A Look Inside Kings Island Halloween Haunt 2016
What you can’t see will haunt you this Halloween season at Kings Island’s Halloween Haunt. We stopped by the park during Halloween Haunt’s media day to see what all the screams were about for 2016!
Each Halloween season, Kings Island offers a veritable playground of terror. 2016 features 11 haunted mazes, three outdoor scare zones, three live stage shows and more than 600 assorted clowns, ghouls, vampires, werewolves and zombies, plus 20 rides including the Banshee, Beast and Diamondback roller coasters!
Kings Island goes all out with their Halloween event. During HAUNT, the park completely changes the front entrance to look like a classic haunted house complete with monsters lurking in and around every turnstile.
The event offers so many thrills that it’s hard to experience everything in one evening, so, this year, we each received a Fright Lane and Skeleton Key to check out all of the mazes and haunted houses Kings Island has to offer.
Wait, Skeleton Key? You read that right.. The Skeleton Key unlocks a secret extra room inside five of the attractions: Kill Mart, Madame Fatale’s Cavern of Terror, Slaughter House, Sorority House and Urgent Scare. The Skeleton Key add-on unlocks extra rooms that allows guests to encounter intense experiences, interactive secrets, and other blood-curling surprise – only accessible with Skeleton Key.
In addition to the five mazes with a secret extra Skeleton Key room, a new standalone Skeleton Key room, The Viewing, has evening services each night of Halloween Haunt… The Viewing is a new twisted escape room-like game. Inside, you find yourself at a man’s funeral viewing. You and your team are given a task to complete to help usher the man’s spirit to his final resting place. We won’t spoil the game for you, but we will say it was quite the challenge! The whole experience is a bit short, but it was definitely fun! This is something we foresee being expanded in the coming years.
For 2016 Kings Island also debuted an all new maze called Field of Screams. Just as their logo describes, it’s filled with corn, terrifying scarecrows, corn, scarecrows, and did we say corn and scarecrows?!
Lost in a giant 10,000 sq foot outdoor maze, guests not only have to find their way out, but they must do so with frightening creatures lurking all through out the corn. Don’t get caught or you might just become a permanent part of the field. And for the big surprise? you will have to experience it for yourself! If you go with intentions of trying to do everything in one night, we recommend the Fright Lane pass and recommend doing the new Field of Screams maze first. It was very popular and the line was long most of the evening, but for good reason!
During HAUNT, the park is completely decorated for Halloween. No matter where you look, there is a skeleton or pumpkin in sight. There were multiple mini sets and scenes set up through out the park similar to the one below.
On our visit, we were able to walk through all of the indoor mazes Kings Island had to offer. Among our favorites were Madame Fatale’s Cavern of Terror, KilMart and CarnEvil.
Madame Fatale’s Cavern of Terror features all sorts of creepy statues and even snakes—live snakes! It also happened to be our favorite Skeleton Key Room, but we’re not going to spoil that secret for you… you’ll have to experience it for yourself!
CarnEvil is sort of like a funhouse gone wrong and if you’re afraid of clowns, this one is definitely not for you!
KillMart features a massive post-apocalyptic grocery store filled with blood thirsting zombies. We had to navigate our way out of the grocery store without letting the zombies infect us!
Another maze we really liked was called Wolf Pack. Think of Little Red Riding Hood, but in your nightmares and that’s where you’ll find yourself.
Without giving away what waits inside, we will just say that we highly recommend doing Wolf Pack after it gets dark due to the nature of the building. The maze opens at 6pm, but it’s in a shelter and not completely enclosed, so light will peak through if it’s still daylight.
The entertainment lineup features Blood Drums, a percussive blood bath of rhythm and music; Hot Blooded, a seductive after-life revue; and Monster Rock, which features the music of Journey, Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and others.
Not only did we get to experience the thrills of all Kings Island’s mazes and scare zones, we also got to try some delicious Halloween-themed food, including shrimp cocktails served out of an ice coffin. They offered pulled-pork, blackened chicken Alfredo, and even cake that was served from the back of a Hearse!
Everything was funeral themed. Even the staff serving the food was dressed in their mourning attire!
Media aren’t the only ones that are able to enjoy delicious Halloween themed food. If you’re hungry during Halloween Haunt, the park offers a Fright Feast! The all-you-can- eat buffet is served in the picnic grove from 6pm-8pm for $14.99 (cheaper for season pass holders). And best of all, it comes with a FREE Front-Of-Line Maze Pass plus features a menu that’s to die for!
Fried Chicken
Montgomery Inn Pulled Pork BBQ Sandwiches
Hot Doggs
Corn on the Cobb
Baked Beans
Pasta Salad
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Unlimited Soft Drinks
We ended the night with a special goodbye from Kings Island’s Halloween Haunt cast. A group of monsters from various mazes gathered in front of the fountain at the park entrance to get in some end-of-the-night scares and take pictures with guests.
Halloween Haunt runs every Friday and Saturday night through October 29 from 6 p.m. until 1 a.m., except for September 24 when the park opens to the public at 7 p.m. For tickets and more information, visit the official Kings Island website by clicking here.
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