QUEEN MARY’S DARK HARBOR

October 8, 2019

Review: QUEEN MARY’S DARK HARBOR

After her last journey during the Halloween of 1967, the RMS Queen Mary found her final resting place in the port of Long Beach. Since opening to the public in 1971, this internationally known tourist attraction has been entertaining guests, ghost hunters, and historians alike. The Queen Mary is a beautiful portal to a bygone era, complete with ghostly residents and legends of supernatural occurrences.

Every fall the Queen Mary transforms her otherworldly environment into the annual premiere Halloween event: Dark Harbor. This eerie and nightmarish gathering incorporates vendors, performers, rides, and multiple iconic mazes in order to celebrate Halloween on an epic scale. As you travel through Dark Harbor, your constant companions will be the dense clouds of sinister fog and the echoes of bloodcurdling screams.

This year’s event has six mazes which are original creations of Dark Harbor: “Rogue”, “Intrepid”, “Circus”, “Feast”, “B340”, and “Lullaby”. Each maze features its own set of original characters, with three of the mazes located on the Queen Mary, and the remaining three on land. These mazes offer a variety of walk-through pacing, and all feature excellent sound and light design, beautifully creepy sets, and incredible actors.

The new maze which premiered this season is Rogue. Located on land, this maze replaces “Deadrise” from last year. Rogue is based on a true story, which takes your through disaster striking the Queen Mary in the form of a rogue wave. In the Halloween version, you must escape to safety by avoiding undead crew members and going through mechanized tilting rooms.

The other two land mazes, Intrepid and Circus, are not new but have received some fresh features for the season. Circus has benefited greatly from its upgrades, and includes a new assortment of characters which offer more of a sideshow feel as opposed to the “possessed clown” theme of past years. Additionally, this maze turns up the levels of absolute, fantastic absurdity - such as a newly added section in which you might end up waist deep in a ball pit, or the "laughing gas” room that you are taken into by a maniacal clown doctor, from which you have to find your way out of amid giant clouds of fog and limited visibility.

Our favorite mazes, however, are the ones located within the bulkheads of the Queen Mary: Feast, B340, and Lullaby. Feast features the evil Chef, a ghostly character who has come back for revenge after being cooked alive. Feast takes you throughout the Chef’s kitchen where you will end up in mechanized human meat grinders and giant ovens. B340 features the quest to find the spirit of Samuel the Savage, a Queen Mary passenger who went on a murderous rampage. Following his killing spree, Samuel was locked in Stateroom B340, only to disappear into thin air and subsequently haunt the decks of the Queen Mary.

The third and best maze on the Queen Mary is Lullaby. This maze features Scary Mary, a child who has been haunting the ship since she drowned in the first class swimming pool. You join a medium’s journey to find Mary in the shadows of the ship. Scary Mary - with her decomposing Victorian dress, chalky face riddled with dark veins, white clouded eyes, and rotten teeth - is the best character that Dark Harbor has created. Clutching her ravaged teddy bear, Scary Mary pays tribute to the ghost of a second class passenger named Jackie Torin, a little girl who has haunted the Queen Mary since she drowned in the second class pool. This maze also features a secret bar: Fathom 6, which brings passengers for the first time into the ship’s boiler room. This area is in the lowest point of the ship, and we were able to find after gathering clues from multiple scareactors.

Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor is a wonderfully entertaining experience that takes you through the spectral worlds of a legendary ghost ship. Dark Harbor has outdone itself this year by offering a collection of mazes whose innovation and artistry is both superb and enthralling. Our tips to enjoy a better experience at Dark Harbor include getting the Evil Express pass and parking off site (use the free shuttle) in order to maximize your time at this legendary haunted event.

VC

October 08, 2019

Hauntsofla.com

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