Howl-O-Scream is going on now and runs from September 8th to October 31st this year. Halloween is big business at theme parks with a chance to earn lots of extra revenue from haunted houses and other events. This year’s events features several new haunted houses, scare zones, shows, food options and even behind the scenes tours. The super cool Christmas themed haunted house is back along with the Cirque X-Scream show. New this year are Las Vegas and demolition derby themed scare zones, a circus themed haunted house, a new musical show and the “Raveyard” with cocktails and music.

I think one of the coolest things is the “Behind the Scenes” tour where you can see one of the houses with the lights on! It’s also cool how the park utilizes old attraction queues, SBNO (standing but not operating) attractions and other areas often not seen by the public for the event. Here is a “Witch of the Woods” with the lights on video where they talk about how the area being used was the old indoor area from when the park used to have pandas years ago.

The parks put some big time money into these events with the scare zones starting to take form in the late summer and some of the haunted house structures permanent all year. The Stranglewood Estate house near Cheetah Hunt looks so peaceful in the daytime in July, not so much in October.

Hope you all enjoy fall and the Halloween season!