155 days till Halloweekends!

Who wouldn't want to come see the first back to back Frightmaster award winners? I know I wouldn't want to miss it.

Pumped about today and tomorrow! Love Halloweekends!

I can't believe the park closes in 9 days though. Major bummer. I can't believe how fast this season went by. Seems like just weeks ago we were watching the Ohio State marching band open up the park with Kinzel giving his speech. :(

In just one week, this will have to be renamed 318 days till Halloweekends. :(

I went to Halloweekends this past Sunday, and I had a wonderful time. I was thoroughly impressed by various Screamsters and haunts this year. I'm not sure if I was just in a great mood because of the excellent weather and low crowds, but things just seemed better this year.

I feel like Cedar Point listened to some of my / our complaints & criticism about Halloweekends, or perhaps Sunday is just the day to go from now on. Here are some things I noticed though:

--There seemed to be more interactive CP Screamsters with personalities this year, which made the experiences far more memorable and fun. We were stopped in Terror Island to play a game with a surprise, a "Chugga chugga" crazy clown followed us all through Carnevil, a Screamster asked for the name of my friend quietly and creeped her out, we were approached to be a baby's daddy... lol There just seemed to be a better mix of Screamsters all around.

--Happy Jack's Toy Factory. Ugh. Got in line right at 3PM, which was probably a bad move, as many people had the same idea. Anyway, there was a line that should have taken 30 minutes, but it took about 10 minutes. They were pushing them through ridiculously fast. A large group was going in what seemed like every 20 seconds. My friends and I knew that the stacking was going to be just awful, so we purposely held everyone up behind us a long time in the mirror section. We got through a hallway or two of good scares and fun before we hit stacking people at an absolute stop.

Once we stacked, it was over. No surprise or scares anymore, as there was no time to reset. Even the characters had given up, as it was just a stopped line of jammed people. This was my first haunted house of the day, and I was upset thinking, “Cedar Point will never learn!” Funny thing is that while on Raptor 30 minutes later, there was NO wait for Happy Jack’s. So, there was no point in pushing them through that fast.

--Eerie Estate. There was about a 10 minute wait, and this guy erased all my bad thoughts about Happy Jack’s. He was letting smaller groups in slowly, and he was getting “all clear” or “hold on” signals from monsters inside. I talked with the entrance guy about how the stacking ruined the previous house, and he made sure to wait extra long for us. As a result, while stacking ruined the house in 2009, it was GREAT this year. We went through it slowly, got plenty of jumpy scares that were nicely timed. What a relief.

--Club Blood. No wait at all…they were all dying to scare us when we entered. We had all the characters following us and scaring us from in front and behind the whole time. Excellent!

--Dr. D Mented…Yes! They listened and used that simple trick commonly found at King’s Island…curtains! While people were being let in too quickly, the curtains and division of areas still allowed for many great scares. I really liked this new haunt…there were several times where I couldn’t figure out if scenes were props or characters, which is always unsettling.

--Fright Zone. I know this is one of the best scarezones from history. We just had bad timing this year, as there was a mass of people walking through everywhere. As a result, no Screamsters paid any attention to us, and though the fog was holding everywhere else, it was blowing away here.

--Carnevil. Not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. It is too open, but there were still many great Screamsters with memorable personalities at us the whole time.

--Cornstalkers. Didn’t seem quite as good as in the past, as there were too many people walking through and not many Screamsters…I found only a handful, but they were at least good jumpy scares.

--Terror Island. Wow. Did all the attention go to this one or what? It was the best haunt of the night. It was very foggy, had an excellent set up and tightened path, and it was just full of Screamsters. I wanted to go through again, but we were running out of time. There were lots of good scares here, and it was nice and long.

--I didn’t have time for Fear Faire, but I enjoyed the Sideshow (favorite) & Hullabaloo shows. It was my very first year watching Halloweekend shows, and they were a nice change of pace…I’ll definitely fit them into the schedule for future Halloweekends.

It’s now clear to me that Cedar Point’s haunted attractions are great when there are low crowds and no stacking. I don’t understand why all the haunted houses don’t have a simple midcourse checkpoint with 2-way radios to provide some sort of signal to stop letting guests in so they can clear out if stacking. Letting people in quickly to prevent long lines is not an acceptable excuse when the experience is completely ruined. It’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

I'm glad you liked Terror Island. I'll be sure to let everyone know you enjoyed it. Character development has been very good for us this year. :)

Ralph Wiggum said:
In just one week, this will have to be renamed 318 days till Halloweekends. :(

Assuming the park is going to open on May 14th next year, there will be exactly 200 days until the park opens in about 15 minutes.

200 days... :(

Oh, I have to throw in one more major compliment for Cedar Point / Screamsters / Halloweekends.

There was a steady rain that came through from 7PM until 7:30PM or so. Everyone was flooding out of the park, and the whole park became dead silent. It felt completely closed...my friends wanted to go, but I felt like it was going to somehow pass and everything was going to come back to life while we played some games in the Frontier Town arcade.

My friends felt there was no way that they could open the rides and that the characters wouldn't come out with the risk of their costumes or make-up getting wet and running. With only a little over an hour left until close, I was starting to throw in the towel that CP just told everyone to call it a night.

Well, the rain miraculously stopped with a little over an hour to go...and within 5-10 minutes, the whole park just suddenly came back to life! All the roller coasters started climbing their hills, all the haunts were quickly staffed with enthusiastic Screamsters, and the screams and energy just returned to the park...herds of people started walking from the front of the park back to Frontier Town.

It was so exciting to feel the park go from dark-barren-dead-silence closure to full throttle within 5-10 minutes...was just unexpected with so little time left. Kudos to CP for giving effort to get everything going up until the last minute and to the Screamsters for not acting withdrawn from the expectation of going home for rain. It was the perfect end to a great Halloweekends day.

^ Despite the rain, the outdoor haunts all opened at 7 as scheduled. It was actually pretty fun marching out to the Overlord ceremony with lightning dancing overhead.

^it was exciting and weird just because it was such a different feeling!

The only thing that stopped us that one night was crazy wind tearing trees apart and flinging them around Twister style!

Other then that, Screamsters are rain or shine, hell or high water baby!

Last weekend starts in a few hours!

I love Halloweekends, but I do have one complaint. If you are the screamster with the spiked shoulder pads in Fright Zone sorry for pointing you out...

Last Saturday after my friend and I's shift was over in Chuck Wagon we decided to walk through some of the zones. My friend had never been to Halloweekends before, so I wanted to show him what the zones were like. While walking through Fright Zone my friend stopped and watched one of the screamsters getting ready to scare some one. While he was turned around the screamster with the shoulderpads came up right behind him and waited.

As soon as my friend turned around he ran into the screamster. Not hard, it was just a bump. He didn't know the guy was behind him, so there was no way of avoiding it. Suprisingly, the screamster chest bumped him pretty hard on purpose, and shoved him a bit with his arms. My friend did the same thing I, and most other people would do, and shoved him back.

After that happened, the screamster grabbed my friend by the back of the neck and said "Come here D*ck im taking you to the cops". My friend said "Get off me; I'm not going anywhere with you..I didn't do anything". The screamster continued to try and lead him (by the neck) to the cops until my friend turned to the group of people behind us and asked, "Didn't you see him shove me? Didn't he push me first?" The group behind us agreed and told the screamster to stop being an Ahole. After that, the screamster let go and walked away.

It isn't the first time I have seen something like that this year. I don't know if you guys have big ego problems or what, but just tone it down. Your job is to try and scare people not to be immature little pricks trying to get attention.

Other than that and the giant crowds, Halloweekends has been excellent this year! :)

I'm not in any way trying to justify what happened, but I will say we've had a lot of problems this year. lots of violence and people trying to start stuff, and had some really nasty crowds on some of these past weekends. especially in the fright zone. it has put some people on edge certain nights. Having done this here for 5 years now, and as someone who can take some hits and stay level headed and know when things are a problem and when things are accidents, there have been a few times this year the focus hasn't been on scaring, and has been more about surviving the crowd. the sheer number of jerks and issues and lack of backup or action by the cops has left a lot of people real nervous and uncomfortable. Again not trying to justify or say this is what happened in this situation, just trying to provide a little insight on how bad its been crowd wise for us.

I just got back from my only Halloweekends trip and really enjoyed all of the Halloweekend attractions as usual. Just one suggestion, please don't overfill the haunted houses! We ran into the group in front of us in every indoor house and Cornstalkers and came to a dead stop. The people working at the doors of all of the houses just kept pushing people through with only about 20 seconds in between.

I have to compliment the guy they have at the door to Eerie estate. In my visits he has always done a good jobs keeping the flow of visitors going at a proper pace. My main reason though, is this guy is good. He is perfect for this attraction. From the way he talks with a bit of a reservered British accent, to his appearance and his understated mannerisms. He is good to watch even if you aren't in line. I've stopped a few times while passing by just to watch him do his job.

I hope he returns next year. CP needs to sign him to a long term multi-million dollar contract.

He is one of my favorite parts of HW.

Clevelandkid said:
CP needs to sign him to a long term multi-million dollar contract.

Multi-million seems a little much, no? :)

I'm sure his agent is talking to other parks. You gotta pay the big bucks to keep outstanding talent.

Vince982 said:
Just one suggestion, please don't overfill the haunted houses! We ran into the group in front of us in every indoor house and Cornstalkers and came to a dead stop.

Unfortunately, that's an issue for all haunted houses that doesn't have an easy fix. I went to Haunted Hyrdro in Fremont last Thursday night, and despite having a solid 3 minute gap between groups (it was a slow night) we still collided with several groups ahead of us about halfway through. The best anyone can really do is get their actors to know how to deal with large groups.

That's true. I guess most of the time it isn't the fault of the people working the door, but moreso the dumb people walking through that come to a complete stop for several seconds when they get scared.

At the mansfield reformatory, we were stuck behind a bunch of dim-witted girls who repeatedly kept stopping in front of us just to wait for actors to jump out. It was funny, because even though there was no guarantee an actor would jump out, they stopped anyway in suspense to let out shreiking yelps of attention whore and cuteness.

Originally, we were sent alone, but caught up with them because of their stopping. They should have waited longer before sending us in after the girls.