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Review: Return of Dark Harbor

Dark Harbor is back on board the Queen Mary this Halloween, and that is great news for Los Angeles fright fans. There are four attractions on the ship (three mazes and one immersive experience) and a few on land, plus numerous bars and eateries. What more could you possibly want?

Well…we’ll talk about that later. First, let’s mention the good stuff.


Return of Dark Harbor Review: Highlights

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The new Infirmary maze, featuring the return of the ethereal Graceful Gale character, is fabulous. It’s long and loaded with a variety of great scenes and scares. Besides Gale, the most memorable is a trio of creepy classical musicians giving a truly macabre performance.

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Also astounding is Lullababy, featuring the girlish ghoul Scary Mary, whose innocent aura of childhood creates a chilling contrast with her horrifying attitude. As in her past mazes, she appears repeatedly, like a ghost unfettered by physical limitations. This time she is joined by a couple other characters, a grieving father and a guilt-ridden lifeguard, both of them desperately begging for your assistance in finding the drowned girl. There is also a wonderful “underwater” scene, in which you walk along the bottom of the pool, the “surface” above rendered in a clever illusion.

Dark Harbor 2024 Review
Lady Mabel presides over The Summoning of Samuel.

Adding a little variety, instead of a walkthrough, The Summoning of Samuel is a short theatrical experience, in which medium Lady Mabel summons the infamous killer, Samuel the Savage. This is the best use ever of the character, whose signature attraction in the past, B340, was always a bit of a generic murder maze. Here we get an immersive blackout experience, in which the malevolent spirit manifest mostly through 360-degree sound, visible only in startling flashes lighting up the darkened room for fractions of a second. Great stuff.


Return of Dark Harbor Review: The Rest

Now as for the rest…

Although Dark Harbor feels crowded thanks to stages and rides, it also feels as if there was room for at least one more maze on land and maybe one on the Queen Mary – or at least one of the mazes should have been better. Feast, the third maze on the ship, was always somewhat generic in its use of a cannibalism theme, but at least in the past it sometimes featured some memorable sets, like the walk-in oven with ghastly red light suggesting immense heat. There is little memorable this time, just lots of long corridors with little happening.

Dark Harbor 2024 Review
Big Top Terror

Big Top Terror is not bad as far as circus-themed haunts go – it’s actually colorful and fun – but only the first section is set in the big top tent. The second half, which takes place outdoors, is basically a rerun of Diesel’s Pumpkin Patch from last year’s Shaqtobefest at the Queen Mary. The sets and props are worth seeing again; they just reminded us that we wanted a little more new stuff.

One other minor complaint is the fairground-type layout with lots of stands packed together but very little seating. There are plenty of opportunities to get something to eat or drink but not a lot of seating. For instance, you can grab a drink at the Anchor Bar, but you can’t sit down and imbibe themed atmosphere along with your drink; you just have to wander off and find a bench somewhere.

The exception is the Bayou Barrel Bar, located inside an area named Voodoo Bay. The decor reuses some set pieces from Shaqtoberfest’s Pirates Cove walkthrough, but the effect is to create something that feels new – a small but wonderful setting where you can sit down after ordering your drink and feel like immersed in the atmosphere.

Of course, for an upcharge on your ticket, you can get access to the VIP bar/Observation Deck, for a more relaxed cocktail setting. And there are some hidden speakeasies you can access if you pay for the tokens that grant entrance.


Return of Dark Harbor Review: Conclusion

There is definitely room for more at Dark Harbor, and room for improvement in at least one maze. Fortunately, the good stuff is great. The immersive Summoning of Samuel provides a different kind of experience, and Infirmary and Lullababy are lengthy, imaginative mazes of the sort that earned the Queen Mary its Halloween reputation. They use the real settings to great effect, enhancing them with lighting and effects, and filling them with wonderfully creepy ghosts. The result is more than enough to eclipse any objections, making this year’s voyage to the Dark Harbor worth booking passage.

Note: We will be back to update this post with more details and photographs as soon as time permits.

Title
4

Rating Scale

0 – Awful
1 – Poor
2 – Mediocre
3 – Good
4 – Great
5 – Excellent

Our walk-through Feast literally had has yearning for the old days of the Queen Mary Halloween Terrorfest by Shipwreck Productions. That and the feeling that there should have been one or two more walkthrough attractions (as opposed to rides in the Ringmaster’s Halloween Carnival section of the event) praedisposed us to downgrade this year’s rating to 3 – a mild recommendation. On further consideration, Infirmary, Lullababy, and The Summoning of Samuel are strong enough to make us overlook our qualms and give the return of Dark Harbor a four-star recommendation.

Dark Habor continues at the Queen Mary on select nights from September 20 to November 2 (weekends in September, some weeknights in October). Hours are 7pm-12:30am except Fridays & Saturdays, 7pm-1am. Tickets start at $39.99 (including fees). The Queen Mary Hotel is located at 1126 Queens Highway in Long Beach. Get more information at darkharborhalloween.com.

Dark Harbor 2024 Photographs

Steve Biodrowski, Administrator

A graduate of USC film school, Steve Biodrowski has worked as a film critic, journalist, and editor at Movieline, Premiere, Le Cinephage, The Dark Side., Cinefantastique magazine, Fandom.com, and Cinescape Online. He is currently Managing Editor of Cinefantastique Online and owner-operator of Hollywood Gothique.