Knott?????s Haunt Readies To Rise Again

[Oscar]

The dawn of the dead won??????t come for another few months, but Knott??????s Berry Farm crews have already spent weeks getting ready for Haunt, the park??????s biggest annual event.

Significant progress has been made on two Haunt mazes resurrected from last year, and three new mazes will join the lineup this year.

Since late June, carpenters, painters and special effects crews have been hard at work cobbling together plywood and stringing wires, creating Victorian-era cemeteries or prison execution chambers in preparation for Haunt??????s opening in late September.

For the public, Haunt is a fall gorefest, celebrated during the harvest moon. But for Knott??????s crews, Hallowe??????en is year-round.

??????We start designing as early as January,?????? said Lara Hanneman, Knott??????s director of entertainment. That??????s just a few weeks after November, when carpenters hurriedly break down the blood-soaked sets so they won??????t clash with the Christmas d??????cor.

Why so much preparation? At full swing, Hanneman said, more than 150 people will help create 13 mazes stuffed with another 1,000 ghouls, demons, and zombies (some monsters with previous experience have been hired already; open auditions will be in mid-August). And to realize the full extent of their creepiness, those legions of doom need black lights, sound effects, and fog machines.
??????We always try to do new effects, new ways to scare people,?????? Hanneman said.

Constructing the sets alone this year will require 65, five-gallon buckets of black paint, Hanneman said.

The attention to detail shows, even before the mazes receive their final touches.

Terror of London takes visitors on a journey through Victorian England during the time Jack the Ripper sent panic coursing through the streets with some of history??????s most notorious killings.

The maze features a meat pie shop, a bordello, fog-filled alleyways, and a blood-spattered bedroom.

For the latter, designers used a crime scene photograph of one of Jack the Ripper??????s murders.

??????We used that for inspiration,?????? Hanneman said, smiling with pride.

While scaring people is the point of the mazes, the designers try give the mazes different themes.

Lockdown lets visitors tour a prison taken over by the inmates, with disastrous results for the guards.

Scene artist Maria Rago of San Clemente busied herself making a plywood sheet look like the grimy cinder blocks that would make up a prison cell.

??????A lot of the detail is sporadic,?????? she explained, designed to draw visitors?????? attention to certain spots in the maze.

??????This is my fourth year doing this,?????? she said. ??????I love doing paint. You can express yourself. It??????s great to see it go from raw wood to finished.??????

Crews decorate the sets with their imaginations, and just about anything they can get their hands on. One prop table featured some tooth-pulling pliers next to a book opened to Lewis Carroll??????s poem, ??????The Walrus and the Carpenter.??????

??????We??????re used to Dumpster diving,?????? Hanneman said with a sharp laugh. ??????Our budget is thin, so that??????s useful.??????

Knott??????s also took advantage of 20th Century Props, a North Hollywood prop shop, shutting its doors earlier this year. Knott??????s paid a few thousand dollars for a truckload of items, from old pinball machines to a mechanical chair, from a sadistic dentist??????s office to a 1940s-vintage porthole television.

??????We got a lot of stuff,?????? Hanneman said. ??????We??????ll find a use for it.??????

This year??????s new mazes include:

- Sleepy Hollow Mountain. Based on the classic Washington Irving short story, it will be located at the Timber Mountain Log Ride. Knott??????s classic pumpkin arch will also relocate there.

- Fallout Shelter. The Cold War is back with a vengeance with this 1950s-theme maze.

- Virus Z. This zombie-filled maze picks up where Contagion left off last year.

source: Press Telegram