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I think BGW's Terror-Tories should be called Booze-zones.


(Hehe, booze as in scare)

Anyways, back to Tampa.
 
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I don't think the rumor is that far-fetched. While the event is not exactly the same from park to park, many Cedar Fair parks share the same mazes/themes/names/scare zones during their haunt events, and I believe Six Flags does the same. That way corporate only has to come up with one idea and test it out at one park. If it works, mass-produce the idea and ship it out for each park to implement in a similar way. This isn't to say every SEAS park needs to have an event that's the spitting image of its sister parks. Each event could/should maintain individuality based on the say of their own management, but this would save the company lots of money on branding, creative design, technical design, etc.

Better yet, design the mazes to be easy to pick up and move. That way every few years each park can just pack up their mazes and rotate them throughout the chain, bringing a new set to each park every season or so.

They could probably pull it off because the SEAS parks are fairly spread out, and most people probably don't make it to more than one SEAS park within the Halloween season anyway.

Edit: By the time I finished typing this, a bunch of posts had already been made on the subject. I like Party Rocker's idea of a corporate Howl-O-Scream team, though. It's like what Cedar Fair does: downsize each park's individual haunt teams and have everything come from corporate, thus cutting costs and perhaps bringing about more consistent events across the board.

Edit #2: Seaworld-related paragraph deleted thanks to a correction by Party Rocker. :)
 
Viktor said:
It's not so much of a corporate team. Individual HOS "Ambassadors" from each respective park meet together to collaborate on an event theme that the parks will later use for that years event.

That is a fine process but I just don't see all the parks being nice with each other. I feel like they each would try to get their own way. I could see Tampa trying to push their ideas through because they make a lot of money, but Williamsburg would try to push their stuff through because they are just ruthless like that, and then San Antonio would just sit there and say sure whatever you guys want.

Joe, you are very close to what I was thinking. Also SeaWorld Orlando doesn't have Howl-o-Scream. It's just BGT, BGW, and SeaWorld San Antonio.
 
Party Rocker said:
...but Williamsburg would try to push their stuff through because they are just ruthless idiots like that....

Fixed that for you.

Anyways.... As I have stated elsewhere I hate the idea of cross-park branding and theming work, so no I would not encourage this idea. Also, for the reason Nicole stated. I wouldn't mind the idea Joe stated of multi-park rotations, however. Still, I don't find the rumor far fetched, especially with the increase of cross-park branding/design lately among the SEAS parks(I'm looking at you Colossal Curl(s)).
 
I am all in favor of rotating houses between the parks. I even suggested that to Carl Lum once. Williamsburg has everything to gain and nothing to lose from this. Tampa could also get away with having Deadline and Bitten whether they are directly shipped or not. Besides, Tampa would actually staff them properly at all times.
 
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I know this doesn't have anything to do with HOS, and it really should go into the Adventure Island thread, but AI is just "There" and barely holding on financially.

Nobody really visits it (that I know of...), and they basically took a shortcut getting their new attraction by identically copying the existing Colossal Curl ride.

Will it draw in a big market & record breaking crowds? I don't think so...


On the note of staffing at the BGT houses, I was mildly impressed this year.

Compared to 2013's event, The Basement & Blood Asylum had barely half of the actors in the 2014 season. Not sure if it was due to budget cuts, but there was a substantial lack of scare in those houses IMO.
 
Matthew/Nicole: One would hope that a corporate-designed Howl-O-Scream would mean more haunt, as done by BGT and Seaworld San Antonio, and less of the drunken street party theme BGW has been playing with.

But I really do think cycling houses could be a solid path. If each park starts with six mazes and goes through the "cycle," there could be eighteen years worth of mazes for the chain, assuming maintenance is superb and one house is swapped every year. In the end each park will have three times as many mazes as they paid to make, and the company would have spent only a third of the money on houses that they would have spent if they'd just discarded their houses.
 
I'm surprised to hear that about Blood Asylum, but I'm not surprised about The Basement. The Basement always has that issue. Unfortunately for the guests, the backstage areas in both of those locations are too comfortable. They have so much room that most actors would rather hang out backstage behind drop doors and wall panels rather than being in immediate view.

On a side note, I got to see parts of Blood Asylum backstage with work lights on one time. It was because I lost my iPhone on Montu. The security guard saw my HOS T-shirt and asked permission to take me to the front of the park via Blood Asylum. Thank goodness, my iPhone was returned without a scratch, because it landed in the grass. Talk about an exciting adventure!
 
Has anyone heard about what HOS Williamsburg will be like? Normally they have more on the website by now but its still mostly posting stuff from last year. We went a few years ago and are going again this year but we cant find any new stuff on it. :irritated2:
 
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Water Country USA (also a related AB park, located next to BGW) does not have a haunt either, and I feel like they should really utilize that space, especially since the park is only open about 2-3 months of the year. BGW is now open almost 12 months of the year due to Halloween and Christmas. Water Country has a lot of space and they can easily build scare zones and a couple houses, in my opinion.
 
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