How SeaWorld San Diego engineers its Halloween scares
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"You did a lot of things last summer." "Yeah, well, only one murder comes to mind." Photo: Claire Trageser/Axios
Alexander Krikes is out to scare you.
The big picture: Krikes is the evil genius, quite literally at times the man behind the curtain, for SeaWorld's six haunted houses, including an alien laboratory and a slaughterhouse.
- They're part of the Howl-O-Scream nighttime attractions meant to draw horror-lovers to the park all this month.
By the numbers: SeaWorld hires more than 150 people each season to scare the pants off people.
- They dress up as characters, hide and jump out as you walk past
- It takes one week of training and three to five months to set up the houses.
Driving the news: This is the first time SeaWorld got a licensing deal to make a movie-themed house, and used it to recreate "I Know What You Did Last Summer."
That 1997 movie scared the crap out of me as a teenager, but I'm such a committed journalist that I cautiously entered to find out how it works.
- Krikes kindly left the lights on.
Spoiler alert: Don't read on if you don't want to know the depths of these horrors.
How it works: After entering the house, you push your way through curtains, feeling like something will jump out at any moment.
- As you get farther in, a blast of air hits you and timed lighting makes the killer fisherman's shadow briefly appear.
- "It's essentially a false positive, making you think 'oh, he's here,' but he's not quite here yet," Krikes said.
- Then you head deeper, moving through movie scenes like the car crash, crab boil, department store and fishing boat.
- Performers use buttons and foot pedals to trigger steam blasts, flickering lights, red strobes and audio cues and then jump out at you with the fisherman's hook.
An especially terrifying room is filled with mannequins with plastic bags over their heads, but, of course, some of them are real people waiting to come alive.
- In another room, you're looking at an animatronic seagull and then the killer attacks from the other side when you're least expecting it.
- "We do a lot of misdirection in order to direct your focus to one area, and then push you towards another one based on the scares," Krikes said.
The last scare comes right at the end, when another air blast hits you, the fisherman grabs at you through a curtain. and the words "I still know" flash in strobe lights.
- Sounds like fun, right?
If you go: Howl-O-Scream opens at 6pm, and the scares begin at 7pm.
- It runs weekend nights through Halloween.
- Tickets start at $45.99, plus parking.