Behind the Screams: What It Takes to Create a New Maze for Knott’s Scary Farm

Jessica Peralta
13 hours ago
9 min read

From hybrid beasts to haunted mirrors, the park’s creative team blends story, set design and performance to make fear feel real.

A mutated monster at The Zoo, one of the new mazes at Knott’s Scary Farm in Buena Park. Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Culture OC

Guests entering the new Knott’s Scary Farm maze, The Zoo, will encounter a unique array of hybrid creatures, military experimentation, vibrantly painted walls and a whole lot of poop.

The Zoo maze designer, Daniel Miller, stands in front of his maze during a recent daytime walk-through. Photo by Jessica Peralta, Culture OC

It’s the fruition of Knott’s Berry Farm art director Daniel Miller’s design plans, which were completed on Jan. 1, 2024. That kind of timeline is typical for the maze design planning process at the Buena Park theme park.

“We get a lot of time to plan and put more and more perfection in and that’s probably one of our secrets,” Miller said during a recent daytime walk-through of his latest creation.

The theme park that launched its original three-day “Halloween Haunt” in 1973, spurring the haunted attraction industry, continues to push itself every year with inventive maze design and creative storytelling.

This year’s Knott’s Scary Farm, which runs select nights through Nov. 1, includes two new mazes, The Zoo and Mary – The Haunting of Worth Home.

Entrances for Knott's Scary Farm's new mazes for 2025. PHOTO 1: Mary – The Haunting of Worth Home. PHOTO 2: The Zoo which is inhabited by hybrid creatures and mutated monsters. Photos by Paul Rodriguez, Culture OC

Inspired by films like “The Island of Doctor Moreau,” which is based on the H.G. Wells novel, and the “Moreau”-inspired Oingo Boingo song, “No Spill Blood," The Zoo’s storyline is as meticulously detailed as its design. The basic premise is that soldiers are recruited to become hybrid creatures as part of a military experiment, but of course, everything goes wrong.

“They have three ways of making hybrids,” Miller said. “One is through chemistry, sort of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The next one is surgically, like grafting (the) brain of a monkey into a man or a man into a monkey. And the third one … is genetics. Sort of like what we see in ‘The Fly’ – when we genetically combine the animal into the person.”

Visitors will see everything from mermaid creatures to bird things and weird giant beasts up close in an abandoned zoo turned government lab. For those who really like looking at the detail, there are many Easter eggs and inspirations.

Hybrid creatures and their skeletons populate The Zoo maze. Photos by Paul Rodriguez, Culture OC

“This is kind of personal,” Miller said. “When I grew up, my mom raised lots of pets. She was sort of an amateur breeder. We just had a lot of dogs around. As a kid, taking care of all of these pets, there was also kind of a gross part of it – especially how dirty things got, how ripped up things got and the poop. Cleaning up all the poop as a kid was just like terrifying for me. When I bring my brothers, and they haven’t come in yet, they’re gonna have a laugh. Because a lot of this sort of feels like a little bit of what I had to go through as a kid. Not to this extent.”

There’s a bird area inspired by the Big Bear bald eagle live camera that follows two eagles’ annual batch of eggs and hatchlings. Miller and his wife are big fans and watch the eagles online.

“This is my nod to that, the two eagles,” he said. “I requested as much bird poop as you can put on here. The funniest question in the build was: What does bird poop smell like?”

Putting together a maze often involves more than just the visual sense. It can include smell. So Miller requested a bird poop scent from the effects department.

“I guess it smells like regular poop,” Miller said.

During a daytime walkthrough of The Zoo, thoughtful details are visible. Photos by Jessica Peralta, Culture OC

Graffiti paint is a big part of the scenic design from the moment you walk up to the attraction. Gloria “Glo” Haro, who is also a scare actor in Ghost Town called The Bride, was the lead painter for The Zoo. Many familiar names can be spotted in the paint design, including employees and former employees, Millers’ own daughters and a special tribute to friends who have passed away.

“This is sort of the look that we wanted – graffiti over graffiti over graffiti,” he said. “A major contributor was Glo, the paint is so incredible in this maze.”

At 10 p.m., The Zoo gives guests a little something extra for brave fans by turning off all the lights. Guests get a dim flashlight as they walk in, just enough to see their way through – and the creatures lurking within. Miller said the concept behind this dark twist is that the animals have chewed through the power cable and turned off the lights.

He does ask guests to not flash the flashlights in the monsters’ eyes for their safety.

“Everything goes to hell in a hand basket,” he said. “It’s very creepy.”

Miller said many teams – including paint, props, effects, lighting, audio, video, costume and carpentry – all collaborate to create these mazes.

More than 1,000 roving creatures that lurk throughout the park during the Knott's Scary Farm season. Photos by Paul Rodriguez, Culture OC

Billy Murray has been casting director for Knott’s Berry Farm since 2022. He said he’s involved with maze designers and producers very early in the process to help bring the characters to life. He works with designers to determine what energy level they want for each character and the age range they want the character portrayed as.

“What will their silhouette look like once we have partnered with costuming and wardrobe to add those finishing touches to each of the characters?” he said. “So casting is involved at the very early stages to make sure that what the designer is dreaming up is feasible with people that are applying and auditioning for Knott’s Scary Farm.”

He said The Zoo was really fun to cast because these characters are all human-animal hybrids. During the casting process for The Zoo, he was looking for talent that had a feral quality.

“Maybe there's a particular animal that they’re (bringing) to the table – whether they have like monkey or chimp-like qualities, or if it's a hyena-type of laugh, evil laugh that they did,” he said. “It's not just the energy level that the performer is demonstrating in their audition, but it's also the sounds that they're making like grunts and growls and snarls and hisses, you know, all of those animalistic-type noises or things that I'm taking into consideration when placing talent into positions in The Zoo. I'm also looking for really tall performers and then I'm also looking for rather short performers, too, because those different varying height ranges will lend itself to characters, or I should say, animals that would be of that stature.”

Mary – The Haunting of Worth Home is inspired by the urban legend of Bloody Mary, which lent itself to female cast members.

“I am familiar with the type of applicants that we receive for Scary Farm, and so I use some of that information and I relay that to the designer, so that way when they're creating these characters, they can keep those details in mind,” he said. “Believe it or not, Scary Farm has more female applicants to be monsters than we have males. So, to have a maze this year, Mary – The Haunting of Worth Home, it's a very heavy female cast, which is great from a casting standpoint because I get to utilize all these wonderful female performers that are coming through the door.”

Female cast members in Mary – The Haunting of Worth Home maze. Photos by Paul Rodriguez, Culture OC

Art director Jon Asperin led the design for the Mary maze. He was interested in telling this story in a maze because of the lore’s seemingly wide appeal.

“I think for a lot of people, we've had our interpretations and our own different experiences and our different introductions into the Mary lore, and they're all very different,” he said. "And for Mary, for me, it was something that was very personal because as I grew up, I've heard different stories …. I think the biggest thing that really resonated with me was that … the lore itself that revolves around Bloody Mary crosses a lot of different cultures and different communities. And for myself, I have family in the Philippines and family in Hawaii, that are two different cultures, but they each had a similar folklore or story that revolved around a character like Mary.”

He said after speaking to a variety of friends, he found a through-line similarity of the story: saying her name three times while looking in the mirror.

“I thought that it was something that resonated just across the board around different folks and the fact that when I heard it as I was growing up and my kids are now hearing it with their friends,” he said.

He said when they’re putting together a maze at Knott’s Scary Farm, they approach it like they’re telling a story or a very short story, and they develop scenes.

“Not only are we trying to scare the heck out of them, but we're also at the same time trying to present our story in a way that the guests will not only be entertained, but they could kind of follow with it,” he said.

Scenes in rooms throughout the house help to tell the story of Mary – The Haunting of Worth Home, which is inspired by the urban legend of bloody Mary. Photos by Jessica Peralta, Culture OC

He said for each of the scenes, they take guests through a little journey of her appearing not only in the mirrors, but also breaking through these mirrors in the form of apparitions or actual scare actors coming out as Mary through the mirrors.

“Huge monstrosities and animatronics emerging out of her … popping out trying to attack a guest or maybe there's a little vignette or a little scene that's happening and so we definitely try to use that and then in the maze itself, we sort of take guests through this journey inside of her home in which, in the story, she was originally murdered in,” he said.

In this story, Mary’s home has over the years been transformed into a group home for disenfranchised teenagers. In the maze, guests step into the story of her coming back and looking at her house being invaded by the new residents.

“It's got the same structure. It's got the same wallpaper that she had, that she and her husband put up, but there's different faces, different smiles, different laughter,” he said. “And so there's a bit of a feeling of invasion that she feels while she's searching for her family. So we use that sort of as a backdrop to where we have the use of these mirrors.”

A scene in the Mary – The Haunting of Worth Home maze. On the left, it is viewed in under work lights. On the right, the room is lit with the theatrical lighting. Photos by Jessica Peralta (left) and Paul Rodriguez (right), Culture OC

He said the storyline was created from the ground up. They took a look at some of the elements that really embodied her story, and they created a new world around it.

“The backstory to her and the idea of her being in a home, that was definitely all in-house,” he said. “The team and I collaborated on developing a story that would allow us to create this walk-through space, this walk-through world.”

The name for the maze is an Easter egg in itself.

“The main antagonist that we have here at the park is the Green Witch and over the years … we had a show called The Hanging, which we still have today, in which … the Green Witch's real name is Sarah Marshall,” he said. “She had all these different interpretations and names that we've used over the years.”

There is a family tree that is hidden inside the maze that guests can find as they walk through. It has a lantern activation. He said it’s the kind of deep diving and Easter egg that hardcore fans love.

Knott's Scary Farm's interactive lantern, that can be purchased in the park, activates this family tree. Photo by Jessica Peralta, Culture OC

“We have this nice little interactive lantern that folks could buy here at the park that allows them to create these nice little special show moments throughout the midways of the park and also inside some of the mazes,” he said. “And so when you come across this family tree inside of our maze and you use your lantern, you have this special image … that just sort of appears almost like a UV light, like a black light that shows this family tree and how her family tree reveals the name and the lineage of not only Mary, but her connection to our Green Witch as being one of her, the Green Witch's actual sisters.”

It’s these kinds of details and world-building that have helped amp up the creativity to what’s evolved to today.

“When we're approaching it, we're always trying to make sure that we try to have the guests forget that they're in Buena Park, that they're in Knott’s Berry Farm, that they're inside of a maze,” he said. “Ultimately we try to get them believing that they're inside the world that we create.”