Spirit Of Halloweentown — Attraction in Saint Helens

ABSOLUTELY, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, DO NOT BUY TICKETS!!

read on to see my slow descent into insanity:

decently impressive for a small town! while i understand the negative reviews, i think it’s important to remember just how many visitors st helens gets around halloween time. i do think they’re trying their best. it was very disorganized, but there were many friendly older people helping out, it made my heart happy to see them and their pride in their town. i really enjoyed seeing the sights from halloweentown (especially for the 25th anniversary), but not sure if i’ll be back soon. it was mostly vendors and some props. just don’t go in with disneyland expectations and enjoy as much as you can. not sure you need to pay for the “excursions”, just visit the town. ticketed events were definitely not worth the premium price. really unsure of what we paid $200 for.

edit: my boyfriend’s review is as follows- too many people very overstimulating. What was that train ride almost got stung by a couple of bees, but seriously though what was that train ride saw alpaca pushed into cage the alpaca clearly did not want to be there pretty cool pumpkin though.

edit: i have dropped the rating because i was being too nice in my review. we paid $200 for nothing

edit again: i was delusional and in complete denial. it’s been over a week since i went and i am still thinking about how bad it sucked. please, for the love of everything, DO NOT BUY THE ONE BIG TICKET. you will be so disappointed. i saw “train” and thought it would be an actual train. i should’ve done my research. i was too embarrassed that we paid for it to take a picture of it. genuinely one of the weirdest experiences of my life and i am so upset my sweet boyfriend is out $200 because of my inability to research. he got the tickets and drove us to st helens because halloweentown was one of my favorite movies growing up, i flew in from mn for this. absolutely embarrassingly awful.

parking was so disorganized and plain abysmal. we were in line for almost two hours, then we approached staff finally. they instructed us that the lot was full and we would need to turn around. they also said there were some people they thought had left so we could check if there was parking… which of course we did and we found a parking spot. we then got on a shuttle to the town. passing the overflow lot, it was already almost full so if we had turned around, we likely wouldn’t have gotten a space. i digress.

also, when we got there, i was like where do we check in?? we saw a tent that said check-in and bag check or something but no one was checking tickets. that’s when i learned you didn’t need a ticket to get into the town (i know i am stupid). then, we could not understand the map at all (see photo). we finally found where the lines for the ticketed events were. the train was again, NOT A TRAIN. the horses, ahem, unicorns looked stressed/tired. the alpacas got quite literally dragged into their enclosure through the crowds of people (i do not handle animals, so i don’t know how they’re usually transported/how much coaxing it takes/how to fully get them to do it, so i don’t know if the dragging was unnecessary or not). the mermaid was scary with weird teeth and just an overall odd vibe. the fart tent was so bad. we went through this large white tent that had the weirdest dollar general spirit halloween decorations in it that i have ever seen. they were so bad. it stank in there. then there were random pirates? one of them was catcalling me. we went to the sand island, the breeze was nice on the boat. once we got there, we did the walking trail. it had wooden faces and flags like for irrigation systems to guide you? so odd. and a person with a bow, a fairy, and a sasquatch to try to scare you. and then a smore afterwards that i didn’t want to wait for. when we got back, we got an expensive gyro, took our pumpkin picture, bought a t-shirt (for the 25th anniversary, this will be such a funny memory to keep), and LEFT. couldn’t find anything else to do and really didn’t...

It really pains me to be ‘that person’ but we put a great deal of money and time to come to this so I think it’s fair to give my opinion in case other people are planning the same.

We had friends travel from out of town to do this with us and it was a big deal, we were very excited. We bought the “Big Ticket” for everyone. We carefully read the (truly terrible) website and tried to be respectful of the parking instructions so we bought parking and went to the designated address to park.

The line of cars was really long, but, hey, not their fault - nice that their event is popular. However when we got there, we were told the buses come “every 10 minutes”. Nope. We stood on the parking lot with a couple of hundred other people for over an hour and only saw two buses. We got to St. Helens at 12:30, and by the time the bus rolled into the event, two miles away, it was after 2PM.

So…that meant we missed the first two events we wanted to see. We got in line for the Sand Island Bigfoot thing with high hopes. A few beautiful carvings attached to trees, two Bigfoots in scruffy costumes and some Dollar Store decorations stuck around randomly…and that was it. Ummm…OK, let’s get in line for the haunted house. And….yawn.

I think not liking the haunted house was on me because the old Elk’s Lodge haunted house in Milwaukie was WORLD CLASS - like scary as hell and super cool. This one wasn’t very good for adults. Good for kids, not for adults. But it looked like a ton of work so it makes me feel bad to say that. I think that kids (not too young) would probably think it is very cool.

Overall, we spent over $320 on tickets and parking for 4 of us and it was a complete bust. But I don’t want to be unfair so let me say that there would be some good things about it for ‘not us’.

Kids would LOVE this. It’s fun to see people in costumes. And there are lots of vendors with interesting things and a lot of solid street food. The town is adorable, the vibe is nice and there are a some cute shops. The pirates down by the waterfront made me want to wear a bodice they could tear. Also, if you are a big fan of the movie side of this, could be cool for you.

I think as this continues to grow and gets some better organization, it might turn into something that I would have had fun at - but it was pretty miserable.

It was really tough to understand everything from the website, it needs to be better organized, better signage - and improvements in the attractions.

The long lines and lack of transportation was a rough start (we took Uber back to our car, the line for the bus to get back was brutal) - since we didn’t get anything out of the island or haunted house and missed a couple of things because of the wait, it wasn’t a great experience. I also got pushed out of the way in the bathroom so I was cranky (but that was just some random douche, not the fault of the event).

If you are a huge fan of the movies, live for good street food or have kids (and figure out a way to avoid the long waits for them), or like walking around in a costume and have more patience than me, by all means go. But it wasn’t worth the money and time for...

Ok, So I'll start by saying that my exact trip date was 10-30-2021 Flew all the way from LAX for this event. As many people excited to visit I was disappointed with the experience.

Tickets were over priced for what you get. the "Attractions" seem like home made or put together last minute with what ever you can find at your local Goodwill. the lines for the food venders were all over the place, not organized at all.

there was so many people and long lines to take a picture with the main pumpkin in front of the city hall.The lines for the museum and haunted house as well.

But the worse part of this experience was the " Walking with Pumpkins" "attraction" over at Sands Island -_- biggest waste of time that I will never get back.

First of all when you hear " Walking with pumpkins" I automatically picture a pumpkin patch vibe, halloween decorations, ect. NOPE! nothing but a empty island full of trees !

After waiting over 40 minutes in line, in the sun to catch a boat ride to take us over to the island, Mind you, there is a $3 fee if you purchased a admission ticket or $10 on the spot through online process, regardless this experience was not worth $3 or $10.

they drop off us off at the island, there is nothing by about 4-6 wood crates with carved pumpkin faces on them -__-" once you walk that there is nothing else in the island but a bunch of picnic tables and fire pits.

we were on that island for about 1-015 minutes because there is nothing to do or see! Once you walk back to the dock you must wait another 30-40 minutes for the boat to come back to take you back drop off the new visitors and load up the new people to take back to the St. Helen Dock.

this whole thing took about 2 hours round trip with waiting in line, walking island and waiting again to be brought back. biggest waste of time and money ever.

This whole experience is totally over hyped and way overpriced... if they are going to charge $74 for two tickets at least put some more effort into make the place fun. Add some carnival rides or something. If I could get my time back I would.

Suggestion for the event coordinator, with all the money you guys made, please make next year better, there are people that travel from very far for this only to be disappointed. Organize the main entrance, make the ticket booth easy to find. add some rides or carnival games. have a designated area for food vendors where the...