Haunted House and Halloween Party Buses in Austin
A bus full of costumes rolling out TX-71 to a haunted attraction in the dark, then back into a downtown that has turned into one enormous Halloween party, with the lights inside set to red and the driver the only one not screaming.
Round up the costumes
Send us the night you have in mind and how many are dressing up, and we will tell you what is open.
The short version
October in Austin is a month of overlapping crowds: ACL over two weekends, the F1 race at COTA, UT home games, and on top of all of it, Halloween. Groups who want a haunted attraction and the costume bars in one night find a bus is the only way to do both without losing an hour to parking. October is a small slice of the year in our Austin records, about 6% of dated requests, but its Saturdays fill quickly, with 56% of October requests landing on one.
Busiest months
What Austin haunted house tours groups actually request
A few numbers from the Austin groups who plan the same thing, so you can see where yours lands.
- of Austin requests are October events
- 6%of Austin requests are October events
- of October events fall on a Saturday
- 56%of October events fall on a Saturday
- of Austin requests are October–December events
- 12%of Austin requests are October–December events
- busiest requested months
- May, Sept, Octbusiest requested months
Source: Austin Party Ride inquiry records (2023–2026) and our booking-data library. Percentages are rounded; historical quotes are references, not offers.
A night at Scream Hollow, seen from the back of the bus
The big haunted trip in Central Texas is Scream Hollow, out past Bastrop in Smithville, and it works best as a bus night because the drive is part of the fear. The group boards in East Austin or Pflugerville around seven, already in costume, and the ride east on TX-71 gets darker with every mile past the airport. By the time the bus turns onto the farm road, there are no streetlights and the whole cabin has gone quiet in a way that a party bus rarely does. The attraction is several haunted houses on one property with a bonfire and a food stand in the middle, and a group of sixteen spends two hours there while the bus waits in the field lot with the driver reading. The ride home is the opposite of the ride out: the lights on, everyone talking at once about which room had the chainsaw, and a stop for late food in Bastrop or back in town before the drop.
House of Torment and a costume bar night in one trip
The closer version of the same night runs through House of Torment on the north side of town, where the line on an October Saturday wraps around the building and the attraction itself takes an hour. The advantage of the location is what comes after: the bus is fifteen minutes from downtown, so a group can do the haunted house at eight and be walking into a costume party on Rainey Street by ten thirty. On Halloween weekend, Sixth Street is one of the largest costume crowds in Texas, tens of thousands of people in the closed blocks, and a bus is the only sane way to get a group of eighteen in and out of it. The driver drops on a corner north of the closure, the group disappears into the crowd for two hours, and the pickup at the same corner is a matter of everyone recognizing each other in masks. Groups of 11 to 20 make up 54% of Austin requests, and Halloween groups sit right in that range.
Vehicles Austin groups pick for haunted house tours
Real photos of the sizes that come up most, with the reason each one fits.
22 pax22 Passenger Party Bus
The Halloween workhorse for a group of 16 to 18 in costumes that take up more than a seat each.
30 pax30 Passenger Party Bus
For an office Halloween party or a combined friend group of 24 to 26 doing a downtown costume crawl.
28 pax28 Passenger Shuttle Bus
Forward-facing seats for the 50-minute TX-71 run to Scream Hollow and the sleepy ride home.
Ghost stories downtown and a slower haunted night
Not every October group wants a chainsaw. Some want the older, quieter kind of haunted, and Austin has a downtown built for it. A walking ghost tour through the blocks around Congress and Sixth tells the stories of the Driskill, the old jail, and the Capitol grounds, and a bus lets a group of a dozen do the walk and then ride to a dinner in a historic building rather than hunting for a garage. Groups pair it with a night at a bar with a reputation, of which downtown has several, and a run down South Congress past the shops that have gone all out with skeletons and orange lights. In late October the evenings are finally cool enough that a costume with sleeves is comfortable, and the ride between stops with the LED lights turned to orange and purple is a mood on its own. Groups in our booking data reach out a median of 30 days ahead across the year, and the last two Saturdays of October are the ones that go first.
Plan haunted house tours transportation
If this sounds like your group, tell us the date and we will price the night.
Halloween on a weeknight, and what the calendar does in October
Halloween moves around the week, and the year it lands on a Tuesday is the year the haunted bus is easiest to get. Most groups celebrate the Saturday before, and that Saturday sometimes falls on an F1 weekend, when every hotel downtown is full and the roads to COTA on TX-71 are the same roads to Scream Hollow. A group that reaches out in mid-September has its pick of the 18- and 20-passenger buses; one that reaches out the week before takes what is left. October is the third busiest requested month in our booking data at 10.5% of inquiries, which surprises people who think of it as a quiet stretch between summer and the holidays. For families with kids, the same bus does a gentler version on a Sunday afternoon: a pumpkin patch out near Marble Falls or Elgin, a hayride, and a ride home in costumes that are asleep by the time the bus reaches Cedar Park.
Good to know
- •Full masks tend to come off on the bus, since the pickup corner works better when everyone can see faces.
- •Face paint and fake blood wipe off leather seating, but a towel on the bench saves a scrub at the end of the night.
- •The haunted attractions outside town close their gates around midnight, and the bus leaves the lot with the last of the crowd.
- •Groups of teenagers ride with a parent or two on the bus, and the haunted trip works fine as an alcohol-free night.
- •Late October can still be warm at pickup and cold by midnight, and the bus is where the jackets wait.
Good to know
- •Full masks tend to come off on the bus, since the pickup corner works better when everyone can see faces.
- •Face paint and fake blood wipe off leather seating, but a towel on the bench saves a scrub at the end of the night.
- •The haunted attractions outside town close their gates around midnight, and the bus leaves the lot with the last of the crowd.
- •Groups of teenagers ride with a parent or two on the bus, and the haunted trip works fine as an alcohol-free night.
- •Late October can still be warm at pickup and cold by midnight, and the bus is where the jackets wait.
Austin-specific notes
- •TX-71 east through Bastrop has a long stretch of construction and lane shifts; the driver will know it, but budget the extra 15 minutes on a Smithville night.
- •The Halloween weekend on 6th Street overlaps with F1 at COTA some years, which doubles downtown hotel traffic and pushes rideshare into surge.
- •Rainey Street runs its own costume crowd and is easier to drop and pick up at than 6th; use the Davis Street end.
- •Late-October nights can still be 75 degrees at 9 p.m.; full-body costumes need water on the bus and the AC running before pickup.
- •A Driskill lobby ghost stop is a quick 15 minutes with the bus on Brazos Street, not on 6th, where it cannot stop.
Popular haunted house tours venues and destinations
Tools for planning haunted house tours
Work out the cost, the size, and the timing for your group in a couple of minutes.
Event Timeline Planner
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Open tool →BYOB Drink Calculator
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Open tool →Group Size Recommender
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Open tool →Party Checklist Generator
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Open tool →Austin Party Ride polls
Haunted House Tours polls
Vote on the questions other groups planning the same thing asked, then open more categories for vehicles and booking.
Haunted Houses
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Which type of haunted house theme excites you the most?
How do you prefer to experience a haunted house?
What is the most important factor in choosing a haunted house to visit?
What element do you find most thrilling in a haunted house experience?
Want the whole list? Visit the polls page or check the poll results.
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What Austin groups ask us about haunted house tours.
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We pick up across the metro. These are the suburbs that ask for this event most.
25 min to AustinHaunted House Tours from Round Rock
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35 min to AustinHaunted House Tours from San Marcos
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22 min to AustinHaunted House Tours from Cedar Park
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