Touted as the Carolinas’ premiere Halloween event, SCarowinds transforms each night from a family theme park into the region’s go-to scream park.

While it is not Cedar Fair’s flagship haunt event, SCarowinds still delivers quality scares and entertainment, attracting tens of thousands of regional fright enthusiasts each fall. It is an event that ran sixteen select nights between September 21 and October 28, including Fridays and Saturdays in September and Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays in October. The event was not offered on Halloween night.

Frightening park goers since 2000, SCarowinds features six haunted mazes, six scare zones, and three shows. Also included for the price of admission are most of the fan favorite attractions, including Intimidator, Afterburn, and the Golden Ticket-winning Fury 325. Again this year, SCarowinds features plenty of thrills and chills to go around, with just over 500 monsters inhabiting the park’s boundaries.

DEPTHS OF DARKNESS

Journey deep into the dark mind of the infamous State Line Slasher. Darkness will consume your every step as you uncover the sick secrets that lie in wait.

The story brings guests in as visitors to Blackthorne Research Facility, where the State Line Slasher was supposedly taken after he was captured.

It’s an interesting premise: we are “entering his mind” as we traverse through this abandoned warehouse he once used to prey on his victims.

How will we accomplish this? The laboratory at Blackthorne has isolated the means to literally step into his memories and mind using a portal device they’ve created using scientific instrumentation. Once we pass through and begin this dark journey, the history and life of this sick and twisted mind will be revealed.

The scenic environment of Depths of Darkness really starts off with a bang. Upon entering the research facility, it is clear that this is not a typical laboratory sterilized by blinding fluorescent lighting and spotless floors. No, this locale has seen things nightmares are made of, and the darkness has taken its toll on the environment.

To exit the lab and pass through the mind, guests are ushered through a gateway of complete darkness, outlined only by a small, bright green border. What follows is a very impressive exterior scene reminiscent to an exterior façade commonly built inside sound stages where all aspects of lighting and elements need to be controlled. Facing the outside of the killer’s childhood home, we see a projection of him as a child as we hear harsh scolding from his parent. It is evident from his reaction and demeanor the admonishment is negatively affecting the young child.

From there, we continue to see glimpses – granted, they get shorter and less detailed – throughout the State Line Slasher’s life, which has a recurrent theme of turmoil and confrontation with those closest to him.

In a place where such evil has fermented, even the staff members have adapted a darkness to them. They seem to stare frighteningly through you as you pass them by, either from the horrid things they’ve been privy to, or perhaps the exposure to the inner workings of a madman has taken its toll – or taken root inside them.

The effective visual and audio presentation depicting vignettes of torment and struggle are haunting and almost evoke pity for the maniac … well, almost. As the interactions with his memories mature to his adulthood, we finally experience and witness the disturbing turn of events as he begins taking lives and becomes a true killer.

DARK HARVEST

Is this year’s crop too far gone to save? Either way, it’s going to be a very Dark Harvest.

With a perfect play on words, this maze takes haunt-goers on a trip through a farm straight from a horror movie.

We’ve taken a wrong turn and ended up on a scenic tour through the dark and dwindling crops, with hopes of finding the way out before we ourselves become harvested.

Dark Harvest has advanced lightyears since its predecessor, Cornstalkers. SCarowinds took the previous edition from the everyday, ordinary corn maze and leveled it up to a hauntingly good experience, free from the common repetition seen in so many of its close relatives.

There’s a lot more to this offering than just a mundane stroll through a makeshift cornfield.

The journey winds through actual farming structures and past dead and decaying victims – both human and animal. As a bonus, we even stumble across the farmer’s homestead.

While you expect that a few of the scarecrows you encounter are there to do more than just shoo the birds away, the creatures lurking within Dark Harvest’s paths are very well-blended with their surroundings, making it quite challenging to spot them before they make their presence known to you.

With excellent camouflaging techniques, getting a few unexpected jump scares becomes much more of a possibility.

The best part, found at the finale, is one you are guaranteed not to miss – the farmer himself greeting you with a deafening shotgun blast you can feel in your chest.

URGENT SCARE

Welcome to Urgent Scare – where we believe FEAR is the best medicine. No matter your ailment or disease, our ethically warped staff is here to provide the scare you need for a healthy tomorrow.

Now, this is our kind of hospital! While there is something to be said for the healing power of laughter, nothing brings a smile to our faces quicker than a good scare.

The story for this maze has been brushed off and  freshened up a bit, starting with a classic haunt attraction move in order to re-purpose an existing maze: flipping the entrance and exits so that the updated maze moves guests through the structure in the opposite direction than before.

The outside of Urgent Scare is a fairly accurate representation of a creepy medical center – on a small scale, of course. The broken windows are a hint that something is somewhat amiss inside this structure.

On the interior, there are all sorts of out-of-date and rundown devices and medical supplies at the ready to treat guests as they snake through the establishment. Blood spatter, severed body parts and other gore is a sure sign that not much healing is going on here.

The bathroom facilities look as though they have never been cleaned – let alone been sterile any time recently – and make the idea of using a port-o-john sound rather appealing.  The patient rooms are filthy and dark, much more likely the source of infection and disease rather than the place where the ill find healing and comfort.

Just like in real life, there are a number of patients all lined up waiting to be called in for treatment. But the real medicine delivered at this haunt is a healthy dose of fear to get your blood pumping while getting that heart rate up.

Crazed patients and medical staff wander aimlessly and trail your progress through the maze, ensuring a constant presence of the creep factor they bring by design.

ZOMBIE HIGH

Think you can survive this grueling trip through the halls of E. Pat Hall High? Maybe you should just stick with homeschool.

There’s nothing wrong with homeschool, but no way are we missing the chance to revisit the golden days of high school again!

While every school differs a bit from one to the next, something is not quite right at this school, and we can’t quite put our finger on it – maybe because it might get bitten off!

All the best scenic parts from our high school memories are here. Everything from the principal’s office to music class, the cafeteria to the school gymnasium. There is even a long hallway full of lockers that has been trashed from the battle with zombies that has taken place.

This spooky, yet nostalgic journey takes guests back to the days of sitting in class, cruising the halls and even hitting the gym floor during prom, decorated in the flavor of Stephen King’s Carrie with blood-spattered streamers and doomed dancers. The difference at this school, however, is that limbs, guts and gore are part of the décor.

By far, one of the year’s best upgrades to Zombie High was the implementation of video projection panels in the school bus that used to be parked inside the queue line. Now it is out front and center and loops a terrifying (but family friendly) scene of students trapped in a bus with a monster fighting for their lives to escape. It is an excellent, effective school-themed visual.

In addition to the scenery, the scareactors are another area where Zombie High really shines. A zombified drum major still looks to lead those who wander through the band hall, perhaps stuck replaying her favorite role at school. Dancing zombies who can’t resist being the “life” of the party even in death stand frozen in time aside their lifeless dance partners in the gymnasium – but which are real and which are decoys? You won’t know until it’s too late.

By far, the lunch ladies in the cafeteria steal the show. While serving up the nastiest, smelliest goop one can imagine, these larger-than-life bearded ladies playfully toss out hilarious insults as they are forced to forever serve up slop at the school buffet. Their antics were quite entertaining to us and frightening to our fellow guests passing through.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE: THE FINAL CUT

Diseased livestock and rancid meat are the least of your worries. You’ll see first-hand how they put the “Magic in the Meat.”

The backstory for this attraction is very unique for a slaughterhouse-type maze. The company is named Red Ribbon Meats, and their gimmick is that they sell meat made from the “red ribbons” of the county fairs. However, the winning secret recipe in this meat comes directly from local citizens who have unwillingly donated the very best of themselves to the cause.

As guests, you take a tour of the historic meat factory, but do not linger too long, as you might very well end up being processed, packaged, and part of the next product shipment!

To experience this maze, guests must first enter into the cattle queue. Slowly making your way to the processing plant entrance with the rest of the herd, you can’t help but notice the brightly glowing letters on the “RED RIBBON MEATS” sign occasionally flicker off, leaving the foreboding word “DIE” burning for a brief second.

Once inside the factory, we are exposed to the sights and salty smells of the butcher shop storefront, then into the freezer area. The scenes are well-painted and boast a variety of effective color and meaty texture treatments.

At one point, we descended into a meat grinder, with gummy plugs of skin and bits from previous meat “donors” hanging from the rotating blades. A favorite scene for us was a conveyor belt sending boxes of the final packaged meat product to the stock room where the product is prepared for shipment.

The slaughterhouse theme is a fairly easy one to create scares for, and SCarowinds does it very well. Scareactors ready to cleave and extract your best, meatiest cuts greet you throughout the factory.

Along a table in the butcher room was a buffet of nasty, fresh meat halfway through being hacked up. Shortly thereafter, we encountered several cages, where captives begged to be rescued before they, too, became a part of someone’s next backyard cookout.

Packed with probably some of the best gruesome gross-outs in the entire park, we witnessed victim after victim strewn apart in just about every fashion you can imagine: giant saw blades, machetes, blenders – you name it. The very last scare you encounter is during the final scene, where the smokehouse is abundant with the pungent smells of burning wood and skin. Just as you lean in to see what’s cooking, the pitmaster steps out of the shadows and fires up his chainsaw, giving you two choices: leave RED RIBBON MEATS or DIE.

SILVER SCREAM STUDIOS: CONDEMNED

The stage is set for a brand-new take on SCarowinds’ Silver Scream Studios maze. This year, it’s lights (out) … camera … action – in complete darkness, barring a few flashlights you’ve been given before entering the decrepit and abandoned space of cinematic infamy.

Who knows what you will find lurking in the darkness of this once functioning studio relic from the past? It could be the ghosts of Von Hellsburg’s victims, the actors who once had dreams of hitting it big, now forever doomed to walk the empty halls where they instead met their sticky end.

The scenic – what you could see of it – was considerably improved over what we’ve seen in this maze’s forerunners. The premise of this haunt lends itself to being able to see only what can be illuminated with a small, mini-flashlight.

In addition to the dynamic highlights manually controlled by our own group, we occasionally encountered areas that managed to still have power or their own source of luminescence. We were pleasantly surprised to see the upgraded visuals in the scenic elements of this new and improved maze.

What we were very disappointed with, however, was that for our entire large group, we were strictly only allotted 3 mini-flashlights. These were dispersed to the front, middle, and back of the group – none of which included us. The result was that for half of the maze, we could not unfortunately see where we were stepping, much less the scenery we were passing through. What we did see, though, we really liked and were very impressed with. Still, we were left wondering what all we missed and what wonders were left behind in the darkness.

We admit that we do love the trend we’ve seen in many haunts in 2018: the distribution of flashlights for a sort of user-generated experience. What the operator of the flashlight wants to see and explore is totally up to them. They can make it as exciting and suspenseful – or as straightforward – as they wish, just by the amount that they choose to utilize their light source.

While we personally do not care for “lights out” events, we do quite enjoy having our very own source of light. But, as a general rule, each patron should have their own flashlight. Period. Otherwise, some guests miss out on a lot of the experience.

In the area of scares, Silver Scream Studios: Condemned did manage to hold its own. Stepping through the hallways where former aspiring actors succumbed to the crazed plans of a madman, the scene was set to encounter a number of spirits in a state of unrest due to the violent manners in which they passed. Torn from their corporeal existences, they lash out and take out their grievances on guests from the darkness as they journey through the studio facility.

SCarowinds has an impressive six scare zones to match the number of mazes they have – that’s pretty remarkable, considering the size of this regional park. These areas of concentrated fright are so well placed and well done that none seem too close or imposing on any other. In between the zones, guests have just enough space and time to catch their breath before encountering the next.

FLEET STREET

There’s an old English folklore that says ghosts only appear in places that have known either great happiness or great misery, and Fleet Street has certainly experienced both. Thick, poisonous fog has completely engulfed the city, and its effect on the citizens has been grave. There have been awful rumors that our barber is a possessed murderer. But if you find the time, do stop by and try a meat pie at the shop below the parlor – they are to die for…

Enter the world of Jack the Ripper and Sweeney Todd as you walk through 19th century London. The sets in this scare zone are very impressive and include facades of several well-known structures such as Elizabeth Tower, the famed architectural icon that houses Big Ben.

As we stepped into the central part of Fleet Street, Scareactors dressed in authentic period garb held hands and danced around Big Ben, singing “Ring around the Rosie”, which of course references the terrible and deadly plague of that era. Off the main street, The Demon Barber himself brandishes a sharp razor while offering haircuts to unknowing victims who are willing to come sit in his chair.

Of the past few years that SCarowinds has featured Fleet Street, this was the best presentation by far.

DEAD MAN’S LANDING

Take a stroll through a bustling town full of seafarers, merchants, and scrappy ruffians that rival the ports once visited by Blackbeard himself. It may look innocent on the surface, but inexplicable terror lies beneath, where lost treasure and the song of the siren have put even the strongest, sturdiest pirates in a watery grave. Legend has it that these lost souls are looking to add to their bloodless, cadaverous pirate crew…

SCarowinds really pulled out the stops for Dead Man’s Landing, one of two new scare zones for 2018. You very much do get a sense of strolling through a seaside town, complete with docked pirate ships, a stone-faced waterfall reminiscent of Skull Mountain, and rag-tag merchants offering up period-appropriate sustenance at a rustic market.

Further down the path, a tavern nestled in an impressive stretch of era-authentic buildings serves up beers and beverages for just a few shillings. Serving as the structural backbone of this area, this section took us aback and reminded us of some of the scenery at a major theme park.

Although on a much smaller scale, we would simply love to see these types of structures and scenery become a permanent part of Carowinds. They were that good.

To boot, the actors and characters were simply excellent, well-costumed, and accurate in their dialect. This proved to be our favorite scare zone by far, and one of the best ones we’ve seen in many years of attending haunt events.

MASS ACRES

A presence pulsates through the trees – a presence of spirits and mischievous creatures. If you’re visiting this cemetery, you’re looking for trouble. Lucky for you, you won’t have to look long.

The very first scare zone you encounter at SCarowinds – given you enter the main entrance – is Mass Acres, a cleverly named stretch filled with cemetery headstones and meandering spirits.

This sprawling expanse definitely contains all the creepy elements of a graveyard at night, plus the added bonus of night walkers and undead creatures pawing at guests as they go by.

While not one of the scariest zones scenically speaking, it is certainly beautifully done and contains many masterfully crafted features and statues.

CARNEVIL

E.H. Bailey may have disbanded his traveling circus years ago, but those who shocked and awed the audience can’t seem to leave the only place they’ve called home.  These deranged clowns don’t want to make you laugh – they want to see you cry…

SCarowinds seriously upped the ante in this re-imagined, circus-themed scare zone. This year, CarnEVIL features plenty of scenic morsels and clown-filled frights. While some of the props were visually familiar, they have been recycled in such a fresh way as they are barely recognizable within their new locations and functions.

An old, over-sized Jack-in-the-Box that used to lay wasting off the midway as a photo backdrop now perches atop a big-top themed maze, his giant, clawed hands framing the entrance and exit.

Inside the tent, guests navigate identical sections constructed of matching red and white striped material. This fun addition, called Jack’s Revenge, is just a bit of extra fun thrown in for guests passing through the area.

The best part was that even on the last night of the season, the actors were giving it their all, just as if it were opening day. As we walked through, two clown characters joined hands and formed a bridge, inviting us to playfully pass underneath.

The hollow

BLOODYARD

As you stand up, you notice that you’re surrounded by a very unfriendly group, but these aren’t your average villains … These are vampires, and they look thirsty – thirsty for blood. There’s no sense in trying to escape. You’re in the wrong place, at the worst possible time … If only there was a way out…

Blood Yard has somewhat of a cool junkyard vibe to it, decorated with brightly graffitied shipping containers, chain-link fences, and re-purposed oil drums. It seems like this area is always packed and full of life – and maybe that’s just what the vampires want. There is often a show taking place, featuring talented percussionists and dancers.

Although it looks like you may have wandered too far off Carowinds’ property at first glance, those dumpsters and fences are just the creatures of the night setting the stage for the unsuspecting crowds who cannot resist their songs and gyrations.

In a manner of speaking, Blood Yard is the black sheep of the scare zone family – filled with misfit vamps clad in leather and tattoos. It’s definitely an entertaining spot, and we always find ourselves pausing here to check things out.

It was apparent from the moment we took to the midway that SCarowinds was not messing around this year. Everywhere we looked, we felt like we were at a major theme park, not the regional amusement park we have grown accustomed to. We were very impressed at every turn: Pirate villages, giant Halloween luminaries, exterior facades built inside buildings, worthy of a Hollywood sound stage … at SCarowinds?

This sort of leveling up on scenery and every detail is not something we’re familiar with at this venue. After attending every single year since SCarowinds began in 2000, we were fairly used to liking what we saw enough to keep coming back, but they really never knocked our socks off, and the scare zones and overall décor has always been tame. This year, however, it is obvious that Cedar Fair showed some improvements across the board.

You can find an extended photo gallery from our night at SCarowinds in this exclusive album on the Escape Authority Facebook page! While there, why not give us a “LIKE” if you haven’t already? We’ll give you candy!

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Venue: Carowinds

Location: Charlotte, NC

Number of Haunts: 6

Dates: Select Nights September 21st – October 28, 2018

Hours: 7:00PM – 12AM or 1AM, depending on the night.

Cost: As low as $37 with online purchase, or free with your Gold or Platinum Season Pass; Fright Lane passes available for $45.