Drive-thru
FROR TAGE 7
Although the format has changed, the fear factor certainly hasn’t. The Pirates of Emerson should elicit as many screams as ever — perhaps even more — as riders make their way along a mile-long track that runs through a vast array of menacing and macabre sights.
Fr ight fans will pa ss through, among other things, a cemetery, a haunted house, a jail and, of course, a pirate ship. And we mean “pass through” in a very literal sense here.
“You are driving through the pirate ships and you are driving through the haunted houses,” Fields says. “You are not driving by them — you are inside them, which is really cool.”
The fog machines will be pumping, blasts of fire will soar into the sky, and the special effects and props will be coming at you from all directions. Combine all that with very active costumed actors, who will be working hard to strike fear as they wield chain saws, knives and other instruments of pain.
T here’s also a spooky soundtrack in the mix, which patrons can download beforehand and listen to during what should be a 20-minute trek through the haunt.
“If you press play at the same time you are starting, and stay in the 3 mph zone, the music will kind of match up with where you’re at,” Fields says.
There will also be an FM signal that drivers can tune into, although what they’ll hear there is more overall ambience than scene-specific soundtrack.
Also nice: Drivers and passengers won’t have to spend all evening looking at the brake lights in front of them. Organizers will be using a timedentry basis for each car.
“We let cars in every 30 seconds,” Fields says. “So that allows — a car driving at 3 mph, 30 seconds between cars — about 150 feet between cars. So you get your own individual experience.”
This is the 29th year of the Pirates of Emerson, which began as a celebration among friends and neighbors in the backyard of the Fields’ house on Fremont’s Emerson Street (thus the name), but quickly grew into something else.
“It was successful with the neighborhood,” Fields says. “Everybody loved it. It got bigger and bigger every year. Word got out. We had all kinds of cool stuff. We had a shark that came out of the swimming pool. We had a bridge we built over our pool. We had a scuba diver that was in the pool and would come out of the pool at you. It made it like a destination.”
By year seven, Pirates had outgrown the neighborhood, and Fields says city officials told them to shut it down. So, they decided to give up being amateur haunters and go pro, leasing a spot in the Warm Springs area in Fremont.
Eleven years ago, they moved into the fairgrounds, and they have been going strong ever since. The coronavirus situation threw them for a loop, but they’re hoping this workaround pleases Bay Area fright fans this Halloween season.