Behind the Scenes at FearFest

 

Ever wonder what it takes to transform the world’s most popular seasonal theme park into a forebodingly sinister extravaganza?   Park newsletter editor Sue Carrington talked with Amy Griffin, the head of makeup and costumes for FearFest, for a closer look at how the flawlessly fearful October production is staged. Amy served as a park employee for Paramount’s Kings Island intermittingly for 17 years and is now a consultant   through her own company, AMG Expressions.   

 

Amy started out with Kings Island as a dresser and worked her way up to assistant costume supervisor.  After a break for a job on a cruise ship, she returned to the park as a costume supervisor, followed by a promotion to operations manager of the costumes department.  Most recently, she has served as head of the character department, which includes the frightfully costumed FearFest troupe.

 

“When I started out with the park 17 years ago, I really didn’t know how to sew,” Amy remembers.  “But the park took a chance and hired me. I just watched and learned and worked really hard until I knew what I was doing.”  Today, she and a team of four are responsible for all the costumes and makeup for the 200 or so “scare-actors” whose sole job it is to scare unsuspecting guests from every corner.

 

After auditions are completed and all scare-actors have been selected, Amy receives the casting list.   She sees who’s been assigned to which maze and where they will most likely be located—and also determines who will need a specially sized costume.  Then, working from the conceptual renderings of each of the park’s mazes and fear attractions, plus her vivid imagination, she describes her vision for each scare-actor—and works with her costume design team to ‘make it real.’  The process begins in August; Amy and her team stay on task every day until FearFest opens in October.       

 

How long does it take to create each costume?  “One person can usually crank out two or three costumes in a day,” Amy says.  “Once we’ve honed in on the look and feel, we get the patterns laid out and sew them fairly quickly.”

 

All costumes, numbered for easy tracking, are washed each day and stored each night at the park.  Designed to be durable, they are packed up at the end of the season and often reused the next FearFest season. 

 

Along with rendering costumes and make-up, Amy has also come up with concepts for the mazes themselves.  The Cowboy Carnage maze, for example, was her idea. “I was inspired by the old TV show Gunsmoke,” she says.  “Lots of country shirts, vests, cowboy hats, and saloon-girl dresses!”  For added inspiration, she goes each March to the Transworld Halloween Convention, where she picks up fresh perspectives for the next season.

 

New this year are the creepers—athletically inclined young people wearing mountain bike padding who run, throw their bodies down, slide, and spark.  “I wanted to do something different with their costumes, especially with their faces,” Amy explains.  “It’s hard to retain your make-up when you’re running and sliding.”  So she created masks using stretchy, skin-colored spandex with eye and mouth holes—then added latex for texture and a look of melted deformity.   

 

Admitting she’s no fan of horror movies and is not macabre by nature, she marvels at how much she enjoys her FearFest work.   “What I like most is the creative process,” she says.  “It’s so much fun to ‘recast’ all these people who come in looking normal—and walk out looking highly abnormal.  What a feeling to stand at the FearFest front gate and look in, knowing I’ve helped create such a memorable experience.”