Can You Put a Price on Fear? Inside the Economics of Halloween Attractions

Halloween is right around the corner with consumer spending on haunted attractions and seasonal experiences. But what does it take to bring these massive productions to life? And how is the industry evolving in 2026? To answer these questions and more, we now have Chris Stafford here with us, CEO of 13th Floor Entertainment Group. Thank you so much for being here, Chris. Yeah, thanks for having me, Justine. Of course, this is such an exciting time of year, especially for everyone who loves to get out there and get scared in haunted houses. Halloween experiences have really become so much more than just a haunted house though, right? There's so much more that people want to get from these experiences. So what are you seeing from consumers right now this year? What are they willing to spend to get a truly immersive experience? What are they looking for? Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. They're looking for truly a unique bespoke experience. Halloween and celebrating Halloween, it's not just a night anymore you know it's become an entire season you know I think July 5th has become the unofficial start of the spooky season or summer ween I noticed that decorations were in the stores in June this year so I think people are celebrating much earlier excuse me celebrating the season as far as what they want in a Halloween attraction I think they're craving more unique social experiences that they can share and create memories you know to get people out of the house we can consume so much digital media and entertainment in our homes nowadays and at a very high quality. So creating those unique in real life experiences to get people out and share them together is what we're trying to do. Yeah, I mean, so many people, especially since COVID, really want to get out there, be with other people and get to celebrate, not just at home alone, but at the same time, you have households watching their budgets. So how are you thinking about ticket pricing and making sure that these experiences are affordable and also feel worth the money for people who go? Yeah, no, we've definitely focused very hard on keeping our entry-level prices low and affordable for families. We are well aware that with inflation, things have become more and more expensive. I think when we look at our ticket prices, though, you know, I've been doing this now for we opened our first attraction 24 years ago. And I think at that time we were spending 15, you know, our tickets cost about $15. Here we are 24 years later. And I think the average ticket price for a haunted house in America, just your standalone haunted house is probably in the $35 range. So when you look at that, yeah, prices have gone up, but proportionally they've only gone up less than a dollar a year. And I think Halloween attractions are still a very affordable form of live entertainment when you compare it to other things that people are having to pay for other experiences right now. Yeah, it's so true that there are so many experiences out there that ended up costing so much more than they did 24 years ago. So that incremental increase does make a lot of sense there. Take us behind the scenes of what it really takes to put on one of these attractions, right? You have the Haunted Bride, Queen Mary's Dark Harbor. You have almost 20 different locations, right? So how far in advance does planning really begin? And also what goes into bringing these experiences to life? Yeah, you know, our planning never stops anymore. We're a team of about 80 year round folks at this point. And, you know, we've already got things on the drawing board for 2027 before 2026 starts. We have to just from a timing standpoint. You know, we want to produce experiences that are high quality that people want to people want to go out and experience. And to do that, there's a lot of thought that has to go into it. And, you know, a lot of technology advancements there, you know, our goal for our places is to make sure that you're not looking at the technology and saying, hey, that's cool technology, but more so saying, how did they do that? You know, then we know we're using it right. And then on the business side of things, to your point, the amount of data that we're able to crunch now and discover how consumers are feeling about our product, what they want to experience is a huge undertaking before we do anything. And then I would be remiss not to say, what does it take? An incredible team. And we have an amazing team of leaders that, you know, like I said, we're about 80 people year round. But during the Halloween season, we're literally thousands of employees. So the fact that they're able to hire, train and implement this is a huge testament. I'm super proud of it. And, you know, this year on opening night, I remember standing there and going, this is going on all over the country right now with people just like the folks here. And it's it's an awesome sense of accomplishment, but, you know, one that we couldn't do without amazing people. But a lot of work, I guess, is is the final answer. A lot of hard work goes into it. Yeah, I'm sure. Bring all of those people together, as you're saying, not just during the season, but around the entire year. 80 people full-time all year round is just incredible. Thinking about the number of people it takes, it's also a lot of cost to put this on, right? You have massive productions with sets, special effects, actors, technology, real estate even. What are the biggest costs involved and how do you make the economics work? Again, talking about not wanting to raise those ticket prices too high. Yeah, I think, you know, just like any business, I think our main, our largest costs are real estate, right? Overhead for that. Second to that, I would say wages and employment costs. Obviously, there's been a lot of upward inflation on those post-COVID. And then in addition to that for us, we're only operating once a year. So marketing, getting the word out to let people know we're open and let them know that they need to get out right away. So I don't think it's super different than a lot of businesses. I think real estate and payroll are probably some of the biggest factors that pressure business. So to keep prices low, focusing on other things that people want to add to their experience in order to say, hey, if you just want to buy a base ticket and come to our event, you can do that. But if you want to maybe do this extra experience, you can do that. That allows us to increase our margin. And then I think food and beverage and retail items. I think all of those are converging, right? You know, retailtainment, you know, you know, food entertainment, you know, all of these things are coming together and we're positioned well for that. So, you know, offering unique food and beverage offerings that you can only get in the fall at one of our events and, you know, unique retail products that you can take home to help you remember your experience. And I think those are the areas we've focused on as areas where we can generate more revenue to offset some of the inflation we're experiencing in our other costs. Yeah, so important to think about all of those different factors that you can bring together for customers. You mentioned marketing, getting people in there. How much of your business really depends on repeat customers versus first-time visitors? And also, what do you do to turn a one-time Halloween outing into an annual tradition where people say, okay, I'm going to go again next year. I'm going to bring the family and bring more friends. Yeah, no, you're Absolutely right. Historically in our industry, about half of our, believe it or not, about half of our attendees each year are new and have never been to one of our experiences. About half of them visit on an average of two to three years. So, you know, for us, I look at the scale we've grown to, if the average is two and a half years per visit, to your point, anything I can do to bring that number down is going to increase revenue. So customer loyalty programs, special incentives going to repeat customers, trying to stay engaged with them throughout the year and communicating with them. Most of our events do also off-season events. So we'll do a haunted Christmas event. We'll do a haunted Valentine's Day event just to keep people engaged with the brand and the product. And to your point, keep them coming back. Yeah. And thinking about all of these different markets that you have because again you need to keep people coming back to every one of them do you really alter the experiences kind of change what the haunted houses look like or what you're actually doing the activities there maybe when it comes from different markets maybe from a Denver to a Chicago or something or are they really all the same you know they're different because all of the the facilities are different i mean we do everything from uh haunt uh you know an abandoned building or in a strip mall somewhere and create a new world. But at the same time, we've haunted historic prisons. We haunt a haunted ship and we haunt a haunted mansion in San Jose, the Winchester Mystery House. So they're all different depending upon the location. So they all have to be treated a little bit differently. So that gives us some flexibility. But I think the one thing that's unique though, is when we look at what people respond to, they're very similar no matter where they are in the country you know they they respond to the same things i hate to say it but it's like uh interesting to me how incredibly similar we are even if we're in different geographic locations no i love that it's so true to think about what we really are looking for in these experiences is so similar across the board everyone going out trying to have a good time there lastly as you think to the future here not just with halloween you're mentioning other haunted experiences yeah where do you see everything going in the next couple years will it be more year-round events so you're not just focused primarily on halloween or where do you see this all going yeah i you know i think two answers to that as it relates to halloween i think people are craving more unique experiences more interactive experience where they have license over their experience maybe they're making choices uh in that experience i think when you give the ability to somebody to make a choice about what they're going to experience it builds that anticipation even more when they're engaged in the story um so yeah i think that's what you know i see an interesting convergence between what we do as a walk-through halloween attraction and also you know immersive theater and different types of experiences coming together like i said i think for us as a company we've built an incredible platform of uh producing these live events so the question i ask is what other ip can we use that maybe hasn't been brought to life in the same way that we've done it to do that in a different part of the year. What can we do in the spring around a unique IP that maybe people have experienced on a screen, but not experienced it in real life? So I think, yeah, I think, look, I love as the world becomes more and more virtual that we're in a business where we produce live experiences. I think that there's definitely going to be even more and more of a need for those moving forward. I definitely agree. And people wanting to get out there and experience all of this. So we wish you the best of luck as you head into this busy Halloween season here. Thank you so much for being here. Chris Stafford, CEO of 13th Floor Entertainment Group. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you, Justine. Appreciate it.