Well I just had my birthday the other day, I have to say a great big thank you to my friends, co-workers, and students for the great birthday wishes. I want thank my family for the great gifts and for just being there for me. And last I want to thank Invader Hime for the beautiful cake and wonderful presents.
Thank you all.

Ah, the onset of Oct. that means that it is time for the Haunt. For those unfamiliar with "Knott's Scary Farm's Halloween Haunt" it is the largest Halloween party in the world and has received the Golden Ticket Award for the best Halloween event in the world. This is the 33rd year of the haunt and for myself I have been attending since the mid 80's (hint it was the only year that they tried to hang a witch).

This year by far is the best year yet for Knott's. The day started the day with a whole day at the park. One of the advantages to going to Knott's in Oct on a weekend is that the park is near vacant. Saturday the longest wait that we had was 10 min for the Calico Mine Ride. We literally rode all the major rides and most of the minor rides multiple times, it was "awesome".


One of the neat things that Knott's they did this year was the solidification of a pirate theme to the Camp Snoopy area of the park for the kids to do a "Treasure Hunt". This made the entire land look so cute, in a creepy way. There were colorful spider webs and skeletons everywhere. Once the season really kicks in it will be wicked to see all the kids in there costumes running around pirates and Snoopy.


Anyway back to the Haunt itself this year there were so many mazes (12), shows (5), scare zones (5), and almost all of the major rides and attractions open everyone was so spread out and entertained lines moved quickly and happily. The longest we had to wait was no more than half an hour. As for the actual mazes I give Knott's full props for the quality of the show they put on this year.



And the winners are
top 5 mazes:
1. Feary Tails
2. 13 Axe Murder Manor
3. Lore of the Vampire
4. the Asylum
5. tie Hatchet High / Cavern of the Lost Souls
* Feary Tails and 13 had some of the best talent and set design that i have seen, the same goes for the Asylum. Lore still offers some of the best talent that the haunt has to offer however the attraction seems to get smaller each year (yes I know the layout is the same as the past two years). This is an attraction that deserves a nice larger layout like when it first opened.

top 3 scare zones:
1. tie Ghost Town Streets / the Gauntlet
2. Silver Bullet Mining Town
3. the Dark Realm
* Some things just never change GTS and the Gauntlet are unbeatable, nowhere in the world can anyone compete with the combination of fog, theming, sound fx, frightful talent and most important of all SLIDERS! As for the two runners up. SBMT suffered from theming and environment but with top notch talent trying there best (may the swamp rest in peace). The Dark Realm would of been a better maze than what it was. No body went through it, the talent just kinda paced thought it and watched the people walk by. The area had tons of good hiding spots but the talent just seemed to ignore the people waking though???

So overall this was an amazing year for the haunt at Knott's and cosidering that this was just the first week of operation there were bugs and now they have until tomorrow to work them out. Well until the 8th we will see what changes occur and improvements are made.