Fright Nights Tips and History Canada Reviews

Looking for tips and background information about Vancouver’s Fright Nights? Curious about the history of Playland’s Halloween haunted houses?

To learn about what takes place in 2024, see our article about Fright Nights. To learn about what has happened at the PNE at Halloween in the past, continue reading.

Below is some general information about the Haunted Houses at Fright Nights. It includes tips and advice about admission, information about crowds and lineups, and then a brief history of the Halloween attraction’s story. Read the entire article, or click any of the links below to skip to a specific topic.

About the Houses | About Admission | Crowds and Lineups | Tips & Advice | Video | Fright Nights History

For hours, dates, prices, shows and ride details for the PNE at Halloween, click Fright Nights at Playland.

For a detailed description of each of the eight different haunted houses, click Fright Night’s Haunted Houses.

General Information

First off, we think the haunted houses at Fright Nights are pretty awesome, assuming you like this sort of thing!

At Fright Nights some of the houses are more gruesome than others. Some are gorier, some are more realistic, some are more frightening, better, or not quite as good as the others. Overall, however, all are exceptional in their own different ways.

Much of one’s opinion of each attraction depends on who you are, what you like, and what freaks you out. In general though, the haunted houses are all highly effective at doing what they were designed to do – which is to scare people.

About the Houses

Here is some general information about the haunted houses at the PNE:

• A couple of the houses have tunnels where the walls spin around, a few use smoke machines, and a couple of others have strobe lighting. If you don’t like these sorts of things, don’t go in them. See PNE Haunted Houses Reviews for a description of each house for individual details. Once you’re there, read the warning sign at the entrance to each venue or talk to an attendant if you have any concerns.
• Each house is different, which is great! Many share common features like hanging corpses, severed body parts, and blasts of air at your feet. There are also skeletons, mechanical creatures popping out from places, maze-like hallways and torture scenes. Some of the haunted attractions have extensive amounts of blood and gore, and others are more creepy than terrifying. In short, there’s something for everyone (except for people who don’t like scary stuff).
• All of the haunted houses have live actors hidden among the model and mechanized creatures. The actors will jump out at you and scream, but never touch you.
• Be kind to the live actors! You are paying for them to scare you, so don’t be surprised or angry when they succeed. We know of a high school student who worked at Fright Nights one year. The student scared a guy, who responded by punching the worker! The “tough guy” was subsequently arrested and charged with assault, plus thoroughly humiliated to learn that the person behind the costume was a young girl.
• Fright Nights isn’t recommended for children ages 12 and under. It’s also not recommended for folks 65 and older, people with sensitivity to strobe lights, folks with high blood pressure, and pregnant women.

About Admission

• Admission to Fright Nights is cheaper when you purchase tickets online. Sundays, most weekdays, and days earlier in the season are also usually a little less expensive.
• There are no in-and-out privileges! Once you get your ticket scanned and go in you leave and come back in again later. This is important to know, especially when you pay upwards of $100 for your ticket!
• For security and safety reasons, expect to be searched before entering Fright Nights. There are separate lines for men and women, bags are inspected and bodies patted down.
• Items that are not permitted include costumes, face paint, selfie sticks, cameras with detachable lenses, and pets (except for service animals for people with disabilities). Glass containers, alcoholic beverages, illegal substances and overly large umbrellas are also banned.
• For this year’s prices and hours of operation, click PNE Fright Nights.

About the Crowds & Lineups

• Expect to wait in line for anywhere between a few minutes and two hours for each haunted house. The length of the line depends on the time, date and popularity of the specific attraction. One hour or more lineups are pretty common.
• Lineups are fairly short right at the very start of each night but get exponentially longer as the evening progresses.
• Fright Nights is busiest on Fridays and Saturdays, the closer you get to Halloween, and the better the weather.
• More often than not, lineups for haunted houses are longer than the lineups for rides, especially on rainy days. However, on non-rainy days the lineups for the Wooden Roller Coaster, Music Express, Atmosfear, The Beast and Hellevator can get frighteningly long too.
• Except for on the busiest days, if you arrive right at opening time and head straight to the haunted houses, and do nothing but them, it’s usually possible to get into every haunted attraction before the end of the night and still have time left over without the need for a Rapid Pass.

Fright Nights Tips & Advice

Below are some tips to help you make the most of your Fright Nights experience.

TIP #1: Arrive a few minutes before opening time and go to the most popular haunted houses right away. That allows you to hit them before the lineups start to form, and then go to the rides later.

TIP #2: You don’t typically need a Rapid Pass in the first hour or so of each evening as the lineups then are still usually quite reasonable. It’s later at night, when things are much more crowded, that Rapid Passes become worthwhile.

TIP #3: Share a Rapid Pass! That’s right, share a couple of them with your friends. The passes are probably technically “non-transferable,” but they are just a punch card that more than one person can use, just not at the same time or for more than once per haunted house or ride. Or at least that has been the case in the past.

Rapid Passes cost as much as $60 extra, which isn’t inexpensive. If you can afford it and it’s a busy night, they are worth it. If it’s too expensive though, then a few people can pool for a single rapid pass or two to allow everyone to save money. The main drawbacks of this arrangement are that everyone can’t do things together and people have to decide who gets to use the passes for which houses and rides.

More Tips and Advice

TIP #4: Don’t forget that there are no in-and-out privileges. Once inside the gates you can’t go back outside and then get back in! Don’t leave your camera, umbrella, raincoat, sweater, cell phone, purse, wallet, bank card or other personal items in your car and expect to go back out later to get them! Remember to take everything in with you the first time!

TIP #5: While going through a haunted house, take your time – if you waited in line for a long time then be sure to appreciate the scenes and make the most of the experience. Look all around, admire the details and absorb all you can! After all, you paid good money to be thoroughly freaked out, didn’t you? Just make sure to not take so long as to make everyone behind you annoyed.

History of Fright Nights Haunted Houses

Playland first launched Fright Nights in 2003. Since that time it has become Western Canada’s largest and most famous Halloween attraction.

Initially targeted towards a 12 to 35-year-old audience, Fright Nights started with a few rides, about three or so haunted houses and tens of thousands of attendees. The event has since grown significantly in size, adding more haunted attractions and rides slowly over the years. Apart from a few exceptionally rainy Octobers, attendance and revenues have generally increased over time.

In 2006 Fright Nights added its Fire Show and a new haunted house.

In 2007 another new haunted house was added and 64,378 people attended. Revenues exceeded $1.5 million as the attraction was open nightly from 6:00 pm to 11:00 pm. 2007 was also the year that Fright Nights introduced premium pricing. That meant tickets on busy weekend nights cost more than on slower weekdays.

2008 was when the PNE added the “Monsters of Schlock” show, a record 83,076 people attended and revenues topped $2.1 million. By that time Fright Nights had a total of five haunted houses, but the lineup was different from the ones that exist today. 2008 houses included the Bates Hotel, Black Hole, Scary Tales, Nuclear Nightmare and Demon of the Dark/House of the Dead.

Fright Nights Expansion

In 2009 the PNE replaced its existing haunted houses with four completely new ones, and in the process more than doubled its haunted attractions capacity. New haunted houses in 2009 included Asylum, Hollywood Horrors, the Haunted Manor and Darkness. That same year 60,552 fright seekers attended, Fright Nights made close to $1.8 million in revenue and the PNE ceased using off-site retailers to sell its tickets. Rainy weather was likely the main cause of the drop in attendance from the previous year.

2010 was the eighth year for Fright Nights and it celebrated by adding a fifth house. That year 71,582 people attended and the attraction grossed $2.27 million in sales. New for 2010 was the 3-D haunted house Carn-Evil featuring dozens of scary clowns and carnival scenes.

In 2011 Fright Nights added no new houses, had 78,456 attendees and $2.58 million in sales.

Celebrating its 10th season in 2012, Fright Nights introduced another haunted attraction – Fear. This house played on people’s phobias of spiders, snakes, heights, germs and various other real-life scary things. This brought the attraction’s total number of haunted houses up to six. Due largely to an exceptionally rainy October (even by Vancouver standards), attendance numbers were just 55,254 and sales a mere $1.89 million.

2013 saw no new haunted houses, but still was a great year with just short of 80,000 attendees and close to $2.9 million in sales. By this year, Fright Nights no longer operated every day of the month. Instead, it closed on slower weekdays, but extended its hours to as late as 1:00 am on busy weekends. 2013 was also the year that Fast Passes (i.e. Rapid Passes) were introduced to allow people willing to pay more to be able to access shorter lineups.

Modern Fright Nights

2014 saw the arrival of the Keepers Doll Factory haunted house. It was also a year that saw over 74,000 attendees and $2.86 million in revenues. Despite the strong sales, 2014 was also a tough year for the organization as it was that summer that the PNE had its charitable status revoked by the Canada Revenue Agency.

In 2015 Fright Nights added a new Fire Show and had close to a record 84,000 attendees and over $3.4 million in sales. Premium pricing for regular admission on weekends that year was between about $34 and $37, and for slower weekdays tickets cost between $22 and $25.

No new haunted houses were added in 2016, but an eighth one did appear in 2017 – The Bloodshed.

Fright Nights didn’t operate in 2020 because of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. In its place the PNE hosted Slayland: Night of a Thousand Screams which was similar to Fright Nights, but without any of the haunted houses. Slayland had amusement rides, Halloween decorations and characters in costume, but no haunted houses. There were also special physical distancing protocols in place, plus lots of extra cleaning measures.

In 2022 Fright Nights returned to its usual haunted stomping grounds and featured seven haunted houses with some new haunted house props and a new open “scaremony.” This was also the year when the Hollywood Horrors haunted house was retired. The featured haunted houses in 2022 were Darkness, Fear, Materia Medica, Keepers Doll Factory, Bloodshed, Hollywood Horrors and Haunted Mansion.

2023’s haunted house attractions grew by one from the previous year. Fright Nights featured eight spooktacular haunted houses. They included The Void (new), Carn-Evil, Darkness, Fear, Materia Medica, Keepers Doll Factory, Haunted Mansion and Bloodshed.

Fright Nights Video

For an idea of what to expect at Fright Nights, check out the video below. It features a number of roaming characters at the attraction in 2024.

Other Information

To learn more about Fright Nights in general, click PNE Fright Nights.

For in-depth details about each of the PNE’s eight haunted houses, click Fright Nights Haunted Houses Descriptions & Reviews.

For more information about the amusement park at other times of the year, click Pacific National Exhibition, Playland or the Christmas Lantern Festival.

Click Lower Mainland Haunted Houses or Vancouver Halloween Events for lists of other Halloween attractions.

For a list of other major events see Vancouver’s Monthly Calendar or click Festival & Events.

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