By Charly SHELTON

There are some nightmares in the fog at Halloween time. Some are pleasant nightmares, like a fun time at a theme park with your friends, visiting haunted houses and taking in some creepy shows. Others are logistical nightmares, like trying to navigate through “California’s Largest Haunt” with no signage, uninformed employees and lackluster houses once you find your way through the fog. This is Fright Fest Extreme.

Six Flags Magic Mountain opened its Fright Fest Extreme on Sept. 7 despite some houses not being ready. Members of the media and influencers were invited to see all the houses open by the following weekend – CV Weekly among them. What followed was, unfortunately, a difficult and disappointing night.

A few things to mention overall – I wanted this to be good; so badly did I want to have a good time and write a glowing review. Six Flags is an amusement park, a regional park, so it shouldn’t compete with Universal or Knott’s Scary Farm. They’re playing in different leagues. That said, Six Flags has significantly invested in licensed intellectual properties this year, bringing well-known themes like “Stranger Things,” “Trick ‘r Treat” and “Army of the Dead” to its lineup. These IP-based houses should have been the showstoppers; however, instead they felt sparse, as though much of the budget went into securing the licenses rather than building out the mazes.

The original haunts that were returning from previous years, like “Willoughby’s Resurrected,” “Vault 666: Unlocked” and “Condemned Forever Damned,” had noticeably higher production values, likely due to the years of iterative improvements made over time. Meanwhile, the new IP-based houses often felt lackluster in comparison.

In all houses, there seemed to be a decision from the top down to ignore storytelling, to minimally staff houses with scaractors who had no consistent training or performance standards, and to go for exceedingly basic set decoration and build out. This isn’t the fault of the scaractors, who were poorly trained, or the build team that had little to work with. This is an operational decision that was misguided and I assume likely due to budget constraints. It’s a decision that comes from the same team that approved an event map with no labels so guests can’t see where the houses are, and the same team that thought an 8.5×11” black paper sign on a tall stick (against a dark sky) would suffice for the house entrance to help guests wayfind through the event. Fright Fest Extreme is plagued by poor choices, lack of communication and lackluster mazes throughout.

That said, there were still occasional bright spots to be found. The “Stranger Things” maze was the highlight of the night. While the maze could have benefited from more character appearances (it featured just one Demogorgon and Eddie, and none of the rest of the cast), the overall atmosphere was immersive due to a particularly cool effect involving floating particles that felt right out of the Upside Down. This maze stood out as the best execution of a licensed property when compared to the others.

Unexpectedly, another high point of the evening came from the food. In a sea of chicken fingers and hamburgers, Fright Fest’s specialty offerings surprised me with their creativity and quality. The Zombie Nachos, featuring braised beef birria and white queso sauce, absolutely killed it (no pun intended) and was a bright spot in an otherwise dark night.

Tickets are available now (and are between $6 and $12 more expensive than any of the other theme park haunts, depending on the night) for select dates through Nov. 3. While we can’t advise that this is a good haunt for someone who enjoys them, it is a great starter haunt for people who don’t want a lot of scares. There were lots of younger kids populating the night – at least on the night I was there because there isn’t a lot to be afraid of.

For a full in-depth review with peeks inside each maze, or for a full review of the foods and cocktails that were previewed for the media, scan the QR code attached to this story.