Sinister Pointe Haunted Attraction
Sinister Pointe Haunted Attraction
Hollywood Gothique Says:
Sinister Pointe is a true innovator among Halloween haunted houses, using interactivity to involve its victims in a way that few Southern Californian haunts had ever done. Over the years, it has changed locations and presentations, always trying to offer something new and stay one step ahead of the competition.
Not only that – they manufacture their own props and effects, some of which are truly amazing.
Website: www.sinisterpointe.com
info@sinisterpointe.com
2022 Status: Sinister Pointe has not presented a walk-through Halloween haunt of its own since 2018. Instead, the company is currently offering overnight stays in a motel room modeled after Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. The room tends to book up well in advance, but dates are available throughout 2023.
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Sinister Pointe Information
Sinister Pointe once billed itself as “Southern California’s Only Year-Round, Permanent Haunted Attraction and Horror Production Studio.” Now calling itself a “one stop shop production studio specializing in Halloween and Haunted Attractions,” the company has not presented a walk-through haunted house for Halloween since 2018. Instead, it has offered various horror-themed events throughout the year: a “Not So Merry Holiday Haunted Attraction,” a Spirit Lounge spooky speakeasy, and an AirBNB motel room modeled after Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.
Sinister Pointe History
This highly regarded Halloween attraction haunted Orange County in various guises since 1996, originally under the name “Nightmares,” then “Realm of Darkness.”
Sinister Pointe was the first Halloween attraction in Southern California to feature interactive elements, forcing visitors to complete tasks and choose pathways in order to navigate their way through its sinister corridors. While other haunts appropriated this strategy, Sinister Pointe continued to innovate, always striving to stay one step ahead.
Past events include The Haunting in 2006 and Condemned in 2007. Halloween 2008 brought an officially licensed Saw maze, followed by Fear and Silent Hill (based on the videogame and film) in 2009; there was also a haunt zone titled “Slaughter Yard.”
In 2010, the team behind Sinister Pointe took a year off from their own haunts to work on the Queen Mary Dark Harbor in Long Beach and on Diner of the Dead in Garden Grove. 2011 saw Sinister Pointe move into a new location in Brea, where it offered some innovative and unique scares, set in a backwoods country house akin to abysmal abodes seen in films such as THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.
For 2014, Sinister Pointe moved again, this time to Fullerton, where it offered a new version of its haunted labyrinth, titled Beyond the Mirror: A Bloody Mary Tale. Guests were allowed entrance only in groups of four – no more, no less – which meant each group might be split up or combined with another, depending on the number of members in one’s party. Once inside, visitors could find themselves separated from their friends and forced to proceed on their own – completely alone, except for monsters lurking in the dark.
A new strategy was devised for 2015: at a new location in Brea, guests could chose which personal fear to face from a group of four (clowns, living dead, deranged, possession) and then encounter that fear in absolute darkness – guided only by a partner relaying instructions from a control room equipped with night-vision.
Halloween 2016 saw Sinister Pointe offering a multi-path haunt. Visitors would choose which route to take, visiting one of four different realms, which branched off and occasionally reconnected.
For Halloween 2017, Sinister Pointe announced Hex in lieu of their customary haunted house attraction. Billed as “Orange County’s Largest Costumed Affair,” the event was cancelled at the last minute. In 2018, Sinister Pointe presented “Scary Place,” which promised 150,000 square feet of horror, including scream zones, vendors, stages shows, games, exhibits, and three “heart-pounding” attractions.
Since then, Sinister Pointe has been on hiatus as far as presenting haunted walkthrough attractions of their own. They continue to provide props and decorations for other events such as Cemetery Lane, and they present off-screen spooky events such as the Spirit Lounge Pop-Up Bar in the Summer of 2021 and an AirBnb “Ghostly Retreat” inspired by Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, which was still taking reservations as of Summer 2022.
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