without any thrilling "kiss goodbye" moment. We would have preferred something like the chainsaw killer chasing guests out of this equivalent maze last year. The 1980s theme also seemed to mostly come from a couple of dated furnishings and a soundtrack during the second half of the maze that was coincidentally identical to the track played in the Midnight Mania portion of this year’s 13th Floor Denver haunted house.

There’s a murderer in the loose in this house! Also, it’s the 1980s.

This doll monster was incredibly creepy and unnerving!

And while there were plenty of plain walls abound in The House Next Door, there was a greater density of set elements to mix up the maze and provide a comparatively more immersive ambiance. Even little elements like dolls tied up or anchored against the walls helped mix up the spatial feel of the maze.

Funhouse of Terror

The last maze we experienced, Funhouse of Terror, was fortunately the best, and it shows the promise that Castle Dark may work toward if it receives more committed investment and stable, event-specific management. This was essentially Castle Dark's clown maze, to go with its clown-themed scare zone, Medieval, and was located next to Dragon's Tower in the same nook of the park as last year's Mr. Tubb$ Twisted Cirus, and it was also the most elaborately themed maze of the three at Castle Dark (relatively speaking).

The clowns would like to come out and play.

Here again, the theme of clowns and circus performer encouraged the scareactors to present themselves in the most demented and and twisted manner possible. Each monster was very engaging, and there was even a mixed in statue scare to help with diversity in fright tactics. Funhouse of Terror was short, but it felt more action-packed--exactly what Morgana's Revenge would have benefited from if it had been similar condensed and made more efficient.

Our only regret was that we never saw a character shown on one of the painted outside murals--Frog Boy--inside the maze. Though we jokingly bemoaned his absence and hailed him all night, it did serve as a missed opportunity that could enhance this maze next year. Cast the maze talent types and then show portrayals of them on the outside to give guests a sense of expectation and connect a little more storytelling.

While we don’t hold Castle Park to the expectations of his higher profile theme park haunt brethren like Knott's Scary Farm or Halloween Horror Nights or even Six Flags' Fright Fest, we still felt that this year's offerings at Castle Dark were a little unfulfilling, with the maze construction and theming appearing to take a step back. At the same time, we suspect that the haunt faced some challenges in preparing for this year's event.

The first involved changeover in Castle Dark's creative team--which happened this past summer--creating a transitional phase in event planning and story-writing. Anytime there is a new team on board, with its own vision and take on how to adopt the existing haunt, there is always a settling period that needs to occur, and a few months certainly would not be enough, considering that even many home haunts spend much of a full year planning and preparing for their attractions.

Supply chain and delivery issues also reared their ugly heads, with some set pieces ordered over the summer still not delivered and missing from some of the mazes and even basic operation components like direction-finding signage not available on opening night. This further hampered the success of the maze construction.

Finally, it was pretty evident that the event was operating under a pretty tight budget, which severely restrained what could have even been provided. This, perhaps, is the most endemic issue. Over the past few years, we've heard talk about improving Castle Park and elevating it to a level where it can be a local attraction with enough quality to bring in guests looking for Halloween entertainment on a budget but unable to afford Knott's or Universal prices. Unfortunately, we haven't seen a financial commitment (or any noticeable effects from one) from Castle Park's corporate owners to supply the funds needed to improve the scenic quality, increase the park decor and furnishings, and provide a modern-day baseline of operational and technical support. As a result, though Castle Dark is very much a professional theme park haunt, the quality of its mazes and scenic treatment seems to be more on the level of an intermediate home haunt. And if the amusement park wants to raise the caliber of its haunted festivities to be a feature, it will need to make a concerted and consistent investment to do so.

There was a DJ near the Funhouse of Terror maze, providing dance music through the night.

These criticisms aside, we actually ended up having a pretty fantastic time at Castle Dark last Friday evening. Though the mazes were middling, we appreciated the effort that most of the scareactors put forth. In addition, we also got to enjoy Castle Park's charming miniature golf course (surprisingly not dressed up for Halloween this year) and amusement park areas as part of our night, including the fantastic Ghost Blasters dark ride that is an enchanting highlight of the park. Our group had a blast simply reliving innocent joys of childhood, and the ambiance of the park itself is still nostalgic and classic.

The miniature golf course is fantastic, though it was not themed on our visit.

All of this speaks to the good bones of Castle Park, which opened forty six years ago and has connections to Southern California theme park staples like Knott's Berry Farm. It just needs some more concerted support from ownership to bring its nighttime Halloween event closer to the standards of other comparable SoCal haunts. And we're hoping this can happen over the upcoming years!

Castle Dark at Castle Park is a separate event from the daytime operation of Castle Park and requires a separate ticket that can be purchased for $39.99 at the gate or $34.99 plus fees online. There is also a day/night ticket available for $20 more at the gate or just $5 more online. The event runs from 7:00pm to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays and from 7:00pm to 10:00pm on Sundays, now through October 30th.