After a four-year hiatus, Dark Harbor is back aboard the Queen Mary starting Friday, Sept. 20, with a much-anticipated array of spooky mazes, rides and hidden speakeasies.
This year features four new mazes and one redesigned favorite complete with live performers ready to scare those who enter. There are also four rides, five themed bars and performances from the Dark Harbor Sliders, fire spinners, Voodoo Sound Company and magicians.
Also back this year are Dark Harbor’s speakeasies, which will be hidden inside and around the mazes and attractions.
Before you go looking for them, however, make sure you have one of Lady Mabel’s mystic tokens, which will be given out each night during the Maiden Voyage Launch Party starting at 8:08 p.m. in the Shipyard. You can also buy your way in by purchasing a “Foresight Four Pack” for an additional $15 per person.
General admission tickets range from $39.99 to $54.99 depending on the night. Dark Harbor runs on select nights through Nov. 2. You can see a full calendar here.
Other purchasing options include Fast Fright (starting at $67.99), which has roughly a third of the wait time at entry and all mazes, and Evil Express (starting at $119.99), which includes access to The Observation Deck for an exclusive bar, photo-ops and pop-up characters.
Descriptions of the five mazes, access to which is included with all admission types, are below:
Lullaby
Lullaby centers around the “sinisterly playful ghost” of Scary Mary, who is rumored to have drowned in the depths of Queen Mary’s first-class swimming pool. In this maze, Scary Mary rises to harass passengers and “guide them toward a watery abyss — a vortex that leads to the chilling underworld.”
Infirmary
This new maze features a sadistic surgeon, Dr. Edwin Master, along with his accomplice Graceful Gale.
The pair carry out gruesome procedures on the living with their carnage stretching from the first-class decks to “the eerie depths deep inside the bowels of the Queen Mary.”
Guests will witness Master’s specialized surgeries in the operating theater on “third class patients,” leading to the question: “Will the third class patients overthrow this maniacal medic or will he and Gale continue their gory game in this violent, disturbing macabre masquerade?”
Big Top Terror
Another maze making its debut centers around a Halloween carnival that is a trap set by The Ringmaster, who has a collection of cursed objects displayed throughout the circus.
It’s billed as “a deadly labyrinth of jack o’lanterns designed to ensnare the souls of the innocent.”
Breakout
Notorious murderer Samuel The Savage has been arrested and thrown into a prison cell aboard the ship, but he breaks out of his rusted shackles inside stateroom B340.
In this new maze, you are in Samuel The Savage’s footsteps trying to avoid lawmen and stay out of sight.
“Will you listen to the twisted voices in your head or can you resist the urge to kill in Breakout!”
Feast
This classic maze returns reimagined for 2024. Visitors will step into the kitchen to witness Chef’s origin story. He began as a young, ambitious butcher aiming to be head chef aboard a luxury cruise liner. However, after years of chopping meat on the ship, he grew resentful towards the ungrateful first-class passengers.
Now, he takes recipe creation into his own hands by adding a special ingredient: you. After completing the maze, guests descend into the engine room, where visitors have the option of walking through Door 13 to hear the last whispers of Half Hatch Henry.
Other Attractions
Side attractions not included with admission are ax throwing at Anchor Axe ($7) and a place to test your sharpshooting skills at Pirate’s Plunder Shootout ($10).
There are also four rides available for $10 per ride or via a $30 unlimited ride pass. The rides include the Sinister Swings, a haunted carousel, a spinning thrill ride called the Black Widow and the Rampage Double Wheel — a double Ferris wheel offering a birds-eye view of Dark Harbor.
Each night, resident DJs will have pop-up performances and there will be a Final Voyage dance party in the Shipyard one hour before the festival closes featuring “stops” in Brazil, Mexico and Peru.
Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group, which also hosts the Haunted Hayride at Griffith Park along with various Halloween events throughout the U.S., took over production for this year’s event.
Epic Entertainment Productions was the organizer for the event’s previous iteration in 2019. Thirteenth Floor was involved in the launch of Shaqtoberfest, a Halloween event featuring Shaquille O’Neal held at the Queen Mary in 2022 and 2023.
Shaqtoberfest will not be held this year but is planning a return at a new location for 2025.