Who lives in the fortress?
Countless times I have driven down Magnolia to Huntington Beach and wondered who lived at the real life castle on the corner of Bermuda St. This year I found out that they open up their house one day each year... On Halloween!
Impressive and scary is an understatement. On Halloween the Castle Manor is turned into a ghoulish dungeon! There are about 20 monsters, zombies and ghosts inside the house, scaring you at every corner and another 10 people directing your path with flashlights. The whole house is dark and lit with strobes, fog machines and strategic gel spotlights. They must've allowed us to walk through 80% of the house!
The gargoyle outside is tame compared to what's inside. Start up the stairs, wind through decrepit bodies in the shower, risen zombies in bedrooms, sword wielding monsters in nooks, creepy clowns, grotesquely large gremlins, up and down numerous steps and side rooms, down through the family room, the haunted kitchen and into the backyard where there's a life-like stone tiger, a zombie handing out handfuls of candies to the kids in front of a raised devil and his friends. The red lit backyard makes the pool look like a lava pit.
If you are waiting in line outside the line never seems to move fast enough but once you get in the house you understand why. It takes at least five minutes to walk through the whole haunted castle. They have to let in groups at a time because walking though the house requires you to use the same set of stairs mulitiple times... They do a great job of directing the foot traffic.
I got in line at 6:15 pm with about 150 people in front of me and finally entered the house at 7:40 pm. Get there early! If you get there after 6:30 pm you will probably have to wait at least 2 hours. The house is open from 6 pm to 11 pm.
Admission Cost: $0
Suggested Donation: $1 per adult
VIP Cut the Line Donation: $10 per adult
If you are in the area this is definitely worth doing at least once. How often you get to see a huge house like this in a normal neighborhood decked out in full Halloween mode with live ghouls and zombies?
If you are in a time crunch and really, really want to see this, pay the $10 for the front-of-the-line pass. Do I think this maze is worth $10? Ehhhh... But is it worth $5? Definitely. Is paying $10 worth saving you a 90 minute wait? Probably. And it's definitely worth paying the $10 if it's a couple of adults and a bunch of kids because the kids all get to cut with you for free.
More work goes into this than I can even imagine. Thanks to the awesome owners for opening up their castle for a day for the whole community to enjoy! read more