Reimagining Halloween Haunt at Kings Island part of tech manager Ben Houser’s role

However, the park has also gone through and updated many of these scare mazes, while also adding new experiences.

“Order of the Dragon,” is one of these additions, and serves as the event’s sixth haunted maze. This attraction takes guests through a medieval crypt, complete with monsters, cultists and dragons.

“The idea is vampires, thrones, castle-esque vibes,” said Ben Houser, the park’s area manager of entertainment technical production. “The idea came from our park manager at the time, who was like ‘Hey we want to create a new house,’ and we worked with a production company to bring that theme, that environment into real life.”

The attraction is located near Banshee, the park’s inverted roller coaster, inside the building once used for Blackout and other scare mazes.

“We used [the building] as our scene shop for awhile,” said Houser. “So we kind of did some shifting around and we added that building into our lineup for Halloween.”

Credit: Alex Cutler

Credit: Alex Cutler

The park also refreshed several existing attractions, adding new scenes, animatronics and frights.

“We looked at what we can do to give another spook or another scare to the guest experience,” said Houser. “We added animatronics, upgraded the lighting and added a little bit more effects here and there throughout each one.”

One of these updated attractions was Cornered, which was completely flipped from its original layout. Guests now enter the maze through a farmhouse façade, which formerly served as the exit.

“We took the layout and rethought the maze as a whole,” said Houser. “The layout flows a lot better. We also added a lot more overhead scenery, décor and lighting.”

In addition to these traditional scare mazes, which guests can enter using their Haunted Attractions Pass, Kings Island also added an upcharge experience to this year’s event, “The Conjuring: Beyond Fear.”

Also located at several other Six Flags parks such as Cedar Point and Carowinds, this experience takes guests on an interactive trip through the world of the popular franchise.

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed

Despite not being included with the Haunted Attractions Pass, this experience has proven so popular Kings Island has instituted a new reservation system for it.

“The guests are loving it from what we’ve seen,” said Houser. “I’ve definitely seen the people running and screaming.”

“This is our first combined Halloween event with the two companies and with a new Six Flags brand,” said Regional Manager of Public Relations for Kings Island Tony Clark. “So obviously they [the former Six Flags corporation] worked with movie partners before.”

Legacy Six Flags parks are known for using other properties owned by Warner Bros., such as DC Comics and Looney Tunes. This has lead fans of Kings Island to speculate if other intellectual property-based attractions may come to the park.

“I can’t say what the future holds for what IP [intellectual property] will appear at what parks or even at Kings Island,” said Clark. “This is the first step into that direction, and after this year, we’ll reevaluate everything and see how they performed.”

Clark also added how upcoming Warner Bros. films may affect this relationship, similar to how “The Conjuring: Beyond Fear,” coincided with the recent release of “The Conjuring: Last Rites” film.

“If Warner Brothers, and I’m not speaking for Warner Brothers obviously, but if they come to us and say ‘hey guys, there’s a new horror movie coming out, can we bring this into some of your parks?’ that might be an option as well,” said Clark.

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