SEAWORLD’S THOUGHTS TURN TO FRIGHT FOR NEW EVENT
SeaWorld San Diego President Marilyn Hannes is thrilled to be bringing Howl-O-Scream to the marine park, but don’t expect to find her inside any of the haunted houses or scare zones.
“It’s pushing me way out of my personal comfort zone,” Hannes said during a phone interview. “I will probably not go through the mazes.”
Howl-O-Scream will debut in September and October during the Halloween season at the San Diego marine park.
The SeaWorld San Diego top boss got a baptism in blood when she visited Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens Tampa in Florida. Hannes went through one haunted house and that was more than enough. She ended up holding purses for the other women in the group for the rest of the night.
“I was scared to death,” Hannes said with a nervous laugh.
Breaking into the Southern California haunted event market will be tough, with established competitors such as Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, Knott’s Scary Farm and Six Flags Fright Fest. Fortunately for SeaWorld San Diego, it will be able to rely on help from sister parks in Florida, Virginia and Texas that have long run their own Howl-O-Scream events.
“We’re going all in,” Hannes said.
“It’s going to be very scary.”
Howl-O-Scream has long been on SeaWorld San Diego’s wish list.
“We’ve been wanting to do it for years,” Hannes said. “To have the chance to pull it off this year is absolutely phenomenal and I’m so excited about it.”
While it’s only March, SeaWorld is already hard at work on Howl-OScream.
“We have a lot of stuff to build between now and then,” Hannes said. “We will have multiple houses, multiple scare zones and a show or shows.”
SeaWorld designers are busy developing concepts for Howl-O-Scream haunted houses and scare zones.
“We have a lot on the drawing board right now,” Hannes said. “We’re taking the best out of all of our parks. We have scenes already that are just as scary as you can imagine.”
The pandemic put a halt to Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, Knott’s Scary Farm and Magic Mountain’s Fright Fest in 2020. SeaWorld’s HowlO-Scream will happen in 2021 — while adhering to COVID-19 guidelines — even if restrictions continue, according to Hannes.
“Busch Gardens Tampa did an amazing job of executing Howl-OScream in a COVID-safe way,” she said.
SeaWorld’s Howl-O-Scream will deploy original haunted house concepts, as Knott’s Scary Farm does, rather than build mazes based on wellknown horror movie properties like Universal’s Horror Nights.
“Our company is really good at this,” Hannes said. “We don’t have to create it from scratch. We can go fetch designs and ideas from the best of the best. So I feel like we have a huge head start for this.”
SeaWorld San Diego will look to sister park Busch Gardens Tampa as a model for Howl-O-Scream, Hannes said.
“They do an amazing job,” Hannes said. “There’s a theme every year. I’m looking at a couple different ones that they’ve developed that I think are phenomenal and they belong to us.”
Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens Tampa has featured themes such as nightmares, fears, curses and zombies. Past haunted houses at the Florida theme park have included Simon’s Slaughterhouse and Motel Hell, while previous scare zones have included Camp DOA and Deadly Toys. Busch Gardens Tampa has hosted a HowlO-Scream show called “Fiends” for nearly two decades.
The kid-friendly Spooktacular event will continue at SeaWorld San Diego. The park will be divided in half during the Halloween season — with HowlO-Scream on the western side, where most of the coasters are clustered, and Spooktacular on the eastern side.