The Haunted Amusement Park: 2022 Review
The Haunted Amusement Park, El Cajon, CA
T’was the day after Halloween, and all through the Westcoaster… we were still in Halloween mode, because we have a backlog of haunts from this past weekend to get through! Today, we review our final professional haunt of the season, The Haunted Amusement Park—one of three San Diego area haunts we visited last weekend (Sinister Trails and Fright Nights at AleSmith Brewing being the others) in a rare non-home haunt end-of-October Run. Those from the area might also know today’s attraction as Scotty’s Scare Trail, its former identity that has still stuck despite a new name the past few years.
Happy (day after) Halloween from the Haunted Amusement Park!
The Haunted Amusement Park is located—appropriately enough—at the site of the old Marshall Scotty’s Playland, a defunct amusement park that operated from 1967 to 1998. A modest park for much of its run, Marshall Scotty’s Playland saw its heyday in the late 70s through early 90s, with notable growth in the late 80s, when Bill Lee took over the park and tried to transform it into a world-class amusement and water park. Unfortunately, a bankrupcy filing in 1990 led to declining popularity and improvements. The park was sold in 1995 and renamed Frasier’s Frontier, with a summer camp operating on the premises for a few years as well. But the change of hands wasn’t enough to save the property, which was closed for good three years later.
Since then, a few isolated efforts have come and gone to revive the park, but none have truly stuck. In 2015, though, new business stirred some new seasonal life at the former Marshall Scotty’s when new operators created a haunted trail. Utilizing part of the property as a naturally creepy and unnerving setting—especially when visited at night, with the shadows of the decrepit structures providing an eerie and authentically unsettling ambiance—they were able to carve out an attraction that was successful enough to return year after year.. Since then, Scotty’s Scare Trail has become an East San Diego County favorite—a more rural alternative to the Balboa Park Haunted Trail—with much of its fame spread through word of mouth and more locally based marketing.
It’s set in an actual old amusement park. And who knows, it could really be haunted!
The haunt operated as Scotty’s Scare Trail for a couple of years until changing names in 2017, but we did not catch wind of the Haunted Amusement Park until last year in Southern California haunt listings. At the time, though, the scheduling and logistics weren’t favorable for a visit. But this time around, a stop to this unique haunt worked out, and the owners were generous enough to accommodate a trip despite the late season timing.
Located off the I-8 freeway, exiting Lake Jennings Park Road / Ridge Hill Road, the Haunted Amusement Park is firmly implanted in the San Diego outskirts, which enhances the sketchy, rundown feel of the haunt environment even before guests enter. This is not something artificially constructed, in a controlled environment, where the rational part of the brain can still assure some sort of horror disconnect. The attraction is located in a woodsy location, amidst aging and rundown structures, and is very literally housed among ruins. During the nighttime, in the dimly-lit atmosphere around this sprawling, nearly-mile-long haunted trail, the moody shapes and silhouettes of the old buildings and rides carry a tangibly weighted history that pulls on the psyche. It’s the perfect setting for a haunted amusement park theme that the aptly-named Haunted Amusement Park has taken.
Guests who brave the lengthy and often-winding trail will encounter zany clowns in an old bumper car enclosure, then find additional carnival squatters in a string light circled encampment set up in somewhat hilly terrain nearby. A haunted house facade provides for a fantastic photo op, especially when a mysterious lady in white poses along the arcaded walk. Later guests encounter her more directly, marking the start of a house of horrors inhabited by creepy dolls, ghostly girls, and demonic fiends.
The haunted trail makes great use of its natural amusement park settings. This clown-filled bumper car area uses chroma-depth painting techniques paired with 3D glasses to create a psychedelic ambiance.
A lady in white strikes a ghostly appearance.
An interlude through a gazebo area reveals an IP insertion… Stranger Things 4 characters are spotted lurking behind walls and barriers, waiting to spring out. Nothing here is elaborate or sophisticated, but there’s an odd charm in the (quality) home haunt level of craftsmanship in both the scenic sets and character aesthetics.
And Vecna is here too.
This leads to more of the old amusement park, with deserted ride vehicles and walled off switchbacks hiding more heinous creatures crawling in the dark. As the captive audience makes its way around the old kiddie roller coaster, they find monsters dressed in rags, with hideous visages, sometimes wielding severed body parts, often laughing and screaming maniacally. These figures revel in pouncing on unsuspecting guests.
You never know what freaks you might run into at the Haunted Amusement Park.
Or what freaks might run into you!
This leads to the Ridge Hill Cemetery, which lines the perimeter of the grounds. Here, undead creatures stir in the darkness, lumbering with a deliberate lurch that warns passers-by to stay away. A traverse back across the roller coaster, passing through its loading station, takes guests to one final structure, a somewhat claustrophobic and dark labyrinth of utility spaces with pop-out animatronics, a live scareactor or two, and strange graffiti and wall artwork that seems painted by deranged minds. Walking through, one would not unreasonably wonder whether a shady character is a scareactor or a transient who has taken up residence in such cozily forgotten bounds.
They’re nice enough to have a graveyard too.
One of the creatures of the dead from Ridge Hill Cemetery.
No time to ponder what-if’s, though. As guests move forward to less confined spaces, they encounter a victim crawling on the ground, screaming for help. She’s clearly in distress and danger, and it isn’t long before the source of this alarm is revealed. A chainsaw-wielding maniac comes behind her and plunges his savagely gashing instrument into her back as she shrieks for help and mercy. There’s nothing more that can be done, so it’s a quick escape out the exit of the maze while the ravaging butcher is distracted. And just as it seems guests are finally safe as they approach the same, green-lit ferris wheel that they saw upon entry, one more parting scare comes in the form of a buzzworthy psycho clown who seems to spring out of nowhere, swinging terror at guests who thought they were literally out of the woods.
This finale scene is the most cinematic and terrifying of the trail!
The Haunted Amusement Park may not be the most polished haunt, but it’s not meant to be. Everything about the rickety and run-down backdrop of this haunt provides a naturally chilling and uneasy anxiety to the vibe of the haunted excursion. The multitude of scareactors (with a larger number later in the season than earlier) contributes a lot of energy to the haunt. Though many of them appear to be minors, they relish their roles and execute them with enthusiasm and fervor.
Ultimately, the Haunted Amusement Park finds success by taking the nostalgic memories than many area guests have of the old Marshall Scotty’s Playland and inverting them into the despondence and dread of the current day circumstances. With an abysmally abandoned aura and an abundance of scare moments that come continuously and menacingly, what was once a sentimental dream has been transformed into a gritty nightmare. This haunt establishment properly leans into all of the gifts and benefits of its authentically forsaken environ.
The Haunted Amusement Park was crawling with scareactors on Halloween weekend, making for a very active and frightful experience.
The Haunted Amusement Park ran Fridays through Sundays plus the last Thursday through Monday from September 30 through Halloween night, opening at 7:00pm and closing anywhere between 10:00pm and 11:00pm depending on the evening. Admission was $20 for general admission and $30 for a front of line pass, with tickets sold only on site. There was free parking available on site, with highly appreciated guides to navigate guests to spots in the otherwise unlit lot.
Editor’s Note:
An earlier version of this story noted that Scotty’s Scare Trail ran from 2015-2019 and rebranded last year after the pandemic. The switch to the Haunted Amusement Park name actually occurred in 2017., and this information has been corrected. Please excuse the error.
Architect. Photographer. Disney nerd. Haunt enthusiast. Travel bugged. Concert fiend. Asian.
