Silverwood has announced that its annual Halloween event, Scarywood Haunted Nights, has been cancelled for 2020. In this post, we’ll share the details of the announcement, and offer some thoughts and commentary of our own.
Scarywood Haunted Nights at Silverwood has been running for over a decade, and is now essentially just as much a part of the regular season as summertime. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Silverwood has made the difficult decision to cancel the event for 2020, after 11 increasingly successful years.
Here is the official announcement:
“For the protection of our Guests, Cast Members, and Haunters, we have made the difficult decision to cancel Scarywood for the 2020 season. Due to the unique features of this event, we cannot operate Scarywood while maintaining the recommended guidelines by the CDC and our local health district.
Our team will focus on operating Silverwood for daytime guests, using the enhanced health and safety procedures already in place. Weather permitting, we will be open and operational on weekends from September 12th through October 25th.
Thank you for your patience as we navigate the challenges associated with COVID-19. This has been a difficult situation for everyone, and we appreciate your understanding. Our team at Scarywood is looking forward to returning to your nightmares in the future.”
So there it is. If there’s one silver-lining here, it’s that the park will continue to operate through the month of October on weekends, weather permitting. No word on whether Timber Terror will run backwards or not. But even if they could sneak that little bit of Scarywood into the mix, that would be nice.
Now some commentary. Of course, none of this should come as a surprise. With other major theme parks cancelling Halloween events left and right over the past few weeks, it almost seemed like Scarywood was destined to fall at some point.
For anyone who has attended a Halloween event at a theme park, it’s easy to understand the reasons for the cancellation. On the surface, these events are all about close-up encounters with scareactors. The mazes themselves are often incredibly tight quarters, with very little room for social distancing.
So why not just limit attendance, you ask? Gary Norton alluded to it in his book, in addition to our interview with him several years ago: attendance is key to ensuring this event makes good business sense. A tremendous amount of time, money, and training goes into preparing for something that essentially only runs for 12-15 evenings a year. Simply put, Silverwood doesn’t have the budgeting luxury of Knott’s or Universal here – so cutting back on the crowds would likely mean the event simply wouldn’t pencil out.
That leads us to the daytime operations. It will be interesting to see whether enough crowds are willing to head out during those months. During Scarywood’s first year of operations in 2009, the park was open during the day without any scare zones or mazes. When we attended, the park was a literal ghost town – easily the emptiest we’ve ever seen it. And we were there on an otherwise nice day, weather-wise.
For theme park nerds like us, it was awesome getting to walk onto every single ride all day long with little to no waits. But that also means low revenue for the park, which is likely why they had no daytime operations in October since then.
Hopefully this year will see a different result. Who knows? People may still be so starved for any form of entertainment that they’ll gladly head to Silverwood. Regardless, our advice would be to go if you can – you’ll likely be greeted by a relatively empty park with short wait times.
In the end, we’re glad to see that the park will remain open through October, even if Scarywood isn’t happening. And while it’s incredibly disappointing that our personal favorite part of Silverwood won’t be operating this year, we know that fall 2021 will be here before we know it. Hopefully by then, things will have returned to some semblance of normalcy, and Scarywood can return bigger and better than ever.
Are you surprised to hear that Scarywood has been cancelled? Were you planning to attend or not? Are you still planning to go to the park during the day in October? Lastly, are there any questions that we didn't cover? Let us know in the comments below - we love hearing from you!
The official Silverwood Theme Park website can be found at: www.silverwoodthemepark.com. All business-related questions should be directed to this site.
people are opposed to this. people can wear halloween face masks plus jackets. People should be free to have fun and be scared. you are making a big mistake.
You guys are not going to save scarywood. Guests,workers, hunters can wear Halloween facemask plus jackets. Plus you can enforce people to social distance and wear masks. You ruin people’s fun cancelling this and that what is next Halloween for everybody.
You are ruining people’s fun. What is next cancelling Halloween. Your health department is being unfair and unreasonable