Review by Rick West

The whole Dia de los Muertos tradition and celebration has always appealed to me personally.  I was unwittingly introduced to my first glimpses of it via Oingo Boingo's own interest in the Day of the Dead.  Before I even truly understood the depth and history of Dia de los Muertos, I was falling in love with the visuals of it - for in the '80s, it truly was a "Dead Man's Party" for this teen!

Over the years, discussing Knott's Halloween Haunt, I have often played armchair designer with friends, and the discussion of having a Dia de los Muertos theme in the Fiesta Village part of Knott's Berry Farm has been pondered many a night over many a drink.  I still think it would be a fantastic addition to the area - just as clowns are to the Boardwalk at Knott's, I think the Fiesta Village area is more than ripe for skeletons, ghouls and ghosts celebrating this amazing tradition.

In fact, years ago, there was a Day of the Dead tribute by the Native Americans that performed in Indian Trails at Knott's Berry Farm.  Some of you may remember - and somewhere around here, we even have still pictures I snapped of that procession through Ghost Town... that was back in the days of film cameras, kids.  One of these days, we'll dig it all out and dust it off - because one project we do want to work on around here (because we aren't busy enough) is the creation of an online Halloween Haunt virtual museum as part of the Theme Park Adventure experience as we look to the next evolution of the TPA website in the coming months and years.

So, Dia de los Muertos actually has had a presence at Knott's Halloween Haunt; just not as prominent of one as we've always hoped for.  Until now.

Enter the newest designer at Knott's Scary Farm: David Ortiz.  For the 2008 Halloween Haunt season, David was a co-designer of the Club Blood maze at Knott's.  Personally, I think Club Blood is a very cool, strong addition to the Halloween Haunt lineup of attractions - although fans (and Theme Park Adventure staffers) certainly disagree with me on this one.  Vampires have become one of the cornerstones of Knott's Scary Farm, so whether you're a hard core "gothic" vamp fan, a modern, "urban" vamp supporter or even a soon-to-be Victorian steampunk vamp admirer, the fact of the matter is... vampires have a permanent home at Haunt.  Knowing that fads come and go, I have enjoyed the urbanizing of the vamps in Club Blood and think that David did a fine job with it.

When I first heard rumblings of a Dia de los Muertos maze, and that it was being done by David, I was excited - and cautious with my enthusiasm.  It was to be his first solo maze design project and well, let's be honest - that can go either way with any designer, let alone someone who's still new at it.  And I was also curious to know how the maze would be - because with a theme such as Dia de los Muertos, you could either go really bright and festive with Boingo music playing and make it kind of a "party maze" like the clowns had for much of the past decade - or you could take the darker path and toss in more sinister elements of Latin American lore for good measure. 

Impatient as I am, I did my digging and found that indeed, David was taking the darker path - and that other Latin "ghost" and "monster" elements would be added to the maze, such as the fabled Chupacabra and La Llorona.  Having grown up through my high school years in El Centro, California, I have a deep understanding and love of the Latin cultures - so perhaps I was more excited about this than the average "whitey bear" - although that may be a semi-racist and unfair statement, as many fair-skinned brethren of mine also were very excited about the prospect of a Dia de los Muertos maze coming to Knott's Halloween Haunt.

So over the summer months, as the walls inside the Bumper Cars area at Knott's went up and life (or death) began to flow into Dia de los Muertos, I kept an eye on it - I had a gut feeling that perhaps this would be the 2009 maze to beat, regardless of the hype and (well-deserved) attention that was being given to Brooke Walters' new masterpiece, Terror of London.  While most fans and much of the Halloween Haunt 2009 build-up was totally banking on London as the maze of the year, there was a quiet calm - a cool sense amongst some fans that Ortiz's design just might be one hell of an underdog.

More so than ever before, fans are starting to associate mazes with the designers at Knott's Berry Farm.  This is something that is relatively new thanks in part to sites such as this, UltimateHaunt.com and other media outlets such as the LA Times.  Under Cedar Fair, Knott's was permitted to let the media socialize and get to know the various Haunt designers and showcase their accomplishments publicly.  Before that, under the management that came before Cedar Fair, even mentioning the designers in an article (except for a rare granted exception once in a while to a major newspaper before the event started) was a no-no.  I personally was told in no uncertain terms in the '90s when I started Theme Park Adventure, that if I named monsters by their real names, or openly talked about the various maze designers at the time, those individuals would be "severely reprimanded and/or fired".  I've never forgotten that line.  It was one of my first "ugly" brushes with Knott's (there haven't been many - I can probably count them on one hand for the past 15 years) and absolutely remains in my mind as the worst and most unfair to the Halloween Haunt team.  It was Terry Van Gorder's control issues over Halloween Haunt that really, made it next to impossible to give the people behind the success of Halloween Haunt their due praise.  There's no Wiki entry for Terry Van Gorder, but if you do a Google search, you will come up with a lot of unflattering pages of comments and postings about him.  In short, he was the President and Chief Executive Officer that controlled all creative developments at Knott's - even told the remaining Knott family members what to do when they were still involved with the company - for many years.  Terry came to Knott's, did not like Knott's Bear-y Tales and had it ripped out of the Farm to put in Kingdom of the Dinosaurs in the mid-'80s.  Some people liked him - others thought he was an ass.  The only time I ever met him was at a company function.  I was introduced to him and he couldn't stop gnawing on a chicken leg long enough to properly say hello.  I forever have the image of the grease and juices running down the back of his hand and chicken chunks splattered in his goatee as he grunted, "Hi" to me.  Then he made some lame joke about not interviewing him because, "they don't trust what I say... I'm just the idiot running the show."

And that was my formal introduction to Terry Van Gorder.

Where the hell was I going with this?  OH yeah.. so anyway... over the years, under Cedar Fair's control, the Knott's Halloween Haunt maze designers have slowly started emerging from the shadows in the fans' eyes and have started gathering their own followings - much as many of the "famous" Scary Farm monsters have over the years.  Brooke's fans are adoring and very loyal to her - and rightfully so; she is a kick-ass designer and we love her to bits here at Theme Park Adventure.  In fact, we'll be bringing you guys a late spring/early summer exclusive interview with Brooke as part of our year-round Haunt coverage.

For the reasons I have written however, I personally placed my bet on David Ortiz and Dia de los Muertos.  Fans often ask me to speculate - and I hate doing that publicly - but I was actually pretty vocal last summer that I had really good feelings about the "underdog" maze - Dia.

Lockdown, which was the "sequel" to Asylum, was the other new maze of 2009 and pretty much was over-shadowed by Terror of London and Dia de los Muertos.  Unfortunately, as we will further discuss in the Lockdown review, designer Daniel Miller was up against the general stigma of a "sequel" to one of the most successful mazes in Halloween Haunt history - Asylum (also Daniel's design).  Lockdown however, was a brilliant addition to Haunt 2009, and it was a very strong successor to Asylum, regardless of much fan grumbling about Knott's throwing in the "Asylum" twist to the new "prison maze".  While Lockdown was one of the best mazes of Halloween Haunt '09, it received the least support or hype in the months leading up to the event.  That's just the way it goes.  Sorry Daniel - you know we love you, man!

One of the immediate challenges we pondered about Dia de los Muertos, was its location.  We knew that David was throwing a lot at this maze - and the Bumper Cars area isn't exactly a huge footprint when compared to some of the other Halloween Haunt mazes.  So we were worried that it would perhaps be dumbed-down from David's original vision to fit inside the given area.

The other worry we had, was the whole 3-D thing.  Dia de los Muertos was yet again, a new 3-D maze at Knott's Halloween Haunt.  Some folks love the 3-D mazes, others dislike them.  Personally, I was over them a long time ago.  The gimmick was cool for a while - but really, just like the prospect of King Kong 360 at Universal Studios Hollywood or even Star Tours 2.0 at Disneyland - I look at the whole 3-D thing as being over and done with - at least as far as venues where you actually have to put glasses on.  There is new technology available where you can actually view a 3-D image on a screen without the glasses... but it's got to be very expensive and it doesn't apply to the technique of 3-D used in Halloween Haunt mazes anyway... so we're gonna move on, kids.

I don't like wearing 3-D glasses in any venue, let alone a Halloween maze that I am trying to walk through and enjoy.  When I visit a maze, I look at the detail, I pay close attention to design and the talent aspects of the maze; even the different soundtracks.  Wearing uncomfortable cardboard glasses that make everything distorted and even "hazy" in appearance... not my idea of cool maze fun.  Sorry.  That said, I do wear the glasses once when Knott's comes out with new 3-D mazes, so I can at least see what they did with the paint effects.  Other than that, I feel that every maze should be able to stand on its own without the gimmick of 3-D paint.

So, with the worries of space size and the whole 3-D gimmick at hand, I watched and waited as Dia de los Muertos took shape in the weeks and days leading up to Opening Night at Haunt.  As the sun dipped down and the fog began to roll, I was very curious and excited to head over to see what David's new creation was like.

On Opening Night, we always experience the mazes first as fans.  No cameras, no video recording, nothing.  Just folks taking it all in like everyone else.  It doesn't always work exactly like that - because after 15 years of doing this, folks are expecting us and often we get, "RICK!" or "TPA!" as opposed to a growl or scare.  It's all good - we love everyone and understand that they know the reason we're there.  But we try to mix in and become "invisible" for those first maze trips each Opening Night.

The first thing that struck me about Dia de los Muertos was how bright - very bright - and colorful it is.  David lit this thing up like a Christmas tree and in doing so, every detail and every monster is very visible - no dark corners, no dimly-lit scenes for the most part.  It is bold and spicy, baby!  That's a real gamble as a maze designer - because it's all out in the open for everyone to see, you know?

And it is gorgeous.  Not terribly elaborate (at first), the maze instantly sucks you in to a small Mexican town south of the border and within seconds, everything you need to know is conveyed via imagery, props and skeletal monsters lurking along the walls.  Music is playing, somewhere fireworks are being set off and even visitors without a clue as to what Dia de los Muertos really is, suddenly are given a crash-course successfully as they wander through the opening scene.  That sets the tone, that puts people in the proper mental zone and David absolutely did this flawlessly.

The maze takes guests on a journey through gorgeous sets - a Mexican church, a cantina (that bears the designer's name, no less) complete with skeletal ladies dancing on stage, a desert clearing with a huge full moon - and Chupacabras - looming, a cavern, and even a weird South American temple of sorts in a jungle where human sacrifice is taking place.  It's beautiful fun and absolutely packs one hell of a punch.

Our review would miss the mark completely however, if I didn't go into detail about the centerpiece of the maze:  the graveyard.

Adorned with scores of traditional candles, flowers and other Dia de los Muertos offerings, rows of elaborate Mexican graves are on display as guests wander slowly - and usually quietly - through this surreal set.  In all my years attending Knott's Halloween Haunt (since 1981), I can honestly say, this is perhaps the most stunning visual I've ever seen in a maze there.  That is huge.  I heard through the grapevine in the days leading up to Opening Night that the graveyard was absolutely gorgeous - so when I first encountered it, I had already very high expectations.  And they were blown out of the water.  The vivid colors, the accuracy of the design - and the use of candles so perfectly - instantly impressed me so much I think I even began applauding as we first walked through.  So much for subtle visitation, yes?  The graveyard is an absolute masterpiece - from the soundtrack (I hear you, Dominion of the Dead and all the other vamp mazes) to the overall feeling - it's a total grand slam for David and many people were totally into it all month long and it became a very popular topic amongst fans and Knott's employees alike.

One of the great lenders of success to the graveyard in Dia de los Muertos were the folks that typically worked it as talent.  One girl played the part of La Llorona flawlessly, screaming and wailing for her children as terrified guests walked past, huddled together.  It was brilliant and whoever you are - you were amazing and we give you total props.  There was no chasing, there were no pop-out scares in the graveyard.  Just the sense of profound sadness and eeriness compounded by this person's wailing and sobbing.  It was pure genius.

That said - there is a down-side I have to talk about.  When Theme Park Adventure comes through with the video camera for our flow-through shoot, typically, talent is very excited and totally goes off, slipping into overdrive and really giving us a command performance.  Unfortunately however, when the camera comes on, there are individuals that either shy away - which always sucks - or there are people that go way out of character and become over-done just because they're "on".  And that sucks even more.  On the night that we shot our flow-through of Dia de los Muertos, a young man working as general maze talent (skull face make-up) completely blew the whole graveyard feel by using a stuffed animal as a prop and charged our camera screaming, "DEAD RABBIT!  DEAD RABBIT!"

To make matters worse, there was no La Llorona in the graveyard, but an over-abundance of monsters from other areas of the maze wanting more screen time, including Mr. Dead Rabbit, who also end-capped the scene by meeting us once again on our way out of the graveyard.  It was a painfully classic example of misguided talent trying to be funny or whatever - completely ruining the feeling and intent of his or her surroundings in a maze environment.  When you're a street monster at Halloween Haunt, you have more freedom to do kooky things like "dead rabbit".  However, in this situation, it was so out of place and so obnoxious that it destroyed the entire flow and feeling of David's maze.  We are very careful to showcase our maze flow-through videos so that people around the world can truly get a sense of what these creations are like to experience first-hand.  Rarely, have we ever cut something out when talent is involved - because these men and women work their asses off and get little thanks in return.  However, the first "dead rabbit" incident was so glaring and over-the-top that we opted to remove it from the video to hopefully preserve some sense of the amazing level of detail and design guests were treated to as they entered the graveyard scene.  We don't necessarily blame the individual talent - he may have been new and was just doing something he thought was amusing or funny.  The point is, it's up to the other talent in the maze, the black outs and ultimately, the talent captains, to see this type of behavior and to correct it.  Quickly.  The fact that this individual had a prop that he was using and seemed pretty comfortable with tells me that it was not a spur-of-the-moment incident; and that sucks.  Ad-libbing like that trying to be "funny" in a maze is NOT the way to go, people - especially when the maze or scene you're in isn't funny or amusing.  Unfortunately for us (and others that night), this incident and individual had to happen in the most moving and special scene at Haunt 2009.  And that's a shame.  Why not re-shoot?  Our time table and schedule is so tight at Haunt now, there is no time to shoot things over again.  There just isn't.  If we stop and re-shoot something, it could put another maze and other talent's screen time in jeopardy.  Time is not a luxury we have to shoot Halloween Haunt anymore - so things like this simply have to be edited out.  It sucks.  It's frustrating.  But that's the way it is.  Hopefully, talent reading this will understand and "get it" - and they will go forward into Haunt 2010 understanding the impact they can make either positively or negatively by their own interaction and actions inside these mazes.  If just one person becomes enlightened or learns to be better at their craft from reading about this incident, it will all be worth it, you know?

Dead rabbits aside, the majority of talent in Dia de los Muertos was very good - perhaps a bit on the timid side in some cases - but never really overboard like we encountered with our flow-through.  It's better to be enthusiastic and blend in to your environment than to be obnoxious and stick out like a sore thumb.  And most of the talent in this maze got that.  Again, the La Llorona gal - you were rockin' it and we pray that someone picks that up and continues in it 2010, because it was truly eerie and added a whole new dimension to the graveyard scene.  Bravo!

The props and sets are all gorgeous in Dia de los Muertos, and we give total props to the men and women that worked hours on end to get this maze built and ready.  It is a stunning accomplishment and absolutely was my personal favorite addition to Knott's Halloween Haunt in 2009. 

Dia's soundtrack is great - authentic and "real" - no hard rocking songs here or even a hint of "Dead Man's Party" playing anywhere.  David kept it real and the sound gods did a fantastic job mixing and setting the "icing" on this Haunt cake for all of us fans.

In closing, the last - but huge thing - that was impressed on us was the use of space for this maze.  It's LONG.  REALLY long.  Every nook is crammed with detail and the flow-through video actually came out too long for us to include in its raw version on YouTube.com, it took us that long to walk through with the camera!  So bravo for that accomplishment!  You walk out of Dia de los Muertos, look at the building it's in and say, "How in the Hell did they cram that in there?"

And that kids, is Halloween Haunt magic!

Viva Dia de los Muertos!

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