Our First Halloween Haunt at Kings Dominion!
Our scary busy 2023 Haunt Season continues with our first ever visit to Kings Dominion’s Halloween Haunt. Lucky for us, we are not going in alone! Joined by our friends Chad and Venessa from Two Tickets to Adventure, we are taking on every house, maze and scare zone that the event has to offer. Park policy forbids photos or video recordings inside the haunted attractions, but we tried to capture as much of the shows, scares zones, and atmosphere as possible. Unlike previous years, 2023’s Halloween Haunt at Kings Dominion was a separately ticketed event. We did purchase day tickets as well, and spent a few hours riding coasters and enjoying non-spooky related attractions at the park!
Around 5:00PM, it was time to return to International Street to wait in the “holding area” so that guests who were not attending Haunt had an opportunity to leave. Our tickets were scanned and we were directed to another holding area in the Jungle X-pedition section of the park. The official event started at 6:00PM, which was when we were released from holding to enter the rest of the park. At this point, only three of the scare mazes were open - with the rest set to open at 7:00PM. Our group decided to head for the Eiffel Tower to stake out a spot for the “opening scareremonies”, which manifested as the Blood Reign show. According to Two Tickets, the show was abbreviated compared to last year, but it was neat to see all the scare actors gathered together representing the different houses and scare zones.
It is important to note that we did purchase Fast (Fright) Lane, which is Cedar Fair’s “skip-the-line” pass, to maximize our time at the event. During the event, we were able to do every maze at least one time and our favorite (Condemned) a second time. The time saved in line also allowed us to take our time in the scares zones which were also really well themed as well as watch live performances like “The Black Widow Burlesque” and “Big Top Band.” Our favorite show was definitely “Conjure the Night” which ended up being our closer and a perfect endcap for this event.
Overall, we felt the quality of the scare zones and mazes were comparable to other amusement park haunts, and maybe even slightly better. We really enjoyed interactions with actors in scare zones and mazes. We did have a hard time finding places that were open to serve food to guests and had to contend with long waits for the food booths and restaurants that were open, which was our only real gripe. We believe that Kings Dominion would benefit from having a few more standalone booths selling haunt-themed foods, or from opening more of their standard businesses during this event, to be sure…but overall, our first take on Halloween Haunt at Kings Dominion was a very positive one! To hear our full reviews and to see how we ranked this years mazes, be sure to check out our vlog below…and, while you’re at it, check out Two Tickets to Adventure for more fantastic travel and theme park content!
