HorrorWorld cancelled!

HorrorWorld – the wonderfully creepy haunted attraction in Rancho Cucamonga’s Haven City Market – has cancelled its final shows, and Boneyard Effects, the company behind the haunt, has announced that the attraction is immediately going up for sale. The announcement was made Tuesday afternoon in a Facebook post by proprietor Larry Bones, blaming the fire department for the cancellation:

It’s with a sad heart, that we must announce the end of HORRORWORLD. The fire department has made it impossible to continue with our haunt so our final 4 nights are cancelled along with Krampus. We will be looking for a buyer for the haunt and its contents as we are leaving the haunted attraction biz behind. It has taken too big of an emotional, physical, and financial toll on us. We want to thank everyone who was part of the project and helped bring our vision to life, even for few nights.

In a later post, Bones asked fans to voice their opinions to the city director of Rancho Cucamonga, but he made it clear this was not an attempt to save the haunt, merely a chance to have voices heard.

The cancellation is extremely sad news. HorrorWorld – which made its debut at Pomona Fairgrounds in 2017 as Into the Black – was the scariest haunt to arrive in Los Angeles for many years. In 2018 it changed its name and expanded into a multi-haunt in the Puente Hills Mall, but it could not secure a location for Halloween 2019. It moved to Haven City Market in 2020 with plans to provide a Covid-safe Halloween haunt that would meet local health-and-safety restrictions but ultimately was unable to do so.

Finally it opened this August, offering a summer scare show featuring characters from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Returning to the demonic themes of Into The Black, HorrorWorld’s Halloween presentation (reviewed here) was scheduled to run weekends in October. Unfortunately, the Sunday, October 24 show was shut down by the fire department because of a “super minor technicality” (according to the haunt’s official Facebook account.) The plan was reschedule or refund ticket holders and reopen for the final four days of October, those shows were cancelled as well, along with the Krampus haunt planned for Christmas.