Before heading out to Ghost Town to scare the dickens out of some unsuspecting teenagers, trained monsters at Knott’s Scary Farm strap on their metal knee pads, allowing them to slide creepily along the pathway just before jumping right in the victims’ faces, sending them swimming in panic and terror.

“It’s a high-intense scare,” says Charles Bradshaw, Knott’s entertainment director. “It’s in the streets; it’s everywhere you turn.”

Apparently the prosthetics, the makeup, the tattered clothing, and the affected voices just weren’t enough.

Nonetheless, this is just one example of how parks are beefing up their Halloween events for all-around scarier and creepier experiences. And it’s not just the established Halloween events such as Knott’s Halloween Haunt and Six Flags’ FrightFest (which began in Texas 14 years ago) that have all the great ideas. As the general public’s threshold for blood and guts reaches a level that is seemingly insatiable, all the major theme parks are constantly tasked with delivering scarier and grosser events for the teen and young adult markets.

Paramount’s Carowinds, which is only it its fourth year of the “Scarowinds” event, saw the need to follow in the footsteps of other parks, says Scott Anderson, public relations assistant manager at Carowinds.

For parks like Six Flags Great America, in Gurney, Ill., adding a scary Halloween event is a great way to stretch out the season before it gets too cold to smile, let alone ride a roller coaster. Susan Storey, spokesperson for Great America, says people come out in droves for FrightFest (the biggest Halloween event in the Midwest), even to ride the 12 super-fast coasters in the biting cold.
“They love it, and if they grew up around here, they know Halloween means being cold, so they put their sweatshirts on and they come out,” Storey says.

From a business standpoint, celebrating Halloween at major theme parks makes for excellent competition between the big chains. From a financial point of view, it just makes sense. According to the Washington, D.C.-based National Retail Federation (NRF), Halloween spending has been on the rise since the early 1990s, hitting the $7 billion mark. And in 2002, Americans spent an average of $45 per household on Halloween merchandise, from costumes, to candy, to decorations.

“[In the U.S.] Halloween is one of the few holidays that doesn’t have strong religious or political connotations,” says Ellen Tolley, spokeswoman for the NRF, “and that’s why we see a lot of people embracing the holiday.

“Everybody gets into it.”

The Scarier, the Better

Thirty years ago, Halloween night at Knott’s Scary Farm (the Halloween alter-ego to Knott’s Berry Farm) involved nothing more than about a dozen monsters scaring guests waiting in line for Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant. By 1975, the event had a few mazes, and some of the rides such as Knott’s Berry Tales and the log ride were worked into the Halloween motif.

“What really started off Halloween Haunt was nothing more than entertainment,” says Susan Tierney, director of public relations at Knott’s. “It was very basic stuff. And it was so popular for one night that the following year expanded into three nights.” As the event evolved, the entertainment got scarier and more adult. During the second year, the park brought in Sinister Seymour, an L.A. television host. Then in the 1980s, busty Goth icon Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, made her debut at the park. By then, Halloween Haunt was a full-blown event.

Tierney says these changes are indicative of Halloween morphing from a strictly wholesome children’s holiday to something that could be marketed for a mature crowd.

“There was nothing like it at the time,” she says, speaking of Halloween Haunt’s early days. “There was nothing like haunted houses other than just the neighborhood, in someone’s garage; it was still a kid’s holiday.”

But if Knott’s really pioneered the ultra-scary Halloween event, now they’ve racked up some formidable competitors, such as Carowinds and Six Flags Great America, both of which err on the side of fright to keep their target audience—teens and young adults—coming back again and again.

In fact, the good old-fashioned scare, as opposed to gore, is what makes these events most effective, according to Liz Foral, president of the International Association of Haunted Attractions (IAHA).

“Even if you just think someone’s behind you, the hair on your neck stands up. The eerie feeling and creepiness has more of an effect than a gashed-out body,” says Foral, who runs a standalone attraction, Mystery Mansion, in Omaha, Nebr.

Another sticking point with using too much gore is that teens and young adults have seen it all, she says. So parks should focus on generating top-notch acting talent to offer really good scares, Foral says.

“If you bring reality to it, people are amazed with it,” she says. “The acting ability is so important with these events.”

Both Knott’s and Scarowinds know very well the importance of dead-on acting ability. Every summer, Carowinds holds a job fair for the “scaretechs,” who will eventually work the event. And despite the event’s newness, the park has been watching its revenue and attendance numbers increase since Scarowinds’ inception.

“Generally, the scare factor is more the goal than grossing people out,” Anderson says. “And we like to step it up with a lot of special effects, lighting effects, and sound effects.”

Knott’s also considers its bank of actors to be the most valuable asset to the event. Knott’s hires and trains everyone from police officers to lawyers taking off that month to work Halloween Haunt year after year. “That’s what it really comes down to,” Bradshaw says. “Themeing design can be great, but without the great actor monster doing the actual scare, it’s just pretty décor.”

FrightFest—which uses similar scare tactics as the other parks—counts the Mausoleum of Terror as one of its scariest crowd-pleasers. Plus, the attraction is located in a picnic grove, where there are no rides, just buildings and a lot of space. “It’s the perfect venue for putting things in the trees and the buildings,” she says. “It’s the scariest part of the park.”

Having the largest Halloween event in the Midwest is no small task, so to secure those repeat customers as well as the newcomers, Great America does its best to completely transform the park once October rolls around. “We change our rides: we add lighting or we make dark rides,” Storey says. They also build spooky facades, dye the reflecting pool red, and put crypts where flowers used to be. “The whole ambiance is different. So really the park you go to in June is not the park you would come to in October.”

The Halloween Haunt at Knott’s Scary Farm does double duty on both gore and scares—Bradshaw makes sure of it. About 150 monsters are employed to work the grounds, and this year a whopping 12 mazes will dot the park. Even the tag lines they print on their marketing and advertising materials—“Tickets to die for” or “Everybody has to go sometime”—kind of gives you the creeps.

Fun for Everyone

Sliding monsters and disorienting mazes are not exactly family-friendly features, and our theme parks know that. For one, most parks will stop guests at the gate if they’ve got a small child in tow at the scary events. But it’s always in parks’ best interests to have a contingency plan.

During the day at Knott’s, which has always been a family-friendly facility, the park offers “Camp Spooky” (a haunted take on Camp Snoopy) for little kids and their families. “The park still operates during the day, so we still have families bringing their kids in October. And with Halloween Haunt at nighttime, we really wanted to offer something for kids between 3 and 11 p.m. and not scare them to death.”

FrightFest also has themed family areas that get decked out with non-threatening characters such as a king and queen, and some friendly dragons, to name a few. The Looney Tunes National Park and Camp Cartoon Network areas of the park also feature more toned-down entertainment. “We have large banners and signage that say, ‘you’re entering a scary part of the park.’ That way parents don’t feel they have to be on the lookout everywhere in the park.”

Scarowinds and FrightFest make sure to market to the parental crowd, as well. “It’s important to keep spreading the message to other ranges of groups. Because when you have teens, you still have some parents bringing them to the park.” He says an older crowd might enjoy the live shows more than the haunted house, for example. Along the same lines, Great America will be adding a hypnotist to its non-haunted repertoire this year for those who might steer clear of the haunted houses.

New for 2003

As soon as a Halloween event ends, a new problem arises: What do we do next year to get those folks coming back?

For 2003, Scarowinds has added two new haunted attractions.

The Carnival of Terror, an entirely new feature, is an area that has been carved out of a wooded area of the park. Guests will meander through a darkened path into a haunted carnival. “Think of a grotesque and neglected side show, where the performers have run amok,” Anderson says. Scarowinds will also offer Toxic Trap, a chain link and mirror maze. It will be much like the mazes they’ve featured in the past, only there will be more mirrors, more wrong turns, more smoke and more scares at every turn.

Additionally, Anderson says, the park tweaks the decorations to keep them fresh for those guests who know Scarowinds well.

Great America is celebrating its thirteenth year, and Storey promises to incorporate their experience into the fun.

But so far, we know that existing rides will be revamped, and a couple of new features are being added for kids. The Scooby Doo Mystery Train will be a show within a train ride taking place on the Great America railway, the train that circles the park. The show involves a mystery, which, by the end of the train ride, will be solved by Scooby and Shaggy, with the help of the guests on the train.

“We know our guests love the tongue in cheek, funny acts on the train.” she says. “This year, with a Scooby-branded story, I think it will have broader appeal and be a fun thing for the entire family to enjoy together.”

Another sure-fire winner at Great America is the Looney Tunes characters who roam the park. This year, they’ll be in “costume” (Bugs Bunny as Dracula, Taz as a pumpkin, and Daffy as a ghost). At the time of this writing, the park was still finalizing additional Halloween entertainment.

Knott’s is excited to show off its two new mazes for 2003. One is an evil insane asylum, and the other is Hatchet High, a maze twist on a high school gone bad à la 1980s low-budget horror flicks. Mazes they’ve introduced in the past include Malice in Wonderland and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-themed maze.

Nuts and Bolts

One might expect that with the summer ending, the weather changing, and new rides and shows, Halloween events require more staff and time to get ready. But actually, most of the parks don’t go above and beyond what they normally do for security and staffing. Since many Halloween events run only on weekends, it doesn’t usually affect the schedules of the college kids who work there. Same goes for security. Scarowinds might employ a few extra off-duty police officers, but they will just patrol about 75 percent of the park for the special event.

Great America is also able to do the bulk of the work during the week after summer is over with existing staff and a few seasonal employees. And during the first week of October, they’re not open at all, so the staff is working full-steam ahead for FrightFest.

Knott’s is a different animal entirely. Being an every-day event (this year, it will operate 25 days), the park cranks up staffing considerably. New staff for Halloween Haunt reaches to about 1,000 employees. In addition to the street monsters they employ for the month, they also hire “black-outs,” who are staff members in all black, who are staked out in the mazes to ensure safety and escort people out if an emergency arises. The park also brings on makeup artists and wardrobe specialists to ensure the monsters look as frightening as possible, as well as other entertainers for their various shows. Some animatronics are employed, but Knott’s prefers to hire real people for their great scares. “It’s their kick for the year,” Bradshaw says.