By Charly SHELTON

Halloween is nearly upon us and, to celebrate the spirit of the season, the local theme parks go all out to bring scary fun to boys and ghouls searching for a good fright. So far, we’ve seen all that Knott’s Scary Farm and Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights have to offer. This week, we change our focus from an event at a theme park to a dedicated carnival of terror – Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor.

The seventh annual event is better than ever with a redesigned layout to make the flow through the carnival a little easier for guests. The carnival features several dining locations and performance spaces as well as bars and shops. But the real attraction is the ship. The Queen Mary is one of the most haunted places in America, usually ranked somewhere in the top 10 on any list of haunted places. That lends itself to raising fear levels before the mazes are even built. Add to that a scary story of a specific ghost told to guests before entering the maze, then walking through in near total darkness within the bowels of the ship to see disembodied spirits and dispirited bodies. What results should be a terrifying Halloween experience full of fear and haunting nightmares that guests take home. One would think.

The event is better than ever this year, but that’s not saying much. The new maze, “Feast,” is actually really good. The décor is great, beginning in a passenger hallway then moving through the dining room and into the kitchen where a cannibalistic chef is preparing his passengers for dinner. The props are good and the sets are actual locations, so it all works.

The other mazes, though, are brought back from previous years’ events and are bland and slapdash. For example, in “Soulmate,” the maze in which Graceful Gale – a beautiful debutante who haunts the ship – searches for her long lost lover, the hallways are cluttered with piles of mannequin parts, often without any lighting and not placed near anything else, appearing to be just thrown there to fill space. Much of the decoration throughout the event seems to exist only because the Halloween store had a sale and there is space to place a pile of stuff. The speakers were placed more prominently than the actors on several occasions and the lighting was next to non-existent. To me it felt rushed and, at times, unsafe.

The concept behind the mazes is really cool, and I have to give credit for that. Each maze located on Queen Mary is based on a real person who allegedly haunts the ship. Graceful Gale actually existed; she was a debutante who got aboard the ship in 1939 and disappeared mid-voyage without a trace. The chef from “Feast” was a chef onboard the ship who was murdered by being cooked in his own oven during WWII. Scary Mary was a little girl who drowned in the pool in 1952. Samuel committed several murders onboard the ship during an Atlantic voyage in 1948 and was locked in room B340, but when the crew went to let him out, he was found violently ripped apart and dead within the locked room. John Brown, known here as The Ironmaster, was the ship’s builder in Scotland and is now tied to it forever. And The Captain, of course, was captain of the Queen Mary, formerly known as The Grey Ghost during WWII, and he never left his post.

With all that intriguing history, it’s fun to just be in the actual places where these ghosts have been known to haunt. The mazes are so-so, but the history makes it a bit more fun and the chance to maybe have an other-worldly experience gives it that little edge of excitement that is needed. Overall, though, I don’t think it’s worth it.

With so many other options, this one is not a good choice. Because the scares aren’t scary, many of the characters resort to gross-out shock. One girl dressed as a clown spit a handful of her own mucus into her hand, held it up over someone’s face, then slurped it back up again. It’s this kind of disgusting thing that makes guests care even less about the event because it ruins the experience for everyone. Vulgarity, intensely loud and needless noises, and copious amounts of alcohol flow through this event, so be warned when thinking about taking teenagers or kids. This is meant for adults, and feels like stepping into “Jackass” video without the laughter. For kids and families, wait until the holidays for Queen Mary’s Chill – genuinely one of the best events in town. We know QM can put on a good event; it’s just not this one.

For more info, visit QueenMary.com.

  Charly Shelton