Six Flags Great Adventure’s Fright Fest features four more weeks of “thrills by day, fright by night.” The world’s largest scream park operates Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays plus Columbus Day through October 27. Twenty-five Halloween-themed shows and attractions, including four new additions, enhance the park’s world-class lineup of thrill rides for all ages, but did you know…
1. It’s all about the zombies. 200 zombies terrorize the park after 6 p.m., and can be found angrily wandering the midways or stalking guests in terror trails and haunted houses.
2. There are seven master makeup artists who use 1,500 ounces of airbrush makeup and fake blood to transform 200 actors, students, parents and business professionals into flesh-hungry zombies each night.
3. Things that go bump in the night: Fright Fest zombies use shovels, chainsaws, clown horns and metal cans filled with marbles to amp up the startle factor on the midways.
4. Special effects supervisor Tony Mandile creates 600 latex foam facial prosthetics from scratch, and each is used only once. At the end of the night, they are discarded and new ones are created every week.
5. Team members travel from as far as Maryland and Connecticut each weekend to perform as a Fright Fest zombie.
6. Not to be corny, but Fright Fest requires 1,500 bunches of corn stalks to complete the corn mazes and festive park décor.
7. The Bloody Fountain is colored by eight pounds of food-grade, red vegetable dye.
8. Six Flags Great Adventure’s landscape department uses eight tons (16,000 lbs.) of pumpkins and gourds, 2,300 mums and 700 bales of hay to create beautiful fall scenes for “thrills by day.”
9. Spiders galore! It takes 1,200 pounds of beef tube webbing to transform the theme park into a scream park.
10. The creepy, hazy ambience of Fright Fest is thanks to 1,210 gallons of “fog juice” to create the mysterious, rising fog, plus 24,500 lbs. of CO2 and 4,480 liters of liquid CO2 to create the “dry ice” effect of low-level fog during “fright by night.”
11. 35,200 lbs. of propane are required to illuminate the spooky flame columns in the heart of the park.
12. While summer is known for theme parks and thrills, Fright Fest is actually the most popular time of the year at Six Flags Great Adventure.
13. In addition to zombies, thrill rides are a main attraction during Fright Fest. Guests can’t resist a spin on their favorite world-class coaster in the dark like El Toro, Nitro and Kingda Ka.
