'Scarier' Fright Fest opens Saturday at Six Flags

Tiny the giant spider once again hangs from the side of the American Eagle roller coaster at Six Flags Great America.

A giant inflatable gorilla has taken its usual spot atop the Sky Tower, and workers have lined the paths of the Gurnee amusement park with cornstalks.

While all the old favorites are in place, organizers say there will be a different feel when Fright Fest kicks off this weekend for its annual October run.

Great America Entertainment Director Kris Jones said officials are ramping up the intensity this year to make the theme park edgier and scarier than ever before.

“We are going to scare people,” Jones said. “We are truly pushing the envelope this year more than we ever have in the past.”

One of the scary new additions, Jones said, is the Massacre Medical Center haunted house opening in the County Fair area near the games and cotton candy. Billed as a vacant hospital filled with many of the nation's most notoriously disturbed minds, park officials say it has the potential to be one of the scariest haunted houses Great America has ever produced.

Jennifer Dugan-Savage, communications manager for Great America, said the park will still offer numerous Halloween-related attractions geared toward families with young children. But she said park customers have asked them to make the event scarier in recent years, and they responded.

“We are still maintaining all the scare-free zones and areas for families that we've had in the past, but people have told us that they want it to be scarier at night,” Dugan-Savage said. “So, we are doing what the people want.”

The detail behind the scenes at Massacre Medical Center features scares and gore, including a full autopsy lab complete with flowing blood from a body down to a concrete blood catcher.

That and other scenes inside the haunt would look more familiar in an R-rated horror film than in a theme park that has been billed in the past as high on fun, but low on scares.

“We want to make this year more scarier than ever before,” Dugan-Savage said. “So, at night, we will do our best to make sure that happens.”

In addition to the new haunted house, 200 monsters will roam free in the streets of Great America, more than ever before, Dugan-Savage said. There will also be more frightful theming displayed at more rides.

Dozens of corpses, hundreds of rubber snakes, bats, skulls and body parts, seven tons of pumpkins and 50 pounds of blood-red dye will be part of this year's production.

Dugan-Savage said most of the frights and zombies will come out after a 3 p.m. parade, which will serve as a warning to shield youngsters in scare-free zones. Those zones will remain near the Character Candy Trail in the Southwest Amphitheater, Camp Cartoon and Kidzopolis area.

For the less faint of heart, scare zones will be in the Bayou Du Vaudou, Necropolis: Haunted City of the Dead, Tinseltown Terror, and Sector 7 sections of the park.

This year's Fright Fest, the 21st at Great America, offers three haunted houses, five scare zones and eight shows, Dugan-Savage said.

The 21st annual Fright Fest

<b>Where</b>: Six Flags Great America, 1 Great America Parkway, Gurnee

<b>Hours</b>: Fright Fest opens on Saturday, Oct. 1, and closes for the season Sunday, Oct. 30: Fridays, 5 to 11 p.m.; Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Open Columbus Day, Oct. 10, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

<b>Cost</b>: $59.99, but cheaper ticket prices are available at the Six Flags website at<a href="http://frightfest.sixflags.com/greatamerica/tickets"> frightfest.sixflags.com/greatamerica/tickets</a>. Visitors can reduce the admission price by $25 when they turn in a specially marked Coke can at the ticket window.

<b>Haunted houses</b>: Extra cost. The Primal Scream haunted maze is $5, and the three main haunts — Mausoleum of Terror, Studio 13 and Massacre Medical Center — are $7 before 5 p.m. and $13 after. A $30 haunted house combo pack, providing access to all four haunted houses, is for sale at the front gate.