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I decided to lump trip reports for these two amusement park haunted attractions/events together. Although not traditional seasonal haunts, Cedar Point does offer several haunted houses and scare zones, and Knoebels has an a unique haunted 'antique car' ride.
Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH is an amazingly huge amusement park and they have Halloweekends which run from mid-September to the end of October on Fridays-Sundays. They run their rollercoasters, rides, etc. during the event and have 3 separate haunted houses. Each of the haunted houses are pretty low quality, especially compared to other amusement park haunts. One is toxic dump themed, another Pharoah/Egyptian themed with cheesy 3D effects and the other is a standard haunted house with a couple of OK scenes but nothing special at all. The best part of Halloweekends is the general atmosphere in the park which is covered in fog, Halloween music is playing, there are decorations everywhere, etc. They have some extremely foggy 'fright zones' where essentially you walk through an outdoor area with more smoke than a Cheech n Chong flick and can't see a damn thing, until some character pops up in your face and shakes a yahtzee can of dice to scare you LOL. I won't go into too much other detail about the park - I would say for Cedar Point itself the place is a 10 out of 10, the overall atmosphere is a 10 out of 10, and the attractions themselves are a 3 out of 10.
Knoebels is a small amusement park in Elsyburg, PA which is essentially in the middle of nowhere, but not TOO far from Harrisburg I guess you could say. Each year, they have several weekends where they operate their antique car ride in a haunted atmosphere in conjunction with a haunted house run up the street from the local gun club. I've never been through the haunted house, but the antique car ride is actually VERY well done with some very elaborate scenes. Considering that they only do this for three weekends, they put an incredible amount of effort into this ride and it shows. If you are not familiar with these types of rides, you basically drive in some model antique cars on a self guided track - you do control the gas and the cars go about 5 mph. There are live actors jumping out at you, on top of your car, in the back seat, etc. and the sets are good. If you're in the area (god knows why you would be in this area though) definitely check it out. I believe they run their Phoenix rollercoaster too for the event. As a side note, the park runs an excellent permanent ride-through Haunted Mansion, which is often regarded as one of the best traditional dark rides in the industry. Gotta give the antique cars at Knoebels an 8 out of 10!
Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH is an amazingly huge amusement park and they have Halloweekends which run from mid-September to the end of October on Fridays-Sundays. They run their rollercoasters, rides, etc. during the event and have 3 separate haunted houses. Each of the haunted houses are pretty low quality, especially compared to other amusement park haunts. One is toxic dump themed, another Pharoah/Egyptian themed with cheesy 3D effects and the other is a standard haunted house with a couple of OK scenes but nothing special at all. The best part of Halloweekends is the general atmosphere in the park which is covered in fog, Halloween music is playing, there are decorations everywhere, etc. They have some extremely foggy 'fright zones' where essentially you walk through an outdoor area with more smoke than a Cheech n Chong flick and can't see a damn thing, until some character pops up in your face and shakes a yahtzee can of dice to scare you LOL. I won't go into too much other detail about the park - I would say for Cedar Point itself the place is a 10 out of 10, the overall atmosphere is a 10 out of 10, and the attractions themselves are a 3 out of 10.
Knoebels is a small amusement park in Elsyburg, PA which is essentially in the middle of nowhere, but not TOO far from Harrisburg I guess you could say. Each year, they have several weekends where they operate their antique car ride in a haunted atmosphere in conjunction with a haunted house run up the street from the local gun club. I've never been through the haunted house, but the antique car ride is actually VERY well done with some very elaborate scenes. Considering that they only do this for three weekends, they put an incredible amount of effort into this ride and it shows. If you are not familiar with these types of rides, you basically drive in some model antique cars on a self guided track - you do control the gas and the cars go about 5 mph. There are live actors jumping out at you, on top of your car, in the back seat, etc. and the sets are good. If you're in the area (god knows why you would be in this area though) definitely check it out. I believe they run their Phoenix rollercoaster too for the event. As a side note, the park runs an excellent permanent ride-through Haunted Mansion, which is often regarded as one of the best traditional dark rides in the industry. Gotta give the antique cars at Knoebels an 8 out of 10!