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In the world of amusement parks, exclusive and solitary attraction experiences are hard to come by for two reasons: First, like most other businesses, parks usually need volume purchases to be profitable; and second, most guests don’t want to experience attractions by themselves.
So when Scott Swenson, director of creative services for Busch Gardens Tampa (BGT) in Florida (www.busch gardens.com/BGT), had the idea of a haunted house that guests would experience alone, it was a tough sell.
“This is something we kicked around about five years before it happened,” Swenson tells Funworld. “We kept saying, ‘What if we had to go through a haunted house alone? Gosh, that would be scary!’ Then we did a kind of test run on our media day where we had media folks walk through alone with a camera, and they were trying hard not to utter profanity, so we realized this was something we needed to do.”
Still, low-capacity attractions make theme parks nervous. “I said that we were not going to be able to make it a high-volume attraction, that only a small percentage could experience it,” Swenson explains. “But big [throughput] was not our goal—our goal was to create a product worthy of an additional charge and that would be talked about as the hidden gem of ‘Howl-O-Scream.’”
Last fall Swenson got what he wanted. His idea was approved and the haunted house, named simply “Alone,” debuted at BGT’s 2010 “Howl-O-Scream” Halloween event. It was the most talked-about attraction of the event.
‘Safe Word’ Required
The creative process of developing “Alone” was a personal one for Swenson. “I hate to admit this, but the truth of the matter is that when I put together a new house, I like to put things in that would scare me,” he says. “I put something in ‘Alone’ that came straight out of one of my nightmares, and I made the mistake of telling the performers. When I went through, they trapped me in the scene they knew scared me, and I came close to using the safe word. I had to remind myself that I knew these people and I trained them!”
 The “safe word” is a term given to guests before they enter the house. Swenson’s team knew the attraction would be too intense for some patrons, so if a guest spoke the safe word the experience immediately ended and the guest was shown to an exit. “After all, this may be terrifying, but it’s still entertainment,” says Swenson, “and if it ceases to be entertainment for someone, we want them to be able to stop it.” The safe word was used multiple times by guests during “Howl-O-Scream,” including five times before guests even entered the house!
The “Alone” story line centered around guests playing the roles of prospective victims who are visiting a warehouse run by a sinister and insane man named Alexander Daedalus—a collector of objects and, unfortunately for warehouse visitors, people.
Visitors were told they were about to see items in Daedalus’ assortment, and were warned that if they couldn’t find their way out, they’d become part of the collection. Guests then went from room to room in the warehouse and experienced its horrors; in each room, there was a different body part the attraction’s cast wanted to lop off and keep, and visitors couldn’t move forward into the next room until the scene ran its course. To add to the terror, there were times rooms actually reconfigured themselves; not holo-graphically— the walls literally moved.
“The thing that sticks out in my mind more than anything was standing at the exit and seeing the looks on people’s faces,” recalls Swenson. “They were either laughing hysterically because they’d had time to regain their composure, or they looked pale, or they were just completely stoic. Those were my favorites. I saw somebody come out and I asked, ‘So what did you think?’ and he said, ‘That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever experienced.’ So I said, ‘Are you going to do it again?’ and he replied, ‘Nope, never!’”
An Upsell Opportunity
The park allowed guests to reserve a time slot for experiencing “Alone.” They could do it at the park for $34.95 or at an online discount of $24.95. Entry times were done in 15-minute blocks, with five entries per 15 minutes. There was not a single night of “Howl-O-Scream” that “Alone” didn’t sell out; many nights it sold out before the park even opened. Swenson says BGT often held the last time slot open to allow in-park guests to sign up on a waiting list.
The performers were always aware of what was happening in the next room, so to make certain the impression of being totally alone was maintained for visitors the cast could hold guests in a room, or send them through more quickly, to make sure they didn’t see another visitor.
The idea was for guests to experience “Alone” … alone, but they also had the option of going through with up to three other people. However, those who went solo were the only ones who received a T-shirt with the “Alone” logo and the moniker, “I Did It Alone.”
In March 2011 the park asked guests via its “Howl-O-Scream” Facebook page to recount their favorite “Howl- O-Scream” scare of all time. “We were drawing on 11 years of scares, and half of them said ‘Alone,’” says Jill Revelle, Busch Gardens Tampa’s media relations manager. “It only opened last year, and yet they say it’s the best experience they’ve ever had at the event.” Though Revelle and Swenson can’t confirm a return engagement for “Alone” in 2011, the demand is certainly there.
Says Swenson: “We wanted to let those who hadn’t experienced our event before know that we were cutting edge. Our goal was to create buzz, and to let our ‘Howl-O-Scream’ fans create a buzz.”
Contact News Editor Keith Miller at kmiller@IAAPA.org.
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