CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Scarowinds begins its six-week run at Carowinds starting Friday. The annual Halloween-themed festivities run through Oct. 29 with haunted mazes, scare zones, live shows and more.
The amusement park, on the state line between North Carolina and South Carolina just south of Charlotte, is introducing a new live performance this year called Conjure the Night. Also new this year is Procession of Nightmares, a "cavalcade of hideous, monstrous structures slithers through the park" at 7:30 p.m., according to the park announcement. Meanwhile, the new scare zone, Harvest FEAR, takes visitors into a "realm of horror."
Blue Ridge Road Killers, what Carowinds called a fan favorite, returns this year.
Also returning are mazes: Depths of Darkness, Paranormal Inc., Silver Scream Studios: Condemned, Slaughter House: The Final Cut, and Tooth Fairy. Scare zones BloodYard, Ripper Alley, The Harlequin Club, and The Hollow also return.
The park's four live shows include new performances called Halloween Hootenanny and Raging Inferno.
The park recommends guests to the main attraction be at least 13 years old.
For family-friendly fun, the park welcomes kids to The Great Pumpkin Fest with Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang. Activities include trick-or-treating in Camp Snoopy.
To keep guests safe, private security guards and police officers roam the park every night. The park also has a chaperone policy following a security incident that happened during Scarowinds opening weekend last September.
According to cell phone video and guests, mass panic spread throughout the park last year as people ran from rumored gunfire. Carowinds closed an hour early that night. The next morning, a spokesperson said no shots were fired, but unruly teenagers were to blame for the chaos.
The current chaperone policy, according to spokesperson Courtney McGarry Weber, requires any child aged 15 or under to be accompanied by someone 21 or older after 4 p.m.
"When you come into the gate, we check IDs so anybody who is 16 or older will need to have a government-issued ID," Weber said.
Weber couldn’t comment on last year’s incident but said their chaperone policy has been effective.
"Throughout the year, those guests who were underage were escorted out of the park by our security team if they were found to be of that age," Weber said.
The park also has a no bag policy during Scarowinds from 7 p.m. to midnight. However, Weber noted there are exceptions for guests who are already in the park during the day and transition to Scarowinds at night.
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