Kings Island drops haunt depiction of murdered football star

I happen to also think that it was some sort of planned publicity stunt.

Here's where someone comes in and says, "You would, LK."

In which Would reply, "Yes, I would". lol

Enjoys when LK has conversations with himself..

:)

Personally, if they want to tap into popular affairs I think they should have a display of a murdered Kanye West with the blood-written phrase "Taylor Swift was here" on his chest.

That's something EVERYONE could enjoy. ;)

mfivsdarienlake said:
http://hellhousemovie.com/ --- it should still be on netflix instant watch [it's been a year since i've seen it]..... go watch that, and then come back to this thread. then you will see what they COULD have done. the baby abortion scene is pretty good. ;)

Yeah, nothing says Halloween or horror, like a giant hellfire-and-brimstone religious scare tactic. I have a hard time believing that those who are "scared" into Christianity, actually stay involved for long because it's not based on a true belief or understanding. Buuuutttt, whatever floats your boat.

I personally think that KI is beginning to really box itself in with the "Adult Themeing" not just based on skeletons but also their haunts lets take a look at the zones added since it became HH:

-Club Blood: Slutty Bloody Vampires and their victims.
-Urgent Scare: The most blood stained zombies Ive seen in a bloody hospital.
-Slaughter House: A Human and animal meat house, which has loads of bloody carcasses everywhere and even has manure smells piped in.
-Cut Throat Cove: Blackbeard's Revenge except more bloody

Just because its a mature event does not mean that you need a gross out gory maze every single time. Its really starting to get old, year in and year out people I talk to's favorite mazes are Massacre Manor and the Trail of Terror. They have some gory gross out parts but for the most part focus on startling and frightening. I really hope this leads them to go in a different direction next year and maybe do an alien maze, or something like the Island of Dr. Morrau type thing, you know monsters vs gore. Club Blood was original thinking (at the time,) Urgent Scare is a great maze, but this year Cut Throat Cove was not nearly as good as Blackbeard (some of it was the location, it had less hiding spots then Tombstone Terror-itory) and Slaughter House was personally a pretty uninspired maze (although the actors were really good in it, but most will move on to the new haunt next year.) Be orignal next year please.

Good point Touchdown. You don't have to shock people or gross them out to have an effective haunt. I liken it to movies. The scariest movies have minimal blood and gore, imho.

Raven-Phile, I've been through exactly one christian haunt, ScareMare in Holidaysburgh, PA. While pretty fun and kind of scary, the "saving" at the end kind of pissed me off, and back then I was a serious christian. If anything, the way some churches force Christianity onto people by whatever means necessary is one reason that I have abandoned the religion.

I know part of the goal of switching to Haunt from FearFest was to make things more mature similar to what they do at Knott's. However, since I've never been to Knott's, it's hard to say if things are similar there or done better.

Like everything at Kings Island, Haunt just seems to be looking for some sort of identity.

LostKause said:
I happen to also think that it was some sort of planned publicity stunt.

I saw this on the news and thought the same thing right away. Notice the PR response mentions that the event starts on Friday...twice. Bad publicity is still publicity and they got a ton of people talking about their event. They don't care if we agree with it or not, if we're talking about it or debating then we've been punked by the marketing department. :)

The Cedar Fair Halloween events are in the same category at theming a coaster to Saw. Gory, digusting and in poor taste. They take nice parks and turn them into places filled with images of horror. Halloween can be done without being gory. This idea takes the cake and shows how awul the minds are that creat this stuff. They should be really proud of themselves.

^The SAW (Eurofighter) ride at Thorpe was crazy-busy, with even "young kids" in line. Of course, I haven't seen the movies, so I can't speak to that....but the warehouse was chock-full of stuff I don't think my nieces would have been ready for.

Okay, Super7, while I agree that an effective haunt does not need blood and gore, it is still an effective element in a haunt. I still like it, and it still helps with the scares.

I do believe that it is way overused in Halloween haunts, but that doesn't mean that it should be totally cut (was that a pun?).

The perfect haunted attraction will have some gore, but not rely on it for all scares, in my opinion.

I think the perfect haunt attraction would actually scare you - not just repeatedly startle you. There's a huge difference.

People jumping out at you and loud noises and such aren't scary - they're startling and anyone can do it.

I understand that it's a tried and true method of doing things, but imagine an attraction that actually managed to be frightening or unnerving - something that really got inside your head. That'd be the best.

I have no problem with gore - hell, I'd like a truly adults only experience where they took it even further. But that's not scary either, that's shock value that's barely effective in the first place.

super7* said:
The Cedar Fair Halloween events are in the same category at theming a coaster to Saw. Gory, digusting and in poor taste.

That's a very poor generalization. I don't think you've been to any of the parks to say that. I can tell you that Cedar Point and Valleyfair at least are none of those things.

I'd have to agree about the gore thing. I mean you can see gore on Grey's Anatomy, but there's nothing really scary about that. A good mind... um, intercourse, however, can really get the job done and it sticks with you a lot longer, too.

I think that the startling and gore are prevalent because they appeal to the greatest common denominator of the public, they can be done quickly and easily, and despite everything else they are the safest.

People jumping out and yelling "Boo," a guy in a mask revving up a chain saw, and representations of body parts strewn about, you know will get a reaction from most people. Really getting into their heads and scaring them is more complicated, and more varied. What scares some people won't bother others. I also think to really scare someone takes more time and setup than a typical walk-through haunt will allow.

Maybe if people told us what really, really scares them, we could come up with something here.

RatherGoodBear said:
I also think to really scare someone takes more time and setup than a typical walk-through haunt will allow.

Exactly why I'd love to see someone try something atypical.

Something a little more intimate and interactive - a longer experience. Upcharge it even.

I wish I had more than a foggy concept, but I suppose if I did, I'd be putting it to use making something of it. :)

My old haunt team did something exactly like that about 15 years ago. While really really cool, it was really difficult to pull off.

I can't remember the exact details, but I'll tell you what I remember... It took place in the large house that we always had our haunts in, in Altoona, PA. We had small groups of 10 people, and we took them through about 5 or 6 rooms. The guide was an actor who played a paranormal expert. Each room had a about a 10 minute skit where the paranormal expert would tell of what incidents had happened at the house and about the ghost sightings. In the last room was a séance where everyone sat around a table with all the lights off, except for a candle (actually an artificial candle) in the middle. Near the end of that scene, the candle goes out and we had some special effects such as hidden fans blowing, noises like a bells and horns, and an actor would climb under the table and touch the guests legs with a rubber hand at the end of a stick. We also had fishing line on the tip of a long stick that we someone would string across the guests face.

It really creeped some people out. Others, not so much. The actor made sure to tell everyone to stay seated, especially after the lights went out, but some people would get up in a panic.

The small staff had a lot of fun with that haunt, which took place after our normal haunt in the same house. It took about an hour to go through, and cost about $20, I think. Compare that to our regular haunt, which took about 15 -20 minutes, and cost about $5. The late night experience sold out very quickly each night. We would run more two or three shows an hour with multiple actors playing the part of the paranormal expert, sometimes for two or three hours per night.

We only did it the one year because it ran too late into the night after the regular haunt closed. A lot of of our volunteer staff were high school kids, and we had concerns with keeping them out too late. We also had safety concerns with people getting up from their seat after the lights went out in the séance room. The next year, we decided that we would scrap the idea and run the regular haunt a little bit later in the night.

^^ Someone needs to channel their inner Serling or Hitchcock. Or even their inner Poe. I agree that the experience you're talking about would have to be more intimate.

I think if somebody did come up with something brilliant and atypical, it would eventually end up a victim of its own success. It would become more popular, so they'd end up diluting it to make it available to as many people as possible.

CP dropped their Poe performances this year, which was a really bad idea. Those shows were amazing.

The park might be able to get away with graphic depictions of violence that appeal to the greatest common denominator, as long as they keep them surreal. Doesn't Cedar Fair still hold some intellectual property rights? Three words: Dead Peanuts Characters.