Update, August 17, 2026: Six Flags has now revealed the four new IPs. They are JASON: Blood Reign, Final Destination: Death’s Playground, Blair Witch: No Signal, and Diablo: The Infernal Path. See our all-locations guide for the full maze-by-park lineup.
Six Flags told investors on Thursday that it will run 448 Halloween-themed experiences and 107 haunted mazes across its parks this fall, 11 of the mazes new for 2026, with four new horror IPs to be announced in about two weeks. CEO John Reilly called it “America’s biggest Halloween party” and said “no one’s doing anything in this kind of scope, in this kind of geographic range, and with this many attractions.”
The count spans every Halloween brand under the company’s umbrella:
- Fright Fest at the legacy Six Flags parks, mapped park by park in our all-locations guide
- Halloween Haunt at Dorney Park, Kings Island, Kings Dominion, and Canada’s Wonderland
- Knott’s Scary Farm at Knott’s Berry Farm
- HalloWeekends at Cedar Point
- Scarowinds at Carowinds
For scale, Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights runs 10 houses in Orlando and Hollywood historically runs around eight, plus four year-round houses at Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas, if you count a venue that never closes.
“America’s Biggest Halloween Party”
The Halloween block in Reilly’s prepared remarks ran long enough to quote in full:
“Our fourth quarter plan adds several demand drivers when we launch America’s biggest Halloween party, with 448 Halloween-themed experiences from coast to coast. We’ll host visitors at 107 haunted mazes, immersing guests into some of the world’s most iconic horror franchises, with 11 new ones in 2026. Our commercial team is improving upon our Halloween event upsell experiences. We’re also restoring Holiday in the Park at two of the parks where it was not offered in 2025, including Six Flags Over Georgia and Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey.”
Asked the first question of the Q&A, about how July trended and the start of the third quarter, Reilly walked through the back-half positives and raised Halloween unprompted:
“The other thing that I would mention that we’re really encouraged by is Halloween. We just went through some of the factors on it. In about two weeks, we’re going to be announcing some of the IPs that we’re expanding to, including four pretty new and exciting ones. When you look at the scope of what we have in Halloween, no one’s doing anything in this kind of scope, in this kind of geographic range, and with this many attractions. We’re really excited about Halloween, about the programming that we have coming in.”
The Licensed Houses We Already Know About
The four new IPs land on top of houses already announced: The Conjuring: Beyond Fear returns to four Six Flags parks this fall, and Blair Witch: No Signal opens at Dorney Park and Six Flags Great America. Reilly’s “iconic horror franchises” line covers that known lineup. The four new names arrive in roughly two weeks, and we will cover them as they land.
Added August 7: Six Flags announced Diablo haunted mazes for Cedar Point and Kings Dominion, with announcement artwork titling the maze Diablo IV: The Infernal Path. It is the chain’s second licensed maze reveal of the season after Blair Witch, and its first video game property.
Why a Park Chain Bets Its Fall on Haunts
The answer Reilly gave investors is a haunt-economics answer. Events, he said, are “a very efficient way to deploy capital as we go forward,” and for a park chain, they are. The parks already run all day: the rides, the staff, the food service, the land, and the operating calendar are paid for whether or not October has mazes in it. Fright Fest and its sibling events layer haunted attractions onto that running infrastructure at dusk, sell the mazes through a separate Haunted Attractions Pass on top of admission passholders already hold, and Reilly told analysts the commercial team is “improving upon our Halloween event upsell experiences” this year. Halloween is also the company’s next test of pulling passholders across parks: it has been sending regional invitations to visit sister parks, and, Reilly said, “We’ll do the same for Halloween.”
The chain’s earnings context, for those who want it, is on our sister site: the short version is that events are the growth plan precisely because they cost less than coasters.
What 107 Park Mazes Mean for Independent Haunts
The core product already exists, and that is the whole trick. A theme park amortizes its Halloween event across infrastructure that earns money all day. An independent haunt builds its entire experience, and its entire audience, from the ground up every season. The capital math Reilly described is not available to most of this industry.
What it means for independents cuts two ways, and we are not sure which way it nets out. The case for a squeeze: a season pass makes another Halloween night close to free for the family that holds one, and 107 mazes is a lot of capacity in a lot of drive markets, aimed at the same October weekends every haunt needs. The case for a rising tide: Six Flags will market Halloween at a scale no collection of independents can match, the demand data says the season is stretching and the appetite is real, and cross-park pass travel could put more out-of-market visitors in haunt regions than before.
Either way, the working question for an independent is value. A single attraction at a single price point now competes with an event a passholder family has effectively already paid for, so the season’s work is building an experience worth the trip and saying clearly what makes it worth it. The math still leaves room: park events, even at this scale, draw a fraction of the people who celebrate the season in any given market, and some independents are answering with formats a park would not run, like ScareHouse rebuilding its Pittsburgh season around a month-long neighborhood takeover with no haunted house at all. If you operate a haunt in a Six Flags market, we want to hear how this season plays from where you stand.
Dates and details for every Fright Fest park are in the all-locations guide, and the four new IP announcements are roughly two weeks out.
