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Hard to believe, but this is the 10th season of
Halloween Haunt at Dorney Park, and this year the park is advertising that "fear is waiting for you" at the event... and that's some truthful advertising!
The park has bottled up all the ghouls, scares, freaks, mazes, shows and more all season long, and unleashed them to packed crowds in honor of the 10th year of screams.
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Before we check in on the actual event, the park was kind enough to give me a tour of some of the backstage operations that go into putting on such a massive event each night. The park has around 300 actors in full costume each night of Haunt, and getting this army of scares ready is no small feat. Our tour starts with a look at the preparations that go into churning out 300 monsters in only a couple hours.
This photo is of the wardrobe area that monsters visit to pick up their costumes for the evening. Each actor has a specific time that they are to arrive here, which kicks off the process of getting ready. Each rack of costumes is neatly organized by attraction or zone, with a card for every actor to take when they pick up their costume to get dressed.
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Once dressed the actors move into the area seen above, known as The Crypt. This is the area where their real transformation begins, as they move to an individual station to have their makeup applied. The talented artists are able to complete a full application (read: monster creation) in just ten to fifteen minutes, depending on how elaborate the character is. The actors flow in and out of the room like clockwork, it's very impressive to see how organized the process is!
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Here is the actual transformation of the Voodoo Queen, an important role in Blood on the Bayou, from start to finish. It helps that most characters feature the same makeup each night, however some are changed slightly over time or for special events. The Voodoo Queen, however, is an example of one character that looks similar each night - helps her become instantly recognizable to repeat guests in the attraction.
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Some characters features special, often gross, add-ons, such as peeling rotting skin, horrid wounds, and the like. These pieces are hand crafted and painted by talented Haunt staff, and stored carefully (above) for repeat use. Each piece is unique to one actor, not shared between them, and a fresh batch is created for each season. It looks a bit like a demented plastic surgeon's office or something along those lines!
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The majority of Haunt actors use full makeup along with some of the aforementioned add-ons, but in some instances masks are used. This super creepy room is where they are all stored... this alone could probably work as a Haunt attraction is the lighting was a bit lower! There is quite a spectrum of masks in here, everything from giant pumpkin heads to crazed clowns.
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Some characters require a special set up, such as this octopus face that is one of many feature characters in Cut Throat Island. It isn't easy to find an existing mask of this nature, so the Haunt staff took the time to hand craft it - the results are excellent! I was able to bump into this character later in the night as he scared a pack of visitors, and it looks even better in show lighting.
The Crypt is an awesome operation to watch, and it's pretty amazing to think that goes on each night just to get Haunt ready, then it all comes back off, is organized and cleaned, and put away for the next day!
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I was also able to take a lights-on tour of the park's new-for-2017 maze, Tourist Trap. We'll get into the details of the maze in a second, but I wanted to share the above photo first. This room is located within the maze and is a control center for many of the attraction's animatronics and other special effects.
Pressure pad and sensor trigger effects have long been effective in mazes, but this set up actually allows an employee to sit and watch guests travel through the attraction, triggering special effects at exactly the right moment. With a simple touch of a button they are able to make a body fall from the ceiling, a staircase nearly collapse, bookshelves nearly tumble over and more. I did get to push some of the buttons, and even without guests in the maze it was still a blast!
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Tourist Trap is set in 1893 in Chicago, which was home to the World's Fair at the time. The maze is set in the Worlds Fair Hotel, which was a popular place for tourists visiting the fair... but it turns out it was also deadly for most of them. As guests enter the attraction they are in the hotel's lobby, which seems peaceful, and well, normal. However, if you look closely at the newspaper on the counter, you'll notice that it seems a great deal of people have already gone missing. There is a nice advertisement for the hotel, however, so things will be okay, right?
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Visitors quickly start to head through different rooms of the hotel, each of which is layered thick with tons of detail and props. Granted you're a bit too focused on trying not to to be scared to really focus on these little details, but there are plenty of them around. These pictures show just some of what can be found as you move through the first few rooms of the hotel. These include a lounge area, library, bedrooms and more.
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Things start to take a bit of a darker turn as you venture further into Tourist Trap. The authorities are looking for H. W. Harrison, the owner of the hotel, as they have quite a few questions for him about the disappearance of those hotel guests. The above photo was a shot of H. W. Harrison's office, which like the other rooms has plenty of interesting items that he has collected in his travels.
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After twisting and turning through a few more rooms, each a bit creepier than the last, you suddenly enter a room that is definitely where some bad things happened to a lot of people. This is a haunted house after all! It seems that H. W. Harrison has a special room in the hotel for him to visit with guests... but you can be sure that the guests do not make it out alive. Some of them, or parts of them, are forever kept in the floor of the room that you have to walk over, seen above.
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I do not intend to give away too many surprises from the lights-on photos, but this room is too neat not to share. I would guess that this is where the hotel guests check in for a long-term stay... as there were dozens of former guests located here. Just watch out for falling items from the ceiling!
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Many haunted houses use falling picture frames as scare doors, and Tourist Trap does too. But, since the park has plenty of repeat visitors they wanted to make it a bit harder to predict where the scare might come from. So, instead of this room having one falling picture, there are three in a row, and all are controlled pneumatically by the actor. That way he or she can come at you when you least expect it, thinking you may have gotten through unscathed. Not so!
That's all for our lights-on tour of Tourist Trap... and if the storyline of the house feels a little familiar, well that's because it is based in reality. At least to a large degree... you can read about the real life "Murder Castle"
here.
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On to the actual event, as darkness set in the park came to life on a busy Saturday night... fog was in the air and screams could be heard from all over. There is much to see and do at Dorney Park's Halloween Haunt, with a grand total of six indoor haunted mazes, five outdoor scare attractions (three of which are half haunted house and half scare area), and three live shows.
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The evening officially begins with a show called the Overlord's Resurrection, where the Overlord (seen above) rises and calls his minions to gather on stage. After a short speech he beckons his ghouls and monsters to spread throughout the park, quickly filling into the crowd and starting the scares.
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Since Halloween Haunt is a very popular time of the year a great way to keep the evening moving is to use Fright Lane with Skeleton Key Room access. This add-on to the admission ticket allows you to have priority access to eight of the park's most popular attractions, along with access to seven special Skeleton Key Rooms. This year the park has actually built separate structures, located near their associated attractions, for many of the Skeleton Key Rooms. This means that all new tricks have been created... we will get to those in a bit.
The Fright Lane passes are a great help in visiting popular attractions like Tourist Trap, which can be seen above.
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Each year some of the returning Haunt attractions are given new features or other upgrades, and an extension of CarnEvil that opened a couple seasons ago got all new lighting this year. The entire pathway from Hydra down to the Tilt-a-Whirl has new programmed LED lights, which create an especially creepy atmosphere as you pass through the area, filled with clowns of course (like the one seen meandering about in the above photo).
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Once you get into the area the dancing lights really serve as almost a distraction from what is lurking in the fog... it's hard to see what may be coming at you until it is too late!
Also returning this year is Cut Throat Island, located by Possessed, which still features the enormous pirate ship props, along with Age of Darkness and its side-street known as the torture chamber, filled with props and other ghastly items.
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Last year's new haunted house was Blood on the Bayou, and it is back this year and just as popular - if not more so. This house features elaborate sets and storyline, including this New Orleans style mansion as the entrance. It is also where you will find the Voodoo Queen, featured in the first part of this story.
Other returning attractions and mazes include Chamber of Horrors, Trick or Treat, Urgent Scare, Blackout, Grave Walkers and CornStalkers. The shifting of Skeleton Key Rooms to outside of several of these attractions has opened up some space that has led to slight changes in scares... plus all houses are modified slightly to keep them fresh each year.
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Aside from the Overlord's Resurrection, Halloween Haunt at Dorney Park also features two more live shows. Seen above is the ever-popular Blood Drums, which plays their pounding beats at the park's Center Stage. Located within the CarnEvil scare zone is Skeleton Crew, a show that features an eerie assortment of acrobatic and other performances. These shows serve as a much needed break from all the scares of the haunted attractions.
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Onto the Skeleton Key Rooms - I'm not going to ruin any of the surprises, that would be terrible, but I will point out that I would rate most of them as more scary than in previous years... and more gross too. Above is the Grave Walkers room, located in Steel Force's plaza, which has a jump scare you won't be ready for. CornStalkers' room relies on gross for its story, but in a hilarious way, but Cut Throat Island isn't far behind on the "ewwww" scale. Blackout's room is innovative in that visitors get to take part in what goes on in the house, and Blood on the Bayou's has a combination of lighting and fog that makes it impossible to see what's going on from your chest down... until it is too late of course.
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That wraps up our look at the 10th anniversary of
Halloween Haunt at Dorney Park. It's amazing to have seen all that goes into setting up for the event, experiencing it from both the park and guest's perspective. Many thanks for both Dorney Park and Mike Fehnel for their help with this story!
Oh... and happy Friday the 13th!!!
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