Canobie Lake Park — Attraction in Salem

I have gone to canobie lake park since I was a kid, so over 15 years at this point. I have never done before Screamfest and my friend didn’t warn me you can only buy tickets online. So I arrived and noticed the ticket booths were closed and asked is there anyway to buy tickets in person and they said it’s online only. I do put 50% of the responsibility on my friend for not telling me this. But then 50% responsibility is on Canobie for two reasons. The first reason being this is a location with plenty of booth stations and you could easily have one open to address those who don’t buy online. The BIGGER reason though is this. THEY HAVE NO CELL SERVICE OR PUBLIC WIFI THERE. It is pretty crummy trying to break through the cell service to contact friends and to see if anyone has strong enough cell service to buy a ticket for me. If you are going to have mandatory online passes and you are very aware of your lack of cell service. You should invest in a couple of quality WiFi routers at the front gate so people can hop on it and purchase tickets OR if you don’t want to open a booth, invest in a digital station where you can go to a machine and purchase one.

Now for the second part of this experience I’ll be getting more into the screamfest experience. This experience comes with the caveat that I know staffing can be short some night and all that understandable stuff. I get that. However, nothing really felt that spooky. The walkers around the park had lack luster energy as well as in the haunts. The only one I felt had more energized haunters were the works in the location near Untamed. The other two felt pathetic. And not due to lack of ambience or visuals. The ambience and visuals were great. But the haunt near the tea party ride and near the mine ride were a bummer when it came to being actually scared. Because you can have the coolest visuals you want but when there are a lack of people or the people minimally engage it just ruins the experience. For instance when we went through the haunt by the tea party, I think we managed to walk through 6+ rooms before running into another worker. Then, the workers just hide in corners and barely move. Or just stare at you by a wall. Where is the getting up in your face? Where is the following a person for short periods of time? Making repetitive noises through yelling or banging objects? Again, some workers did do that, but for the 2 I was disappointed in, they really didn’t do a lot.

For the last part of the experience I will talk about the express pass. So, first of all you pay $50 to get in. Then, because we dealt with 40mins of trying to get me into to the place we were running short on time and they close at 11p, AND they obviously have long lines. Now we are thinking we will do the express pass. They have signs for it around the park but the signs don’t actually lead you to the direction of getting them because we tried 2 spots in the park and the people said no. Then we went to the front to guest services and they said go to the gift shop next store. We thought we would pay $25 cause it said that online. No, if you buy it at the shop it’s $30 and online it’s $25 if you match it with your ticket and add it on. Well, obviously with no cell service we couldn’t do that so we had to pay the $30. It was worth it in the sense that you get to the front quick. But again with my review of the actual haunts themselves, it doesn’t feel worth it to spend $80 for the lack luster experience.

All of this to say, I love Canobie lake park as an amusement park and for anyone trying to go there for rides whether it’s spooky season or not, it is a great time. Clean park, clean bathrooms. A lot of food options. I hope they put up more roller coasters cause one can only handle so many spinny ride options, which there are a lot there. And they took down the cork screw which was a roller coaster. But yah as an amusement park, I still love it as an adult. As a spooky place,...

Had a fairly good experience at Canobie lake with my 8 and 11 year old boys. Had a few questionable things, but overall, very good.

Good things: Loved that the parking was free...lots of places have moved away from this and it's greatly appreciated that CL isn't trying to gauge their customers. Also loved that there was a restroom prior to entering the park...very well thought out! Prices on almost everything were very reasonable for a large theme park. The only qualm I had in regard to price was the Puzzle Rooms. I have done hour long escape rooms for $35, and the one here was $25 and it lasted all of 5 minutes. The disability pass process was pretty good! My son got one and at each and every ride, the attendant explained the ride and asked him (and me) in the case of emergency would he be able to do x,y , and z, which I thought was amazing The girl who worked the $1.00 bowling ball roll game was AMAZING. She let my son get a few practice rolls before he went and ended up winning! Totally made his day. The rides were very clearly labeled for height restrictions at the beginning of the line, so that you didn't have to wait in line forever before finding out you couldn't go on it.

Areas for improvement: There were hornets EVERYWHERE there was food. They were so bad in one spot I had to go to a different place to fill our cups with the beverage we wanted. I witnessed no less than 3 kids get stung while eating our lunch. It was a very stressful lunch due to this. The employees did not seem happy to be there at all. It could be because of summer burn out, but no one really had smiles on their faces, which was discouraging. We had an issue in the arcade with the change machine. While a nice young man (I think his name was Luke) tried to help us, a supervisor was walking by, told him he couldn't do what he was attempting to, and told him to issue us $5 in credits to account for the change machine eating our $5 bill. When he brought us up to the counter, him and the 2 other employees could not figure out what the supervisor meant by "credits" because the machines took quarters, not tokens. The supervisor came back in, tried to explain the system, and to this day, I still have no idea what she was talking about. Definitely could use a more definitive solution for problems like that.

Overall, this was a good experience, but definitely couldn't do all of it in one day! Will have to go back another time to get more in. I would definitely recommend bringing your...

I loved Canobie Lake as a child, but unfortunately, times have really changed—and not for the better. Let’s start with the water park. While the website claims there’s a capacity limit, that clearly isn’t enforced. The lazy river, in particular, is downright dangerous due to severe overcrowding. It’s packed edge-to-edge with people in tubes, and the lifeguards seem largely disengaged. Middle school–aged kids were running wild, unsupervised, jumping and splashing in ways that made it unsafe for younger children.

The water apparatus for smaller kids had to be over capacity. There was no way you could watch your child or the lifeguard could even begin to maintain safety.

My own son got separated from us in the chaos and he was being swept in the current (which has quite the current for “lazy”) and just rammed into by larger kids and adults, he is 8 and 4’8” for an idea of size. He began struggling in said current and panicked. When he asked a lifeguard for help, he was told to “just keep moving.” The life guard couldn’t even be bothered to stand up. My husband saw it happening but physically couldn’t reach him through the wall of people and tubes. We left the water area immediately after that. It was a truly unsafe and stressful experience—and I’ve been to water parks around the world. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The wait times for the rides were also extreme. While that’s not entirely the park’s fault, it does mean you're spending 80% of your visit standing in line. For the price of admission, it’s just not worth it. There’s no fast-pass option, which only adds to the frustration.

And the food? More expensive than Disney- the cheeseburgers were over $2.00 more than Disney’s quick serve. Outside snacks or drinks aren’t allowed, and while you can bring an empty bottle, most of the water refill stations are broken. The few that work dispense water so warm it's barely drinkable. I get amusement parks increase food and beverage cost, but what they are doing here is disgusting. A dollar store lollipop is $12.

We are willing to spend a premium price for a great experience but there was nothing special or stand out or even average.

Overall, the park feels overcrowded, overpriced, and under-managed. Save yourself the hassle and head to Six Flags or somewhere will you will spent a fortune but at least leave having had a great day...