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Fright Fest Weekend

October 2nd, 2005 · No Comments · Stuntwork

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So Fright Fest has opened at Six Flags Great Adventure this weekend. I’m supposed to be flying on a wire rig over at the Haunted Hollow, but something happened Thursday after I left the park to coach. It seems the test weights had fallen off the rig while they were ascending, yet both the loops on the weights and the aircraft cable that supports whatever is on the rig were intact, and the caribeaner supposedly was intact as well. This is all based on accounts of the people that were there at the time. We’re going to be testing it out again tomorrow to see what happens.

What I’m supposed to be doing is getting yanked about 30-35 feet staright up into the air. The Haunted Hallows is a trail that people travel along in groups at a time and lots of scary things pop out and are around and stuff like that. At one point an actor in the group dressed like me will get scared and run off into a stand of tall catstails. I’ll be waiting on the other side out of sight hooked into the rig. As soon as he comes through they cue lights and sfx and release the counterwieghts and I get lifted up into the air with a light above me making it look like I’ve been abducted by aliens. Then I get winched back down and wait for the next group. And up and down and up and down…. we’ll see how fast it gets boring 😛 The counterweight is 250lbs and I only weigh about 150lbs so it’ll be a nice quick ascent.

Soooo since that wasn’t up and running this weekend I was an audio technician for the fire show that was being held in the Batman Stunt Show arena. Two brothers, one of whom was a thug in this year’s Batshow, put on the fire show. They breathe fire, use a staff with both ends lit up, twirling chains with wicks lit up at the ends, juggling fire and a fire whip. The fire whip is the best – whenever it cracks the fluid the whip is soaked in comes flying off and produces a fireball.

Next week hopefully I’ll have time (if I’m in the wire rig) to make it over between their shows and have them teach me some stuff. I already know I can whirl the chains, I’ve done that before with lightsticks on the end of string – but I don’t know how to do the fire breathing. Well, I know how they do it – put the fluid in their mouth and blow really hard on the torches – but it’s obviously more complex than that. I mean first off you have to prep yourself to hold the fluid in your mouth, and then you have to know the blowing technique so that the flame doesn’t travel back along the stream of fluid and ignites your mouth. I meant to bring my camera with me to the park tonight but I forgot due to previous events in the day…. but we’ll save that for a later entry, once I get the video from my girlfriend.

Righty then – stay tuned! I’ll be playing with fire soon enough!

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