With little more than 48 hours before the hearses begin to roll up to the black carpet for the opening of Fright Dome, the Halloween attraction that annually transforms 250,000 square feet of Adventuredome at Circus Circus into a carnival of creeps, lead “hauntrepreneur” Jason Egan is making sure finishing touches are being applied and all of the elements are falling correctly into place. Egan, who celebrated Fright Dome’s landmark 13th anniversary last year, is once again racing towards the finish line so fast there’s barely time to look backward. “Where have the times gone? It’s insane,” he says. “Luckily I’ve got good genes because everybody’s like ‘When did you start this, when you were 12?’”
One might expect a mastermind of the macabre to look more like Rob Zombie than a former Eagle Scout, but despite Egan’s clean-cut image he manages to pull off a scare supreme with newly conceived and designed features each year, and a staff and crew of more than 400. There are six haunted houses for the 2016 edition, double the amount they started with in 2002, including one based on video game phenomenon Five Nights at Freddy’s. Egan and his creative coven bring Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza to life, inviting guests to survive a tour of the shadowy restaurant and arcade as oversized animatronic characters from the game attempt to make sure they never leave.
“Back in the day, we would just stick a light in a room, but now the lights are all computer controlled and it’s like they’re living, which is really, really neat,” says Egan. “The effects are much more high-tech. The sound is much more high-tech. The actors’ costumes keep getting better and better every year. So we keep enhancing it. It’s truly like a movie set now. We had an inspection last night. They were going through it and they’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh! This is amazing. This really does feel like you’re immersed in a movie!’”
Egan enlisted Hollywood makeup maestro Gary J. Tunnicliffe (the Hellraiser and Halloween franchises) as his full-time lead effects artist this year. Tunnicliffe’s touch may be most effective in the Krampus’ Not So Silent Night haunted house, which creates the world in which Santa Claus’ demonic, horned antithesis waits for unsuspecting girls and boys. Other houses include Clownz: Cotton Candy Carnage and Chaos, zombie prison Hellcatraz, abandoned hospital turned supernatural séance scene Ouija and post-apocalyptic landscape Wasteland 2 featuring the monstrous Mecha-saur.
Five Nights at Freddy’s changed up the dynamic for Fright Dome. “Instead of a slasher, it threw you into a completely different look, and that’s what I want,” says Egan. “I want every haunted house you go through to be such a completely different experience as you’re walking through. That’s always the key. I really want you to be immersed in the haunted houses, seeing something different. A closed pizzeria where the characters come to life and attempt to kill you? That’s fun.”
There may be revisited themes, like clowns and zombies, but each house is conceived from scratch and takes up to 12 months to develop and construct. Ouija, Krampus and Five Nights are among Egan’s favorites in Fright Dome history. The idea for Ouija hit Egan last October, which calls for visitors to participate as paranormal investigators in a former sanitarium. “You try to awaken the spirits. You sit down and you’re in a group of three, and you experience a little séance that scares the heck out of you,” says Egan. “From that point on, you have to go through the haunted house alone, and the ghosts come to life. I love it. It’s so picture-perfect in there.”
In addition to the haunted houses, there are four Scarezone environments—Clown Havok, Corn Stalkers, Freakshow and Voodoo Mardi Gras of the Dead. Fright Club is a nightly rave concluding with a Monster Party, and a no-waiting VIP Private Tour is available for visitors who prefer to have their own personal ghost or ghoul escort them directly to the entrances of the attractions. Costumed scare actors stalk the grounds in case anyone thinks they can avoid chills while getting thrills. “There’s really no safe place in the park you can walk through without being scared,” says Egan. “We darken up and fog the whole park, and theme up everything.”
Circus Circus, 7 p.m.-midnight Oct. 16, 20-23, & 26-31, starting at $36.95, $56.95 fast pass, $89.95 VIP plus tax and fee, may not be suitable for under 12 years. 702.794.3939
