Fright Farms - Haunted House - Drive-Thru Haunt - Drive-Thru Experience - Norco - CA

Fright Farms and Not So Spooky Farm Provide Frights and Family Fun

Men in yellow hazmat suits approach the car, our closed windows keeping us safe. They wave wands over our vehicle and over the people outside to see if anyone is infected. But before the scans can be completed, a shambling shell of a former human in a blood-stained lab coat stumbles out from behind a dumpster. He lunges forward grabbing an officer by the neck. The officer turns just in time, grabs a weapon from the back of her pants and pumps two rounds into the soft supple head of the zombie. It falls to the floor as we drive forward, deeper into town. Fright Farms and Not So Spooky Farm were Drive-Thru experiences in Norco, CA.

Fright Farms is a new immersive drive-through haunted house in Norco, CA, delivering frights past the Halloween season for all ages: offering both a family friendly immersive drive-thru experience called Not So Spooky Farm and a zombie filled horror drive-through experience. While Fright Farms clocks in at about thirty minutes, the family friendly Not So Spooky Farm experience is a bit shorter at approximately 20 minutes in length. Both of the experiences use a similar format: an immersive narrative is provided via FM Transmitters that broadcast through the car stereo, similar to Stranger Things, The Bite LA, and Horrorwood video, as guests park their car and watch short scenes unfold before driving to the next location. Think of these experiences as immersive audio books, in which each page is a different scene and you get to watch the book unfold as it is read to you directly.

 

Fright Farms - Haunted House - Drive-Thru Haunt - Drive-Thru Experience - Norco - CA

Fright Farms

Fright Farms invites audiences into the town of Hilldale. After a recent viral outbreak, you given your own police escort to guide you. Officer Sterns joins you on the entirety of your experience, helping you navigate the rural countryside of Hilldale and the Urban downtown environments. She acts as a pace car in a golf cart, as well as getting out of the cart to interact with the surroundings and provide you with a central character to focus on. This was reminiscent of immersive experiences like Delusion, in which you follow a character through the experience—but for Fright Farms, audiences are confined to their car, and are unable to form a direct connection with Officer Sterns through interactions.

It should already be clear that this is far more than just a simple drive-through haunted house; it’s an experience with a lot of heart and a love for immersive narratives. As guests drive through the experiences, it isn’t just actors jumping out at you, but instead, it is characters developing relationships with each other and trying to get to safety. Sterns meets many along her way and some even join along for the rest of the experience as well. Yet, don’t expect Delusion-level immersion here; it’s more watching experiences unfold than playing a direct role—the interactivity is lower here.

How it works is three cars form a caravan, which gives all vehicles ample amount of room to see the action unfold and experience the narrative. The first car drives directly behind Officer Sterns allowing Sterns to keep pace and ensure the caravan stops at all the appropriate locations. At each stop, cars are put into park to ensure the safety of those inside the vehicles and the actors–and then you watch the next scene unfold. The actors sometimes interact with each car, but other times they are putting the actors in peril—and it’s always exciting to see if they will survive or not.

 

Fright Farms - Haunted House - Drive-Thru Haunt - Drive-Thru Experience - Norco - CA

 

The sets were an absolute highlight. They felt expansive and large, and matched that of driving through an entire town. Ranging from a military compound to a diner to a farm, to a farm house, through a town, to a skate park, and more, no two scenes felt the same—despite all having zombies. And further, they all felt narratively cohesive with Officer Sterns being a driving force. We weren’t simply jumping through themed rooms; instead, we were driving past a farm, through the cornfields, into a junkyard, and then finally into downtown. We could tell care was taken when developing these sets and the details inside.

Despite it’s strengths, there were a few criticisms. First, with so much focus on narrative and immersion, there were some small choices that helped break the immersion for us. Multiple characters (Officer Sterns and the Military commander) were voiced by males on the audio track in the car, but played by female actors. This provided a dissonance when listening to a deep, gruff voice come out of a womanly body. This could have been fixed with multiple recordings to match the different actor configurations. Second, the experience would have heavily benefitted with use of more actors as there were multiple sets we drove through with no narrative or actor interactions. With a heavy focus on narrative, often there was only one scare actor in a scene and the actors interacted with the characters more than the cars. This felt like watching something unfold more than being a part of the action. reducing scares or the ability to interact with cars. Thus, with a few tweaks, the immersion could be enhanced, and the experience could feel more frightening overall.

 

Not So Spooky Farm - Fright Farms - Immersive Theater - Drive-Thru Experience - Norco - CA

Not So Spooky Farm

The family-friendly version followed a very similar structure as Fright Farm—three cars form a caravan and follow characters through seven different scenes as Stingy Jack leads you on foot. This time, instead of having 360-degree action, most of the action unfolds on the driver’s side of the car, while projections are set up to entertain the right side of the vehicle.

The narrative follows Stingy Jack, a racoon who has become immortal through a bet with the devil. In doing so, Jack has become very stingy and greedy, looking for treasure and riches for himself, rather than investing in friendship and generosity. After hearing about a Pirate named Bluebeard and his vast treasure, Jack sets off to find it. The seven scenes put Jack in contact with various characters across time and space: from dinosaurs to plants to a fantasy land of Pegasus to a farmhouse full of barnyard creatures and beyond. As with any children’s tale, the lesson was in the friendships he made along the way and the generosity that the people showed him, and just like the geode Bluebeard shows him at the end, beauty is in the inside.

While the experience followed a traditional children’s narrative and was generally entertaining, the action failed to engage us. This was mainly due to all of the actors, except for in one scene, being on the driver’s side of the car – leaving those in the passenger side feeling left out of the experience. The projections felt generic and added very little to the scenes, often repeating themselves two to three times throughout a given scene. The specific animations also felt odd as they often only showed footage that could have been found of real animals online: raccoons running and chickens walking around.

 

Not So Spooky Farm - Fright Farms - Immersive Theater - Drive-Thru Experience - Norco - CA

Summary

Not So Spooky Farm is a traditional children’s experience with a strong moral, geared towards young children. The simpler costumes and narrative will help instill good values in them and provide an entertaining night out for a family. We only wish the action could be expanded to encompass all sides of the car, providing equal viewing for all members of the vehicle.

On the other hand, Fright Farms is a welcomed innovation to the haunted house formula. It takes scares and elevates them by providing some emotional weight earned through narrative. Further, it is one of the only haunted attractions that ran well into November. Overall, if they implement a few small adjustments and provide a little more interactivity for their audience, this could be something truly special. We recommend this experience to any haunt fan looking to find some scares after the Halloween season has died down.

 

Fright Farms - Haunted House - Drive-Thru Haunt - Drive-Thru Experience - Norco - CA

 

For more information on Frights Farms and any upcoming experiences, check out their website, Facebook, and Instagram pages.

Fright Farms Images

Not So Spooky Farm Images

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Fright Farms and Not So Spooky Farm were Drive-Thru experiences in Norco, CA.

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