For three years Knott’s Scary Farm hosted a mysterious, intense maze that allowed the monsters to touch you, utilized a safe word that would immediately get your group escorted to the exit, and required a signed waiver to enter. There were no pictures or video allowed of the rooms or characters inside, and it was an extra $60 per group (of up to six people) to experience.  That maze was TRAPPED.

At this year’s Midsummer Scream Halloween and Horror Convention, maze designers Jeff Tucker and Gus Krueger hosted a behind-the-scenes presentation of TRAPPED, detailing the whys and wheres and how comes of this crazy maze.

Tucker had the first idea about a separate, hands-on, up-charge maze back in 2009, and it took until 2012 for him to convince his coworkers at Knott’s that TRAPPED was a doable idea.  Since this was before escape rooms had really become popular in California, nobody really knew if this new thing would be popular or profitable, but thank goodness they were willing to risk it.

Tucker and Krueger premiered a walk-through video of the entire TRAPPED experience, shown in public for the first time ever (although Krueger chuckled that there are many more videos of customers’ reactions involving bodily fluids that the two designers absolutely could not show in public). The audience was full of fans that had survived one, or more, years of TRAPPED, but there were a few in attendance that had never had the pleasure. Interest was high as the lights dimmed and the video began.

And then a skinny white boy lit up the screen, singing, “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down…” We’d been Rick-rolled by the master prankster himself, Jeff Tucker.  After some hearty laughter and applause, the real video began.

Watching a group of unsuspecting patrons trying to get from room to room brought back my own fond memories of TRAPPED. Even though there was a problem with the sound, Tucker and Krueger provided a [hilarious] running commentary of the action.

The first room was a filthy, stinking (literally–they had fecal and urine smells piped in) bathroom where guests were accosted by an angry, foul-mouthed janitor trying to get them out of his bathroom. But, there doesn’t appear to be any way out of there. That is, until one person is brave enough to stick their hand into a toilet and pull out the used underwear there, opening the hidden door that leads to the…

…rat room. A room full of wire cages and actual, real, live rats. As the guests wander around trying to find a door or passage, the sound of rats speaking gets louder. Suddenly a large human-sized cage opens (Tucker laughed that this was just an automatic door and wasn’t triggered by anything the guests did). Everybody hunches over and crowds in, the door locks shut, and the rat sounds get even louder and closer. Suddenly, the lights go out and rat poop rains down upon everybody’s head (okay, it was just dry rice, but the screams these people emitted were very real). And a new door opens into…

…Momma’s kitchen.  Momma, a creepy lady with a serious wound on her face, loves having visitors to her kitchen. So happy, in fact, she wants to share her delicious food with them all. At least one, and sometime all, of the group has to eat whatever is given to them. Might be a cockroach. Might be a worm. Might be sour, curdled, lumpy milk. tucker explained that they had to change this bit because nearly everybody who drank the milk (a safe mixture of buttermilk and cottage cheese) puked it back up.  Yummy. Momma asks someone to open the refrigerator, and that becomes a passageway that goes to…

…a room full of mirrors. A darkened room. Soft whispering: “Say my name…say my name…Bloody Mary…” Tucker said that the freak-outs in this room were gender-based: guys were totally nonchalant and ready to say the words, but females were totally weirded out by it. He chalked that up to the prevalence of slumber party antics. naturally, Bloody Mary makes a shocking appearance, shoving the group to…

…the puzzle room. A room filled with plexiglas walls and monsters taunting you to “Push on the door!” But you don’t see a door anywhere, just more clear walls with monsters behind them. One of the walls starts to give and you end up pushing the entire wall backwards a few feet, exposing a doorway that was previously hidden. This doorway takes you to…

…the morgue. A corpse under a sheet, a couple coffins, and some body drawers set in the wall.  The corpse suddenly rises up and starts leading the freaked-out group around the room. He opens the coffin and–oh my god– forces someone to get in. The same with the body drawer. The rest of the people head into the crematorium. On the video we watched, one girl was reduced to tears when faced with the possibility of having to climb into one of those body receptacles. After this, the group is reunited in the…

…arcade exit. Ah, we’re all safe and sound in a brightly lighted room, where other guests are playing pinball and video games, and our survivors pose for a complimentary photo to celebrate. Suddenly, the lights go out and all the video game players turn and attack! They were monsters all along!! Aaaaah!

TRAPPPED ran from 2012 to 2014, and, sadly, shan’t be making a return engagement. It is part of Knott’s history, and for those of us who were lucky enough to go through it, this brought back some awesome memories. For those of us who never got to, the presentation offered a tantalizing glimpse of the mayhem we missed.