I'm not going to lie, I didn't want to go in the first place.
But I am so very glad that I did! The Los Angeles Haunted Hayride is more than just a theme park ride, it's actually a whole park. The park is set within the Los Angeles Griffith Park abandoned zoo... which is already creepy, as it is said to be a haunted spot.
The Haunted Hayride is one of four attractions. All of the attractions include scare actors who are attentive to the moods of the individual visitor, and will act accordingly. In my case, I was in a terrible mood when I started the Hayride attraction, but by the end of it those actors had me smiling and laughing (they're as good at comedy as they are at sneaking up behind you).
In the House of Shadows, Omar and I shuffled through a maze in complete darkness, only momentarily lit by the flashing of strobe lights. Spray-painted messages on the walls proclaiming misleading directions had us ambling around in circles, and after a few wrong turns, we used these clues to decipher the real way out.
On our way out of the park, we stopped into Trick or Treat, where we joined a group of fellow "trick or treaters" and made our way from one house set to the next. At each set, we were instructed to knock on the door, and shout "trick or treat!" ... And then an actor would pop out of somewhere to surprise us. We definitely didn't expect some of those hiding places!
In the central area of the park, we bought ourselves a super cute jack-o-lantern t-shirt to share, because Omar and I wear the same size. Pleasantly enough, the food offered was not of the typical theme-park-greasy-heart-stopping-sickly-sweet variety. Instead, everything was plant-based and vegan-friendly. Considering how large the line was for the only shack to buy food, though, we decided to skip out on that experience.
The entire main area is a scare zone, so as you wait in line to enter an attraction, you can watch all those poor suckers at the end of the line get their fright on. The scare zones have actors who are just as amusing and comedic to watch as those in the Haunted Hayride.
I would say that this is definitely not something that you'd want to miss. If any of you are going to be in Los Angeles for the remainder of the month of October, I'd suggest stopping in to the Haunted Hayride theme park!