NOTE: Bleep, bloop! This cleanup was done using an A.I. Agent. The following notes come from that agent.
I’ve made a bunch of updates around the site over the past few days. Here’s a summary of what’s changed.
Vote in the DMHH Survey 2026! If you went to a Des Moines-area haunt this season, rate the haunts you actually visited at https://dmhauntedhouses.com/vote/ — results are filtered to visited attractions, so only rate the ones you went to.
Haunts 2026 page — real ticket prices
The big one: ticket prices on the Haunts 2026 page now show what you’ll actually pay, not just the advertised price. Where I could verify a checkout, the listing shows the advertised price followed by the all-in total with taxes and fees in parentheses. Where a gate price is known, that leads instead. Parking is noted only when there’s a fee to pay.
Examples of what’s now listed: Slaughterhouse $30-$45 ($34.58-$51.47 with taxes/fees) — this corrects the old $25-$30 range, which didn’t match any actual tier. Sleepy Hollow $32-$48 ($38.74-$55.86 with taxes/fees). Zombie Hollow $12-$18 ($12.92-$19.13 with fees). Adventureland Phantom Fall Fest $69.99 gate, $39.99-$47.99 online ($45.29-$53.85 with taxes/fees) plus $21 parking. Haunted Trolley Tour $80 ($88.47 with taxes/fees). The Docks $25, Future Nightmares $30-$100, Haunted Hall (Waukee) $10, Haunted Manor $24.24 gate ($22.24 online with fees), and Tunnel of Terror $25 gate ($21.40 advance online per vehicle) are also updated. Carlisle Haunted Woods stays $20 cash only. A few gate prices still can’t show an all-in total because the venues don’t state whether tax is added at the gate — those stay without a parenthetical until confirmed in person.
Haunts 2026 page — rankings, ratings, and hours
There’s a new Rankings section at the top of the Haunts 2026 page, current as of 10/26/2026, ranking the main Des Moines haunts by combined rating and by number of ratings. By rating: Zombie Hollow leads at 4.76, followed by Carlisle Haunted Woods and Future Nightmares at 4.70. By most reviewed: Slaughterhouse, with 1,745 ratings, is far ahead of the rest.
The seven main haunts also now carry a Rating line right after their dates, with Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Apple figures, and the Reviews page has been refreshed with the latest numbers from all four sources, plus a new Review Rating Changes history section at the bottom so future updates can record what moved.
Hours are updated too: Phantom Fall Fest now lists full park hours (Fri 6pm-10pm, Sat 12pm-10pm, Sun 12pm-9pm, with haunts and scare zones from 6pm). Sleepy Hollow now states gates open 7pm, admission stops 11pm Fri/Sat and 9pm Thu/Sun, and the park closes midnight. And Haunted Woods’ Wednesday hours (7pm-9pm) are now listed.
The rest of the Haunts 2026 listings got a tidying pass as well: dates synced against the shared calendar, addresses standardized, and ticket links added for ten attractions.
Shared calendar
The Des Moines Haunted Houses calendar at dmhauntedhouses.com/calendar was updated to match the attractions’ posted hours, including Slaughterhouse, Sleepy Hollow, Phantom Fall Fest, and Boone Haunted House (now 7pm-11pm), plus a cancellation note for the Oct 3 Haunted Trolley Tour.
Haunts 2013 archive page
The 2013 page got two kinds of attention. First, I verified its dates against the 2013 calendar: the page was indeed repaired after the old 2012 duplication problem, matching the 2013 data and calendar nearly night for night. Second, the page’s WordPress formatting was cleaned up: the entries are now one properly numbered list (1-17) instead of a dozen separate one-item lists, Twisted Tales is its own entry instead of being trapped inside Trail of Terror’s, a duplicated intro paragraph and an empty “Database:” line are gone, and some pasted font styling was stripped. The wording itself is unchanged — it’s an archive page, typos and all.
As always, if you spot something out of date, let me know.
