Halloween Wars: Theme Parks Are Fighting for Bigger Share of Scream Economy
John Murdy, creative director for Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood, remembers when he realized how popular the annual after-hours event had gotten. “When my first daughter was born, I was going to get diapers and had somebody come up to me and go, ‘Can I take a picture?’ I’m like, ‘Can I put the diapers down?’” Murdy says, laughing. “Now it’s everywhere in a movie star kind of way, which is really bizarre because I do something in a theme park.”
Murdy’s experience speaks to theme parks’ growing share of the $12 billion Halloween seasonal industry. “Halloween never actually ends,” says Philip Hernandez, editor of the Haunted Attraction Network. “You have the Midsummer Scream, Halloween conventions, trade shows. Haunts will open for Krampus all through December, and then January is our first buying convention.”
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For Disney Experiences or Universal Destinations & Experiences, fall is one of the busiest times, second only to prime vacation times like summer and the winter holidays. In 2019, Thomas Williams, former chairman and CEO of Universal Parks & Resorts, called HHN Universal parks’ “thirteenth month” of revenue. “We have Halloween in all of our parks around the world, and it’s a huge after-hours separately ticketed event that drives enormous volumes of business,” he said at a Bank of America event.
Parks like Six Flags or Knott’s Berry Farm find it to be similarly pivotal. “Halloween has become one of our most critical seasons of the year, and a lot of it has to do with our participation in the scream economy,” says Edithann (EA) Ramey, Six Flags “Chief Fright Officer” and CMO. “From a seasonality standpoint, it’s more important than the [winter] holidays.”
“Each of these parks is approaching it a little bit differently now, but they’re bringing enormous amounts of revenue and attendance to a period that was generally slow or nonexistent,” says Martin Palicki, editor of the Theme Index and Museum Index: The Global Attractions Attendance Report. Palicki also points to the growing presence of Halloween events at the companies’ international parks as more evidence of its value and impact. “Halloween is such a big deal for parks they created demand for a holiday that doesn’t exist in other parts of the world.”
Theme parks don’t disclose attendance or revenue for these after-hours events, but Hernandez says, “We can infer the financial success of these events from several indicators, including the sheer number of ticketed events, upcharges, VIP experiences, and exclusive merchandise tied to Halloween offerings,” he says. “It also runs counter to Christmas, which is included with most tickets.”
Add-ons shave down line wait times or let guests get a head start on houses before other attendees, while for a few hundred dollars, guests can make repeated visits. “It used to be you bought a ticket and raced through the park because you had one night to do it,” says Jeff Tucker, a show writer and director at Knott’s Scary Farm. “Having people come every night changed the dynamic of how they enjoy the event.”
Disneyland’s Happiest Haunts daytime park tour and Universal Orlando Resort’s lights-on haunted house tour, Unmasking the Horror, offer behind-the-scenes looks at their respective seasonal events. “VIP” night-of tours offer reserved show seating, line skipping, special dinners or themed bars. Experiences range between $100 and $400 for public options and $5,000 to $8,000 on the higher end for private experiences. It’s a way for the parks’ more passionate fans to make deeper connections to the brand, which “help with people’s desire to want to come back,” a Disney spokesperson notes.
Event length is also changing, with the Halloween season now running through the Day of the Dead. HHN in Hollywood lasts 40 nights, while Orlando hosts 48. The Oogie Boogie Bash at Disney’s California Adventure is now a 27-night event that sold out in 11 days after going on sale in July. Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party in the Magic Kingdom, which began on Aug. 9, has also sold out. “There seems to be no saturation point where there’s too many nights,” says Tucker. “Society as a whole has just embraced this holiday in ways that we could not have imagined.”
All of this is being driven in part by parks’ desire to create a bridge between two historically busy seasons and a potential “100 percent return on attendance for any given day” they host their separately ticketed event, says Palicki. It’s also being influenced by weather. “Our summers have become more hot,” says Ramey. “So with Halloween, not only do you get to come again when it’s cooler if you’ve already come, but we’re able to give you something really new, and make it feel like there’s a reason why you have to be back at the park.”
Halloween at American theme parks didn’t always look like this. In their earliest iterations, as far back as 1959 for Disneyland and 1973 for Knott’s, celebrations were a handful of days that offered locals an elevated trick-or-treat experience or a few scares alongside smaller crowds and access to the park’s coasters after dark. “It started as a test — three nights over one weekend where they had one haunted house, Dungeon of Terror, and masked characters through some of the park. It really began in the most modest way,” says Mike Aiello, creative director of HHN for Universal Orlando Resort, of the event’s 1991 Florida-debut.
Noticeable changes began in the late 1990s and through the 2000s, with Cedar Fair’s purchase of Knott’s resulting in an expansion of its Halloween schedule, while Six Flags’ event continued to expand outside its Houston park. Universal Studios saw major changes in how it created and marketed content during this time, says Aiello, who like HHN Hollywood’s Murdy, points to 2007 as a major turning point.
That’s when Jack the Clown, one of the event’s “icons” — a series of original “master of scaremonies” characters — appeared with slasher movie titans Freddie, Jason and Leatherface. “Instantly you felt this lift, not only in more people coming, but just the buzz in the Hollywood community. For the first time ever, I saw a filmmaker show up to our event, and that was Tobe Hooper who directed Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” recalls Murdy. “Now I couldn’t even count how many times that’s happened, but that was the moment I went, ‘Oh my god, they’re paying attention. We’re on to something here.’”
That buzz continued during The Walking Dead’s run, its massive success leading to multiple haunted mazes and scare zones at HHN, L.A. premieres on property, and cast walkthroughs of houses. Around that time, Disney expanded the holiday to its cruise lines for Halloween on the High Seas. Running six weeks through mid-September and October, “they’ve become so popular that they book out as early as six months in advance,” a Disney spokesperson tells THR.
In some ways, these events still retain the foundations of their earliest iterations, but nowadays, no one would call them modest. That’s because “quite a bit in terms of capital, people, and creative power” is being invested by each park to inspire attendance, says Palicki. Park teams are planning all year round, at times years in advance, as in Universal’s case. Six Flags employs 6,000 people during the season to keep its events running across parks and, like Scary Farm’s Nightmares Revealed preview in August, hosts pre-season events like Scream Break at Six Flags Magic Mountain.
The parks aren’t just doing more Halloween, either. They’re diversifying how they engage with guests. Knott’s continues to transform its abandoned mining town aesthetic with original house ideas as “creating our own nightmares is what we’re famous for,” Tucker notes. But many mazes feature longer runtimes, and the park’s social media gives fans a look behind the production curtain. Guests can sit for variety, magic, or comedy shows like the popular “The Hanging,” a satirical take on the year’s best and worst celebrity and pop culture.
An art show, which features pieces celebrating the holiday and Knott’s for sale, is also a unique element as is the presence of horror icon Elvira, “a fantastic draw” for decades who is returning in-person for several days this year, says Tucker. “With Knott’s, they’re going to tell a story and celebrate the locals,” adds Hernandez.
Six Flags’ recent pivot of its locally-driven Fright Fest event to Fright Fest Extreme has upped the presence of studio IP for its now numerous theme park locations around the country. Within its record 20 combined houses and scare zones this year are branded mazes from six studios and distributors, including Army of the Dead, James Wan’s Conjuring universe (The Conjuring, Annabelle and The Nun), Saw, Stranger Things, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Trick ‘r Treat. “I tell people, ‘What if the place that gives you these thrill rides can continue to expand what thrill means?’” Ramey says of how the park pitched itself to Hollywood. “Though sometimes these movies are more about psychological horror, for us, it had to be thrilling.”
It follows last year’s test of IP houses in L.A. and New Jersey where “the lines were like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” according to Ramey. “So bringing in all the IP comes with cost and resource investment, but it’s going to have the return on investment.” It also comes on the heels of decades of rides inspired by DC characters or local lore. “There’s a story behind why you’re getting on the ride. That was important to us when it came to the houses, and bringing in the movie IP is taking it to that next level,” she explains. “Selfishly, as a company, it means more attendance, but for the consumer, it’s wanting to delight them — giving them something that they are aware of or know, that they are excited about and can experience. It really feels like a thrill ride but in a different way.”
Like Disney’s daytime events, nighttime remains focused on families, with adults also able to wear costumes, “next level trick-or-treating” with Mars-branded candies and “a different experience in what your Instagram picture will look like,” notes the Disney spokesperson. Both coasts also feature creative elements like fireworks shows and parades with event-exclusive additions, or ride makeovers like The Nightmare Before Christmas at The Haunted Mansion. Yet, much of the popularity around Disney’s after-hours events is “our villains, who our guests love,” the Disney spokesperson tells THR, with some of these characters — before the announcement of Magic Kingdom’s Villains Land — only in the parks exclusively during Halloween time.
Disney’s theme parks have also “recognized the opportunity to take their IP and use it for this event as a means to sell new merchandise, new food and beverage options,” says Palicki. “The retail element of it, especially for Disney, is a huge component.” This year, that has expanded to a partnership with Children’s Starlight Foundation, in which Disney is matching sales for up to 20,000 costumes that will go to families with children in hospitals during the holiday.
Universal is fueled by an approach that balances delivering what attendees want with quiet innovating for the future, as one of the only events “that changes everything — haunted houses, scare zones, shows — every year,” says Aiello. That’s true even when franchises, like Hollywood’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre 50th Anniversary house or Universal’s own Classic Monsters IP, return. “The industry understands that reinvestment and new capital is critical for theme parks to thrive. That also extends to Halloween. You can’t do the same thing year after year. The formula might be similar, but people want and expect something new and different each time they go,” says Palicki.
A responsibility is to make guests feel like they’re walking to a horror movie, says Aiello, which comes from “being on the shoulders of the studio that created the horror genre. So every environment, the way we write our characters, makeup, prosthetics, masks, even at that early stage, is about meeting that bar.” Murdy adds that approach was a personal passion and “game-changer” for the industry, and it’s an effort aided by being “in the middle of a movie studio. Some of the things we build are in the movie studio, so we’re tapping into their scenic artists, carpenters, production designers, props, costume design, that do movies and television shows.”
Their teams push the limits of house design, like with this year’s A Quiet Place maze, which features the first practical versions of the film’s CGI monsters as life-size animatronics. With no music, the maze’s unique soundscape is “driven by sound effects and atmospherics,” says Aiello. “Certain areas aren’t soundless but the pressure in the room almost changes like a sound booth, offering ways we can baffle audio so you’re left with only hearing your own voice or heartbeat.” It’s the kind of immersion that has attracted high profile collaborators like Wan, Jason Blum, John Carpenter, Eli Roth, and Jason Reitman — all of whom attended the event’s red carpet opening night in Hollywood.
Studio collaborators include Blumhouse, but also talent like The Weeknd, whose house joins the list of musical collaborators, including Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie, Slash, and Black Sabbath. The house, After Hours: Nightmare Trilogy, is promised as a take on Dante’s Divine Comedy based on his last two albums and a forthcoming release. In the line queue, guests will join the purgatory party — a massive club evocative of the stage set from The Weeknd’s most recent tour and featuring Dawn FM’s old man or After Hours younger self as DJ. In the house, Jim Carrey’s voice serves as the “disorientingly calm interstitials that exist in Dawn FM,” says Murdy. “It is different from doing a movie, television show or video game because it’s much more interpretive. There’s music videos and films, but what we do is live, so it’s a unique art form all to itself.”
For HHN, houses like this and last year’s Exorcist: Believer can act as marketing tools for unreleased work. “Sometimes we’re out ahead of [a film’s release], and that’s the case where I go, ‘We’re the ultimate trailer,’” says Murdy. “We have the audience that’s going to be going to the movie theaters in the park every single night.”
Universal is also responding to the diversity of that audience. Deaf actors and ASL users in A Quiet Place, L.A.’s “Monstrous” Latin American lore houses, and Orlando’s androgynous “icons” of Sinister and Surreal, are one way the event is creatively expanding who is visible in horror. This year’s Universal Classic Monsters: Bloodlines maze is a notable pivot in the male-heavy franchise, and features an original story with existing characters like The Mummy’s Anck-Su-Namun and the Bride of Frankenstein, with a score by Emmy nominated composer and Hans Zimmer collaborator, Sarah Barone, for Orlando’s house.
“Our show director Kelly Malik first came to me with the thought of bringing some of the female Universal Monsters out of the shadows and into the forefront for this year’s haunted house,” says Lora Sauls, Orlando’s senior director of creative. “Kelly worked closely with our Hollywood partners to write the new story for our female monsters and create a new hero in Saskia VanHelsing.”
That diversity is present in the event’s non-Universal brands, mediums and genres of horror, thanks to “another golden age” of the genre, says Murdy. That includes the L.A. park’s horror-comedy show Late Night with Chucky, as well as the bi-coastal house Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, “a supernatural comedy that has horror and sci-fi elements,” says Murdy. “We just kept pushing those boundaries of what you can define as horror. That’s the track we’ve been on in recent years — let’s see where we can take it next.”
His team may already be there, with the spring launch of Universal Fan Fest Nights. In addition to Dungeons & Dragons and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, new experiences tied to major anime titles One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen, and the bridge set piece featured in the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard, have been revealed. According to Scott Strobl, executive vice president and general manager, Universal Studios Hollywood, the “level of immersion guests experience at Halloween Horror Nights will be consistent with what they can expect,” he told THR in a statement.
For Hernandez, even as guests’ disposable income has dropped and the post-pandemic travel surge is leveling at parks, the success and frenzy around high-quality special eventing at places like Knott’s, Six Flags, Universal and Disney may offer a glimpse into how parks situate themselves as a business going forward. “What theme parks have done is taken this shoulder season and turned it into something that’s more popular than summer, and that, maybe, in many ways, is going to be more essential to their future.”
A version of this story first appeared in the Oct. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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