REVIEW: SCARELA
September 1, 2018
SCARELA at the LA Convention center
Last weekend celebrated the 5th year of ScareLA, the first Halloween convention of its kind. ScareLA transformed the walls inside the downtown Los Angeles Convention center into a surreal world which hosted Halloween lovers of all shapes and sizes. Clowns, mummies and zombies packed the show floor as they visited vendors and panels, watched slider shows and enjoyed the wide assortment of haunted mazes. Although ScareLA takes up much less space than Long Beach’s massive multilevel Midsummer Scream, that doesn’t mean that it there was less to offer. The compact floor space actually made it easier to hop around and take everything in.
Like Midsummer Scream, our favorite experiences at ScareLA were the attractions. This year ScareLA introduced the Ghost Train (unrelated to Griffith Park Live Steamers). This funhouse/carnival styled miniature train traveled through a blacked-out, psychedelic, 3D world in which a cowboy ghost holds up the train and visits each passenger to shake them down for gold nuggets. This all ages ride was great and reminded me of a larger scale version of Festival Supreme’s 2014 Halloween train ride.
The curation of ScareLA was excellent, and showcased some of our favorite “unhinged” haunts. It was great to see High Desert Haunt getting some love. This Apple Valley legend has been in our top 5 list for years. The owner of High Desert Haunt, Jordan, is an extremely creative maverick who always surprises us with his bizarre and twisted ideas which he executes with great precision.
Another of our favorites, Rizos Scarehouse, delivered the most intense experience of the convention. This Rialto haunted maze is similar to High Desert Haunt in that it always feels wild, unpredictable, and relentless. All of their classic characters were there to frighten all who chose to enter the maze. It is worth noting that the screams coming from the visitors in the Rizos Scarehouse pop-up were consistent throughout our entire time at the convention center.
ScareLA had many other haunts, scares, and VR experiences to fill up the blacked out area of the convention center. Bands were playing in the lobby and they had some great pop-up photo opportunities which included a gigantic Ouija Board and horror sets created by Gory Girls. We will be posting a few more detailed individual reviews of selected mazes throughout the next week.
We always look forward to all the work ScareLA puts into creating a thrilling and spooky weekend which can be experienced by people of all ages. The event has been a great benefit to the LA horror and haunter community. and we thank them for their dedication to make the chill of October nights come alive in the heat of August!
VC
September 1, 2018
Hauntsofla.com
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