Dade City, Fla. — SCREAM-A-GEDDON opens its 12th season on Saturday, August 29, one day after Halloween Horror Nights, and it is arriving with the largest capital project in park history: a $2.5 million rebuild of the midway, renamed Bonzo’s Bizarre.
That August 29 date is worth pausing on. Central Florida’s theme park events open first every year, and independent haunts typically follow from mid-September. SCREAM-A-GEDDON is opening ahead of every other independent haunt in the country on our 2026 calendar, and ahead of four of the five major Orlando-area park events.
Dates, hours, and tickets
- Season: Saturday, August 29 through Sunday, November 1, 2026, select dates
- Gates: 7 p.m. nightly
- General admission: starts at $27.95, varies by date
- Pre-season sale: 25% off general admission with promo code NIGHTMARE25, on now
- VIP experiences cost extra
For comparison, when we last reported the park’s pricing in 2023, tickets started in a $31.95 to $52.95 range. The $27.95 entry point with the code is a real discount against that.
Bonzo’s Bizarre: what $2.5 million bought
The midway has been the park’s connective tissue for years, and Bonzo and his clowns have worked it the whole time, pouring drinks and running games between attractions. For 2026 the entire thing has been rebuilt as a 50,000-square-foot environment under Bonzo’s name.
What is actually new:
- A fully paved midway winding past permanent covered pavilions
- Four new food trucks
- New fire pits with s’mores
- An upgraded beer garden pouring local wine and craft beer
- Newly paved parking lots and park roads
That last item is the least glamorous and probably the most felt. Paving the lots and the internal roads is the kind of spend that does not photograph well and that every guest notices on a rainy October night.
“We’ve been scaring Tampa Bay for more than a decade, and as we grow, we’re committed to investing in the guest experience,” said Jon Pianki, Chief Marketing Officer at SCREAM-A-GEDDON. “Bonzo’s Bizarre and the broader park upgrades were designed to elevate every moment of a guest’s visit. This August, we’re delivering our most terrifying and most guest-friendly season yet.”
Reading the list, the theme is dwell time. Covered pavilions, fire pits, four food trucks, and an expanded bar are all built to keep people on property between houses rather than moving them through a queue-to-queue circuit. That is the same bet a number of operators are making this season.
The 2026 attraction lineup
Six attractions across 60 acres:
- Killgore’s 3D Circus — the headliner, which debuted last season
- Bloodwater Bayou
- Breach
- Ravenhill Asylum
- Demon’s Revenge
- Zombie Paintball Assault
Plus midway games, hatchet throwing, and photo ops.
One change worth flagging for returning guests. When we covered the park’s lineup in 2023, Breach was the new attraction and the only one carrying the opt-in interactive experience, where guests 18 and older could mark themselves to be grabbed, held back, pulled from their group, or sent into hidden cells. For 2026 that option runs in both Breach and Ravenhill Asylum.
Also from that 2023 lineup: Rage 3D was the park’s 3D attraction. Killgore’s 3D Circus now occupies that role.
The touch option, in context
SCREAM-A-GEDDON has been running a consent-based contact model longer than most parks its size, and it has come up in our pages before. Writing in his A Scott in the Dark column in 2019, Scott Swenson used the park as his example of a haunt that escalates rather than softens:
“There’s a haunt here in Florida called Screamageddon. It’s a full-contact haunt if you’re wearing a glow necklace, which means they’re not dumbing down the scare, they’re ramping it up. They’re giving someone an opportunity to be even more involved, more scared.”
The mechanic has since moved from a necklace to a per-attraction opt-in, and it is now available in two houses rather than one. The principle has not changed: guests choose their own intensity at the door.
Where this fits in the Florida season
SCREAM-A-GEDDON sits at 27839 Saint Joe Road in Dade City, northeast of Tampa and roughly an hour from Orlando. That puts it in the same category as Sir Henry’s Haunted Trail in Plant City, the real-haunt counterweight that Orlando visitors drive out to reach. Sir Henry’s opens September 25 with general admission from $27.
The August 29 open puts SCREAM-A-GEDDON one night behind Halloween Horror Nights 35 and well ahead of the rest of the region. Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, its nearest large-scale competitor, does not open until September 11 this year, having moved off its historic Labor Day weekend start. That gives SCREAM-A-GEDDON close to two weeks with the Tampa Bay scare market largely to itself.
More HAN coverage
- Sir Henry’s Haunted Trail: 2026 Dates, Tickets, and the Story of a Top-Five Haunt
- Orlando Halloween Events: Every Park, Party, and Haunt
- Howl-O-Scream 2026: The Complete Guide to All Five United Parks Locations
- When Do Haunted Houses Open in 2026?
- LEGOLAND Florida Expands Brick-or-Treat to 18 Dates for 2026
Dates, pricing, and lineup details from SCREAM-A-GEDDON’s July 23, 2026 announcement. General admission pricing varies by date; check the park’s calendar before you buy.
