Exhibition - Halloween2018: A Queen Mary Dark Harbor Halloween Event

By Mulder, Long Beach, 13 october 2018

Queen Mary is back with more frightful fun this Halloween season with Dark Harbor. With 6 terrifying mazes, live entertainment, sinister swings, more bars than you can keep track of, monsters at every turn and some spooky good eats, you’re set to have a night to remember. Over the summer during Midsummer Scream we learned that this holiday season they would bring in Jon Cooke, a former maze designer from Knott’s Scary Farm, to shake things up, and shake things up he did. While dropping a maze from the previous years roster, they revamped the remaining, each maze following it’s own story line.

Feast, moves its location from one end of the ship to the other, keeping some signature scenes from the previous year while still delivering a fresh, or not so fresh, depending how you look at it, story line. You travel through the bowels of the ship passing through kitchens with demented cooks that are ready to serve up whatever crosses their path, maybe even you. Deadrise, mixes things up this year by being a little less dark and damp and a little more interactive. If you enjoy feeling like a kid climbing through an obstacle course, this maze is the one for you. Each turn feeling like it leads you in a different direction, climbing up a rope wall or taking a chance down a dark slide, even having an opportunity to interact with people up on one of the events many bars.

Intrepid steps up its scares this year, immersing you in the environment even before stepping into the maze, surrounding you with sights and sounds from old Scottish shipyards. You’re lead through graveyards, funerals and a swamp that has you looking in every direction. You can wander through the event and find entertainment just about everywhere, there isn’t a place where you will go where a monster won’t try to sneak up on you. They keep their guests highly entertained when not lost in the mazes. Fire dancers grace one stage while musicians play on another. Don’t forget to take a ride on the sinister swings.

All these scares can work up quite an appetite, and Dark Harbor delivers on every level. From the I Scream Cavern where you can get some ice cold treats, to El Diablo that serves up some wicked good Mexican food. And last but not least, Dark Harbor brings a good time with it’s many bars. Some available to general attendees while others are for VIPs only. Interacting with monsters however can earn you wooden tokens that can grant you access to a select few hidden bars, one even being aboard the ship.

Dark Harbor runs on select days from September 27 - November 2, 2018. Prices vary on select nights, while also having several tiers of front of the line passes. With the scares they deliver and entertainment to die for, its too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Photos and Video : Lauren Sanchez