Queuing outside the Main Street Haunted Hotel at Hong Kong Disneyland, a group of teenage boys puff and preen beside their giggling girlfriends, while two youngsters accompanied by parents stamp impatiently. At Ocean Park, visitors exploring a spooky housing estate are presented with a choice of red and green doors. Leading the fearful group forward, a ghoulish character cackles: 'Choose your fate!'
Halloween is now a month-long party at the city's two theme parks, which have been offering a range of new thrills to pull in crowds over the scary season. Keeping things fresh year after year tests producers' creativity, but being a theme-park aficionado helps.
Lisa Tsang Ching-man, Disneyland's senior producer behind this year's fright nights, is a self-confessed fanatic who spends most of her holidays shrieking on roller-coaster rides or being awed by stunt displays. She has visited more than 100 haunted attractions around the world, all of Universal and Disney's theme parks, and during one memorable holiday in Florida 10 years ago she zipped through seven parks in five days.
'I did all the thrill rides, all the shows, including the night shows and even some of the family rides,' she recalls. 'I got a map and worked out a detailed plan of what I was going to do when.'
Given such zeal, it's perhaps not surprising that Tsang should find her way into the theme park business. A marketing graduate, she worked for the Hong Kong Children's Choir and for a trading firm before joining Ocean Park as a senior entertainment supervisor in the mid-90s. Initially, she was set more on pleasure than a career. Since she loved dolphins almost as much as she did theme parks, she says, 'I thought I'd do it for one year and then get back to real life.'
Joining Disneyland in 2004 gave her the chance to fulfil her dream of helping to open a theme park.
