Halloweekends - Missing It's Vibe?

Miss_Maverick07 said:
I also think they took away some of the decorations because someone must have complained about them for some reason, just like that mental health group did with the asylum haunted house name. : /

Just about everything from the past few years (and even longer for some) is still sitting in the same spots. The only big noticeable prop missing was the UFO in front of Coasters Drive-In.

Ffej said:
Come on CP, bring back the music that people want for Halloween! And while we're at it, there have been people begging that Cedar Fair bring back the grandiose music to International Street at Kings Island ever since the takeover. Listen to your customers!

The only way they are going to listen is with an e-mail or a filled out comment card. Posting on here will do no good.

99er said:
The only way they are going to listen is with an e-mail or a filled out comment card. Posting on here will do no good.

Done. But honestly, if these are the only 2 ways that they're gathering customer feedback, that's a major problem in itself. It should be someone's full time job to gather customer feedback from every possible venue and convey the common themes or valid points to management.

Darth Snoopy said:
The weather may have had something to do with it. It's not often you see peeps walking around with cups of ice water during Halloweekends.

I've definitely noticed this, the weather has been weird and not very fall-like so far. None of the leaves on the trees have really started to even change yet. Once it gets colder and the leaves change/fall, then I think the "Halloweekends" feel will be more noticeable.

Also, I thought there was more "Halloween-ish" music in the park this year. I noticed what seemed to be the old Fright Zone soundtrack playing along the Gemini midway and Frontier Town last Sunday.

I too miss the music thay played up until about 2 years ago. I urge CP to return to that music.

I think most of the decorations are still there. I don't think the pumpkin faces hanging from the tree at the front of the park are there anymore. The school buses disapeared last year. I hadn't noticed the UFO was missing. I should have because I always thought it was kind of cheap looking and out of place. The last couple years parts were falling off of the back of it and that really looked bad. I won't cry over it's departure.

I was there Saturday night and I for one was very disappointed in the lack of screamsters doing there job. Lack of people scaring. Blood on the Bayou could be awesome with where it was but the screamsters were just standing doing nothing. The only guy that was freaking people out was the butcher. I miss fright Zone. I will be going a few more times so hopefully things change.

What is it that they changed that makes Screamworks so much different from Fright Zone?

They took out the skeletons in the hottub, it's now near TTD and the other props. They added some steampunk props. The costumes are less "monster" like. Overall it's not that different. To me there are not as many screamsters.

Fright Zone just seemed a little better as far as people in there trying to scare.

djDaemon said:
What is it that they changed that makes Screamworks so much different from Fright Zone?

Not much really. It is basically the same zone, even the lights are in the same places they have been for the past 10 years.

Clevelandkid said:
I think most of the decorations are still there. I don't think the pumpkin faces hanging from the tree at the front of the park are there anymore.

The pumpkins were moved into Fear Faire. Some of the decor that has been in the same place for years is still at the park, just in a different location.

It makes me wonder... if CP simply changed FZ's theme to steampunk, but didn't mention or promote it, would there still be complaints?

The change of theme is noticeable, even if that theme is somewhat half-baked. It's not the steampunk stuff that detracts per se but the amount of light being used on props like the "airship" along with the Starlight Experience floods. It tends to make the zone feel less immersive and more like an open space. The simplicity of Fright Zone made it all about the quality of the Screamsters and not a storyline/theme that is likely to be lost on most guests. It feels like the change to steampunk and Screamworks was more about the designers wanting to do something different than "improving" on what had proven to be a classic HalloWeekend attraction like Fright Zone.

TimChat2 said:
but the amount of light being used on props like the "airship" along with the Starlight Experience floods.

There were not any lights illuminating any of the larger props this past weekend. None of the Starlight washes around the Fort were on, it was completely dark in that area. The only time I saw any of those lighting fixtures used were the ground fixtures when the "lightning" effect was used (which was really cool!).

That's good to hear. I only experienced it on opening night so it's possible they were still tweaking the lights. The "lightning" effect is somewhat unneccesary to my view, but to each his own.

The last few weeks we have been running the old Fright Zone program for the lights. So the lights are the same as they were last year. Though we are tweaking the fort some the first weekend we had a problem with the fort lights and they were on white for most of the night, that has been fixed.

We are currently writing a new program to run the lights but have not finished yet, we are tweaking again this weekend. Though we do have a nice pre-show that was designed and we run before Screamworks opens and on Sunday's when it is not open.

Also no lights in the trees have ever been on since opening night, we do use a few of the color washes for strobe effects but all the Christmas style lights are unplugged at this point.

Does anyone know why they got rid of the haunted train ride from the earlier Halloweekends? Was it some kind of safety hazard in the dark (the crossings)?

I thought it added variety to the Halloween attractions, and it was something to do with very minimal wait.

lots of reports over the years. Safety being one of them, its hard to keep track of monsters because they are spread over a long stretched out area so its a bit harder to "watch their back" or keep them from screwing around or getting into stuff they shouldnt. lots of reasons. The park doesn't seem to be interested because its been kicked around a couple of times that it would be fun to bring back, or to do the cadillac cars like they did at geauga, nobody seems to care too much. despite the apparent interest

King's Island has a nice haunted train ride/trail.

Kings island also had a haunted cadilac car ride. Believe the the name was route 666 or something

^Which is actually a real state route in Ohio.

The Haunted train ride at KI is horrid. It never works. The issue is, you have to listen to a story as the train goes...about where you're going, and why, etc...and the people on the train never, ever shut up, so you hear nothing unless you are sitting right in front of the guy talking. Then they drop you off and you walk in the dark a little, but nothing makes sense, because you couldn't hear the story.

Nice idea, horrible execution, and not worth it at all IMO.