What's up with kids at Halloweekends?

Over the years I have been going to Halloweekends, I have encountered many small children going into haunted attractions. There was a five year old girl walking in Blood on The Bayou. A mother was pushing a toddler in a stroller through Cut Throat Cove. It just seems like all haunts have very large amounts of small children going in them. Although I have noticed that whenever there is a small child in my group, scare actors stay away from us. The actors don't even look my way. It is very disappointing that these parents are forcing their children through haunts. Also it's not just through "congo line" haunts like Blood on The Bayou that have a lot of kids walking through them. Eternity Infirmary had many a kids that walked through it. What do you guys think of this?

Note this isn't a rant. It is an observation.

TL;DR Parents force their small kids through haunts.

The only time I ever took my kid through a haunt was for a "potty emergency"...she was 3, and we dashed through Fright Zone. She thought the lights and monsters were funny. Of course, daddy had told her that this was all a big game the people were playing, and everyone was wearing funny costumes and trying to make her laugh. I think we could have kept up that game just long enough for us to get out.

That said, I would personally not choose to take my children through any fright zone or haunt, both for her sake and the others.

Some parents let their kids watch R rated movies to, and I have parents come in my office with a baby in one hand with Mountain Dew in their bottle (this just happened last week). I'm constantly surrounded by parents making ill-informed decisions.

It's not a good idea, but I'm also going to guess that the parents are ignorant to how bad of an idea it actually is. And on top of that, it takes something away from the experience of other patrons as well. Frankly, I'm happy to hear that the screamsters stayed away.

Yeah these kids weren't in the haunts for "potty emergencies" lol. I'm from Pittsburgh and go to Kennywood Phantom Fright Nights frequently. There never seems to be young children there. So I was shocked to see kids in Eerie Eerie Estates at Cedar Point the first time I went.

Do screamsters stay away from small kids? If so, does anyone have a small kid or two I can borrow next weekend?

How do you know they were forced? This is pretty ignorant of you to come on a public message board and complain when you don't know all of the facts on the ground.

I never see little kids in haunts. Then again it's hard to see a foot in front of you sometimes.

Some kids you can tell are forced, if they are cowering into their parents arms, crying and/or screaming that they want to get out, that is a good sign they are being forced.

But some kids can handle being scared, different kids have different tolerances for stuff like that. Like some kids will ride TTD in a heartbeat, but some don't want anything to do with it.

Personally when I see kids, I don't behave any differently than if there weren't any kids. I just tone it down and be a little gentler with obviously terrified or really young kids.

Spont Combust said:
Some kids you can tell are forced, if they are cowering into their parents arms, crying and/or screaming that they want to get out, that is a good sign they are being forced.

But some kids can handle being scared, different kids have different tolerances for stuff like that. Like some kids will ride TTD in a heartbeat, but some don't want anything to do with it.

Personally when I see kids, I don't behave any differently than if there weren't any kids. I just tone it down and be a little gentler with obviously terrified or really young kids.

True. When I was about 8 years old, my sister and I watched The Shining and other horror movies. We wanted to and understood the plot and were not bothered by the gore and language, etc. My parents were OK with it. But....I was actually scared of going upside down on coasters and my parents had to bribe me on corkscrew when I was 11. Different people have different scare tolerances.

At Kings Island Friday night a woman and her 5 year old were in line for CarnEvil. The little girl wanted to be the first one to go through. She laughed the entire time and had fun.

Some kids are ready, some aren't.

Sadly there's no IQ test required before you can be a parent.

I actually saw screamsters stopping to console crying toddlers on two separate occasions Saturday. Once we were headed onto Frontier Trail and there was a Screamster kinda running interference so that a dad could get his kid out without them being scared any more, and then towards the end of our walk through CarnEvil there was a clown helping to show a kid that she was just someone in a costume.

This wasn't as bad as the kid I saw being forced to wait an hour for TTD and crying the entire time because he was scared of the ride. Talk about the worst time of year to try and get your kid to try a new ride.

I see a bunch of extremely annoying Middle School kids. I rarely see people with small children.

A lot depends on the child. My boy was about 6 when he wanted to go through the walk throughs. He knew it was just people in costumes like when he goes out for Halloween. We don't watch scary stuff, so it's not like he was used to scary things. So we decided to wade into the water as it where. We went into Fright Zone with him, ready to turn around if we had to. Well we got all the way through and he thought it was cool so we walked back. In a couple of years he want to run ahead of us and scare people himself. We didn't let him, but he wanted to. He is 14 now and sometimes brings friends that want no part of those attractions. Everyone has a different tolerance. He was the same way with the coasters.

Every situation is unique. You just have to quickly gauge the situation and know when to

1. avoid

2. offer the high five

3. scare, with less force

4. go all out

I personally enjoy finding a way to freak out the parent without the little kids or stroller kids knowing.

One thing I see in these zones that really worries me is when people walk through them with their child on their shoulders. There is way too much going on for that to be safe. Lots of running and bumping. I'm a fairly big guy and I've been bumped many times by hysterical people to the point of almost losing my balance. I'd hate to see a child fall.

My eight year old boy is a fearless roller coaster fiend, this was his first year at 52". He ran to TTD, and rode it at least ten times this weekend. He also loves scary movies. He was determined that he wanted to try the haunts this year, but freaked out half-way through the first one (ScreamWorks), I had to carry him bawling on my shoulder the rest of the way through. We didn't try another. There was a little boy that looked about his age in our group entering Eerie Estate. He was determined to go through, even though his parents kept warning him that it was scary. He bailed just as we were going in, he looked so disappointed. I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up going in later. I think all kids are different. Some can handle it, others can't, and some think they can until they're at the point of no return, and have to bawl the rest of the way through.

Bigmal said:

I personally enjoy finding a way to freak out the parent without the little kids or stroller kids knowing.

You could always talk about global warming...

I can absolutely see how one might categorically say that the ghouls and such are a very poor idea for children, but I don't personally agree with that position and think it's a pretty individual thing. I took my 7 1/2 and 9 yr old girls to Halloweekends last weekend, and we did the Eden Musee. I'd told both of them that it would be very, very scary - that was the point of it. And that some people like that sort of scares and some don't, and either is totally fine and normal. We discussed how these were actors, etc. and they both insisted that they really wanted to do it.

The 7 yr old LOVED it and wanted to do more! Miss 9 got pretty scared 3/4 of the way through and started to cry a bit - we got her calmed quickly and the folks were very nice to her. M9 was escorted off to the arcade to feed the machines, while I let Miss 7 go on two of the walkthrough areas, and we both just laughed a lot - I like the scares and screams and find the makeup and acting skills really cool, but can't really fear it at all, a trait which Miss 7 happens to share and Miss 9 happens to not. However, I did think that just one of the houses was enough to experience despite M7's enthusiasm for it.

The "scary folk" were absolutely great with the kids, I really have to say. I think that M9 got a scarier experience because she is tall for her age. When we were walking in Eden Musee, there was a very loud man scaring people right at the door, screaming at them and such - he just looked at M7 and said "you're short." He was great!

Btw, M7 and I got a very big laugh out of a young lady who looked to be about 25 or so, who was running through the Bayou section yelling "I've got to get out of here!" with her hands over her ears.

Now, after the kiddos went back to the room for some swimming and bed, I went with our 19 yr old to some of the other haunted houses and yes, it sure was a very different experience than walking with a little one! Both were absolutely fantastic, though - and I actually got slightly creeped out at the end of the infirmary when a young man looked at me and said "Mommy, he took my arm" in a very sad way. That totally got to me!

I think the reason why very small children such as your 7 year old daughter are not as scared of haunts is because they are too young to understand the concept. From my experience, I've seen some very small little girls and boys happily giggling at the actors. They are simply too young too understand that these characters are murderers, zombies, vampires, etc. Although when they age, they start to better understand what is going on in the haunts and, are more scared of the actors.

That was exactly the case with my daughter as well.