The Best (and Worst) Halloween Drive-Thru Experiences in Los Angeles
It’s no secret that Halloween and all of Spooky Season looks completely different this year, especially in California. Trick r Treating is discouraged. Haunted Houses are a thing of the past. Worst of all, my favorite theme parks are still closed, which means that we don’t get spooky amusements like Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween at Disneyland, Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights, Six Flag Magic Mountain’s Fright Fest, or Knott’s Scary Farms!
Don’t get me wrong, I understand and agree with the fact that theme parks should still be closed here in California. However, it’s still alright for me to mourn my useless annual pass to Universal Studios Hollywood and the missed costume hangouts with my friends at Oogie Boogie’s Bash at Disneyland. My heart goes out to the 28,000 Disney employees, crew members, and castmates who lost their jobs, and to all of those who have lost loved ones to this awful pandemic.
I am, however, incredibly happy with my state and city of Los Angeles for doing their best to ensure we have a legit spooky season and to create opportunities that are not only fun for couples and quarantine pods, but also provides jobs for those are usually scare actors or seasonal cast members at theme parks. I’m also super impressed with how quickly so many companies and organizations were able to develop drive-thru Halloween events that legit make it feel like Halloween.
Halloween is my favorite holiday, so you know I wasn’t about to sit here and do nothing all month!! Oh, no no no!
That’s right, out of the dozens of Halloween events in Los Angeles (and the surrounding areas), Arjuna and I went to five! We had a really great time, and have some very strong opinions (obviously). I’m always trying to find new, fun date nights for you and your boo, especially this spooky season, so here is my definitive ranking of the Halloween Drive-Thru experiences in Los Angeles and Southern California, in a very particular order from worst to best.
No. 5 Tanaka Farms Drive-Thru Pumpkin Patch - Irvine, CA
Alright, so I know Irvine is not technically Los Angeles, but don’t let this be the only deterrent from going to Tanaka Farms Drive-Thru Pumpkin Patch. Aside from this being the one drive-thru experience where you can actually get out of your car, there wasn’t much value in this experience.
The best part of this drive-thru pumpkin patch is that each ticket comes with a pumpkin, which you actually get to pick yourselves! This was a major selling point for me, because when I lived in Riverside, I would travel to this pumpkin patch every Halloween. It’s normally very fun, so it was my mistake of going in with the same expectations.
Picking your pumpkin is fun and all, but it wasn’t with the drive from L.A. to Irvine, nor the $20/person (really per pumpkin). The other attractions of this event included a drive around the farm looking for signs to complete a lackluster scavenger hunt activity, and various scarecrows created by Irvine locals.
Overall, this experience was about two and a half hours long, with about 60 minutes of that being us waiting in our car to even get into the farm. Yeah, that’s right. And that wasn’t even the worst wait!!
Borderline Millennials Rating: 1.5/5
No. 4 The Bite LA Halloween Food Crawl - El Monte, CA
Oh, man. I was ready to rip this experience a new one until I tried the food...but let’s be honest, it still deserves some hate. Let me enlighten you.
We booked this experience for Saturday, October 10 at 9:15 pm, and I didn’t get home until Sunday, October 11 at 1:30 am. What was supposed to be a two-hour experience, turned into a two-hour experience with a two-hour wait.
We arrived early at The Bite LA venue, as the ticket said, and what I thought would be a 30-minute wait to start our experience, was actually a two-hour wait in the car just trying to check-in. This event was in the middle of a big public park, and I have a small bladder, so within those two hours, naturally, I had to use the restroom. Because it’s a drive-thru event, there weren’t any event-designated bathrooms, so I had to use the port-o-potty located in the park! The only upside to that was that I met some other women with small bladders and made a couple of friends.
Once we finally got in, the event carried on at a ridiculously slow pace, but it did get better. The first part included a pitch-black drive through the park where the only light you have is a flashlight to light up the woods around you, which contained some well-costumed scare actors. Honestly, I have no idea how it was legal to drive in such darkness at an event because we weren’t even allowed to use our headlights. I had fun with this part though! Then after the scary drive-thru portion, it was on to the actual food crawl.
The food crawl consisted of bite-sized snacks ranging from mini-burgers to pumpkin beer mac & cheese. Each of these stations was manned by a creepy character with their own set, which I was impressed by. I was also very happy that the main attraction of this food crawl, the food, was delicious!
I was finally feeling alright about this event until the very end. We were promised hot beverages like cocoa and cider to enjoy while parking our cars around a digital fireplace to listen to scary stories, but NO! They had run out!! THEY RAN OUT OF GUARANTEED FOOD AT A FOOD CRAWL EVENT THAT I PAID GOOD MONEY FOR! And all they did was say, “we ran out of hot beverages, this is the best I can do,” while hastily shoving water bottles through our window. Man, I was UPSET! How are you going to run out of the final dessert beverage at an event specifically for food and beverages? I couldn’t believe that. This brought their score down for me.
Borderline Millennials Rating: 2/5
No. 3 Los Angeles Haunted Hayride - La Verne, CA
This event was my very first drive-thru Halloween experience, so I went in there with completely blind eyes. I also had never been to the traditional Haunted Hayride because it looks super scary, so I also didn’t have the idea of that hindering me.
As I didn’t know what to expect, I watched a YouTube video of someone who went the night prior, to get a taste of what we were in for. To help you get a visual, here’s the video I watched.
My boyfriend and I splurged on VIP tickets, which allowed us to have a front-row parking spot for the event, and honestly, if you’re going to go to this event, you have got to splurge on VIP or better. I say this because if you’re about three to five rows where we were, you’re probably not getting a good experience.
Let me back up a bit and say that I enjoyed the drive up to this event. There wasn’t a huge wait, which was amazing compared to all of the other events I went to! Plus, the entire drive up is an experience itself, with spooky sets lining each side of the drive. This was pleasant.
Then, when you finally get to the event itself, you park your car and start the show. Essentially, this event was meant to mimic a haunted drive-in movie experience. There’s a semi-cheesy virtual host who is showing short, scary movies that were lower quality than Hallmark during Christmas (no diss to Hallmark, I love your movies, but we all know you can’t put out 60 new movies in one month without sacrificing quality...but that’s for another post).
All throughout the movie, scare actors are running through the parking lot, creeping up on you and scaring you from the comfort of your own cars. I must admit, I had a few good scares! They got me and that made me happy!
I had a lot of fun at this event, and initially would’ve given them a four out of five, but after experiencing more events, and getting an idea of how the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride could’ve been better, I had to drop their score, sorry!
Borderline Millennials Rating: 3/5
No. 2 Haunt-O-Ween Drive-Thru - Woodland Hills, CA
After a long debate with myself, I decided to put Haunt-O-Ween Drive-Thru at number two, mainly because the long wait and the slow pace made this event more boring than it should have been.
I’ll start with my gripes before I get into the fun stuff. As with most of the other Halloween events this year, there was a long wait. We weren’t admitted into the drive-thru experiences until about an hour after our designated start time, which sucked. The entire drive-thru portion was more like a bad traffic jam on the 405 not during a pandemic. It was soooo stop-and-go that it made the event lose some of its magic.
On the plus side, I was happy that, despite the event being so slow, we had some really great stuff to look at while we waited to move the next few inches forward. The decorations for this event were amazing! As many of you have seen, the event begins with this really cool pumpkin-light tunnel that felt like we were transferring to a new dimension! This event was clearly sponsored because, not only were there Hulu logos everywhere, but it just felt like this event was made with a hefty budget. It looked expensive if you know what I mean.
My favorite part, aside from getting a pumpkin, was the trick r treating element. They had actually built and decorated houses that every car stopped at, and the actors dumped candy in your car. And when I say dumped, I mean dumped! It was hilarious watching them make it rain with candy through various car’s moon roofs and through passenger windows. We also got a ton of candy, which I also wasn’t mad at! Overall, I had a fun time and would actually recommend this event!
Borderline Millennials Rating: 4/5
No. 1 Nights of the Jack Drive-Thru - Calabasas, CA
When I say this event was impressive, I mean this event was IMPRESSIVE. There must’ve been thousands of pumpkins at this event and they were all carved by experts! This was, hands down, my favorite COVID-19 friendly Halloween event!
Everything about this event just clicked! The different zones were amazing, the layout was well-thought-out, the flow was perfect, the music didn’t overlap from one zone to another, and the pumpkins were spooktacular! I had such a great time at Nights of the Jack. It was even worth the drive all the way out to Calabasas! And that’s saying a lot because Calabasas is far AF.
They had a Spongebob Squarepants scene, Alice in Wonderland, famous celebrities, Dia de Los Muertos, and so much more! Plus, unlike a lot of events, where you have to pay per person, for this event, you pay per car. This means, the more people you have, the cheaper it is per person. So, if you have a five or seven-seater car, go ahead and pack that up with people in your quarantine pod!
I know this event is a little bit on the pricey side, and it’s a trek to Calabasas if you’re coming from the main part of the city, but everything about Nights of the Jack was so worth it. Anyone of any age and ability can participate and enjoy this and I am looking forward to attending this event in the years to come. I would highly recommend going to this event before the season is over!