DARK at Fort Edmonton in Edmonton Canada

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Dark at Fort Edmonton in Edmonton,
Canada is celebrating its sixth year with a

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new haunt and integrated festival atmosphere that's
coming up on today's show from the Haunted

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Trastion Network. I'm Philip and this
is our sixty one day Haunted on where

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we're counting down to Halloween by celebrating
haunted houses daily via videos, podcasts,

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and in person experiences. We've been
focusing quite heavily on our videos this year.

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You can go to our website Haunted
atrash network dot com or sign up

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for our newsletter to get emailed links
to new videos as they air. But

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more audio podcasts are going to be
dropping between now and Halloween. Today we're

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at Dark at Fort Edmonton. We
were there on the dress rehearsal day,

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so this interview was recorded before the
show actually opened. But this is the

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Haunts sixth year and they've really focused
on expanding their footprint and integrating the festival

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atmosphere. They've opened up the Capital
Theater, they're doing hotel stays there on

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property in this story hotel. So
we're going to sit down with Teresa Ryan

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and we're going to hear about why
the festival atmosphere is so important to growing

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the event. Here's Teresa. My
name is Teresa Ryan. I am the

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Director of Experienced Development at Fort Edmonton
Park. I'm also the creative director and

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event producer for Dark. You have
come on the show quite a few years

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and so I think we've been chronicling
the development of Dark over the years since

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it's inception. This is year six. Tell me about year six. Year

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six is a big year for us. I think it's really a pivotal year

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for us. It's the first year
that we're really leaning into the festival environment,

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which is great for us. It's
one of the things that I think

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sets us apart from anyone in the
region. We have a really large footprint.

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We've expanded that footprint this year.
We've increased our our event capacity.

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This year. We are now pushed
ourselves deeper into the living history museum the

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park and have created like an outdoor
haunt now that takes advantage of the infrastructure

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and the buildings, the historic buildings
and the sort of natural landscape that we

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have, which again I think is
really unique and interesting with this particular location.

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So year six, Festival Atmosphere increased
capacity, more entertainment offerings. With

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an increased footprint, We're bringing in
more food, drugs, introducing more warm

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up locations, more entertainment areas.
So a big year of growth for us

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this year. Yeah, tell me
more about the festival atmosphere and why that

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was important for you all to expand
on for this year. The festival atmosphere

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is important to us for many reasons, one of them being we have a

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midway. So one of the first
the first things that you see when you

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come to Dark is you you walk
in, you see a giant ferris wheel.

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You see this midway, and so
to us that equals festival. Another

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thing, another reason why festival is
important to us this year is we are,

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like I mentioned, a really large
We have a large footprint and so

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between our haunts, that means there's
a lot of gaps, negative space that

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we need to fill. So in
those gaps, we've chosen to lean into

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the festival environment, whether that's with
festoon lighting, fire pits, performers,

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food trucks. It helps us to
create a more cohesive story, like a

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cohesive theme for the event. So
while we do have haunts, and we

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do have things associated with traditional haunted
house environments. We want to create an

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environment where people can come in and
spend two to three hours, be fully

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entertained, have some food, have
some drinks, watch some performers, as

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well as go through some haunted houses. Tell me about the new haunt this

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year. So our new haunt this
year is called Bloodshed Passage. We are

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leaning into the infrastructure that a historic
museum provides, which is small old buildings,

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interesting sort of yards and nooks and
crannies, and we also are exposed

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to sort of a natural wooded area
too, So it's in primarily an outdoor

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haunt. Like you said, Philip, it kind of weaves in and out

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some of the small buildings. And
the theme of this haunt is you're just

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approaching basically a frontier town. Your
wagon is overturned, you're looking for to

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find safety, to seek shelter.
You come across this town and when you

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arrive, you're warned that you shouldn't
proceed, that something has gone horribly wrong.

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And essentially this haunt you as the
hero character. The goal is to

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survive, and what you're trying to
survive is basically a horde of zombies.

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So as you go through the haunt, it starts to deteriorate, and you

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know, you can see that we've
got some soldiers that are fighting the battle.

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And like I said, your goal
is to actually survive. Will you

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be a character that survives this haunt? So we're really we're really pleased with

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this one. We've got to try
a bunch of new gimmicks. We've got

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some challenges to work through because it
is primarily an outdoor haunt, so that

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really impacts anything from our sound or
lights. The weather is going to play

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a part on this one. Actors
are spending the majority of their time outside,

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so we're going to learn a lot, but incredibly unique to this area

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and unique to something that only ford
Eminton Park can do right because we have

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those unique buildings, So leaning into
the infrastructure, using what we have,

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leveraging what is unique to us,
and again just pushing our boundaries and challenging

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us to do something new and to
grow. And I think people want to

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come to Fort Edmonton Park during the
Halloween season to experience those old buildings and

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this riverside atmosphere. We want to
deliver that and this is the first year

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that we've had the infrastructure, the
knowledge, the team and the confidence to

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actually deliver a really good outdoor hunt. Why was it important to have a

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role for the guests. I would
say one of the most important pieces of

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leaning into that narrative and encouraging the
guests to play along was the fact that

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we have a great distance to cover, and being outside and around all of

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these unique buildings, there's a tendency
for people to go slow, take it

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in and on busy nights, we
know that that's going to be one of

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our challenges is keeping everybody moving forward. So if we add this sense of

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agency, we condition them right from
the beginning to look for the people with

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the lanterns, the people that are
safe, the people that are going to

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guide them. Those people their role
is also to keep our guests moving forward,

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right, So if guests feel like
they're part of the story, then

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they're going to actually start living up
to that role and doing what we ask

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of them. And the other thing
about this haunts it is quite long.

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We wanted to use as much of
the street and the wooded area as possible.

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Our indoor mazes allow us to build
a maze where we can do a

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lot of switchbacks and we can cover
a lot of ground in a small area.

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We have a large area that we
need to cover. So again getting

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those guests to engage and knowing that
they have to get to the next place

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and the next check stop keeps them
moving and yeah, we're going to see

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how it goes. But it's definitely
out of all of our haunts this year,

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it is the one with the largest
footprint and the largest ground to cover.

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But like I said, we felt
this year that we were, you

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know, confident enough. We've got
our haunt leads, the people, the

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production team that's working on it,
our acting team. These are people that

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have been with us now for a
few years, so they know how to

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motivate a team, they know how
to coach, they know how to you

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know, work the technical aspects.
So we're starting to see that succession and

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the repeat staffing come back year over
year, which then gives us the strength

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and the confidence to take these risks
and to try these new things. So

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this was the year. This is
again part of why year six is such

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a really important year. Our goal
is and still maintains. We still maintain

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that we want to be like the
best Halloween festival or haunted attraction in Western

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Canada, and so every year we
level up and we make changes to push

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us toward that goal. But we
were mindful not to like, you know,

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overshoot, like try too hard.
We still want to have success every

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year. So part of the planning
for the an event like this is to

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sit down and be like really critical
about what we can tackle this year and

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what we have to shel for next
year or year ten or whatever. That

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looks like, yeah, yeah,
well that's exactly exactly what I want to

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I know, we haven't even know
we haven't even opened yet for this year,

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but are what continues to be your
goals for year seven and I would

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say about year ten. We keep
talking about we want to make this a

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fully immersive experience, so we still
have a few years to do that.

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Those that have been coming to our
event year over year will notice changes.

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One of the things being all the
lights. We're really again trying to immerse

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people in this festival atmosphere. We
want to create a fourth maze. We're

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trying to figure out where that fits
in our footprint because again, being on

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this historic site, we can't move
the buildings around. We have to work

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with what we have, which is
a challenge, which is fun you know,

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we've got a creative team, but
we do there are lots of limitations,

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so we'd love to have a new
haunt. We want to introduce more

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scare zones, but again, we
want to do this and do it well.

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So there's no sense in introducing three
more scare zones if they're watered down

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and we can't execute on them properly. So, like I said, by

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year ten, we want this to
be a fully immersive event where people come

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in and they just kind of get
swept up in it. And again,

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from an internal standpoint, it is
team training and building, like I said,

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building that succession planning, where we've
got now people on the team that

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started year one as an actor,
then they move up into another role and

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they're moving up within the organization.
They bring that experience, that confidence,

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that motivation which then allows us to
keep pushing and keep growing. So it's

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not just what the guests see.
A lot of the work happens behind the

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scenes with like I said, building
the team, building the production side of

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it, learning how things work on
this site. Every year we improve,

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and I can say that the team
that I work with too, they genuinely

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they want to improve year over year, and that helps, right, So

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it's a collective desire to make this
a better product. Today's episode was produced

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and edited by me Philip Hernandez,
with post production by David Swape and original

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music composed by Chris Thomas. We're
counting down to Halloween with daily podcasts,

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videos, and events in our sixty
one day Hauntathon. Follow along at the

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link in our show notes. Our
Hantathon is made possible through generous support from

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spotlights. See what you're missing with
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includes Daryl Plunky, Emily Luis Rua, Megan Spells, Gavin Burns and Omni

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Adventures and Our content partners for this
year include Attractions Magazine, Creepy Kingdom,

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Freaks of Hjjen, Hon Topic Radio, Kevin Heinbach News TV On, The

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Adventures, Scare Track, Sharp Productions, That Halloween Podcast, The Horror of

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Being, Emily, The Scare Factor, and This Weekend with Nick Pelliochini.

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The best way you can support us
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with someone you think we'll enjoy it, and to follow along to our hantathon,

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sign up for our weekly newsletter at
HOTA Attraction Network dot com. We'll

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catch you back here tomorrow and every
day until Halloween. Until next time,

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see Gary. This is a Haunted
Attraction Network production