It's Halloween again, and while some theme park fans will head out tonight to their favorite park Halloween event, many other TPI readers will spend the evening in a more traditional manner, taking the kids trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. (That's TPI Kid Brian, ready to go in his Indiana Jones costume.)No matter how you spend the day, I hope that you have a wickedly good time and wake up Saturday free of any candy hangovers, or, well, hangovers of any kind. ;-)
Which brings me to the Vote of the Week. Now, really, what else could it be than the most-asked question of the day?
Open thread for whatever you wish to chat about, in the comments.
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I suspect that the SoCal haunts employ a healthy number of un- and under-employed actors, people professionally trained to inhabit a role, and to do so aggressively. Certainly not everyone working a haunt is on IMDB, but I suspect enough have been to have influenced the culture.
That said, I don't like aggressive scare-actors, either. I've always been aggressive, myself, in looking for and making eye contact with them before I am "in range." With the element of surprise gone, they leave me alone. (FWIW, I am at a huge advantage here given the number of times I visit parks, allowing me to have pathways memorized. Less experienced visitors have to look where they are going, while I can look for who's in the way.)
A fog and maze zone where I didn't have to deal with scare-actors would appeal to me, as would special overlays on classic attractions. As much as theme parks have succeeded with their Halloween events, I think that there even more money left on the table, from folks looking for that spooky, not scary environment.
Growing up here also makes it strange since you can be walking through a maze and have a ghoul come up behind you and call you by name! I don't think it helps that I am not the prime target. I am not one to scream and carry on.
I went to a Halloween kegger last night, which was a treat. This led to many tricks later on.
I suppose I choose "treat", but I consider beer a treat.
On a somewhat related note, my daughter and I got into a conversation this morning where we decided that the phrase really ought to be "treat or trick." Start with the demand, followed by the consequence of not meeting the demand. Made sense to me.
And that reminded me of the first roller coaster review I wrote for the LA Times. I started to type "head over heels" to describe an inversion, but then thought: "Wait a minute. I'm *always* head over heels. That's my normal position. What I really mean is 'heels over head.'" So that's what I wrote, and that's the phrase I've used in several other reviews since then.
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We just returned from Cedar Point, and noticed something different about what it takes to scare in different parts of the country.
Maybe we are jaded in California, but when we go to haunts out here, the ghouls are much more aggressive. The fright zone at Cedar was much spookier, more fog, harder to navigate, better costumes.
I suspect there's probably some safety concerns in Cali about obscuring the view that much(we seem to have rules for everything out here). But at Cedar, deep down under all those wonderful effects, there were nicer folks inside, and you could tell. Personally I liked it better. I've never been too comfortable in letting a total stranger approach me with the seeming intent at harm. I just wonder if we can't find a better blend of fear at the west coast parks, less of the chainsaw, more of the spooky. And wonder if others have perspectives about this as well. Less of the trick, more of the treat.