For three weekends in October, SeaWorld celebrates Halloween with Halloween Spooktacular. The theme park is festivally decorated for the holiday. There are trick-or-treat stations for candy-collecting kids. And the park is populated with a variety of delightful characters.	Pumpkin Fish
SeaWorld hired me to write scripts for the strolling characters. Since my knee injury still prevents me from returning to my regular work, it was a treat to have a project to work on and an outlet for my creativity. I developed six different mini-scripts for the various characters, giving them a relationship with each other and a reason to be out-and-about in the park interacting with the guests.
There were a wide variety of characters for whom I developed scenarios: Ms. Mackerel and her Fish School; Mrs. Rosenbloom the Gardener, Mona the Butterfly, and Lily the Flower; the Sea Witch and her Bat Ray assistants, Charles and Steven; Stavros the Fisherman and his wife; and others. I also worked personally with some of the performers to prepare them for their characters and their guest interaction. I enjoyed getting to meet and work with new people, and I was happy to have work that I could do even with my injured knee.	Ms. Mackerel's Fish School
	Mrs.Rosenbloom, Mona & Lily
In addition to working with the characters, I became a character for Spooktacular myself. SeaWorld needed pirates, so I became the Fierce Pirate Peewee and my friend Thom became the Fierce Pirate Tootles. To keep me off of my injured knee, Thom made a Fierce Pirate Ship out of a little red wagon.
	Needless to say, none of the guests took us particularly seriously as fierce pirates, much to our characters' dismay!
	Fierce Pirates!
Meanwhile, over at Pets Ahoy, my girlfriend Sarah and her gang were celebrating Halloween Spooktacular as well.
The Pets Ahoy set was decorated for Halloween with pumpkins and spooky eyes. The show's music was given a Halloween twist. And all of the trainers dressed up in Halloween costumes for their shows: a mummy, a witch, a cheerleader, a hillbilly, a pirate. Sarah was a go-go dancer.
Go-go Dancer Sarah	Mummy Martha
Head Pets Ahoy trainer Joel Slaven also presented a special assortment of critters associated with Halloween. A poor female victim from the audience is subjected to a boa constrictor, a tarantula, hissing cockroaches and a rat. The show that I saw, the woman volunteer was irrationally afraid of spiders, and the tarantula reduced her to uncontrollable tears and sobbing... much to the amusement of the rest of the audience.
Even Shamu got into the Halloween spirit with a special nighttime Spooktacular show: The Spirit of Shamu. One evening after we had finished all of our performances, Sarah and her coworkers and I went to see the special Shamu show. It was wonderful and beautiful and a very powerful show. We actually enjoyed it more than the usual daytime Shamu show.
I've very much enjoyed being part of SeaWorld's Halloween Spooktacular event. It is so nice to be active and performing again. It makes me particularly eager to be finished with my knee rehabilitation and get back to performing full time again.
Click below to visit the SeaWorld's Halloween Spooktacular website:
Posted: 10/29/04