Update, August 3, 2026: Hershey has published its own State of the Season report reaching the same conclusions from separate data. Our full coverage of the Hershey report and its “Treatonomics” framing is here.
Update, August 4, 2026: Starbucks has dated its fall menu. The Pumpkin Spice Latte returns August 25, arriving after two of the country’s biggest Halloween events have already opened.
The annual Tricks, Treats and Trends report from Mars confirms a lot of what we have been tracking in the haunt industry: the season is stretching well past a single night, there is real appetite for intense and textural Halloween food, adults still want to trick-or-treat, and discovery has moved to social while purchase has not. None of that will surprise anyone who has been reading us. What is new is that somebody finally put consumer numbers on it.
Know what you are reading first. The report is eleven slides summarizing a Morning Consult survey of 3,001 US adults, fielded online June 1 through 5, 2026, weighted to be nationally representative, with a stated margin of error of 2%. Three thousand people is a real sample. It is not a massive one, and it is not an industry study. Mars sells Halloween candy, and a report concluding that Halloween is bigger, longer, and more emotionally significant than you thought is a report that serves Mars. Read it that way.
First, the food opportunity.
The food opportunity
Mars found that 71% of US adults want sensory or textural experiences from treats and 58% want “extreme” flavors, while 76% see sweet treats as a small daily pleasure. Actively seeking out seasonal flavors, colors, or shapes when snacking runs highest with the youngest buyers: 74% of Gen Z, 72% of Millennials, 61% of Gen X, and 45% of Baby Boomers.
Mars means candy. The appetite does not stop at the candy aisle, and our own reporting says this industry is barely positioned to serve it.
When we covered Scarehouse Windsor’s immersive dinner, the supply-side numbers came from the industry’s surveys. Fewer than 10% of haunted attractions incorporate food at all, per the 2022 Haunt Industry Benchmark Survey. Only 3.9% cite it as a major revenue source, and 65% charge less than $30 for general admission, both from the 2024 Haunt Industry Report by HauntPay. For scale, per-capita spending at regional theme parks averaged $56.50 and destination parks $170, per the Global Theme and Amusement Park Outlook 2023-2027.
Scarehouse Windsor’s dinner package brings the total to $125 per guest. Co-owner Shawn Lippert broke the math down for us plainly: “It ends up being around $45 for the meal and $55 for your fast pass, which is our normal price.” The margin is not the interesting part.
“One of our goals was to create something that appealed to people who might never set foot in a haunted house. They’re drawn in by the dining experience, but they leave having had their first haunt experience, and they love it.” — Shawn Lippert, co-owner, Scarehouse Windsor
That is a customer acquisition channel, not a concession stand. Co-owner Dario Silvaggi described who actually shows up for it: “We’re seeing older couples, families, and people who are just curious about the dinner.”
The same logic is showing up at bigger scale this season. SCREAM-A-GEDDON spent $2.5 million rebuilding its midway into a 50,000-square-foot environment with four new food trucks, fire pits with s’mores, and an expanded beer garden pouring local wine and craft beer. None of that adds a scare. All of it extends dwell time. At Eastern State Penitentiary’s Halloween Nights, where two themed bars, a beer garden, vendors and s’mores fire pits replaced a 29-year linear haunt, director Erin Davis told us what the food actually buys: “You can just come here and do the historical stuff and have a great time and have a beer in the beer garden and pizza.”
Universal is treating it as a product problem rather than an amenity. Universal Horror Unleashed built Feaster Grievings around a menu of pickled eggs, bloody egg cake pops and truffled deviled eggs with a Feaster-tini and a Blood Bunny Mocktail, and assistant director of entertainment Del Wynegar told us the menu had been reworked about seven times since February. At Universal Fan Fest Nights, the headline addition for 2026 was a Dining Pass, six items for one bundled price, which is a per-cap play more than a menu play.
I wrote about the wider version of this in May for Seasonal Entertainment Source, after an IAAPA Honors panel where three operators were asked whether the F&B trend was sweet, savory or experiential. All three said experiential. Tommy Schatz-Thompson of Meow Wolf Grapevine put it as treating food and beverage “not as a secondary amenity, but a core element of the narrative for our entire site.” Anthony Pratt of the Vancouver Aquarium described building a menu backward from the exhibit: “It’s really about knowing your audience and the story your facility wants to tell. Some of the best ideas for food and beverage might not come from food and beverage.”
One caution before anyone reformulates a menu. “Extreme flavor” is a candy category, and the haunt version is not a hotter hot sauce. The number to work from is the 74% of Gen Z seeking out seasonal flavors, colors and shapes. A themed, named, October-only item sells at a higher price. A hotter wing does not.
The season is stretching, and not only at retail
Mars found that 57% of US adults believe Halloween is no longer one day but a full season, and that 66% would buy their favorite Halloween candy year-round. It also puts numbers behind Summerween, a term Mars did not invent but has now measured: 59% of Gen Z are aware of it and 30% already participate, nearly double the general population. Awareness drops to 48% of Millennials, 26% of Gen X and 10% of Baby Boomers. Gen Z’s stated Summerween activities are baking spooky treats (74%), hosting or attending themed parties (69%) and decorating (65%).
Summerween gets written up as a retail story, and that is a mistake. The attraction side of this industry has been running the same play all year, and the 2026 calendar is the evidence.
Tickets came first. Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party went on sale to resort guests May 5 and to the general public May 12, for an event that opens August 7, the earliest start date in its history, across 38 nights. Then the openings: Oogie Boogie Bash August 18, Halloween Time at Disneyland August 21, Halloween Horror Nights Orlando August 28 in its earliest start ever, and SCREAM-A-GEDDON August 29, ahead of every other independent haunt on our 2026 opening calendar.
The back end has moved too. Field of Screams runs its regular season to November 7 and then adds an Extreme Blackout on November 13 and a Zombie Fun Run on November 14. Fear Farm in Phoenix and 13th Floor Denver run to November 14. The Legendary Haunt Tour fills November 5 through 7. And the off-season is being colonized outright, something we documented before Mars did: Fright Nights WV built a one-night Friday the 13th slasher event in June, and Laurel’s House of Horrors ran a Capital Purge on July 5, both covered in our piece on haunts breaking free from the Halloween season.
Two operators are betting the whole format on it. ScareHouse returned this month with Halloween Hangout, a month-long October takeover of a Pittsburgh outdoor venue with no traditional haunted attraction in year one. And Universal Horror Unleashed announced a two-year rotating calendar for Las Vegas, where senior director and general manager Kim Scott framed the advantage as the absence of a calendar: “Where the parks have this finite amount of time, the interest that is coming to us is just phenomenal because we’re three sixty-five.”
I remain skeptical that a walk-through haunt is a year-round product, and I have written that at length. A 57% belief that Halloween is a season does not mean 57% of consumers will buy a haunt ticket in February. But the season is now defensible well outside October, and the operators pushing into August and November are following demand rather than manufacturing it. That is a useful thing to be able to say to a landlord, a city, or a sponsor with a nationally representative survey behind it.
We were told this seven years ago by someone in the industry. Amy Hollaman, then creative director of Terror Behind the Walls at Eastern State Penitentiary, said it on a 2019 panel: “When I was a kid, Halloween was one night, and it was sad when it was over… I love that this industry has taken a holiday from one night to 30.”
Adults still want to trick-or-treat
Mars found that 72% of US adults agree certain candy brands feel like Halloween and the holiday would not be the same without them, that 75% say a shared candy bowl builds community, and that 71% believe the candy they hand out says something about them as a host.
Strip out the brand framing and what is left is a finding about ritual and reciprocity. People want to give and receive treats, and they attach identity to it. The events already selling that to adults are among the most reliably sold-out things we cover.
The two biggest are the theme park Halloween parties, and both of them hand candy to grown-ups. Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party runs more than a dozen trick-or-treat stops with Mars Wrigley candy and a complimentary bag at the door, and Disney’s language is trick-or-treating “for children and adults alike.” Oogie Boogie Bash ran twelve treat trails in 2025, nine hosted by villains and three candy-only, each with an allergy-friendly and no-sugar-added option at the station. Those are $119 to $229 and $139 to $199 tickets respectively, and the candy handoff is a load-bearing part of the product, not a giveaway.
On the independent side, the Spooky Swap Meet at Heritage Square Museum has sold out each day since its 2021 debut and now runs 65-plus vendors across three days, with guests of all ages trick-or-treating at seven Victorian-era homes decorated by professional and amateur haunt designers. Co-creator Claire Dunlap told me why in 2021, and she was blunt about it:
“We want to drive that point home. If you have a ticket, you go trick or treating. It’s not for just the children. It is for adults… We all need to be able to trick or treat, not just kids. It’s a little discriminatory that only children get to trick or treat.” — Claire Dunlap, co-creator, Spooky Swap Meet
Scott Swenson made the underlying argument on that same 2019 panel: “When we grew up, we wanted ways to catch that same spark in a bottle. That’s why adult-theme haunted attractions work incredibly well.”
If your event ends at the exit and the only thing a guest carries out is a photo, you are leaving the reciprocity instinct on the table. Disney charges up to $229 for a night that includes it. A candy handoff at your exit costs almost nothing.
Where discovery happens, and where it doesn’t
Mars found that 53% of Gen Z use TikTok to discover Halloween or Halloween candy trends and 49% use YouTube, but that when they buy they buy in person: 43% at large retailers, 41% at supermarkets, 18% online from a retailer’s site and 10% through TikTok Shop.
We have been circling this for six years without a number attached to it. Back in 2020, Josh Sumsion of Dead City Haunted House described the mechanism to us after a Krampus-night video hit three million views and the haunt picked up 60,000 followers in about four weeks:
“I wish we had a better way to track exactly who came in specifically through TikTok, but it was at least one group every 10 minutes or so would mention that they were here to see Jack Frost.” — Josh Sumsion, Dead City Haunted House
Mars just told us why that is structurally true rather than a tracking failure. Discovery and purchase are separate venues. Applied to haunts, social is a demand-generation channel and measuring it on last-click attribution will make it look like a failure. Tyler Barnett made the same point to us in 2020 when he described the real chain: a guest sees you on social, a friend recommends you out loud on a Friday night in October, and then the guest Googles “haunted house near me” and buys from the top result. As I wrote after last year’s marketing masterclass, influencer reach does not translate to ticket sales on its own, and the durable value is content you can repurpose into paid.
The number I did not expect is YouTube at 49%, effectively tied with TikTok. Vertical short-form absorbed all the attention and all the production budget, and this industry has almost nothing on the horizontal platform where half of Gen Z is looking. That is the cheapest gap in the report.
What I would actually do with this
Four things, ordered by how cheaply you can act.
Put a treat in the guest’s hand on the way out. The 72% and 75% findings say the exchange itself carries weight, and it is the lowest-cost item on this list.
Audit your food against seasonal, textural and specific. Not more food. One item that is unmistakably yours and unmistakably October. Fewer than 10% of haunts do food at all, so the bar for standing out is on the floor.
Split your social measurement. Stop asking whether TikTok sold tickets and start asking whether guests arrive already knowing your characters. Then put something on YouTube, because half of Gen Z is there and your competitors are not.
Use the 57% when you negotiate. With a landlord, a city, a sponsor or a partner venue, “57% of US adults believe Halloween is a full season” is a citable line from a nationally representative survey. It is a stronger argument for a longer permit window than anything this industry has previously been able to point at.
What the report doesn’t tell us
It is a survey of consumers about candy, not about attractions. Nobody was asked whether they attend haunted houses, what they pay, or how far they travel. The phrase “haunted attraction” does not appear in it. The 57% is about the holiday, not about your gate.
It is also a snapshot from a single five-day window in June, from a company with a commercial interest in the answers. The margin of error is 2% overall, but it widens considerably on the generational cuts, where subsample sizes are not disclosed.
Use it as directional support for decisions you were already making. Do not build a season on it.
The 2026 Tricks, Treats and Trends Report was published by Mars in July 2026 in partnership with Morning Consult. Slides reproduced from the report.
