Haunted Mini Golf At Maier Festival Park Draws 800-Plus Players; 'Scarier Than Route 164,' Says Mother

WAUKESHA — More than 800 players worked their way through Haunted Mini Golf at Maier Festival Park between Friday and Sunday, a Halloween-themed 18-hole course that pairs fog machines on every other hole with a final hole course manager James Rodriguez openly describes as "designed to humiliate."

The course, built inside the festival park's standard summer mini golf footprint, replaced windmills and loop-de-loops with fog, strobe lighting timed to a 12-second interval, and recorded chain-rattling audio that Rodriguez said was sourced from "a sound library, not anybody's actual basement." Players posted an average score of 67 across the weekend, compared to 48 on the park's regular-season layout, according to scorecards collected at the 18th hole.

"It's scarier than actually driving Route 164 in October without GPS," said Dawn Hollis, a Waukesha mother of two who played the course Saturday evening with her sons, ages 9 and 11. "And I've driven Route 164 in October without GPS." Hollis said her younger son lost his ball inside the fog on hole 11 for nearly four minutes before locating it against the hole's back wall, a delay she attributed to "the fog, and also his general approach to golf."

The 18th Hole Problem

Rodriguez said the final hole, a 40-foot uphill run through a rotating graveyard gate that narrows the fairway to roughly 14 inches at its tightest point, was the single largest driver of weekend scores. Of the 800-plus players tracked, Rodriguez said fewer than 60 completed the 18th hole in fewer than six strokes, and 22 players picked up their ball entirely rather than continue, an option the course allows under what Rodriguez called "the mercy rule, which we made up this week."

"I've run this course for three Halloweens now, and the 18th hole is the one I get the most complaints about and also the one I will not change," Rodriguez said. "If you want an easy last hole, there's a regular mini golf course forty feet to your left. This one isn't that."

"If you want an easy last hole, there's a regular mini golf course forty feet to your left. This one isn't that."

— James Rodriguez, Haunted Mini Golf course manager

Fog Machine Usage Outpaces Projections

Rodriguez said the course's four fog machines ran through roughly 340 gallons of fog fluid over the three-day stretch, more than double his pre-opening estimate of 150 gallons. He attributed the overage to staff running the machines on their highest setting starting Saturday afternoon, after Friday night's "low setting" was judged insufficiently frightening by a group of teenagers who complained to the ticket booth that they "could still see their own feet."

"We adjusted," Rodriguez said. "By Sunday you genuinely could not see your own feet on holes 6 through 16. I consider that a success."

Course staff member Linda Gorecki, who worked the ticket booth all three days, said the most common complaint was not fear but visibility, specifically from players who hit their ball out of bounds inside the fog and spent several minutes searching the artificial turf border before staff intervened with a flashlight. Gorecki said the course keeps six replacement balls at the booth for exactly this situation, and all six were checked out and returned at least once over the weekend.

Course To Run Through Halloween Weekend

Haunted Mini Golf will continue through November 1, with Rodriguez saying the fog machine fluid has been restocked to 500 gallons in anticipation of a heavier closing weekend. He said the course has no plans to ease the 18th hole before then, though he confirmed staff are considering adding a second, larger mercy-rule sign near the hole's entrance "so people know going in, not coming out."

Hollis said she plans to return for the course's final weekend, this time without her sons. "I want to see if it's less scary without having to also manage two children's emotional reactions to fog," she said. "I suspect it will not be."