NEW YORK — In case the real world’s not scary enough, there are plenty of Halloween attractions out there designed to completely freak you out. One in New York called This Is Real promises to “literally kidnap you and stash you in a Brooklyn warehouse.” Fortunately, you can also find happy pumpkin-themed events if you seek a gentler approach to the holiday.
Here are some options, from family friendly to utterly terrifying.
Family fun
A pumpkin made of more than 100,000 Lego bricks can be seen at Legoland in Winter Haven, Fla., and Carlsbad, Calif.. The Legoland parks are hosting Brick-or-Treat celebrations on select dates.
At Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., a new family friendly event called Great Pumpkin Luminights is under way through Oct. 28.
Disney parks also offer a variety of Halloween celebrations. At Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party takes place on select nights through Nov. 1 with a parade, fireworks, costumed characters and treat trails. Tickets are separate from regular park admission. Mickey’s Halloween Party at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, Calif., is so popular that it’s already sold out for this year.
Disney California Adventure has other new Halloween-themed features. Guardians of the Galaxy — Mission: Breakout, which opened in May, is hosting Monsters After Dark nightly through Oct. 31 and Cars Land has been redecorated and dressed up for Haul-O-Ween.
Real enough for you?
Intense storylines, high-tech special effects and actors who know how to spike your adrenaline without ever harming a hair on your head have become a big trend in Halloween attractions in the last few years. Many of them have warnings and age limits so check for details before you buy tickets.
The immersive This Is Real experience is billed as an interactive, survivalist game in an “extreme escape room.” The attraction charges $95 to $110 to lock you up in an abandoned Brooklyn warehouse where, the company says, you will watch a “psychopath kill others. They implore you to help them, but you cannot. Your time has come. You have just one shot at getting away if you are to survive.”
HauntWorld.com’s “scariest haunted houses” lists freaky attractions such as Erebus in Pontiac, Mich., with a half-mile walk inside a creepy building where “things grab you, bite you, land on top of you, and then we will bury you alive.”
Among the best-known and most popular Halloween extravaganzas are Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights, in both the Orlando, Fla. and Los Angeles theme parks, featuring haunted houses, scare zones, mazes and movie-quality sets and productions. Many of the attractions are themed on popular horror genre films and shows. The forthcoming horror film “Jigsaw,” part of the “Saw” franchise, inspired a new haunted house in Orlando and a new maze at the Hollywood park this season.
Around the U.S.
Just about every region around the U.S. has local Halloween attractions, from haunted hayrides to huge displays of elaborately carved pumpkins. But some events and attractions also draw lots of out-of-towners.
In Philadelphia, visitors from all 50 states and 40 foreign countries bought tickets last year to Terror Behind the Walls at Eastern State Penitentiary, which is a real abandoned prison.
Salem, Mass., known for its all-too-real 17th century witch trials, also typically gets more than a half-million visitors from around the world throughout October for the city’s Haunted Happenings.
