[Graveside Chat] The Decline of Theme Park Scare Zones and how to fix 'em

One of the Walking Dead scenes at HHN 23 Orlando

Ah, the scare zone, one of the biggest staples at large scale Haunted Attraction events such as Halloween Horror Nights, Howl-O-Scream, The Haunt, Fright Fest, Phantom Fright Nights and many others that amusement and theme parks put on every year.

These open air bastions of chaos and screams are a frightfully good time and provide some of the best people watching in the biz. The unique and "never safe" kind of experiences they offer are hard to come by anywhere else at that. I know that myself and +Carrie H.C. have spent countless hours people watching in them or just outside over the years.

However, it seems as if the art of the scare zone is being lost or watered down severely. Not one of the parks that we visited this year (HHN 23 at USO or either Busch Gardens park) were that great and it's been troubling me for quite a while now.

I don't envy theme park haunts, they have a ton of logistical nightmares to deal with just with how many houses/mazes they tend to have during their shows on top of their regular park operations. Throwing in the scare zone just adds to that, but if you're going to do it, might as well do it right. The past couple of years have been trouble at best in that regard. Smaller, less populated and in some cases less themed areas have been a slight on the concept and hurts the overall event in our eyes. They are integral pieces for any big haunt and should never be an afterthought.


The Problems:

While it's true that these areas may not need nearly as much as a fully immersive and themed house/maze, they still need some love and consideration to work properly. They should fit in with your themes or areas to provide unique and different experiences. Additionally, they should be stocked with a good amount of high energy actors. Sure, you may not need the 30 or so that are in the other attractions, but having only 5-10 isn't going to do either. If you have a lot of scare zones, that may work but typically parks only have 3-5 in total so there needs to be more going on.

Aerial view of Kings Island, really big place to fill!

Let's also not forget that the size of these areas is important as well. The first thought may be, "Well, we only have 7 actors for this one, it doesn't need to be that large." Right there two strikes are against you before even getting any further. First off, where these events are held are huge. Having only 3-4 defined scare zones in a park that's 80-330+ acres that are small is going to leave massive areas that are completely empty and devoid of any activity. Even if parts are sectioned off and deliberate re-routing of the flow is employed to "reduce park size".

Roving bands of ghouls and monsters could be a potential stop gap, but the potential for an uneven experience for guests is still high.

In the same vein, having a huge scare zone that's not populated enough is another danger. You could have say, 4-5 scare zones that take up entire lands/areas that leave nowhere safe almost but with too few actors and you're sunk as well. The end results, again, are a heavily uneven experience. In the end you're left with having small, "high impact" areas spread out thinly or you have sparsely populated massive areas. Either way chances are good that it's not going to leave a great impression. God forbid anyone try to mix all three issues together with too few big areas and have little to no actor population, that's just asking for it...

Another issue that parks need to avoid, is putting all their eggs in one basket. As I said before, these areas need to be highly diverse. If you stick with similar themes throughout (or the same...you know who you are), the surprise element is gone and people get bored with it. You don't have the same theme or variation for every house/maze, why do the same to the scare zones? People will know exactly what to expect if the same kind of monster/scare is employed park wide and become desensitized or lose interest quickly. DO NOT DO THIS!

Having an area that matches a house/maze you're featuring is fine, but don't do the whole park. Seriously...it's just lazy. I don't care how much some hit show or movie has lured you in or how popular it is, just don't.

While we're still on the topic of problems, theming should be up there as well. Since you're outside there's a lot of play that can happen with your surroundings. Use it and don't just go "We'll put a few random bits out" and leave it at that. Again, that just comes off as lazy. The more visually striking the area is, the more effective your scares will be. It works on the inside attractions and it works outside too!

The Solutions:

A lot of work is done by these kinds of parks to figure out the flow patterns and traffic in certain areas and I'm sure they monitor it a bit closer during their haunt season, especially if re-routing is taking place. What the perfect ratio should be is definitely not known to me, but if you have a house/maze that has a capacity of 150-200 (at best) and 30 actors in it (some places even go cheap on that. Bad theme park, no brains for you!),  the 5-10 for an open area that's likely to have much more than just doesn't add up at all. I would figure at least 15-20, the more the better, is the perfect fit for these things. It'll never be as high as the indoor ratio but anything is better than the lower end of the spectrum here.

This is even more true if you have larger more sprawling areas dedicated. 10 people may be enough per zone if you've got 6 or 7 of them that are "medium" in size. The question that brings up is just how many are necessary to keep things interesting. Most events seem to have 5 or 6, which in reality, is a pretty healthy number if they avoid the trappings of them being too small. I would say that at minimum there should be 10 actors for a "smaller" area and maybe even as many as 20 or more for something really big. So 15 might be a good number to settle on for most out there. Don't want too much overlap, but want enough to make a difference and allow for the "team scare" but not neglect other areas in the process. Again, a couple roving bands of creatures could help things out, but only if everything else in place first.

With no actors around, it's just a photo op. Bad park, bad!

So, now that we've sorted out the number of actors problem, time to get to theming end of things. One park this year really stepped up their game in this department, but the rest were a bit disappointing in that to say the least. The solution to this one is a bit tougher, not every park is going to completely transform an area for 6-8 weekends a year. That's crazy to expect for a lot of reasons, but again, just tossing a few things out with a gateway to it or putting one large prop isn't going to cut it either. However, don't forget about the actor issue either. You can have the best theming on the planet and a lack of actors will still make it dull. Sure it'll look cool, but we're in the for more than that, right?

There's a lot of ways one could go with this from taking inspiration from themes you already have going for you and adapting them for your icons to just dressing things up with props and other things to "transform" the area. Simple does work at times for some areas. Jungle or Scarecrow zones may not need as much. Doing a zombie infestation or apocalyptic nightmare? Going to need to go a lot further than just a few "key" props to make it believable.

Just like inside the houses/mazes, a story is being told here and it should fit in with your overall theme or what's going on around it with your other attractions for the event. Have a character that fits in with a ride somehow? Put 'em near it! Not only is that just good sense thematically but hey, these are theme parks, it makes people aware of your rides. Even if it's just thinking "Wow, that was a cool reference!". Have fun with the themes, let the imagination go a little and think outside the box...it'll pay off big time in the long run.

(Theming in and of itself could be a whole reason for one these and I won't go too much further than that, otherwise we'll be here all day.)

In the end, scare zones can and should be awesome. They have been amazing in the past at many parks, but lately something has gone wrong with them. The biggest issues are the ones I've talked about above and while there's not a 100% clear cut answer to solving the them, there are ways to improve them. Overall, I hope it's made some people at least think about it some and, again, I don't expect some seasoned theme park haunt runner to go "Hey, that Kitsune guy is onto something, let's scrap everything and do what he says!". However, I do hope that if they should, that they at least take a moment to look at what they're doing. Carie and I have been to dozens of theme park haunts over the years and the past couple of years have shown some really horrible execution of these things at many events.

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