Inside the Disneyland Halloween haunted maze you never knew existed – Orange County Register

Disneyland rips a bloody page from the horror playbooks of Knott’s, Universal Studios and Six Flags every Halloween and turns a corner of the Anaheim theme park into a decidedly un-Disney haunted maze filled with scary beasts and creatures that visitors never get to see.

Disneyland hosts the Ghoul House scare maze one night each year during October as an employee-only after-hours event.

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Disneyland is known for its family-friendly Halloween Time decor and not-so-scary Oogie Boogie Bash after-hours events that are far less gory, bloody and deadly than Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood, Knott’s Scary Farm at Knott’s Berry Farm and Fright Fest at Six Flags Magic Mountain.

Disneyland’s employee-exclusive Ghoul House event is created by cast members for cast members — Disney parlance for theme park workers. Disneyland rarely speaks about the scare maze to the general public and does little to promote the word-of-mouth event to employees.

This year’s Ghoul House event turned the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail in Disney California Adventure into the Grizzly Peak Halloween Carnival haunted maze.

By day, the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail is a wooded play area for kids with rock climbing walls, rope courses and zip lines. During the Halloween season, Disney turns the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail into Villains Grove — a walk-through Halloween art installation that reinterprets a host of Disney villains using light, sound and smell.

One night a year the little-known Ghoul House crew of Disneyland and DCA employees let their inner demons out and put on a scarefest for their fellow coworkers.

The Ghoul House maze monsters wear ghastly disguises and deliver jump scares designed to thrill, chill and terrify just like their Fright Fest, Scary Farm and Horror Nights compatriots.

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This year’s cast of three dozen or so volunteer “scareactors” included a rogue’s gallery of skeletons, witches, goblins, zombies, werewolves and horned beasts that were far scarier than Cruella DeVille, Captain Hook, Maleficent or any other Disney villains.

Before the Ghoul House event, the all-volunteer team of Disneyland haunters went through a Scare School to prepare and train for the one-night-only affair that’s now in its 13th year.