Thrills & Chills

The designers behind amusement parks' mostpopular
attractions--roller coasters and haunted house--are master manipulators
of our deepest fears.

IN ORLANDO, FLORIDA, David Clevinger stands in a back corridor of
Terror on Church Street and listens expectantly as customers make their
way through the haunted house's passages. Suddenly screams erupt, sending
Clevinger, the attraction's artistic director and operations manager,
into gales of glee. "I love that sound," he chortles. So does Dave Focke.
Watching shrieking riders hurtle through the drops of The Beast, the
massive wooden coaster at Paramount's Kings Island near Cincinnati, Ohio,
Focke beams with pride. "Guests come off breathless, hearts pounding,
scared out of their wits," exults Focke, the park's vice president of
construction and maintenance. "And wanting to get in line to go
again!"

Call them shock meisters, terror tacticians, spookologists and
boo-ologists. The small band of designers who create the roller coasters
and haunted houses that are amusement parks' premier attractions are
master manipulators of our deepest fears. They get us to walk through
pitch black hallways and step into cutaway coaster cars that dangle our
arms and legs. They exploit our most closely held vulnerabilities--and
make us like it.

For designers, primarily engineers for coasters and theatrical
artists for haunted houses, turning fear into fun depends on illusion. No
matter how precarious a roller coaster or alarming a haunted house may
appear, it must be totally safe. "We always try to make them look and
feel more dangerous than they really are," says Michael Boodley,
president of Great Coasters International, Inc. of Santa Cruz,
California.

Though the experience offered by roller coasters and haunted houses
diverges dramatically--it's the difference between pushing a wagon over a
steep hill versus telling campfire ghost stories--the attractions are
constructed of common elements. Both draw on all our senses, both rely on
surprise for their shocks and both quote heavily from the movies
(coasters replicate action-adventure perils, a la Indiana Jones and Star
Wars, and haunted houses feature quasi-Frankensteins and Friday the 13th
Jasons).

But the biggest common denominator is that the two feed on the same
basic fear: loss of control. Once a coaster takes off, passengers can do
nothing but sit or, on some rides stand, and scream. "The closest thing
to compare it to is driving with an idiot," observes Boodley. Lynton
Harris, director of Madison Scare Garden, an annual fright fest in New
York City, also uses an auto analogy for haunted houses. "It's a hundred
degrees outside, and you'd expect to get in a car and have air
conditioning, and all of a sudden the heater gets turned on," he says.
"Then the doors lock. Cocky as you are, you realize you're not in
charge."

With roller coasters, the psychological games start before
customers even get into the train. Boodley purposely makes his wooden
coasters as diabolical looking as possible. "It's kind of like a black
widow spider web," he explains. "It's a very, very pretty thing, but when
the black widow gets you..." Queueing customers at Outer Limits: Flights
of Fear, one of 12 coasters at Kings Island, are treated to dim lights,
alien noises and a video of a space station in the grip of a mysterious
force. "Even after having ridden that ride probably close to a hundred
times, I sit there anticipating the start, and my palms still sweat,"
says Outer Limits designer Jim Seay, president of Premier Rides of
Millersville, Maryland.

Whether the traditional chain-driven wooden or steel clackers or
the newer linear induction motor (LIM) rides that harness electromagnetic
force to blast off trains, all roller coasters play on two related--and
universal--terrors: fear of heights and fear of falling. "The loops and
elements, they come and go, but the coaster always has to have the big
drop," says Focke of Kings Island.

Traditional coasters provide an ex-cruciatingly slow buildup to the
plunge. "There's a lot of self-abuse on that chain lift," says Boodley.
"Your own mind puts you in a state of paralysis." (Wooden coasters also
creak, rumble and clickity-clack naturally as they flex, but riders get a
queasy feeling that the structure is about to collapse. "That's probably
one of the funniest things we as designers get to appreciate," says
Boodley.) LIMs, on the other hand, rocket you into terror with trains
that go from 0 to 60 mph in under four seconds. The big drops are
actually shorter on LIMs, but the sense of speed sets hearts
pounding.

Most coasters travel below 70 miles an hour, slower than many
people drive, but designers heighten the sense of speed and danger with
close flybys of terrain, buildings, people, even other trains. At Busch
Gardens Tampa Bay, Montu dives riders into five trenches, one of which
emerges through the patio of an ersatz Egyptian temple. "Not knowing
exactly where the bottom is or where you come out is important," says
Mark Rose, the park's vice president of design and engineering. "If you
could see the whole thing, then you could kind of play it out in your
mind." Some coasters, like Outer Limits and Disney World's Space
Mountain, intensify the fear and suspense by keeping passengers in the
dark for the entire ride.

Upping the vulnerability quotient even further is a recent
innovation: inverted coasters which suspend riders below the track and
carve away as much of the train as possible. "There is less fiberglass,
less coach around you, so your feet are just hanging out there," notes
Rose. During one stretch of track on Montu, passengers' soles skim just
24 inches above the ground. Riders also get dangled over a pit of live
Nile crocodiles.

A coaster's effects, though, are not all illusory. Passengers pull
close to 4 positive G's on some plummets. They turn upside down on loops
and rotate head over heels through corkscrews. They literally feel the
wind in their hair and, on a LIM coaster launch, the air in their eyes.
Human bodies don't commonly experience such acrobatic maneuvers, and that
in itself is psychologically disorienting. "Anytime you put a rider in a
situation they're not used to, there's an element of the unknown,"
declares Boodley. "And for 80% of people, fear is the unknown."

The biggest unknown of all is death, and creators of haunted houses
are masters at exploiting our fear of dying, especially in a gruesome
manner. To unnerve guests, designers depend on two elements. The first is
setting a spooky mood with sights, sounds, smells and "feels"--"all the
things that make you uneasy," says Drew Edward Hunter, co-chairman of the
International Association of Haunted Attractions and design director of
haunted attractions at Sally Corporation of Jacksonville, Florida. "Then
you have the second part, the attack, the out-and-out scare. I don't
think you can have one without the other."

For the "creep-out" effect, haunts are always dark; skeletons,
skulls, fog, ticking clocks and screaming ghouls abound. "On my sets, I
try to capture a claustrophobic feeling," says Terror on Church Street's
Clevinger. "I bring my ceilings low, the walls close." To further
emphasize the sense of enclosure, he hangs tree branches, Spanish moss,
rags and spider webs.

Just the suggestion of something loathsome will give customers the
screaming meemies. "Do the sounds of insects, and people scratch their
heads all the way through," says John Denley, president and owner of
Boneyard Productions of Salem, Massachusetts. Run a soundtrack that
whispers of rats, turn on ankle-aimed air hoses and professional football
players tap dance. A strong whiff of formaldehyde and you have the scent
of death, "no matter what country you're in," says Clevinger.

The second part of the equation is the scare, which, say
spookologists, is really a "startle." "All scares are primarily based on
two things," instructs Edward Marks, president of Jets Productions of
Chatsworth, California. "One, it's there and does something you don't
expect it to do, or two, it's not there and it appears."

In Terror on Church Street, customers come upon Hannibal Lecter,
the cannibal psychiatrist of Silence of the Lambs. He yells and lunges
against his cell's bars, drawing yelps from viewers. The cries quickly
subside into nervous tittering. As guests make their way around the bars,
Lecter follows along inside. Then, just when viewers feel safest, Lecter
opens the cage door and steps out. "The guys who were taunting him
usually scream the loudest," observes Clevinger.

In the second type of gag, designers have people or objects
suddenly emerge from in front, beside, above or below patrons. A surefire
gag--and the simplest of all--is dropping a spider on a person's head.
"We call that a $2 scare," says Harris of Madison Scare Garden. "It's the
best value-for-money scare we've ever used."

Another never-fail gotcha goes by the generic term "UV Dot Man."
Guests enter a dark room with ultraviolet dots on the wall (variations
would be skeletons or geometric patterns). A black-masked actor wearing a
black bodysuit, likewise bearing UV dots, stands against the wall and
jumps out. "You are actually looking at him before he leaps out at you,"
Marks says. "It works every time, and it's so simple." (Another certain
scare that designers hate, but feel compelled to use, is the
hockey-masked goon waving a whirring chainsaw. Customers complain if a
haunted house doesn't have one.)

For designers, combining the two types of gags may be the most
satisfying scare of all. In his favorite trick, Denley once draped sheets
over padding, topped them with masked and wigged heads, and attached the
forms to the caging on oscillating fans. He plugged the fans into a power
strip, but left the cords clearly visible. These "monsters" started
moving in unison when people entered the room. After the initial
surprise, guests noticed the power strip and began mocking the amateurish
set up. Suddenly, the middle white-sheeted monster--actually a man with
one of the plugged-in extension cords tied to his leg--leaped out.

"It was hilarious," recalls a chuckling Denley, who is also known
as Professor Nightmare. "We had a woman hyperventilate. We had people wet
themselves. They thought they knew the gag--and, bam! we hit them with
something totally different." Guests losing control of their bladders is
considered a badge of honor among haunt producers. "We call it yellow
control," Clevinger says. Getting an entire group to cower on the ground
is another measure of success.

While the live actors who sometimes assume roles in haunted
productions are forbidden to touch patrons, they are encouraged to invade
their personal space. "Everybody's got this wonderful circle around
them," says Denley, who likes to have actors suddenly appear as close to
a person as possible, then disappear. "We want to leave you thinking,
`What was that?'"

Designers also like to pick their victims. "We call it `slicing the
group,'" says Marks at Jets Productions. "We actually can single out a
person from 20 people. A guy and girl clinging together--I can slice them
apart with the fight scare." A trained actor watches their body language,
whether they tighten up, stare him down, or avert their eyes.

Male customers are a favorite target. "We try to take the guys who
are hecklers and make examples of them," observes Denley "If you nail
them, the rest of the group will follow." Men also pose a special
challenge. "Guys are harder to read than women," Denley explains. "They
don't do body language as much. Women are more animated, more intent on
being scared. Guys play it cool." Designers usually get them with strikes
from above or below, but they're careful. Men sometimes lash out with
their fists.

"The scariest things come from your mind," sums up Edward Hunter.
"With the right setup, the fight imagination, the right story, your mind
creates things we couldn't possibly show you." "No matter how good the
makeup or the costume, nothing is more effective than your imagination,"
echoes Denley. One proof: guests at Terror on Church Street scream loud
and long when, at a particular point, they catch a glimpse of lurking
monsters. The fiends: themselves, reflected in strategically placed
mirrors.

Beating Coasterphobia

WHENEVER I'VE BEEN FACED WITH RIDING A ROLLER COASTER, I'VE
recalled the mythic Sirens' singing. I remember all too well that sailors
lured by the beauty of the voices ended up crashing and perishing on the
rocks.

My fear of roller coasters has been deeply ingrained. I suffer from
acrophobia, which makes me certain I'll spill onto the ground a mile
below, and a personal height (6-foot-2-inches) that makes me feel I have
to scrunch down to avoid being scalped by girders. As if that isn't
enough, I also suffer from motion sickness. Ironically, I'm a journalist
who derives his living from writing about amusement parks, and I'm well
aware of how safe these contraptions are (triple-redundancy security
systems!). Still, I know that my ride will be the one time all the safety
systems fail.

I'm not alone in that feeling, of course--and that concerns
amusement parks who see dollars dribbling away. Now they're doing
something about it. Universal Studios recently enlisted two
psychologists, Brian Newmark and Michael Otto, to come up with a plan to
help frightened riders at its new Orlando, Florida, theme park, Islands
of Adventure. The park's biggest attractions are two next-generation
coasters: Dueling Dragons, which sends two inverted trains on
intertwining courses resembling the flight paths of the Navy's Blue
Angels, and The Incredible Hulk, which catapults cars through a kelly
green track that looks like gift-wrap ribbon gone berserk.

The psychologists' solution: the Coasterphobia Stress Management
Program. As a diagnosis, the term "coasterphobia" is suspect, says Otto,
Ph.D., director of the cognitive-behavior therapy program at
Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor at Harvard
Medical School. "A 'phobia' demands you have a serious life
interference," he explains. "You can go through your whole life and not
ride roller coasters and be perfectly fine." But to those who fear the
pretzelated structures, life is often less enjoyable. In screening
participants for the course's test run, "coasterphobics" reported that
their trepidations kept them from fully participating in social outings
to amusement parks, and parents felt that it hindered their performance
as mothers and fathers.

Fifteen coasterphobics were in the first class; I was one of them.
The goal: to learn techniques that we could use before and during the
ride to overcome the strain. "It's not about convincing people to get on
the ride," stresses Newmark, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Wayland,
Massachusetts. "It's about reducing anxiety."

Newmark and Otto began by explaining to us how the mind and body
naturally respond to a coaster's speed and G forces, sensations coaster
fans channel into a thrill but the rest of us believe is real danger. We
had to learn to not listen to our instincts, said the pair. "Why do we
tighten our hold on the harness handles if we're sure the coaster car is
going to fly off the track?" asked Newmark "Do we think we can really
pilot the car to a safe landing by gripping harder?" I listened closely
to their teachings to approach the ride as fun. Engineers design these
rides to thrill us, we were told, and if we sit back and let their genius
unfold, we'll enjoy the experience.

Then we trained. We tensed and untensed muscles to learn to relax.
We did breathing exercises. We circled our heads to induce dizziness. We
rocked back and forth in our chairs to simulate a coaster's motion. Then
we circled our heads while rocking. We screamed, which Otto pointed out
not only forces you to breathe on the coaster but is part of the ride's
fun. We watched a passenger perspective video of The Incredible Hulk,
rocking as we did so. At this point the hitherto-willing participants
started swallowing hard. Eyes grew wide and wary, and when Otto turned
the video's sound on, one woman tensed up so much she forgot to
rock.

Next came our graduation exercise: riding The Incredible Hulk. I
settled into my seat, the harness lowered over my shoulders and
mechanically locked into place. Have fun, I reminded myself, and instead
of feeling trapped or worrying that you're among the first people to ride
this coaster (guinea pig? sufficiently tested?), just let the adventure
happen. With the catapult up that first lift, I began a yelled-out
running commentary that continued through the ride's sudden rotating
twists and countless loops, corkscrews and dives, all the way back to the
station. Sure it was gibberish, but normally I ride coasters with
clenched teeth.

To the psychologists' surprise, all 15 of us coasterphobics rode
The Hulk not once, but twice. Several even took a third turn, and one
couple hit the track five times. As for me, on both my trips I arrived
back at the station with a happy heart but a queasy stomach. Motion
sickness isn't imaginary, sad to say, and just writing this brings back
that woozy feeling. Nevertheless, I no longer regard coasters with
apprehension. I'm even ready to take on Dueling Dragons, which looks even
more diabolical than The Hulk. Maybe I'll get a little ill from the
motion, but now I can handle the emotion.

--Erik Minton

Scaring Up Business

TO CONSUMERS, ROLLER COASTERS AND HAUNTED HOUSES ARE fright rests.
To the proprietors, they're a business, and however much designers
delight in their craft, they ultimately must make sure the attraction
turns a profit. Many haunted houses are stand-alone attractions and get
their income from direct ticket sales. Some houses--as well as virtually
all coasters--are included in the single-price admission at most
amusement parks. In that case, whether or not the customer rides a
coaster or visits a haunted house has no direct impact on that day's
income. A dazzling attraction, however, drives up the season's gate by
creating good word-of-mouth publicity that entices new customers to come
and try it out. It also draws repeat customers who want to relive the
thrills and chills.

Quality, therefore, counts. "We have found through experience that
some coasters are so rough people will ride them once and not want to get
back on," says Mark Rose, vice president of design and engineering for
Busch Gardens Tampa Bay "We want to have a ride that's smooth and
comfortable. Our experience here is when it's done right, people do it 10
times a day." The park has set two parameters for its major coasters: to
reach a maximum of 3.85 vertical G's (the gravitational force that pushes
riders back into their seats) and a maximum of 0.5 lateral G's (the
side-to-side force). Keeping the lateral forces to a half G makes the
ride smooth, and engineers further assure the effect by adjusting the
track's tilt by millimeters.

Length of ride is another issue. The laws of physics determine that
coaster trains can only go so far powered by gravity (and after their
initial blastoff, Linear Induction Motor coasters rely on gravity to
complete the course), so no matter how tall the track, rides can only
last about one minute from the first drop to last brake. This can be
lengthened by extending the time to the first drop or after the last
brake, though doing the latter tends to dilute the ride's overall thrill.
The Beast at Paramount's Kings Island uses two lifts to double the length
of the average ride to just under five minutes.

Designers must weigh three factors in determining a ride's length.
Customers who have queued for up to an hour want to get their wait's
worth. Second, a person can tolerate only so much fright time. "The one
thing that gets people on is they know there's a limit to how long it
lasts," says Michael Boodley, president of Great Coasters International,
Inc. "It's like they have this threshold to a fear that they normally
wouldn't want to experience, but because they know there's an end in
sight they're willing to go for it."

Finally, operators want to move as many customers as quickly as
possible through the ride. That not only shortens patrons' wait, keeping
tempers in check, it also gets them--and their wallets--circulating in
the park. People standing in line can't spend money on souvenirs or food.
To maximize the flow, some larger coasters, like The Beast, stagger runs
by two trains.

"Throughput" is also essential to a haunted house's economic
success; the faster groups exit, the faster more paying customers can
enter. As much as designers love to see terrified guests fall on the
floor, they know such halts cut into an attraction's bottom line. For
designers, the trick is to keep guests moving without making them feel
rushed. To do this, the theatrical wizards often employ the
"scare-forward" precept: startling groups from the rear or sides sends
them plunging ahead rather than drawing back. A frontal strike, on the
other hand, will cause a person to veer left or right--perfect for when
the exit lies laterally. To vary patrons' pace, designers use light
(people naturally move faster when visibility is good) or darkness (they
slow down). Similarly, curtains will retard movement; people approach
them hesitatingly. Edward Marks, president of Jets Productions, Inc.,
says he first used drapes as a barrier for light, sound and smoke between
scenes, but in high-flow houses he removes them altogether.

No topic is totally off limits for a haunted house, but regional
differences and local demographics may temper presentations. Religious
matter is generally taboo in all American haunts. "I'm lucky I have a
cross in the cemetery," says David Clevinger, artistic director and
operations manager of Terror on Church Street in Orlando, Florida.
Topical subjects can strike too close a chord, too. "We wouldn't have a
locker room with a dead kid on the ground and another one holding a gun,"
notes Marks, referring to the recent spate of school shootings. "That's
real, not escapism." To make sure people know a fright is staged, Marks
sometimes goes over the top in his presentations. For example, if he does
a car wreck, he'll put zombies in the seats.

Another no-no is touching the customer. Squirting or dripping warm
water on a guest is acceptable, and people bump into hanging corpses in
Terror on Church Street's morgue, but actors are uniformly coached that
no matter how close they want to get to a customer, they cannot make
physical contact. Nor can the fake cleaver or bladeless chainsaw they
sometimes wield. You can scare people witless, stress designers, you just
can't mess with their safety.

--Erik Minton

PHOTO (COLOR): During training, would-be riders scream as loud as
they can in order to release some of their tension. Yelling while on
board a coaster has another benefit: it forces paralyzed riders to
breathe.

PHOTO (COLOR): Coasterphobic Renee Berkowitz grabs psychologist
Michael Otto's hands after her first trip on The Hulk. Fearful patrons
can take advantage of a special "calming zone," where they can talk about
their fears with a trained park staffer, do relaxation exercises and
mentally rehearse the ride.

PHOTO (COLOR): Thrills & chills