DARK at Fort Edmonton in Edmonton Canada

0:08 Dark at Fort Edmonton in Edmonton, Canada is celebrating its sixth year with a new haunt and integrated festival atmosphere that's coming up on today's show from the Haunted Trastion Network. I'm Philip and this is our sixty one day Haunted on where we're counting down to Halloween by celebrating haunted houses daily via videos, podcasts, and in person experiences. We've been focusing quite heavily on our videos this year. You can go to our website Haunted atrash network dot com or sign up for our newsletter to get emailed links to new videos as they air. But more audio podcasts are going to be dropping between now and Halloween. Today we're at Dark at Fort Edmonton. We were there on the dress rehearsal day, so this interview was recorded before the show actually opened. But this is the Haunts sixth year and they've really focused on expanding their footprint and integrating the festival atmosphere. They've opened up the Capital Theater, they're doing hotel stays there on property in this story hotel. So we're going to sit down with Teresa Ryan and we're going to hear about why the festival atmosphere is so important to growing the event. Here's Teresa. My name is Teresa Ryan. I am the Director of Experienced Development at Fort Edmonton Park. I'm also the creative director and event producer for Dark. You have come on the show quite a few years and so I think we've been chronicling the development of Dark over the years since it's inception. This is year six. Tell me about year six. Year

1:40 six is a big year for us. I think it's really a pivotal year for us. It's the first year that we're really leaning into the festival environment, which is great for us. It's one of the things that I think sets us apart from anyone in the region. We have a really large footprint. We've expanded that footprint this year. We've increased our our event capacity. This year. We are now pushed ourselves deeper into the living history museum the park and have created like an outdoor haunt now that takes advantage of the infrastructure and the buildings, the historic buildings and the sort of natural landscape that we have, which again I think is really unique and interesting with this particular location.

2:25 So year six, Festival Atmosphere increased capacity, more entertainment offerings. With an increased footprint, We're bringing in more food, drugs, introducing more warm up locations, more entertainment areas. So a big year of growth for us this year. Yeah, tell me more about the festival atmosphere and why that was important for you all to expand on for this year. The festival atmosphere is important to us for many reasons, one of them being we have a midway. So one of the first the first things that you see when you come to Dark is you you walk in, you see a giant ferris wheel. You see this midway, and so to us that equals festival. Another thing, another reason why festival is important to us this year is we are, like I mentioned, a really large We have a large footprint and so between our haunts, that means there's a lot of gaps, negative space that we need to fill. So in those gaps, we've chosen to lean into the festival environment, whether that's with festoon lighting, fire pits, performers, food trucks. It helps us to create a more cohesive story, like a cohesive theme for the event. So while we do have haunts, and we do have things associated with traditional haunted house environments. We want to create an environment where people can come in and spend two to three hours, be fully entertained, have some food, have some drinks, watch some performers, as well as go through some haunted houses. Tell me about the new haunt this year. So our new haunt this year is called Bloodshed Passage. We are

4:00 leaning into the infrastructure that a historic museum provides, which is small old buildings, interesting sort of yards and nooks and crannies, and we also are exposed to sort of a natural wooded area too, So it's in primarily an outdoor haunt. Like you said, Philip, it kind of weaves in and out some of the small buildings. And the theme of this haunt is you're just approaching basically a frontier town. Your wagon is overturned, you're looking for to find safety, to seek shelter. You come across this town and when you arrive, you're warned that you shouldn't proceed, that something has gone horribly wrong.

4:41 And essentially this haunt you as the hero character. The goal is to survive, and what you're trying to survive is basically a horde of zombies. So as you go through the haunt, it starts to deteriorate, and you know, you can see that we've got some soldiers that are fighting the battle. And like I said, your goal is to actually survive. Will you be a character that survives this haunt? So we're really we're really pleased with this one. We've got to try a bunch of new gimmicks. We've got some challenges to work through because it is primarily an outdoor haunt, so that really impacts anything from our sound or lights. The weather is going to play a part on this one. Actors are spending the majority of their time outside, so we're going to learn a lot, but incredibly unique to this area and unique to something that only ford Eminton Park can do right because we have those unique buildings, So leaning into the infrastructure, using what we have, leveraging what is unique to us, and again just pushing our boundaries and challenging us to do something new and to grow. And I think people want to come to Fort Edmonton Park during the Halloween season to experience those old buildings and this riverside atmosphere. We want to deliver that and this is the first year that we've had the infrastructure, the knowledge, the team and the confidence to actually deliver a really good outdoor hunt. Why was it important to have a role for the guests. I would say one of the most important pieces of

6:15 leaning into that narrative and encouraging the guests to play along was the fact that we have a great distance to cover, and being outside and around all of these unique buildings, there's a tendency for people to go slow, take it in and on busy nights, we know that that's going to be one of our challenges is keeping everybody moving forward. So if we add this sense of agency, we condition them right from the beginning to look for the people with the lanterns, the people that are safe, the people that are going to guide them. Those people their role is also to keep our guests moving forward, right, So if guests feel like they're part of the story, then they're going to actually start living up to that role and doing what we ask of them. And the other thing about this haunts it is quite long.

7:02 We wanted to use as much of the street and the wooded area as possible. Our indoor mazes allow us to build a maze where we can do a lot of switchbacks and we can cover a lot of ground in a small area. We have a large area that we need to cover. So again getting those guests to engage and knowing that they have to get to the next place and the next check stop keeps them moving and yeah, we're going to see how it goes. But it's definitely out of all of our haunts this year, it is the one with the largest footprint and the largest ground to cover. But like I said, we felt this year that we were, you know, confident enough. We've got our haunt leads, the people, the production team that's working on it, our acting team. These are people that have been with us now for a few years, so they know how to motivate a team, they know how to coach, they know how to you know, work the technical aspects. So we're starting to see that succession and the repeat staffing come back year over year, which then gives us the strength and the confidence to take these risks and to try these new things. So this was the year. This is again part of why year six is such a really important year. Our goal is and still maintains. We still maintain that we want to be like the best Halloween festival or haunted attraction in Western Canada, and so every year we level up and we make changes to push us toward that goal. But we were mindful not to like, you know,

8:33 overshoot, like try too hard. We still want to have success every year. So part of the planning for the an event like this is to sit down and be like really critical about what we can tackle this year and what we have to shel for next year or year ten or whatever. That looks like, yeah, yeah, well that's exactly exactly what I want to I know, we haven't even know we haven't even opened yet for this year, but are what continues to be your goals for year seven and I would say about year ten. We keep talking about we want to make this a fully immersive experience, so we still have a few years to do that. Those that have been coming to our event year over year will notice changes.

9:13 One of the things being all the lights. We're really again trying to immerse people in this festival atmosphere. We want to create a fourth maze. We're trying to figure out where that fits in our footprint because again, being on this historic site, we can't move the buildings around. We have to work with what we have, which is a challenge, which is fun you know, we've got a creative team, but we do there are lots of limitations, so we'd love to have a new haunt. We want to introduce more scare zones, but again, we want to do this and do it well. So there's no sense in introducing three more scare zones if they're watered down and we can't execute on them properly. So, like I said, by year ten, we want this to be a fully immersive event where people come in and they just kind of get swept up in it. And again, from an internal standpoint, it is team training and building, like I said, building that succession planning, where we've got now people on the team that started year one as an actor, then they move up into another role and they're moving up within the organization. They bring that experience, that confidence, that motivation which then allows us to keep pushing and keep growing. So it's not just what the guests see. A lot of the work happens behind the scenes with like I said, building the team, building the production side of it, learning how things work on this site. Every year we improve, and I can say that the team that I work with too, they genuinely they want to improve year over year, and that helps, right, So

10:46 it's a collective desire to make this a better product. Today's episode was produced and edited by me Philip Hernandez, with post production by David Swape and original music composed by Chris Thomas. We're counting down to Halloween with daily podcasts, videos, and events in our sixty one day Hauntathon. Follow along at the link in our show notes. Our Hantathon is made possible through generous support from Gantum, Lighty and Controls. Gantum illuminates attractions worldwide with the world's smallest intelligent spotlights. See what you're missing with a free demo. Sign up at d'antum dot com slash demo. That's gantum dot com slash demo. Our Hantathon team includes Daryl Plunky, Emily Luis Rua, Megan Spells, Gavin Burns and Omni Adventures and Our content partners for this year include Attractions Magazine, Creepy Kingdom, Freaks of Hjjen, Hon Topic Radio, Kevin Heinbach News TV On, The Adventures, Scare Track, Sharp Productions, That Halloween Podcast, The Horror of Being, Emily, The Scare Factor, and This Weekend with Nick Pelliochini.

11:50 The best way you can support us this Halloween season is by sharing our hauntaedon with someone you think we'll enjoy it, and to follow along to our hantathon, sign up for our weekly newsletter at HOTA Attraction Network dot com. We'll catch you back here tomorrow and every day until Halloween. Until next time, see Gary. This is a Haunted Attraction Network production