I hate to leave a negative review because LA Haunted Hayride has been part of our family tradition…read morefor many years. My husband even left a five-star review in the past. Unfortunately, what we experienced this year was extremely disappointing .... and frankly, it all felt borderline unethical. As a result I feel I need to share our experience last night.
I want to be very clear that this criticism is not directed at the frontline staff. The employees we encountered were doing their best to help people enjoy their night. My concern is with the way the event was managed and, especially how the operating hours were communicated to paying guests.
For Saturday, September 26, we spent nearly $700 on Platinum tickets and Gold parking. My husband was on call, so we arrived around 9 p.m. We got some food, went on the hayride, and then headed toward the mazes, only to discover that they were already closed. We were turned away from attractions that were included in the premium admission we had paid for.
At first, I seriously wondered whether I had somehow completely misremembered our previous visits. So I went back through our photos from past years
Year after year, we have arrived around 8-9 p.m. and stayed well beyond 10:30. We would do the hayride, the mazes, Axe Splat and then usually enjoy the live entertainment afterward. In past years, we were routinely there until around midnight. Last year, we even had enough time to ride the hayride twice. That history is exactly what we relied upon when planning this year's visit.
Had we known that everything was going to abruptly shut down at 10:30 p.m., we obviously would not have spent part of our limited time getting food and snacks. We would have gone directly to the mazes and other attractions first.
That is probably the most frustrating part: there was no meaningful warning that the entire event was about to close. No announcement an hour before closing. No announcement 30 minutes before closing. Everything simply seemed to shut down when 10:30 arrived.
Our tickets also did not clearly communicate to us that the event would close at 10:30 p.m. When we asked staff about the hours, we were told that closing can depend on how busy the event is and that Saturdays are a good night to come. This was a Saturday.
When you are selling premium Platinum admission at these prices, guests should not have to hunt for a closing time or discover it when attractions suddenly stop admitting people. The closing time for each individual event date should be prominently displayed before purchase, clearly stated on the ticket itself, and announced inside the event before attractions begin closing.
Even a simple announcement like "The mazes and attractions will be closing in one hour" would have completely changed how we planned our evening. Or even someone telling us when we entered the event.
Instead, we spent nearly $700 expecting the kind of full evening experience we have enjoyed here for years, only to have a substantial portion of it become unavailable before we could use it. When we tried to address what had happened, there was no meaningful acknowledgment or solution offered.
We have genuinely loved LA Haunted Hayride for years. It has been a family tradition, and that is precisely why this experience was so upsetting.
I'm not necessarily expecting a refund, but our kids genuinely love this event and still want the chance to enjoy the experience we thought we were paying for. Asking a family to simply spend another roughly $1,000 to come back and redo the evening doesn't feel like a fair solution. I'm hoping management will find a meaningful way to make this experience right for us. More importantly, I hope they improve how closing times are communicated so other families don't find themselves standing in front of closed attractions, wondering how an expensive night they had been looking forward to ended so abruptly.
