Forbidden Forest Horror Trail Review (2026)

The signage that leads to the haunt is very bright and visible from the road, and then when you get inside the parking lot is spacious and the ticket booth is well lit. There’s a website that will give you more information about hours, rules, and pricing. They don’t currently do pre-sales, but it was quick and easy to get tickets on site from the lit ticket building. Everyone we met with was delightful, and that makes sense since they’re a close team working a family-owned, beloved local charity haunt. Forbidden Forest has been scaring people for more than thirty years and they have the flow of the trail down to a science. You will never feel crowded or like you’re in a conga line and every scene will include interaction of some kind with your team. It’s important to remember that this is a very heavily trafficked haunt, so when we got there the general admission line was very long, and people were asking to upgrade to VIP and skip the line because they wanted to go through.

From the outside you can hear the shrieks and booms of the trail. Once you’re inside it’s a different world. Each scene is connected to the next in a long and continuous tale of terror. There was no point where we felt like we were taken out of the narrative and sets expertly closed off sound bleed. There is an established gravel trail that you follow, but it’s designed so that you still feel isolated in the woods as you wander back and forth through the dark woods. The trees loom, and the sets blend into the environment in some places, and breathe fire while staring down at you in others. This isn’t just a trail of monsters leaping out, this is a complicated web of trail and mini houses that cause wonder and disorientation. You move from one world to another, from the outside trail to the narrow tunnel to the game house of a game playing serial killer. On top of that, team sizes and pacing allow monsters to interact with groups and make the experience more personal and unique to each group. Any time we got too close to the group in front of us the monsters would create situations to slow us down and distract us while everything got caught up.

Each scene on the trail had its own aesthetic, but they all contained a combination of old-school horror tricks and more modern animatronics. The opening scene sets the tone by merging special effects with tense and spooky set design to inspire genuine dread. In the Mineshaft, a visually stunning effect creates space and depth, making it seem like you are really looking down a deep mine shaft. Then, an explosive surprise knocked us off our feet and we were fleeing to the next scene. Details are layered on top of each other making it hard not to slow down in scenes and look around when you need to keep moving. We saw a lot of custom pyrotechnics, we were assaulted by unstable and vibrating surfaces and one of them was while we were being sized up for eating, and we were funneled through tricky hallways and switchback mazes. They delivered on every promise they made with props and characters, setting scenes up at times so that when you come around corners you would hear sounds that would be part of the next scene, building a solid world. We heard the evil clown horns, and there they were, those tricky dark clowns leading us into a marvelous collection of technicolor horror rooms through a meticulously crafted set piece recreating the playground of a madwoman. Every inch of the space this haunt sits on is utilized.

With around thirty actors in the haunt there are monsters galore that are just waiting for you to get within their grasp. Because of the way this haunt is designed it is very character focused as each scene is affected by the interaction between the monsters and the guests. We were stopped by a young clown who had one of our team members dip their arm into a chest cavity, and then draped the guts over their head. More clowns swopped in from every angle swarming us with sounds and lights and fear. All three of the employees in the Mine Shaft scene were a combination of hilarious and genuine that sold the tension and the story. When our team announced that they knew the codes for danger but came into the danger anyway the roasting we got was hilarious and in character. We went to a shindig and their demanding advice resulted in all of us not learning how to dance. Monsters used distractions to set up scares for fellow monsters all over the haunt, and their timing was on point from start to finish. Nate Dog managed to set the narrative of the final section with panache, and then ate some of the guts our team member was still carrying which was mighty unsettling. A lunatic in that finale section also gets a big callout as they approached every one of us with a different type of scare when we came through, and he had a heavily detailed costume that leant more credibility to the scene and added in tiny touches to communicate the character long before he spoke. Five separate scare approaches back to back, seamlessly. He was ready for anything. Because of the variety of monsters in the scenes, we saw a spectrum of masks and makeup and they were all well done. We didn’t see anything that looked out of place, and in several scenes we saw details in costumes that really sold the look. The unplayful victim we met on the trail had hair that had been teased to look like a neglected and tortured captive. Nate Dog’s cane and hat, the varied and unique makeup on the clowns, and the costumes that allowed monsters to come out of the darkness with no warning.

Firstly, we’re very proud to admit the Mine Shaft was our favorite scene and part of that is because none of us saw the scare coming, and it got all five of us and the two people that were going through with us. That is almost unheard of. Many scenes proved that the furniture, the walls, the floors, and sometimes even your friends cannot be trusted. There were no shortage of screams through the night as they blended dramatic storytelling with jump scare vibrations and booms. Dread and shock are different kinds of fear, and they manage to evoke both with their set design, their approach to pacing groups, and their passionate monsters. No scene was empty or bare, and there was never a real lull between scares and creatures or special effects. The finale was awesome, and we don’t want to spoil the surprise, but know that at the end there are cameras that are set through the haunt, and it pays to go first in your group so you can enjoy that feature to its fullest. The sensory tricks in the foggy section of that final scene, along with their patient, lurking monster’s timing, made it unforgettable.

This is a charity haunt that is raising funds for St. Jude’s and is staffed entirely by passionate volunteers. The general admission is $25 and this is an incredible amount of fun for that price. The website recommends that you get the VIP Fast Pass which is $75 because during peak traffic times the wait can be long. We can confirm that this is true and that the VIP pass is invaluable, as when we arrived the general admission line was about a two hour wait. There are concessions on site, and a merch store with a great t-shirt design that was already selling out by the time we got there. This was a really large haunt with so much to see and enjoy, and they don’t rush you or scream at you to hurry up, they take their time to really mess you up properly.