The Real Scare Is Not Being Scary
Universal Orlando Resort
Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights feature eight elaborate haunted houses and require intense, year-round planning and construction.
By BROOKS BARNES
Published: October 25, 2011
ORLANDO, Fla. — Chainsaws? Yawn. Bathtub electrocutions? Done them. Demented, blood-thirsty clowns? So 2001.
Sheri Lowen/Universal Orlando Resort
To scare its Halloween Horror Nights visitors moving on foot, Universal Orlando uses lighting, fog machines, video projections and actors popping up in the rooms of haunted houses.
For Universal Orlando, the big theme park here that counts on Halloween as a crucial profit center, the art of the scare sure isn’t as easy as it used to be.
The challenge is not size or money. Universal spends millions to stage and market its Halloween Horror Nights, which this year include eight haunted houses and multiple “scare zone” street parties on 25 nights. No, the scarce resource is ideas: coming up with new ways to entertain a “been-there, screamed-at-that” customer base raised on torture movies like “Saw” and bloody video games.
“These people are paying to get the bejesus scared out of them, and every year it gets harder,” said Patrick Braillard, a show director for the park. “We look at each other and say, ‘What’s left to do?’ ”
It’s no small worry. This movie-centered theme park, owned by Comcast’s NBC Universal, would not provide Halloween-related financial details, but the revenue appears to be considerable. Entry to Horror Nights starts at $42 (although discounts are available), and analysts estimate that as many as 500,000 a year have attended. Add in sales of beer, food and merchandise, and substantial profits are at stake.
Desperate to increase their off-season business, theme parks started circling Oct. 31 on their calendars in the late 1990s, led by Universal on the East Coast and Knott’s Berry Farm in California. It was a smart call: America’s obsession with Halloween as a cultural event was just starting to spike, and even in a stagnant economy, the growth shows few signs of slowing. The National Retail Federation estimates that total Halloween spending in the United States this year will total $6.8 billion, up from $3.3 billion in 2005.
Along the way, theme parks have played a major role in globalizing the holiday. Universal Studios Singapore is holding its first Horror Nights this year, for instance, while Disney now mounts Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween events at its parks in Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as the United States.
Here in central Florida, the haunted house scene has become rather, well, cutthroat. In 1990, when Universal first staged a horror event, it didn’t take much more than a couple of boos and a bowl of spaghetti guts to spook visitors. Since then, Disney’s Magic Kingdom, Sea World and Busch Gardens have steadily increased their own Halloween offerings.
To keep their footing on this shifting terrain — that is, to keep scaring people and making money from it — Universal’s fright makers have turned to an intense, year-round planning and construction regimen. “A fright factory,” said Mike Aiello, another show director with the park’s creative team.
Preparation starts in early October for the following year’s Horror Nights, Mr. Aiello said. The creative team starts by spewing out ideas and listing them on a white board, then spending several weeks culling and refining concepts and sometimes combining them. Over the years the park has burned through existing Halloween characters — Freddy Krueger, Jason and his hockey mask — so the goal is to invent new horror stories.
This year, for instance, a haunted house called “Nightingales: Blood Prey” is a mash-up of two concepts thrown on that board: terror in a World War I trench and demonic nurses that feast on the weak and dying.
The park sometimes gets help from its corporate cousin Universal Pictures. This year both Universal in Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood, near Los Angeles, constructed haunted houses around “The Thing,” a remake of John Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic. Universal Pictures released that film on Oct. 14 to bleak results; ticket sales total about $15 million.
Once the park planners select general concepts, the next step involves using graph paper to plot the maze interiors of the houses, each of which has about 10 rooms or scenes. A good scare is usually about the unknown for the visitor, but it’s all about control for the park, explained Jim Timon, Universal Orlando’s senior vice president for entertainment. Planners have to think about things like capacity and the flow of visitors, along with local safety ordinances.
In a way, haunted houses are more difficult to pull off than more elaborate theme park rides that involve cars on tracks. A vehicle allows Universal to control the experience — riders face in one direction — but haunted houses, where people are on foot, must scare in 360 degrees. To terrify an increasingly desensitized customer, Universal relies on lighting, fog machines, room temperature, water sprays, music cues, smells, video projection, wind and even fake snow. A recent addition to the fright toolbox has been actors flying with the help of wires.
Once the architecture of the rooms is planned, stories for each must be plotted. Universal keeps a type of research library stocked with pertinent books for inspiration (“A Pictorial History of the American Carnival,” “The Pop-Up Book of Phobias”) and urges its creative personnel to roam Florida in search of ideas. Old Spanish forts in the region helped inform the design for one of this year’s houses.
By late January, Universal technicians are building 3-D computer models that allow Mr. Timon’s team to take virtual tours through each maze. “We’re looking for ways to increase the startle,” Mr. Timon said. “Move a wall, change an angle.”
A crew of five artists and designers then compiles detailed design books for each house. These books, about 80 to 110 pages each, include colored sketches for set decorations and costumes that will be worn by actors hired to jump out of various nooks and crannies. Audio and lighting design takes up most of March and April, while construction starts in May and lasts through August, Mr. Timon said.
Universal hires the actors in July casting sessions. In total, the park hires about 1,000 temporary workers for Horror Nights, judging their abilities partly by orchestrating scream tests. “You want to make sure they have the lungs to keep going all night,” Mr. Aiello said.
Horror Nights, which Universal markets as “not recommended” for children under 13, started this year on Sept. 23. The park closes for each Horror Night at 5 p.m. and reopens as a haunted version at 6:30.
On a Thursday night this month, the scene before reopening was frantic, as dozens of actors arrived, changed into their costumes and stopped by one of 28 makeup stations to be painted with bullet holes, rotting flesh and blood. Appendages were arranged on tables. “Kristen S. : Retrieve your prosthetic arm!” a cranky-sounding prop manager yelled.
As guests flooded into the park, Mr. Aiello looked around with pride. Has Universal pulled it off for another year? “I have personally seen people exit these houses on their hands and knees,” he said.
A customer, Angela Gutierrez, offered more of a mixed critique. “I was hanging onto my boyfriend for dear life,” said Ms. Gutierrez, a 24-year-old restaurant worker, after emerging from a house called “The In-Between,” which uses 3-D effects.
But she was blasé about the woman encased in a glass coffin with live rats. Her assessment: “They did that last year too.”
The challenge is not size or money. Universal spends millions to stage and market its Halloween Horror Nights, which this year include eight haunted houses and multiple “scare zone” street parties on 25 nights. No, the scarce resource is ideas: coming up with new ways to entertain a “been-there, screamed-at-that” customer base raised on torture movies like “Saw” and bloody video games.
“These people are paying to get the bejesus scared out of them, and every year it gets harder,” said Patrick Braillard, a show director for the park. “We look at each other and say, ‘What’s left to do?’ ”
It’s no small worry. This movie-centered theme park, owned by Comcast’s NBC Universal, would not provide Halloween-related financial details, but the revenue appears to be considerable. Entry to Horror Nights starts at $42 (although discounts are available), and analysts estimate that as many as 500,000 a year have attended. Add in sales of beer, food and merchandise, and substantial profits are at stake.
Desperate to increase their off-season business, theme parks started circling Oct. 31 on their calendars in the late 1990s, led by Universal on the East Coast and Knott’s Berry Farm in California. It was a smart call: America’s obsession with Halloween as a cultural event was just starting to spike, and even in a stagnant economy, the growth shows few signs of slowing. The National Retail Federation estimates that total Halloween spending in the United States this year will total $6.8 billion, up from $3.3 billion in 2005.
Along the way, theme parks have played a major role in globalizing the holiday. Universal Studios Singapore is holding its first Horror Nights this year, for instance, while Disney now mounts Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween events at its parks in Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as the United States.
Here in central Florida, the haunted house scene has become rather, well, cutthroat. In 1990, when Universal first staged a horror event, it didn’t take much more than a couple of boos and a bowl of spaghetti guts to spook visitors. Since then, Disney’s Magic Kingdom, Sea World and Busch Gardens have steadily increased their own Halloween offerings.
To keep their footing on this shifting terrain — that is, to keep scaring people and making money from it — Universal’s fright makers have turned to an intense, year-round planning and construction regimen. “A fright factory,” said Mike Aiello, another show director with the park’s creative team.
Preparation starts in early October for the following year’s Horror Nights, Mr. Aiello said. The creative team starts by spewing out ideas and listing them on a white board, then spending several weeks culling and refining concepts and sometimes combining them. Over the years the park has burned through existing Halloween characters — Freddy Krueger, Jason and his hockey mask — so the goal is to invent new horror stories.
This year, for instance, a haunted house called “Nightingales: Blood Prey” is a mash-up of two concepts thrown on that board: terror in a World War I trench and demonic nurses that feast on the weak and dying.
The park sometimes gets help from its corporate cousin Universal Pictures. This year both Universal in Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood, near Los Angeles, constructed haunted houses around “The Thing,” a remake of John Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic. Universal Pictures released that film on Oct. 14 to bleak results; ticket sales total about $15 million.
Once the park planners select general concepts, the next step involves using graph paper to plot the maze interiors of the houses, each of which has about 10 rooms or scenes. A good scare is usually about the unknown for the visitor, but it’s all about control for the park, explained Jim Timon, Universal Orlando’s senior vice president for entertainment. Planners have to think about things like capacity and the flow of visitors, along with local safety ordinances.
In a way, haunted houses are more difficult to pull off than more elaborate theme park rides that involve cars on tracks. A vehicle allows Universal to control the experience — riders face in one direction — but haunted houses, where people are on foot, must scare in 360 degrees. To terrify an increasingly desensitized customer, Universal relies on lighting, fog machines, room temperature, water sprays, music cues, smells, video projection, wind and even fake snow. A recent addition to the fright toolbox has been actors flying with the help of wires.
Once the architecture of the rooms is planned, stories for each must be plotted. Universal keeps a type of research library stocked with pertinent books for inspiration (“A Pictorial History of the American Carnival,” “The Pop-Up Book of Phobias”) and urges its creative personnel to roam Florida in search of ideas. Old Spanish forts in the region helped inform the design for one of this year’s houses.
By late January, Universal technicians are building 3-D computer models that allow Mr. Timon’s team to take virtual tours through each maze. “We’re looking for ways to increase the startle,” Mr. Timon said. “Move a wall, change an angle.”
A crew of five artists and designers then compiles detailed design books for each house. These books, about 80 to 110 pages each, include colored sketches for set decorations and costumes that will be worn by actors hired to jump out of various nooks and crannies. Audio and lighting design takes up most of March and April, while construction starts in May and lasts through August, Mr. Timon said.
Universal hires the actors in July casting sessions. In total, the park hires about 1,000 temporary workers for Horror Nights, judging their abilities partly by orchestrating scream tests. “You want to make sure they have the lungs to keep going all night,” Mr. Aiello said.
Horror Nights, which Universal markets as “not recommended” for children under 13, started this year on Sept. 23. The park closes for each Horror Night at 5 p.m. and reopens as a haunted version at 6:30.
On a Thursday night this month, the scene before reopening was frantic, as dozens of actors arrived, changed into their costumes and stopped by one of 28 makeup stations to be painted with bullet holes, rotting flesh and blood. Appendages were arranged on tables. “Kristen S. : Retrieve your prosthetic arm!” a cranky-sounding prop manager yelled.
As guests flooded into the park, Mr. Aiello looked around with pride. Has Universal pulled it off for another year? “I have personally seen people exit these houses on their hands and knees,” he said.
A customer, Angela Gutierrez, offered more of a mixed critique. “I was hanging onto my boyfriend for dear life,” said Ms. Gutierrez, a 24-year-old restaurant worker, after emerging from a house called “The In-Between,” which uses 3-D effects.
But she was blasé about the woman encased in a glass coffin with live rats. Her assessment: “They did that last year too.”
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