13th Floor Entertainment Group - LA Haunted Hayride - Theme Park - Los Angeles CA - Entry Sign

LA Haunted Hayride 2022 Maintains its Magic in its Halloween Town: Midnight Falls

LA Haunted Hayride was our favorite large-scale haunt last year, which is saying a lot since it had Universal Halloween Horror Nights, Knott’s Scary Farm, and Six Flag’s Fright Fest to contend with. With Thirteenth Floor Enteirtainment Group and Jon Cooke’s Plague Productions joining the mix, LA Haunted Hayride was elevated from a fun evening to a truly magical innovative experience as audiences stepped into the town of Midnight Falls. This year, LA Haunted Hayride 2022 maintains that magic, bringing the same level of energy, excitement, and scares—but does little to change up the atmosphere.

Now in its 14th year, LA Haunted Hayride 2022 invites guests into Midnight Falls, their nostalgic Halloween Town stuck in the year 1985. The same three Halloween mazes are offered this year to walk through, with some interactions and jump scares provided by the denizens within. There’s also the titular Haunted Hayride 2022, in which guests take a seat within an open-air trailer which is pulled by a tractor as it rides through numerous different facades filled with scare actors scaring from all sides. And Midnight Falls also offers food, merchandise, and a stage in which the undead lounge singer Monte Revolta and his band of the living dead perform their horror-movie-inspired songs throughout the night for a concert with more showmanship than most of the mazes even offer.

 

Midnight Falls: Town Square

13th Floor Entertainment Group - LA Haunted Hayride - Theme Park - Los Angeles CA - Ice Cream Truck

 

Last year, Midnight Falls moved to the Crystal Springs picnic area of Griffith Park offering more square footage of scares, allowing for more room for expansions in the future. There’s an entire area dedicated for food from themed vendors, such as the Midnight Falls Old Tyme Pizza and the Midnight Falls Railroad BBQ, an entire area dedicated to the three mazes and an undead carousel, and the main space with the Monte Revolta stage.

This year, the pumpkin pyramid—a staple and fan-favorite photo-op—of LA Haunted Hayride 2022 has moved from the entryway to the space between the stage and the mazes, allowing for photos without impacting flow of ticket-holders entering the park.

 

 

Unlike other haunted attractions, there are no monsters or scare actors wandering the area outside the mazes—focusing on ensuring that the mazes are jam-packed with scares. The exception is the stage in front of Monte Revolta, in which 5-6 actors tend to congregate to dance and engage with audiences during the performance. This is always a highlight as the jock, the prom queen, the cheerleader, and more are a blast to dance with, take photos with, and listen to their stories.

Ultimately, Midnight Falls feels charming, nostalgic, and a place I’d love to live. The characters within it aren’t scary, but rather welcoming, to the point that they serve to immerse you into the world of Midnight Falls and the LA Haunted Hayride 2022.

While it is expected of the large scale attractions that not much will change year to year, I still find myself wanting to know more characters, see more locations, and hear more stories from this world.

 

Laughterhouse

13th Floor Entertainment Group - LA Haunted Hayride - Theme Park - Los Angeles CA - Laughterhouse

 

While the name is new, this maze feels, looks, and flows extremely similar to last year’s Dead End Diner. The façade has changed from a diner to that of the Midnight Falls Meat Packing plant. Stepping through, bodies hang from the ceiling, heads rest on plates, and the true nature of the meat in Midnight Falls is revealed.

The highlight of this maze was the fog outside, ensuring that the maze feels like a white-out maze in multiple areas as you navigate hay bales and evade mask-wearing maniacs and killer scarecrows. While the theme feels a little tired, it does well with what it’s given and the actors are truly strong with their command of space.

Last year, it was our least favorite of the three, and this year we still agree. Especially with the addition of “Laughter” to Laughterhouse, there was no humor to juxtapose against the horror—it might be nice to see that added to mix up the formula next year.

Trick or Treat

13th Floor Entertainment Group - LA Haunted Hayride - Theme Park - Los Angeles CA - Trick or Treat 7

 

Since 2014, Trick or Treat has been a fan-favorite for LA Haunted Hayride, and in 2022, it’s no different. This maze offers some agency and interactivity to its audience, allowing them to knock on the door of the houses of many of the residents in Midnight Falls. While there’s all tricks and no treats, it’s still wonderful to see who is hiding behind each door.

The vintage Halloween aesthetics and nods to the film of the same name as the maze, the décor here is easily recognizable and only serves to compliment the nostalgic aesthetic of Midnight Falls. “Happy Halloween” banners, rotting pumpkins, and a destroyed bus help make this area feel very lived in.

While we applauded the interactivity last year, this year most of the houses felt empty or non-functional. Only two of the houses had someone inside, and the rest were either empty or elicited no response. We went through a second time later in the evening to ensure it wasn’t just actors on break, but sadly, we experienced the same. With a maze-like Trick or Treat, the highlight is the houses and care should be paid to have someone—or something—behind each one. We miss the old woman with her fake-cat, and some of the animatronics hidden behind doors.

Yet, the energy of the actors who were there was exceptional. Two women stood out to us—one in a werewolf mask and a second in a wooden witch mask. Both ran up and down their lane, infusing such frenzied energy that we stopped to watch them scare the next group.

Midnight Mortuary: Evil Earth

13th Floor Entertainment Group - LA Haunted Hayride - Theme Park - Los Angeles CA - Mortuary

 

Born in 2019, Midnight Mortuary is the fan favorite—and our favorite of the night, second year in a row. It’s a perfect combination of funeral parlor, cemetery, and morgue that feels like it fits the Midnight Falls vibe best out of the three mazes.

A cult of lamb-masked monsters inhabits the interior of the mortuary and morgue, cocking their heads to the side and appearing from all sides of audiences—expertly creating scares. While in LA Haunted Hayride 2022, the 80’s goth rockers of 2021 have been replaced by zombies and other undead. We preferred the interactivity and uncertainty that the rockers imbued into the space—the zombies of this year just felt one-note: scary.

The combination of the claustrophobic interiors with the wide, open-air cemetery is perfect use of contrasts, eliciting scares that span the spectrum. Set designers here outdid themselves, as every room feels authentic, real, and lived in. There’s plenty of crevices for actors to hide in, and switch backs so they can scare from all sides.

Haunted Hayride 2022

13th Floor Entertainment Group - LA Haunted Hayride - Theme Park - Los Angeles CA - Hayride

 

The titular Haunted Hayride follows the same format as prior years: audiences pile into a straw-filled trailer and is pulled by a tractor throughout numerous scenes. Actors will engage the audience from all sides, running at the trailer, and diverting at the last second.

The scenes here encompass traditional haunt tropes with some notable novelties: a ghastly pumpkin patch of behemoth-sized gourds, a dock with kraken tentacles rising to drag poor souls below the dark depths, a dancing alien welcoming you to a tunnel of vibrant lights, a blood sucking vampire bar, and a circus full of crazed clowns.

The Hayride felt a little empty compared to last year, and some of the innovative aspects from 2021 were notably removed—like The Crust Punx—an animatronic band playing happy birthday that malfunctions in the scariest way possible.

Improvements

As mentioned above, last year LA Haunted Hayride was our favorite of the large-scale haunts because they created something different from all the other haunts. They welcomed audiences into a world that felt nostalgic and spooky. There was a certain level of 80’s camp that was vibrant and unique—and I loved it. There were still vestiges of traditional haunts, like Dead End Diner, but haunts like Midnight Mortuary more than made up for it with the rockers in the cemetery and the lamb-masked cultists.

Some of these elements were notably missing. I was hoping that my favorite elements of last year—the old woman with her cat in Trick or Treat, the Crust Punx in the Hayride, the goth rockers in the Midnight Mortuary Cemetery—would be expanded on, further expanding the world of Midnight Falls. But instead, all of those elements are gone. Thirteenth Floor Entertainment, the amount of people watching and dancing to Monte Revolta proves that vibe works for LA Haunted Hayride 2022—and audiences want more of the town of Midnight Falls. Please, keep that aesthetic expanding, you’re doing something special here.

 

Conclusions

LA Haunted Hayride 2022 is charming, eccentric, and spooky. It’s a Halloween event that deserves your attention. If you haven’t been to the LA Haunted Hayride in more than two years, get tickets immediately and go. It’s easily one of the best events in LA. Yet, if you went last year, it’s a lot of the same. I’d still go, just to see Monte Revolta on stage, singing Hallelujah as Regan on her bed from The Excorcist vomits over a crowd full of people. Where else will you find that?

I just pray that LA Haunted Hayride continues to embrace the aesthetic and vibe of Midnight Falls, investing in its world and continuing to develop it, not shy away from it. It’s a true celebration of Halloween and I can’t wait to return, year after year, to see how the town is evolving.

For more information about visiting the LA Haunted Hayride 2022 this Halloween Season, check out their Facebook, Instagram and website. For information about similar events, check out our Event Calendar.

 

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About The Author

Taylor Winters
Taylor has loved immersive theater since his first experience at ALONE in 2013. Since then, he has written, produced, & directed immersive theater, consulted for numerous immersive companies, acted in others, and attended even more. He has his PhD in Bioengineering, an MBA in Organization Leadership, and currently works fixing broken hearts.

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