What it was like attending opening night of Fright Fest Extreme at Six Flags Magic Mountain – DePaoli on DeParks
With the Halloween season in full swing, theme parks across the country are bringing in crowds with scary offerings in their normally family-friendly parks. Halloween is big business for the amusement park industry, and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, Calif. has made the decision to make their Fright Fest event a hard ticketed event this year. But is Six Flags Fright Fest Extreme worth the new, added cost? Here is my experience attending opening night.
My personal worst experience at a Six Flags Magic Mountain haunt event
Ever since I’d begun experiencing Fright Fest at Six Flags Magic Mountain, the event was included with an annual pass or membership. You’d need to purchase a typically reasonably priced wristband to walk through the haunted houses. But scare zones, entertainment and more were available in the park regardless.
Deciding to now require admission to get through the front gate for anybody interested was a bold departure. One that I personally would have supported if the quality of the event had risen. Unfortunately, it did not. In fact, this year’s opening night was my personal worst experience at a Six Flags Magic Mountain haunt event.
I’d like to preface all of this by stating that I take no joy in writing reviews like this one. I know a lot of well-meaning people work hard on these sorts of projects. This article is not meant to critique those individuals. This is being written to help the public decide whether this is where their hard-earned money should be spent. And, hopefully even more so, this is a message to Six Flags Entertainment Corporation that they must do better.
I walked into this event cautiously optimistic. Six Flags Magic Mountain’s Halloween event has never been up to par with other Southern California theme park events in my experience. But I was really hoping with the promise of Fright Fest Extreme being bigger than before, including some big intellectual properties, and feeling it’s worthy of an up-charge, that I would feel differently this year.
Delayed haunted house openings
Let’s begin with the fact that at the nighttime event’s start time, many of the haunted houses weren’t open yet. In a lot of cases, it would remain this way even two hours into the event. Also, the haunted house based on the movie “Trick ‘r Treat” would never be ready to open that night. That particular house was still being completed. In my opinion, a company has a lot of nerve charging full price admission when a main feature in a special event is knowingly not complete enough to open.
If you’ve ever been to Six Flags Magic Mountain, you know that it isn’t called Magic Mountain for no reason. It is indeed a mountain that can get tiresome to climb throughout your visit. For that reason, most guests strategically enjoy everything they want in each area with the intent not to backtrack and need to reclimb the mountain.
Given the fact the haunted houses were opening at different times, that made avoiding backtracking impossible. To add insult to injury, there was no way of knowing whether a haunted house was open or not except by going to each location. There was no signage in the park showing wait/open times, and the app had zero information about that either. I asked a Fright Fest employee about this just to see if it was an opening night error. But he indeed confirmed that this is not an intended feature in the app.
Not impressed by quality of haunted houses
For the haunted houses that were open, I was sadly not impressed by the quality. Not for an upcharge event. It makes it even more difficult to be impressed when you can’t help but compare the quality with other higher budget haunts who have worked with the same I.P. in the past.
“Stranger Things” had been a staple of Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights for numerous years. I know it’s not fair to compare Halloween Horror Nights with Fright Fest given the extreme differences in budget. But the reality is that people will make that comparison if Six Flags uses previously used Horror Nights I.P. I’m personally surprised Netflix made the deal with Six Flags considering they worked with arguably one of the highest-caliber haunts prior.
If Six Flags wants to play in the big leagues (and I would love for them to), then they need to invest like the big leagues. They need to recognize that these other haunt events are working on them year-round and they’re investing a bunch of money into them. Six Flags needs to spend big money to make big money should they want a piece of the action.
Comparing Fright Fest Extreme to Knott’s Scary Farm and Halloween Horror Nights
Six Flags obviously has theme parks around the country. I can only speak for my personal experience at Magic Mountain. But a fair guess would be that the dollar stretches further in most of their other parks. A lot more must be invested in their Southern California park as the cost of things is simply more expensive there. But in addition, the haunt competition is steep with neighboring Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights and Knott’s Scary Farm not so far away.
Ah yes, Knott’s Scary Farm in Buena Park, Calif. That longest-running theme park haunt which is now part of the Six Flags Entertainment Corporation family ever since the recent merger between Six Flags and Cedar Fair. It would do Six Flags Magic Mountain a lot of good to pay attention to what Knott’s Scary Farm is doing.
Knott’s Berry Farm works on haunt season throughout the year and they have dedicated teams of people who produce impressive, new works year after year. Six Flags Entertainment Corporation needs to lean on them and learn. Take note and model Fright Fest after Scary Farm as much as possible. The differentiator between the two events can be I.P. at Fright Fest Extreme while Knott’s Scary Farm keeps knocking it out of the park with their original creations.
Bigger isn’t always better
One of the “highlights” of Fright Fest Extreme is that there’s more than ever before. But this event is proof that bigger isn’t always better. This is the perfect example of quantity over quality. A lot of the haunted houses are tired and lacking the proper budgets to make them impressive.
Here’s what I would like to see happen. Six Flags Magic Mountain Fright Fest Extreme touts eleven haunted houses and nine scare zones. Cut that all literally in half and place them in a portion of the park. Even if the budget was kept the same, the houses and the scare zone budgets would each be doubled. And by only using a portion of the park for the event, this will still feel like a full event without requiring guests to be frustrated about climbing a mountain back and forth all night.
I think the best thing they could do is go back to the “free” admission with annual passes and memberships next year with a nominal fee to experience the haunted houses. Then knock our socks off. Accept the fact that it will be a monetary loss for one year. Because as of now, I’m sure a lot of folks who paid to attend this year have already knocked it off their list for next year.
Regaining a lost customer is a costly marketing venture. Invest those marketing dollars in a year-round team instead, make something amazing (remembering quality over quantity), and surprise guests so much that it can’t help but get media attention in 2025. Give the folks building this event the proper tools and let them build. Then in 2026 guests will be willing to pay for a hard ticketed event.
Moving forward, this event must be inexpensive to attend if it stays on the same trajectory. Or it must be severely improved in order to justify the current asking prices between $70.00 and $229.99. I was invited to opening night as press. But if I had paid anything close to these asking prices, I would have certainly been at guest relations asking for a refund.
Admittedly some time has passed since opening night and hopefully some of these problems have been fixed. But from what I’ve seen online there are still a lot of issues to be addressed. And there seemed to be some problems that were simply too big to fix within this year’s Halloween season in my opinion.
What worked well at Six Flags Fright Fest Extreme
Let me now touch on a few things that did work at Six Flags Fright Fest Extreme this year. It was nice to see some appealing movie franchises represented at the event, even if they weren’t executed well. There were certainly some standout and passionate monster performers around the park who take what they do seriously, but there weren’t enough of them. As I walked through scare zones a lot of them felt empty.
It was great to have dancers back on the Full Throttle Stage instead of just a DJ, but I do miss the live singers.
And most notably, the makeup at Six Flags Magic Mountain Fright Fest Extreme continues to be top notch. It’s even more notable as time passes and other haunts seem to be leaning more and more into masks. The makeup work at Six Flags Magic Mountain is the best.
What do you think? Have you attended Six Flags Magic Mountain Fright Fest Extreme this year? If so, what did you think of it? If you’ve attended a Fright Fest event in a different Six Flags park around the country, leave your thoughts on those experiences in the comments.
Jeff DePaoli is an event producer and voiceover artist living in Los Angeles. He is the producer and host of “That Halloween Podcast” and works throughout the year with Halloween events including Midsummer Scream and Creep It Real OC. He can be heard as the voice of Disney Trivia on Alexa as well as the host of “Dizney Coast to Coast” podcast. Learn more and claim free gifts at DePodcastNetwork.com. DePaoli’s opinions are his own and do not necessarily represent Attractions Magazine.
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