Snowball

I did the lasers for this show! I’m so happy to see it open, the crowd reaction seemed really good tonight. I really like the idea of having a closing ceremony of sorts to end the night every night. Can’t wait to see what everyone thinks!

To put this into perspective, it’s a team of about 20 people, split up between scenic, decor, tech, and warehouse crews. It’s an impossibly small team to set up such a massive event with such a short turn around. The number of hours myself and other people on these teams have worked setting up haunt would make your head spin. There’s just stuff that simply cannot happen in such a short time span with such a small crew. Can’t forget about buyouts, either, the park isn’t really closed on weekends, it’s just closed to the public, making turnaround even shorter. You make a good point about third party stuff, I can’t say much about it, but there’s a ton of third party work that happens and they all have their own issues that lead to delays as well, plus, they all have multiple projects that they’re working on at once, not just KI. It doesn’t help when people complain about haunt decor being out at the end of the summer season, saying it shouldn’t be there until the park closes, and then proceed to complain when stuff isn’t out in time for opening weekend. And no, I’m not talking about one person on here, I hear it in person, see it on here constantly, and even see it on social media sometimes, though I do think this forum is the worst offender, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Even if haunt isn’t as cohesively themed, it’s still come a VERY long way from what it used to be back in the day and is still a fantastic event. Though I may be biased…

The sliders in the background have me cracking up. You can see me slide past a few times.

My best advice: Just do it! They’ll likely have you do a scream (Go for long and loud), and improvise any sort of character. When I did mine 7 years ago I did a zombie, and they put me in KillMart.

Even with a 13 week break after last season, I’ve worked over 1600 hours since last October. And that’s on the lower end. I have friends in the industry that have worked 2800+ hours. It’s a fun job though! Wouldn’t do it if I didn’t like it!

My personal favorite haunts in Ohio are Factory of Terror (but it’s all of the way up in Canton), Dent, Land of Illusion, and Lewisburg Haunted Cave (all 3 of which are fairly close to KI, with the cave being the farthest of the 3.).

Gladly! There’s open interviews for entertainment tech at the park on Sept. 11 from 12pm - 4pm.

Exactly. Between large private events like pride night and P&G day, public operating days on the weekend, a small team, and a gargantuan amount of work to be done including tons of work for those private events, there’s much less time than you think. Seeing people come on here talking about how easily it could be done and how we don’t need time is quite annoying, really. There’s so many things that happen behind the scenes that the general public has no idea about. None of this is as easy as it seems.

Come set it up and see what really has to happen then. You seem to enjoy talking about it and saying it’s doable, so why not join the team?

It was really sad to see Rick go, he did a fantastic job at KI in his time there.

It would be interesting. Due to the nature of my job, I probably wouldn't be able to post much about it though.

It's quite jarring. I usually work evening shift and don't get in until around 2:30 and work until late at night. When the park is closed, I work a normal 9 - 5 type shift. It's hard to get used to. It's a weird feeling being so used to all of the rides and guest noise and getting used to the silence again. I've seen a few people show up, but I don't think it happens too often.

Fully agreed. Leave it to those of us who are trained to do it as our jobs. Not only is it annoying to other guests, but you're putting yourself in danger by attempting to scare people. Some people react violently when you scare them, and if you're not trained on how to deal with that, it can end badly for you, and I've seen it happen many times. I'd even change it to "Don't try to scare anyone". Trying to scare the actors just makes you look foolish when it inevitably doesn't work, or you get security called on you. What really gets me is when people buy them and then either don't have them on, or hide them under their shirt, and then get all up in my face when I scare them because they/their kids didn't have the necklace visible.

The signs are indeed replicas. The scrims, the cannon, and the sarcophagus are all original to the ride. I don’t recall anything else on stage being original (except the vase?), if I remember, I’ll ask if there’s anything else when I’m back at work later this week.