Squeezing through a crowd of vampires and terrifying nuns, visitors snap photos and applaud each other’s costumes while waiting in line for the many attractions at Hong Kong’s Ocean Park Halloween Fest 2026.
This year, Ocean Park brought artificial intelligence into its annual Halloween Fest for the first time, introducing fully AI-generated visuals under its theme, The Grave Rave.
Created in collaboration with Hong Kong musician Jackson Wang’s intellectual property Under the Castle, the festival combined AI-driven experiences with its usual mix of haunted houses, live performances and elaborate costumes.
Held on Oct. 31, the event attracted visitors dressed for the occasion. With Halloween falling on a Saturday for the first time in six years, the park saw large crowds throughout the day.
The Sights: Costumes and Performances
Visitors fully embraced the Halloween spirit with elaborate costumes filling the long, winding queues of the park’s events. Among the outfits were orange prison jumpsuits, matching black and white corsets for an angel-and-devil duo, and the iconic Jason Voorhees’ mask from Friday the 13th.
Scare actors also roamed the park, performing tricks and startling visitors as they made their way between attractions.
A fright spark slider (one of the interactive Halloween attractions) successfully attempting a hard-to- pull-off stunt as the audience eagerly cheers her on, near Ocean Park Tower on October 31st, by Zelene Wong
Marisa Dixon, a 26-year-old English teacher who flew in from Japan specifically to attend Ocean Park’s Halloween Fest, said that all the costumes made the event feel immersive. One group, however, stood out to her for its local humor.
“There were three guys who were holding TVB microphones, and they were dressed in raincoats,” said Dixon. “I think they were imitating the actual reporters who were reporting on the typhoons.”
Attendees showed off their costumes at the Ghoulish Cosplay Party at Summit Plaza, where an outfit contest crowned a Ghoulish King or Queen. The event also featured cosplayers from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, alongside local and international idol group performances. Visitors waved colorful lightsticks and danced to a mix of Cantopop, J-pop, and K-pop.
One of the night’s main shows was Oppa Scaremonies, where eight performers from the hellfire boyband Demoon King danced to popular K-pop songs like ‘Bad’ by ATEEZ and ‘Magnetic’ by ILLIT. Three audience members also got the chance to come up on stage and interact with the performers and snap pictures up close.
For Amy An, a 19-year-old university student, the Oppa Scaremonies was a wild experience.
“I did not expect it to be such a grand performance. There was very great coordination, lighting, and the music was very on point,” said An, dressed up as F1 driver Lando Norris. “I was a bit taken aback by the fan experiences, but overall I thought it was a great start to the night.”
The Frights: Haunted Houses and Immersive Horrors
Among the most popular Halloween attractions for the night were the Haunted House Experiences. Tickets for the “Triple Terror” experience, which included access to three haunted houses, were in very high demand, selling out completely for Oct. 31 on the official Ocean Park website and third-party platforms such as Trip.com or Klook. At the park, lines for the haunted houses stretched far into the distance, with waiting times past 90 minutes.
Patrick Yu, a 30-year-old lawyer attending the park’s Halloween event for the first time, found the haunted houses unique and immersive. Dressed up as Homer Simpson, he was quite impressed by the atmosphere that the actors created.
“The scare actors were really into the experience, and the best part was seeing other people getting scared in front of me”, said Yu. “Troublesome Night was my favourite house. It had more Chinese themes, and at one point I saw one of the fat Buddha statues being desecrated. That was pretty neat.”
Outside the houses, however, Yu felt that the atmosphere was less consistent. He had expected to see more roaming scare actors and thought the rides could have featured more Halloween decorations.
The Tech: Under the Castle and the use of AI
The Under the Castle collaboration was another Halloween experience visitors could purchase tickets for, with Wang serving as the creative director. It featured many AI-driven elements, including the SnapGenie AI photobooth and AI-generated backdrops for performances like the Oppa Scaremonies.
The SnapGenie photobooth offered visitors a chance to take pictures alongside AI-generated characters. It began with a short AI-generated video before transitioning into a K-pop-style photo booth, where visitors appeared alongside an AI-generated knight and characters from Under the Castle.
However, this introduction of AI also raised questions about its role in creative production and the human element of the artistic experiences. The two visitors interviewed had contrasting views on its use in the event.
Yu was critical of using generative AI for artistic elements like Halloween decorations, describing it as lazy. However, he also acknowledged that the technology could have its uses.
“I just think AI takes a human element out of a lot of different things that I think should be more personable to me as an individual,” critiqued Yu. “But if it can be used to help get rid of some of the more tedious and meaningless tasks to help provide a better output and better present their artistic creations, then I think that’s a good use.”
Dixon, by contrast, was less concerned with the introduction of AI-backed features. She queued up for a long time at the SnapGenie AI photobooth and said she was not bothered by the event’s use of AI, despite her awareness of its use for the Halloween Fest advertisements.
While the photobooth offered a playful use of AI, Yu’s reservations centred on its role in shaping the festival’s horror experiences. For him, the fear and atmosphere of a haunted house should come from human creativity and an understanding of what frightens people.
He hoped Ocean Park would continue to prioritise that human element in its horror attractions.
“I hope Ocean Park doesn’t continue using AI in their future endeavours just because I want a personal touch to the frights and scares. I want people’s experience and what they think is scary and apply that to the horror attractions here so it can impact me a little harder,” said Yu.