Six Flags Fright Fest

Fright Nights era (1986–1993)

After testing various Halloween-based seasonal events throughout the 1970s to mid-1980s, Six Flags, then owned by Bally Manufacturing, created an all-new Halloween event for AstroWorld in 1986 that they named Six Flags Fright Nights.^[3][5]

In 1987, the event began to be expanded to Six Flags' other properties. Six Flags Over Georgia was the second park to introduce the event.

Six Flags Over Mid-America was the third park to introduce Fright Nights in 1988 with Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street as the event's "entertainment chairman". The all-new Fright Nights featured House of the Living Dead, a walk-through inside of the ride building for the Time Tunnel dark ride, as well as the "Terror Train", a horror train show on the Tommy G. Robertson Railroad.

In 1989, Fright Nights debuted at Six Flags Over Texas.^[6] Like the parks in Texas and Missouri, Freddy Krueger was the central figure of the event. It featured haunted houses, a trick or treat trail for kids, and more.

Fright Fest era (1993–2023)

In 1999, Six Flags licensed and opened Alice Cooper's Brutal Planet haunted houses at some parks, featuring music from the album and using similar elements in each house. The next year it became just simply "Brutal Planet" and dropped the Alice Cooper theme. Since then, Six Flags has licensed other intellectual properties for mazes and scare zones, including the Saw films^[7] and DC Comics's Suicide Squad.^[8]

In 2018, Fright Fest returned to Frontier City and Darien Lake (later renamed as Six Flags Darien Lake since May 4, 2019), two former Six Flags parks re-acquired by the company on May 22, 2018.

To comply with the new health and safety protocols implemented by Six Flags due to the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020, the company announced that their Halloween event would be rebranded to Hallowfest. The change from Fright Fest to Hallowfest included no haunted houses or indoor shows.^[4][9][10] Six Flags Discovery Kingdom held a different event called Boo 2020! for the 2020 season, as the park operated as a zoo for the season to act in accordance with local government guidelines with the state.^[11][12]

In 2022, Six Flags introduced another Halloween event alongside Fright Fest, called Kids Boo Fest, a kids-oriented Halloween event with trick-or-treat trails along with in-park entertainment, that is held in mornings.^[13][14] On October 7, 2022, all Six Flags amusement parks implemented a new policy in which it limited the size of bags and subjected all bags to X-ray screening.^[15][16] While a reason for the change was not stated by the parks, an editor from the Theme Park Tribune said the new policies could be related to recent guest altercations, including shootings, at Kennywood and Six Flags Great America.^[17]

Fright Fest Extreme era (2024–present)

On June 25, 2024, Six Flags announced in a press release^[18] that the event was rebranded as Fright Fest Extreme. This enhanced version of their annual Halloween event featured haunted attractions inspired by well-known horror franchises, namely Saw, Stranger Things, Army of the Dead, The Conjuring Universe, Trick ‘r Treat, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and DCeased.^[19]