SALT LAKE CITY — Fear Factory in downtown Salt Lake City is known for scaring people. Despite COVID-19 restrictions, co-owner Rob Dunfield said they still plan to do that, just differently.
“We redesigned a lot of the haunted house,” he said.
People are all required to wear face masks, social distance, stay with their groups and come at a designated date and time. A new safety team has been added to make sure everything gets wiped down and sanitized every 15 minutes. They are also only allowing about half as many people in each night compared to years past.
The way people will be scared will also look different, Dunfield said.
“A lot of the actors are now the distraction and you’ll have some trigger that goes off next to you that goes off close — a knock, a horn honk or a blast of air,” he said.
While there was hope things would be back to normal by fall, Dunfield said they started making plans to reopen during COVID-19 many months ago.
“We opened in the spring for our 'Halfway to Halloween' event. It was the first Halloween in the nation to really open after the COVID stuff,” he said.
There was no fear of not being able to do a haunted house during the pandemic, actor Gabriel Allred said, as long as the restrictions allowed for it to open. The actors and staff have been able to find new ways to scare people, he said.
“We’ve had to become very creative, and we’ve come up with some things people have never seen before,” he said.
People are required to have tickets for an exact time and date, so people are encouraged to purchase tickets ahead of time.
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