Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ will headline at Six Flags Halloween festival this year

Six Flags is going big on this year’s Fright Fest. The theme park has unveiled partnerships with Netflix, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and Legendary for this year’s Halloween event at parks nationwide.

Starting September 7, visitors to Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Los Angeles will see an array of new mazes tailored to the tastes of horror lovers. Other Six Flags locations will have a smaller sampling of the new attractions.

Several new experiences will be made available this year, based on the following film and television franchises:

• Stranger Things: What starts as “innocent” Halloween fun at Hawkins High School flips upside down and gets very dark, very fast.
• Army of the Dead: The City of Las Vegas is under lockdown following a recent viral outbreak and survivors must look for an escape while battling the undead. (This experience is exclusive to Six Flags Great Adventure and Six Flags Magic Mountain)
• Trick ‘r Treat: Walk a jack-o-lantern-lit path full of supernatural encounters, holding only a “blood-stained candy bag.”
• Saw: Guests will enter Jigsaw’s realm and rely on each other to solve puzzles and escape before time runs out.
• The Conjuring: Guests will explore four different realms, inspired by The Conjuring, Annabelle, and The Nun, finding artifacts that make them the target of a conjuring.

Guests at Great Adventure will also encounter a new experience revolving around The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And visitors to Six Flags Mexico will experience the “DCeased maze,” a spooky take on the Justice League, where the DC Universe has succumbed to Darkseid’s Anti-Life Equation.

“For over 30 years, Fright Fest has been haunting the thrills-and-chills season like no other, and this year we are turning things upside down with an array of amazing horror franchises,” said Edithann Ramey, “Chief Fright Officer” of Six Flags in a statement. “We take pride in offering the best experiences and are committed to innovating our parks every year.”

Snickers is also a partner in this year’s Fright Fest, which Six Flags says is the biggest in its history.

Netflix House of horrors

Two of the five new mazes come from Netflix. That’s notable not just because of the intellectual property, but because the partnership represents yet another expansion for the streaming giant beyond the world of filmed entertainment. Netflix might not have its own theme park, but certainly seems to show an interest in that category.

Earlier this month, Netflix unveiled plans to launch a pair of in-person venues, called Netflix House, in 2025. The 100,000-square-foot facilities will take over former department store locations at two malls, King of Prussia Mall near Philadelphia and the Galleria Dallas. Neither will feature rides, but they will have immersive show-themed experiences focused on the company’s biggest properties.

The company has also hosted pop-up experiences around the country over the past few years.

Fright Fest, meanwhile, is one of Six Flags’ biggest events of the year—and this will be the 31st year the company has hosted it. In 2023, the parks added new haunted houses based on The Conjuring and Saw.

In the fourth quarter of that year, the parks saw 4.3 million guests, a 6% increase over the previous year driven by Fright Fest visitors. Revenue in that time increased $13 million, or 5%, to $293 million. Those numbers might have been even higher, but rain around the country last October kept some potential visitors at home.