Legends of Horror

Pellatt's tunnels, put to work

Casa Loma is a 90,000-square-foot Edwardian house on a hill above Davenport Road in Toronto, built for the financier Sir Henry Pellatt, sitting in roughly five acres of terraced grounds with a service tunnel running underneath Austin Terrace to the stable block. For most of the year it trades as a daytime museum, open daily, with timed general-admission tickets. The parts of it that matter to this production are the parts the daytime ticket does not reach.

Liberty Entertainment Group, the Toronto hospitality company run by its president and chief executive Nick Di Donato, operates the castle, and in 2016 it started using those lower levels for an October walk-through. The first edition took audiences out of the lower gardens and down into the tunnel beneath Spadina, following a Dracula figure along a route of about a kilometre and a half. The idea was not a haunted house in a marquee but the building itself used as a set.

The route has since grown to around two kilometres and the format has acquired a label the producers now use in their own copy: promenade theatre. The audience walks; the scenes stay where they are. There is no seat, no interval and no fixed running order beyond the order of the path.

What a decade added

The show has grown by accretion rather than reinvention. More tunnel opened up. The historic Stables became a laboratory set with a Frankenstein figure in it. Animatronics went in alongside the live performers, and 3D projection mapping on the castle's exterior became the closing beat, so the walk ends outside looking up at the house it has just gone underneath.

A licensed mid-point also became part of the structure. Glenn Sumi's review for NOW Toronto on 1 October 2021 noted the Glass Pavilion bar and lounge as a new element that year; it now trades during the run as the Captain Morgan Bar and Lounge, with a DJ, seasonal cocktails and, on the 2025 opening night, a live set from the band Cold Weather Captains. The 2026 drinks list includes a Franken Colada, a Mai Die, a Necromancer Negroni and an Ogre Old Fashioned, which is a fair indication of the register.

The commercial shape shifted in 2025. That run opened on 3 October and went past Halloween to 2 November. Standard admission was $45 online and $50 on site for the first stretch, rising to $55 and $60 from 18 October. A VIP tier appeared for the first time at $150 for two people early in the run and $200 later, and Family Hours — 5pm to 6.30pm, with no live actors — split the audience into those who want the sets and those who want to be chased through them. Di Donato's line in the announcement was an invitation to guests of all ages "to welcome in the undead".

One inconsistency is worth noting rather than smoothing over. The attraction first ran in 2016, but the producers called 2025 the ninth year and are calling 2026 the tenth, which is one fewer edition than the calendar from 2016 would give.

What the critics and the ticket-holders say

Sumi gave the 2021 edition four stars and was specific about why it worked: disorientation. Within ten minutes, he wrote, a visitor has no idea where they are in relation to the castle above them. He judged that "the production design of the entire show is impeccable", singling out the detail in the below-castle sections, and described the whole thing as a classier fright show — closer in temper to Dracula and Frankenstein on the page than to contemporary gore cinema, with the odd Stephen King nod along the way.

Visitor reviews are more split, and they split along two predictable lines. The first is pacing. Groups are released closely enough together that walkers can watch a scare land on the party in front of them, which spends the surprise before they reach it; that complaint recurs across Tripadvisor write-ups from several seasons. The second is value: the walk takes a little over an hour for most people, and reviewers who paid close to $50 a head plus paid parking have said so. The VIP upgrade has its own detractors, with at least one Tripadvisor review headed with a flat warning that it is not worth the money.

The praise is consistent on two points. The density of performers in character is high, and the tunnels do not need dressing up much to be unpleasant. Reviewers who pre-booked online also report walking past a substantial queue, which is the single most repeated piece of practical advice attached to the event.

October 2026

The tenth run opened on 3 October 2026 and continues to 31 October, dark on 5 and 6 October and again on 12 and 13 October. Family Hours run 5pm to 6.30pm on selected dates, with less darkness and no live actors; standard hours start at 7pm and run late, with trade coverage reporting extended hours to midnight over the Halloween weekend. Standard admission is $45 online and $50 on site for 3 to 15 October, and $55 online and $60 on site from 16 October. The VIP premium package is $150 for two early in the run and $200 later, covering priority access, drink and food vouchers. The event is open to all ages, with anyone 16 or under required to be with an adult. Entry is not at the main castle gate but at Walmer Road and Davenport.

Casa Loma's own site is marketing the season as "10 years of terror". Di Donato's framing for 2026 is that the castle becomes a theatrical space where every corner is a scene, and the publicity puts more than seventy performers on the property each night, working alongside the animatronics and the projections.

Coverage on 11 September 2026 trailed the run as returning with new spaces and bigger set pieces, though no specific room or sequence has been named publicly as the addition. Reporting on the tenth-anniversary announcement also gave 2 October as the opening night and Family Hour prices from $35, which does not match the operator's own published calendar and price grid; the official schedule is the one above.

The route

The walk begins in the lower gardens, where the first live performers and animal figures are placed among outdoor sets, then drops into Pellatt's tunnels for the longest and least comfortable stretch — low ceilings, period detail, fluctuating light and the heaviest concentration of performers. From there it reaches the Stables for the laboratory sequences, comes back up to the Glass Pavilion for the bar and the DJ, and finishes outside with projection mapping across the castle's facade.

It is a genuine walk, not a stroll: two kilometres, uneven ground, stairways, fog and deliberate lighting changes, which the operator flags as requiring reasonable mobility and energy. Performers do not touch the audience and the audience is told not to touch the performers. Admission is by timed slot across the month's selling dates, and the pacing complaints in the reviews are a direct consequence of how tightly those slots are packed on busy nights.