Eight L.A. Halloween Nights, Ranked. The $49 Ticket Doesn’t Include the Mazes.

One test decides the order: the lowest price each event will sell an adult, and everything that price leaves out.

The cheapest way into a Los Angeles Halloween this fall is $29, at a botanic garden in La Cañada Flintridge, and the same ticket on a different night costs $52. The most expensive is $143 for a play staged inside a house, and it's the only published price here that already counts its fees. In between sits a $49 theme-park ticket that gets you through the gate on a Fright Fest night and past exactly zero haunted mazes.

We read the posted ticket, pricing and parking pages of Los Angeles County's multi-night ticketed Halloween events on September 10, 2026, and ranked eight of them on one number: the lowest price at which each will sell an adult a ticket. Not the peak-Saturday price, not the upgrade, not the package — the floor. Three of the eight publish no price at all on their own event pages, so where an operator doesn't post a number, the figure is the one reported by the trade site Haunted Attraction Network, credited in the entry.

The order is the floor. The argument is everything the floor leaves out, which in this county is a great deal: a maze pass, a parking space, a fee that arrives at checkout, or a second person in the car.

1. Carved at Descanso Gardens, La Cañada Flintridge — $29, and the same walk can cost $52

Descanso publishes the whole spread, which almost nobody here does. Its Carved FAQ puts non-member adult general admission at $29 to $52 and children at $19 to $37, with members paying $22 to $45 and $12 to $30, and children two and under free. The event runs October 2 through November 1, and the garden's Carved page already reports its flexible Anytime tickets — $65 for members, $85 for everyone else — sold out.

What earns first place isn't only the $29. It's that the $29 is printed next to the $52, on the same line, before you have chosen a date. Every other operator on this page reaches the same result — a cheap Tuesday, an expensive Saturday — by making you click through a calendar to find out. Descanso tells you the range and lets you plan around it, and its membership pitch is arithmetic rather than sentiment: up to $7 off a general admission ticket, up to $20 off an Anytime one.

The catch is the calendar itself, and the garden says so in its own ways-to-save list: "Visit on less busy dates and entry times for the lowest General Admission prices." That's the deal on offer, stated plainly, which is more than most of this list manages. October 31 joins the run for the first time this year, with trick-or-treating included in the admission price.

2. Magic of the Jack O'Lanterns, Palos Verdes — $29.99 for 10,000 pumpkins on county park land

The show moved to the South Coast Botanic Garden this year, and the garden's status is printed on the event's own Los Angeles page: "A unit of the County of Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation System." The run is select nights, September 18 through November 1, along a mile-long trail the operator says carries more than 10,000 carved jack-o'-lanterns. Tickets start at $29.99 for adults and $24.99 for children, per Haunted Attraction Network's Los Angeles guide; the event's own pages publish no price.

Second place is a coin-flip with first on money and a clear loss on candor. Thirty cents separates the two floors. One of them is legible from the couch and one of them is not.

Worth knowing who is running it, because it becomes the theme of this page: the same site names its producer as Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group, and describes the company as the world's largest Halloween-themed entertainment operation, with more than 15 locations.

3. The Haunted Carwash, Lakewood — $30 a car, which is the cheapest seat on this page

Here is the placement worth arguing about, and I'll defend it in one sentence: on sticker price this thing finishes third, and per person it beats everything else here by a mile. The operator's own site puts it at "Starting at $30 per-vehicle" and says, in parentheses, "You only need ONE ticket for your vehicle." Four adults in a sedan pay $7.50 each. The same four at Universal pay $308. (Haunted Attraction Network's guide still lists the car wash at $25 a vehicle; we're using the operator's own number, which is five dollars higher.)

It returns this October with four locations, and Lakewood is the Los Angeles County one; the others are in Anaheim, Montclair and San Diego. The premise is what it sounds like — you drive into a car wash, performers come at the glass, the machinery runs — and the fine print is a vehicle inspection rather than a dress code. Anything over seven feet two inches doesn't fit. Lowered suspensions, extra-wide tires, fifth wheels, dually trucks, motorcycles, loose items in an open bed: all refused, all listed on the site.

It finishes third because a ranking of floors has to rank the floor, and $30 is $30 whether or not you fill the seats. It would finish first on any honest measure of what a group actually pays, and no one else on this page is even close.

4. Los Angeles Haunted Hayride, Griffith Park — $34.99 and up, on the same nights as everything else

The hayride runs select nights from September 18 through November 1 at 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, and tickets are "$34.99 and up," per NBC Los Angeles, which published its preview on September 4. New this year is Fallen Angel, a maze built around a 1980s rock band, alongside the return of Elvira's Trick or Treat Mayhem and, per Haunted Attraction Network, the first alcohol ever sold inside Midnight Falls.

It is also the only event on this page that will let you park for nothing. The hayride's location page sells pre-paid parking in the Merry Go Round lots and then tells you the alternative anyway: free parking in the northwest corner of the L.A. Zoo lot, with a complimentary shuttle to the entrance trail, last one leaving 30 minutes after the event closes. Hold that sentence next to the $42 in the sixth entry.

Fourth is a fair price for the only event here that is actually a hayride, and it is also the second Thirteenth Floor property on the page — the company's own logo and corporate copy sit in the site's footer.

5. Queen Mary Dark Harbor, Long Beach — $50.99, and the city takes a third of the net revenue

Dark Harbor returns for a 13th season on select nights, September 18 through November 1, with six mazes and tickets starting at $50.99, per Haunted Attraction Network's event guide. Tickets are sold online only, and the midway is priced down to the dollar in the same guide: $5 for a single game of chance, $9.99 for a three-game combo and $14.99 for Big Top Axe Alley plus three games.

Parking is the line to read twice. All of it is paid, general parking is off site with a shuttle, on-property parking requires the preferred pass, and buying in advance saves $5 — one pass per vehicle, however many people are inside, per the same guide. That last clause is the only place on this page besides the car wash where carpooling is worth money.

The ship is public property, and the arrangement behind the haunt is public record. The Long Beach Post reported that the city receives a third of net revenue up to roughly $3 million, 38 percent of the next $1.6 million and 43 percent above roughly $4.6 million, with officials projecting the city's share at as much as $1 million in the first year and up to $3 million by 2028. Evolution Hospitality operates the ship; Thirteenth Floor produces the event. That is three of the eight.

6. Six Flags Fright Fest, Valencia — $49 to get in, $74 to see a maze, $42 to park

This is the entry that changes what the word "ticket" means. Magic Mountain's daily tickets page sells a Park Ticket at $49 against a $110 gate price, and says it includes Fright Fest on select dates. The Fright Fest page then states the condition in one line: "Access to haunted mazes requires the purchase of a Haunted Attractions Pass." That pass starts at $25 for the night you choose, or $69 for the season, and the bundle that gets you both starts at $74.

So the advertised price and the price of being scared are two different numbers, $25 apart, and only one of them is on the ticket page. The event runs select nights September 18 through November 1, every guest needs their own paid admission regardless of age, and the park's own page says Fright Fest is not recommended for children under 13.

Then there is the car. General parking starts at $42 plus tax, preferred at $62 and front-gate at $77, per the park's parking page. A couple driving up from the city for a Saturday with mazes is at $190 before anyone eats a churro. Sixth on the number that matters, which is $74 and not $49.

7. Halloween Horror Nights, Universal City — from $77, eight houses, 42 nights

The biggest Halloween event in the county is also the priciest general-admission night on this page. It runs 42 select nights from September 3 through November 1 with eight houses, gates at 7 p.m., and general admission from $77 a night, per Haunted Attraction Network's Hollywood guide. Early access, which opens select houses at 5:30 p.m., is $20 on top. The dining pass is $64.75 with tax.

Seventh place is not a verdict on the houses. It's a verdict on the floor. The $77 is the cheapest night of 42, the peak-October Saturdays run well past it, and every hour you buy in front of the crowd is a separate transaction.

One arithmetic note, because it says the thing faster than an adjective can. We added the four cheapest floors on this page — Descanso at $29, Palos Verdes at $29.99, Lakewood at $30 and Griffith Park at $34.99 — and got $123.98. Four nights out, four different parts of the county, for less than the price of the single ticket in eighth place.

8. Delusion: Den of the Mosquito, Los Angeles — $143, fees included, and the most honest price here

Last place, and the placement I would most like to argue about. Delusion is an 18-and-over immersive theater piece staged in a house, running select nights from September 17 through November 8 at a flat $143 that includes $13 in fees, per Haunted Attraction Network, which also reports several Saturdays — October 3, 10 and 17 — already sold out.

It's the most expensive ticket on this page by $66, and it's the only one that tells you what you're going to pay. One price, every night, fees on the label. No calendar roulette, no maze surcharge, no parking tier, no $20 to skip the part of the evening the ticket already covered. The event that costs the most is the only one that behaves as if the sticker should mean something.

Eighth on money. First on the thing this ranking kept finding it had to check for.

The four we left out, and why

Three of the region's biggest Halloween events are in Orange County and this is a Los Angeles County ranking, so Knott's Scary Farm — 53rd season, September 17 through October 31, from $65 online — sits out, along with Disney California Adventure's Oogie Boogie Bash at $139 to $199 and Halloween Time at Disneyland, which comes with park admission. All three figures are Haunted Attraction Network's.

The fourth is closer to home. Night of the Jack, the jack-o'-lantern trail at King Gillette Ranch in Calabasas, publishes no 2026 price we could read, and Haunted Attraction Network's Los Angeles guide still lists its dates as TBD. A trail we cannot price is not a rank we can defend, so it isn't here. If the number appears, we'll re-rank.

What the ranking is actually measuring

Read the eight pricing pages next to each other and the spread on the sticker — $29 to $143 — turns out to be the least interesting number on the page. The interesting one is the distance between the price an event advertises and the price of the thing you came for. At Magic Mountain that distance is $25 and a sentence on a different page. At Universal it is $20 for the hour before the gates open. At Descanso it is up to $23, depending only on which night you pick, and the garden is the one telling you so. At Delusion it is zero.

The other pattern is ownership. Three of these eight — the Griffith Park hayride, the Palos Verdes pumpkin trail and the haunted ship in Long Beach — are produced by Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group, on the same run of nights, September 18 through November 1, and all three sell through the same ticketing platform, Zentix. All three also sit on public ground: a city park, a county botanic garden, and a ship whose net revenue is split with Long Beach. Whatever else the Los Angeles haunt season is, a substantial part of it is one company's calendar, and the county is renting out the scenery.

The cheapest night out remains a car with four people in it in Lakewood, at $7.50 a head. Bring a car under seven feet two.