With the merger of Cedar Fair and Six Flags just days away, and the haunt season quickly approaching, it would be keen to start paying attention to how things are being handled on both sides of the fence.

When it comes to Cedar Fair, the direction has always been to stick with their own in-house design of haunted houses, and not outsource intellectual property (IP) to popular brands like someone like Universal Studios would do for Horror Nights.

On the flip side, Six Flags hosts Fright Fest at select parks each year, and while they appear to have typically stuck to their own house designs, today they announced both Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Los Angeles will host houses by legendary horror brands with Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures’ SAW franchise, Netflix’s Stranger Things and Army of the Dead, Warner Bros. Discovery’s The Conjuring, Annabelle and The Nun, and Legendary Entertainment’s Trick ‘r Treat. A selection of these mazes are also said to be coming to additional unannounced Six Flags parks.

As a haunt enthusiast, this is fantastic news.

While our Cedar Fair passes do not get us into Six Flags parks for 2024, the hope is that when season passes go on sale in August for the 2025 season, they will get us into all the merged parks. This is also an important reason Cedar Fair has been pushing to get the merger complete ahead of passes going on sale.

So what might Fright Fest/Haunt/HalloWeekends look like in 2025 and beyond?

While we would be delighted to see an expansion of the haunt mazes featuring iconic IP brands, knowing Cedar Fair’s track record, we do not see it lasting.

From food to theming, besides the Peanuts contract, Cedar Fair is all about keeping everything in house. The thinking is why pay extra for outside IP when we can do it ourselves. If chicken tenders are your highest selling food item, and you can perfect the recipe, why pay for Chick-fil-A that is closed on Sundays?

Sometimes that thinking works, sometimes it makes sense.

Six Flags obviously sees the appeal of bringing in major haunt brands to drive ticket sales and attendance to their parks. Obviously that same thinking works very well for Universal Studios, though budgets are unlimited on that side. We honestly do not have the expertise of Six Flags parks yet to know how their Fright Fests operate or how they are attended.

Our guess with Cedar Fair in the driver seat post merge is that we could see them reign in the outpouring of cash towards IP. They would much rather spend that money on the houses versus coming off the top directly to pay for the brands.

We are actually surprised to see Six Flags go this route ahead of the merge. Now we understand these agreements were probably years in the making, but seeing how Cedar Fair has been pulling in any extra cash outlay, the opposite can be said for the Six Flags side of things. Though we can all agree for the most part the Six Flags parks need a lot of resources in the future to come up to the Cedar Fair standard on many things.

The one thing Cedar Fair properties do not need during haunt is higher attendance, as it is already their money making season with record crowds. While it would certainly be exciting to go through a Conjuring house at Cedar Point (looking at you Boeckling Estates), we are doubtful the top brass will see the appeal.

Though at this point all the mazes at Cedar Point in particular need to be completely reimagined, as they have become quite stale.

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