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Erebus haunted house prices12/28/2023 The Spanish company, Monsters International, put the United States haunt industry on notice in 1991 with Terror on Church Street in Orlando, Florida. Owned by Cydney Neil, this attraction was spotlessly clean and the volunteer acting troupe was second to none. Rocky Point Haunted house in Salt lake City, Utah was a massive attraction that not only had movie quality sets, costumes and makeup, but was filled with sets, props and costumes from major motion pictures. hours of operation that stands to this date. In its prime the event was host to fifty thousand people in only 10 days of operation and due to noise restrictions had to close at 10 pm a record for independent attendance vs. In the early 1980’s Joe Jenson operated Hades Haunted House in Chicago, Illinois. Throughout its history, there have been Haunted Attractions that raised the bar of haunting in attendance, creativity, detailed realism or pure fright-factor. Even with this high failure rate, some Haunted Attraction have been able to gain a foothold in their market and have been rewarded with attendances in excess of 50,000 people, (the industry average today is below 15,000 attendees per season). Haunting is a business like any other and the failure rate in the first five years exceeds the overall business average of sixty percent. Many start up haunted events fail before year 3, but for every failure there is a new first time event opening to take its place. Today there are between 2,000 and 3,000 independent haunted events in the United States every October. Today, prices for independent haunted attractions range from $8 for a small single element attraction to $40 for a full blown multi-element event while amusement park Halloween events range from $40 – $70 for general admission. This multi-element approach smashed through the $15 ticket price ceiling and was quickly adopted by other Halloween events. A bumper car building, a large queue line area, or an arcade with the games removed became separate “mazes” filled with creepy sets and ghoulish characters. However, Knott’s did not have one single large area for their haunted house and instead created multiple attractions in smaller spaces that the park had available. For an amusement park, a Halloween event drove patrons to the property during a month that historically had low attendance and it introduced new people to the parks amenities promoting return visits in the summer. Stumbling on to Halloween in 1973, Knott’s Berry Farm discovered the popularity of haunted houses and started cashing in on peoples love of being frightened. People were not willing to pay more regardless of size. Haunted houses grew to massive forty and fifty thousand square feet single attractions, but there seemed to be an admission price ceiling of $15. Ever looking to increase profits, attraction owners started raising their prices and the attraction size. Some of these events became very popular and it was not long before entrepreneurs realized the profitability of these two to nine day events.Īt first the for-profit haunted attractions donated partial proceeds to charities, but this gesture quickly died out The non-profit haunted house has all but disappeared from most cities due to the inability to compete with the advertising dollars that a for-profit event can pump into a market. Patrons paid a donation of $3- $4 to walk through an old house, church meeting room or school classroom decorated with frightening scenes and staffed with volunteers dressed in black robes and whiteface makeup. The first October seasonal Haunted Attractions appeared across the United States around 1970 as fundraisers for church groups and charitable organizations. As sensibilities and what society deems acceptable changes, attraction designers areįorced to weave a daunting path through the limits of good taste while trying to create as terrifying an experience as possible within building/fire codes, insurance restrictions and common sense safety of patrons and staff. On the cutting edge of technology, haunted attraction designers are ever searching for new ways to illicit screams of terror and delight from their patrons. The haunted attraction industry developed in the United States from single weekend church and civic fundraisers into a half billion dollar industry in only forty years. Published in Parkworld Magazine in September 2010 By Leonard Pickel, Hauntrepreneurs Haunt Design and Consulting
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