Bayville Scream Park steps up its scare tactics

BY DANIEL BUBBEO | daniel.bubbeo@newsday.com

They're creepy and they're kooky. Mysterious and spooky. They're altogether ooky ...

In case you were thinking the Addams family, you'd be way off. The Bay family has moved into Bayville, and there goes the neighborhood. Only, the frightful occupants are drawing visitors rather than keeping them away.

The Bays are the primary residents of Bayville Scream Park, a Halloween haunt that returns to Long Island for its second year in the space occupied by Bayville Adventure Park.

"The whole park is based on the Bays, the mythical first family of Bayville. Every one of the attractions is based on another member of the family," says D.R. Finley, founder of the company that operates the park as well as Manhattan's Jekyll & Hyde restaurants.

Certainly the Addamses and the Munsters had nothing on the Bays. At Bloodworth Manor, their eerie mansion in the park, zombies and vampires think nothing of popping out of halls to scare guests. And there are a few new rooms this year, so expect the scares and screams to increase.

Then there's Uncle Needles' Funhouse of Fear, painted in a lovely ultraviolet paint that requires guests to don 3-D glasses as they encounter freaky clowns and other equally weird ancestors of dear old Unc, a former vaudevillian. And if you enter the labyrinthine Temple of Terror, hope that you make it out before encountering cannibal mummies.

Also new to the theme park this Halloween is Curse of the Zombie Pirates, a haunted miniature golf course. Actors, in menacing moods and outfits, lurk throughout the mini-golf course and stir up big fear.

For the little ones, Saturdays and Sundays (and Columbus Day) from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. are "not so scary" days, where the frights are kept to a minimum. Kids can go crazy in the bounce house and have fun in the pumpkin patch. Prices are $8 for Needles' Funhouse and Temple of Terror and $7.75 for the adventure slides.

Still, most guests are sure to be frightfully amused, though perhaps not as much as some of the locals working as actors at the park. "My dream is to have something of this caliber as an acting gig. It's the best job out there," says Gregory Agnew, who plays Benedict Beauregard Bay, an Indiana Jones-style "linguist and ladies man" after the family fortune.

Kristin Nolan, who plays Bloodworth Manor housekeeper Cordelia Mayhem, is also having the time of her life. "You get to dress up. You work with great people. You have a good time, and you get to interact with a lot of people."

For Finley, finally creating the park, a two-year undertaking, has been a dream (or in this case, nightmare) come true. "I'm a big fan of horror and sci-fi. For many years, we were searching for a spot to do a park like this. It's difficult because of how expensive real estate is, and since it's a seasonal business, the property has to have another use during the rest of the year," he says.

In the spring and summer, the scream park operates as Bayville Adventure Park, a pirate-themed fun park with bumper boats, rock-climbing walls, miniature golf, and tight-rope walking sort of attraction that tests your agility and your nerves.

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