By Charly SHELTON

This weekend the annual Halloween haunts begin at the local theme parks. A much-awaited time for horror fans across LA, there is something for everyone – from the little kiddies to the steel-nerved spook fans.

For families, Disneyland is transitioning most of its Halloweentime celebration over to Disney California Adventure to get some kinks worked out before the swell of attendees descend for “Star Wars Land.” The now-DCA-based nighttime event Mickey’s Halloween Party offers kids a chance to trick-or-treat through the park and dress up for pictures in their Halloween costumes. And the newly opened “Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout” will transform at night into a continuation of the daytime storyline. “GotG: Monsters After Dark” will welcome guests back on a second mission to save Groot, who was accidentally left behind in the mayhem of opening the Collector’s cells holding all manner of space monsters. Halloweentime at the Disneyland resort begins this Friday and runs through Halloween.

For the more adventurous, local theme parks including Six Flags, Universal and Knott’s unleash monsters of all shapes and sizes. The Queen Mary, though not a theme park in her own right, has a nice festival area that is used for a great Christmas carnival and ice sculpture show around the holidays and, at Halloween, the spirits of the famously haunted ship rise for Dark Harbor – a ghoul-filled extravaganza with mazes, sideshow performers, dinner, drinks and the all new Meatlocker ice bar, which serves libations at a spine-chilling 9°F. Dark Harbor begins Sept. 28 and runs select nights through Nov. 1.

Six Flags Magic Mountain will host its annual Fright Fest. Much like HHN or KSF, the amusement park is taken over for Halloween and offers themed mazes and scare zones. While I have a history of disliking Six Flags, I reconsidered my dislike last year after attending this great event. It does more with less than a lot of the mazes found at other parks. We’ll see if it can keep up the good work this year. Fright Fest begins this Saturday and runs select nights through Halloween.

The big names in haunted attractions are Knott’s Scary Farm and Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. Each park has recently invited CV Weekly to come see some behind-the-scenes work and hear announcements as we lead up to the opening of the haunts.

Knott’s announced its new and returning mazes this year at a fan event in the park. The big news is that 2017 is the last year Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, will be performing her sexy stage revue. After performing a show at KSF for nearly 25 of the last 35 years, she is ready to hang up the beehive bouffant. Also new this year are three mazes – Dark Ride, a creepy carnival ride to escape from, Pumpkin Eater, a grotesque monster maze based on an old children’s rhyme, and Trick-or-Treat: Lights Out, a reimagining of the classic ToT maze, but darker – literally. And a new haunted ride, Timber Mountain Log Ride Halloween Hootenanny, will delight families all day and night in a silly, fun ride to get into the spirit of the season. Additions and updates to old favorite mazes and scare zones will keep repeat visitors guessing as well. Knott’s Scary Farm opens Sept. 21 and runs select nights through Halloween.

Universal Studios Hollywood brings back the ever-popular Halloween Horror Nights with all-new mazes based on “American Horror Story: Roanoke,” “Ash vs. Evil Dead,” “Saw,” the “Insidious” films and “The Shining,” among others. CV Weekly was invited for a walkthrough with the head of Creative Development for HHN John Murdy to see the mazes being built and learn of all the intricacies that go into making guests believe they have left LA and are wandering around a hotel with a maniacal killer on the loose.

From the wallpaper selection to the framed pictures on the walls to the carpet patterns, no detail is too small to ignore. And each one is meticulously researched from the source material, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 version of the film. The carpet, for example, is very vivid with intricate patterns. When researching the film, Murdy found that the walls are rather bland and there isn’t much color except in the carpet. So he brought this touch in to the maze.

“What brings it to life and gives it its color is really the carpet. We created all our own carpet for this maze, so there’s three different types of carpet,” Murdy said. “And they’re all these wild patterns. We designed it on the computer; you can’t order ‘The Shining’ carpet on the Internet, so we designed it on the computer and then we found a company where we could print our own carpet. So you’ll see multiple versions of that as you move through the maze.”

One hallway shows main character Jack’s growing madness as his typed pages that read, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” are scattered around. Kubrick famously had his assistant type this out on several hundred pages that were used in the film. Murdy, in a similar turn, made one of his coworkers type out dozens of pages that were then scattered over the walls of the maze as exact reproductions from the film.

“At least I didn’t do as bad [to my coworker] as what Stanley [Kubrick] did to his assistant, because ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ is an English saying. It means something in America, kinda, but mostly in England,” Murdy said. “But if you were in Spain, it doesn’t mean anything so she had to type different versions of it depending on what market was playing it. There was an Italian version, a French version – I think it was four or five months that she spent just typing that.”

There are a total of eight mazes throughout the event, and each one is treated with the same care that “The Shining” has enjoyed. And each one has the potential to cause nightmares.

“A maze is always a balance of visual things and then really visceral scares, and that’s why people come here,” Murdy said.

Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights begins this Friday and runs select nights through Nov. 4.

  Charly Shelton