Detached: How Kennywood's most extreme haunt came to life

By: Mark Frazee | Content Manager

If you follow our social media pages, you may have seen our three-part behind the scenes look at Detached, our new haunt at Phantom Fall Fest 2025!  We talked about the story, the technical components, costume, makeup and scare acting with those responsible for bringing Detached to life. They offered a lot of cool insights, but there was also a lot of content that didn't make the cut. As spooky season draws to a close, here's a little bit more from those we interviewed about everything it took to make Detached such a success. If you missed the original videos, you can watch everything here.

It goes without saying that there are major spoilers ahead - so if you haven't experienced Detached yet, you've been warned!

The Design Phase

We first started conceptualizing a new haunt for Phantom Fall Fest during last year's event in 2024. Marie Ruby, long-time Director of Operations, explains how we landed on the initial "puppet" theme.

"We realized that we haven't really talked about toys, and we decided that in an amusement park, where there's lots of toys out there, it's a natural fit," Ruby says. "We were thinking about theaters, dolls, ballerinas and things like that, and that's when we realized puppets can be really scary. We were also thinking of our Phantom character and how he's controlling of all our scare actors. That's when the Puppet Master theme came to us."

Marie Ruby is Kennywood's Director of Operations and is Kennywood's primary mastermind behind Phantom Fall Fest.

So, we had a general direction for the new haunt, but we still didn't have an exact story just yet. Joel Brennan, park electrician and technical expert on our creative team, shares how we narrowed things down:

"We came up with a bunch of general broad ideas of what to do - a theater, a toy store, hotels," Brennan says. "We went to the annual Halloween trade show in St. Louis, and that's when we started to fine tune the idea. We would all pick out stuff that we thought would fit within our theme, then we'd get together, and we'd be up all night trying to plot these things in different rooms."

As our team worked to narrow down the theme to a specific story, the key question remained: what would truly set this new haunt apart from the rest? Bryce Ring, our Events and Entertainment Manager, shares how we reached our "aha" moment:

"Most haunts take you through one single setting, so we said, 'what if we flip that and we figure out a story that can take us through multiple settings?' Once we got on the path of a toymaker, that's what put us on this trajectory of getting multiple locations that then became Detached."

"When you go through this new maze, you're going through his mind, from when he was a simple toy maker to how he became obsessed to find that perfect puppet, and how he can control that puppet and turn them into something he could put on display for the world," Ruby adds.

Sourcing Props

With the haunt's story finalized, things were full steam ahead with our creative team meeting on a bi-weekly basis throughout early 2025. Throughout the process, our team used digital modeling to bring the haunt to virtual life so they could begin ordering the materials needed to construct the haunt. 

"One of the benefits of creating a haunt in a digital space first is we're able to look through it from a first-person perspective and make sure all the different scares and elements actually make sense in a real environment before we even start building something," Ring says. "It saves us a lot of time and materials to know what it's going to be before it's actually built."

Events and Entertainment Manager Bryce Ring leads the development and execution of all of Kennywood's events alongside Director of Operations Marie Ruby.

At the same time, our creative team continued to source out the set pieces found within the maze.

"Some of the stuff is made here in-house by our team, some of it is purchased through yard sales, flea markets and things of that nature, and some of it is bought from Halloween companies that make props," Ruby explains. "We also find a lot of interesting old things at Kennywood that haven't been used a while, and we will bring them back. If you walk through, you might be surprised to find a few things that used to be in the park and are suddenly inside the maze."

One example can be found in the Puppet Theater room, right after the first room where a host - specifically, the Puppet Master's apprentice - explains the rules of the haunt. The large theater piece you first see after going through the door was once used for puppet shows in Kiddieland.

Unlike our other haunts that our team has built multiple times, constructing a new haunt takes time. We didn't want to lose the Penny Arcade for most of the summer, so we got creative: our carpentry team built a few rooms at a time in one of the pavilions back by Kiddieland, deconstructed those rooms, then built a new set. This allowed us to build the actual haunt at a much faster pace when the Penny Arcade closed for the year in mid-August.

Elevated Technical Effects and a Custom Soundtrack

If we were going to take the haunt to the next level, we needed to take the technical side to the next level, too. Electrician Joel Brennan led these efforts.

"We knew that we wanted to go in a different direction than what we generally do at the others, which is keep things dark, keep things basic," Brennan explains. "We really wanted to go in depth. We wanted it to really look like where you were. So, this includes smells in here, of course we have some fog and haze. The lighting is much brighter, but it's also creepier. It's a lot of things flashing around. We have some CGIs, we have a fake fire effect, a little bit of snow if you know where to look for it."

Park electrician Joel Brennan leads the technical component of our creative team. He also is the voice behind many of the safety spiels at our rides.

Of course, this is on top of all the props our team had sourced and built over the past several months. This includes both the large "hero" effects, and the smaller filler effects to keep consistent detail throughout the maze and drive the story forward.

"When [you] come into this haunt, we're going through three major themed areas, with another that sort of breaks them up," Brennan says. "They're all lit different, they all sound different, they all look different, so you're really getting immersed in the storyline."

To truly immerse guests, the rooms didn't just need to look different; they needed to sound different.

"We have 11 different rooms in here, and we have 11 different soundtracks, which is different from our other mazes, which will generally have an overall soundtrack to set the tone of the whole thing," Brennan says.

We enlisted musician and longtime scare actor George Sabol for the task. Sabol has portrayed the recognizable apocalyptic Norwegian Viking at Phantom Fright Nights and now Phantom Fall Fest for over 20 years, and is also responsible for several other spooky sounds in Kennywood, including the Ghostwood Estate theme music and Voodoo Bayou soundtrack. He explains his methodology.

"First, I looked at the storyboard for each room and wrote down how that room made me feel. I would take the list of emotions of how the room made me feel, and I'd pick the instruments that would bring those out."

Musician George Sabol composed Detached's custom soundtrack. Sabol also composed the Ghostwood Estate theme music and has been a Phantom Fall Fest scare actor for over 20 years.

Sabol says that everything he writes starts on guitar or keyboard. From that point, he transposes the sound into the desired instrument, then digitally recreates the score with virtual instruments. Everything is then recorded and mastered to the final product.

"It ties to visuals to the smells to the sounds all together," Sabol adds.

Detached is filled with Kennywood Easter eggs, and Sabol says the soundtrack is no exception.

"One room in particular is the Puppet Theater. In there, the soundtrack is the puppets playing out of tune orchestration and laughing and goofing off, and in the middle of that, there is a piece of music that comes up that pays tribute to the old Kennywood closing music," Sabol says.

If you didn't notice, our social media video series utilized Detached's official soundtrack in all three parts, too.

Here's a quick sample of Sabol's soundtrack for each of the rooms, plus some neat concept art from local artist and former scare actor Cam Swartz:

VIDEO: audio samples from each of Detached's different rooms as composed by musician and scare actor George Sabol, plus concept art form local artist and former scare actor Cam Swartz.

Costume and Makeup

As our technical team continued their work, Events and Entertainment Manager Bryce Ring enlisted Phantom Fall Fest makeup supervisors Jacki Dolan and Amanda Luppe to start thinking about how our scare actors might look like.

"There's two big buckets of characters [in Detached]," Ring explains. "We've got the henchmen, who are helping the Puppet Master with all of their crazy schemes, and then we also have victims, or the people who are actually being turned into puppets."

With that in mind, Dolan and Luppe could get to work.

"We really went into the storyline. We picked time periods of what they would look like, what they were wearing, and thinking along the timeline of what was happening through the story," Dolan says. 

The storyline is reflected in the progression of the appearance of the actors, who became increasingly disheveled as you make your way through the maze and the story.

"We pulled for a more vintage aesthetic for the costuming, a little bit more Victorian," Luppe says. "When it comes to the marionettes and dolls, it's very venetian. [There are] the old school puppets with the porcelain masks, and [we figured] out what we wanted those to look like."

Jacki Dolan (left) and Amanda Luppe (right) supervise the Phantom Fall Fest makeup room. They led the team the brings the makeup and costume of the characters within Detached to life each night.

As Ring reminds us, "nothing about this maze is random." This includes very intentional choices in the look, feel and detail of the characters based on the story.

"You're going through someone's life," Luppe elaborates. "It kind of immerses you a little more, because each section has a character that pertains to it. You'll see the henchmen throughout; your Puppet Master and head of house, or his "apprentice" as we call them, are linked by similar outfits. All of the marionettes have that very old rundown look to them, and each character has their own place in the story."

As you progress through the haunt, everything therefore makes sense as one, cohesive story, albeit set in different locations.

Both Dolan and Luppe stress that it takes a team effort from the artists we have on staff; artists Amanda Cline and Spencer Kies played key roles.

"Amanda helped with sewing the dresses that you're gonna see on those marionettes; Spencer was a huge help with the masks and distressing the costumes, painting them, getting them fabricated. He 3D printed them for us, so these things you're seeing wouldn't have been able to come to life the way they did without their help," Luppe says.

The Scares

With the look of the characters finalized, it was time to train our scare actors. Many former Villa of the Vampire scare actors can now be found in Detached, along with some new faces.

"This particular haunt has about 30 scare actors in it," says Marie Ruby, Director of Operations. "The week before we open, we bring the actors in every night to train them on how to do the proper scaring: what a startle scare may be here, or a jump scare over there. They have to learn each of those scares for each of the particular rooms."

The types of scares guests experience within Detached also differs from our other haunts.

"We definitely have the traditional scares in here - you're going to see your drop windows and air cannons, but it's also going to come from a lot of unexpected places," Ring says. "We designed this maze to look like you're going through real environments, and so you're not going to see a lot of actors jumping out from behind a wall or from behind a door. They might be directly in front of you and you can see them, but what happens next might be a little more of a surprise."

Staci Sypien supervises the nightly operations of Detached alongside co-supervisors Heather Davis and Doug Schmitt. Sypien says Detached forced some of our actors a bit out of their comfort zone but certainly rose to the challenge.

"A lot of people were skeptical at first, but we created a scare actor book, and we broke it down into each room, and we practiced," Sypien says. "This is a lot more roleplaying. Once seeing the amazing haunt, everyone really jumped in feet first and embraced it."

Scare actor Kristin Williams explains what that was like from her perspective.

"When I first saw [Detached], I thought it was really neat and cool," Williams says. "It was something new and something different. The first weekend was hard, but then it just came to me."

Kristin Williams (left) usually portrays on of the Puppet Master's henchmen in Detached. Staci Sypien (right) leads the team that supervises nightly operations.

You can usually find Williams as one of the Puppet Master's henchmen in the assembly line room in the middle of the haunt.

"I love it, I like the room I'm in. It's one of the scarier rooms; I really, really enjoy it," Williams adds.

"Just stop and look at all the details, because this haunt is so detailed, the costuming is so detailed, and the makeup. Each room tells a story, and the hosts really just took our playbook we put in place and brought it to life," Sypien says.

From conceptualization to design, special effects to training and everything in between, developing Detached was a labor of love. Perhaps Ruby summarizes it best:

"It's actually a production. It's like putting together any show that's out there. First, we have to build it, then we have to bring the actors in and train them and teach them how to do their particular characters and what the scares are. We then layer it with the sound, the lighting, the fog. It all becomes one immersive experience. From the building of the maze to the theming of the maze, to the teaching of the actors, and then adding in all of the other little things - theatrical, lighting, sound - you miss one of these things and it will take away from it."

The Final World

We wrapped up each interview by asking everyone what they hoped guests would take away from Detached. We leave you with their thoughts:

"What I think is going to be really interesting for guests, is that from the moment they see it from the facade out in front of the arcade, you're going to see that you're going into a toy store, and then you come out of a theater," Ring says. "You might think that's kind of strange, and I hope that when they come through here, they will see how that progression happens, and why they entered a toy store, and why they exited a theater."

"It takes a long time to develop one of our mazes at Phantom Fall Fest, and it takes a lot of different people to make it come to life," Ruby says. "I'm most excited to see as the guests go through the haunt, I'm very excited to see their reaction to how the storytelling is going to come out through the scares."

"I hope they come through here and they are frightened of course, but also, take a little bit of extra time and really look around, and look at some of the Easter eggs we have in here," Brennan notes. "Pretty much everything in here is done by us in-house. This is our hard work and our thoughts, and everything that came together to make something this detailed."

"This haunt just upped everything to another level," Sabol adds. "I think that it shows the collaboration of the talent we have in this park."

"I hope that the guests take away from Detached all of the hard work that went into it, so they can see how Kennywood is growing," Dolan says. "All of the ideas from actors past and present and from people that work for this park all came together to collaborate on such an amazing haunt."

"I hope the guests think it's scary, like the theming and overall have fun!" Williams says.

"I hope that guests see the hard work our hosts put through, because they worked so hard rehearsing their lines and bringing each room," Sypien says. "They're really putting their heart and soul into it, and they want to make sure that each guest creates a memory worth repeating."

"When you walk through Detached and see how much is here, this all happens because of a lot of people's dedicated work. I think the passion that we all have for what we go for our guests really comes out in this experience," Ring concludes.

We hope you enjoyed experiencing Detached as much as we've enjoyed developing it for you. Phantom Fall Fest 2025 concludes Halloween night and Saturday, November 1, before we shift gears to Holiday Lights.

To watch the video series, click here.

Scare Gallery

A look at some of the scary scenes from Detached: