Standing in the outdoor tent erected behind the Circus Circus Adventuredome Theme Park, I don't see how I'm going to scare anyone. My hands are floppy claws, as are my huge plastic feet, which I keep tripping over. My bigfoot fur suit is a torturous sweatbox far scarier to be in than to look at. The oversized demon head mask I am wearing is scary, too, if for no other reason than I have no peripheral vision with it on and so people keep frightening me by suddenly appearing out of nowhere to loom over me and thus making me cower back in my furry suit and stumble over my swollen plastic claws. My shoulders keep slumping.
Monstering is not easy, and the pay isn't great. The other monsters tell me their salary is about $6 an hour for the 7 p.m.-to-midnight shift, but there is a potential bonus for perfect attendance that could bring it closer to $8 an hour. However, according to the rules and regulations, "To be entitled to the bonus you must work the full 16 nights." Still, there seems to be no shortage of those hoping to become monsters; or, to be exact, the technical title, "scare actor."
If I were being paid, my boss would be Jason Egan, 27, who spends all year preparing for this. "This is our main event. I am actually the owner of Fright Dome. They lease the Adventuredome out to me and Circus Circus and I are actually partners in the event."
This is the third year that Egan has hosted Fright Dome at Adventuredome. According to Egan, "For Fright Dome we give a full experience ... we take over the entire Adventuredome, switch the rides, add lighting and smoke, the Jim Rose stage show, four haunted houses, and throw 100 actors on top of it. We wanted to give a full five hours of fear. We wanted to give people a full night's safe experience. But it's pretty gory and we go full bore with the blood and guts. We suggest 12 (years old) and up. Our goal is to be the Halloween event in Las Vegas and I think we are there now."
And maybe that's why, unlike most events on the Strip, Egan claims Fright Dome is overwhelmingly a locals' pleasure. "Shockingly, it's locals who appreciate it the most. We are about 70 percent local. We thought it was going to be vice versa."
This, of course, raises the possibility that I could have the opportunity to terrorize someone I know. Or, maybe even someone I don't know but who, perhaps, at some point irritated me with their hideously unsafe driving while talking on a cell phone in a gigantic white SUV (yeah, you know who you are!).
Yet even thus motivated I feel more dork than terror. So Egan assigns me to be accompanied by Drew, who has over a dozen years experience in the Halloween business. Drew seems like a nice fellow and I'm not at all shaken that he is wearing some sort of restraining jacket and wielding a chain saw that he keeps revving. That's the gig after all, and Drew is very enthusiastic about it. Drew is also friendly and warns me about tripping on the stairs we mount as we enter the Adventuredome. This was good of him because I can barely see the stairs on account of the mask. Feeling is another matter. My feet can sure feel the metal stairs since the thin plastic monster feet offer little cushion to the mere human flesh tucked within.
Yet, let's say while I certainly have a good feeling about Drew, I realize we haven't had nearly enough time to get to know each other the moment we are inside and he begins to cackle and squeal and swing the chain saw about. Rather than boost my confidence that I am part of a scary duo, I just keep reminding myself that Eagan had told me: "We promote safety. Safety is the number one thing going on here. We do use chain saws but, of course, they are all protected. No blades are going. But they are great for the scare." Let me vouch for how scary chain saws are especially when the operator is next to you, you met him five minutes earlier, and you are wearing a mask so you can't see him but you keep hearing his gleeful squeal followed by that wood-chopping roar.
I only lasted 20 minutes on the floor as a "scare actor." The heat in the suit was too much. Monstering is for the young and fit. But amazingly (or, at least amazing to me), some people were so terrorized by my zippered-up fur suit (and various plastic accoutrements) that they jumped from fear at the sight of me. It wasn't particularly gratifying, just surprising. I guess you have to really love scaring people to be a monster.
On the way back to the car a woman with a child walked past me and she asked if Fright Dome was worth it, and so I told her probably, now that I, the cut-rate monster, was out of there.