When you think of SeaWorld, you most likely think of orcas, school trips to the aquarium, or eating chicken fingers while contemplating the ethics of marine mammal captivity. But this Halloween, the theme park franchise wants to make SeaWorld synonymous with something else entirely: BookTok smut.On September 11, SeaWorld Orlando officially opened its annual Howl-O-Scream event, an after-hours Halloween-themed immersive experience featuring various“scare zones” in the park. Scattered between the more expected spooky fare, such as a haunted“Woodrot Hollow” forest and an I Know What You Did Last Summer–themed haunted house is Just One More Chapter, a BookTok-inspired zone featuring the hunky tortured bad boys of romantasy lore.In videos posted by Orlando-based influencers who got an early look at the park, young men with masks, floppy hair,& painted-on abs gallivant around wearing black denim, loitering next to brick walls, beckoning to park attendees,& gifting them with roses. And on Instagram, influencers posed around a central set piece, an oversized book open to a chapter called“The Cathedral,” emblazoned with the slogan“Good Girls Go for the Bad Boys.”Some of the TikToks from the scare zone went viral, garnering mixed reactions.“Booktok dark ‘romantasy’ cancer is RUINING heterosexuality,” wrote one X user,“every little tasteful drop of eros has to be squeezed out of everything so it can be refined into pure concentrated fucking CRINGE.” The fact that the event took place at SeaWorld, an amusement park franchise that is perhaps most closely associated with a harrowing documentary about an orca, also lent to the absurdity.But I did speak to one content creator present at the scare zone who had an entirely different reaction.“I wouldn’t say it was scary,” said the creator, who declined to provide their name because they did not want to“jeopardize their relationship with SeaWorld.”“But it did leave me with a good feeling—I guess you could say a sexy feeling, in a way.”According to Jessie Kinsey,the art director at SeaWorld Orlando,that was precisely the point.She came up with the idea for the event last year, after seeing romantasy bestsellers like Lights Out & Haunting Adeline go viral on TikTok.She knew that a dark romance-themed scare zone was not necessarily“something that you would expect from a traditional horror event,” but she had a feeling it would resonate with the BookTok girlies.“I remember texting my production manager, saying,’Don’t judge me, but I have an idea,’”she tells WIRED.A fiction writer in her spare time(she actually wrote the text for the oversized book set piece at SeaWorld), Kinsey came up with the narrative for the zone: It would be set in a crumbling Gothic cathedral, built in a town run by a wealthy family called the Blackthorns.“These roses grew up around it,& created this beauty out of destruction,” Kinsey puts it.“Which I thought was kind of fitting for the themes of these books.”Romantasy, or romance & fantasy, fuses mythology & supernatural figures such as faeries or demons with explicit sex scenes, exemplified by books like Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm & Sarah J.Maas’ A Court of Thorns & Roses series.The genre has exploded in popularity thanks to BookTok,with Bloomberg reporting that romantasy pulled in an estimated $610 million in 2024 alone.The male antiheroes of the genre,such as the“shadow-daddy” Rhysand in Maas’ A Court of Mist & Fury & dragon rider Xaden Riorson from Yarros’ Fourth Wing,are tortured,dangerous,(at best) morally complex,& egregiously hot.When you think of SeaWorld, you most likely think of orcas, school trips to the aquarium, or eating chicken fingers while contemplating the ethics of marine mammal captivity. But this Halloween, the theme park franchise wants to make SeaWorld synonymous with something else entirely: BookTok smut. On September 11, SeaWorld Orlando officially opened its annual Howl-O-Scream event, an after-hours Halloween-themed immersive experience featuring various scare zones in the park. Scattered between the more expected spooky fare, such as a haunted Woodrot Hollow forest and an I Know What You Did Last Summer–themed haunted house is Just One More Chapter, a BookTok-inspired zone featuring the hunky tortured bad boys of romantasy lore. In videos posted by Orlando-based influencers who got an early look at the park, young men with masks, floppy hair,& painted-on abs gallivant around wearing black denim, loitering next to brick walls, beckoning to park attendees,& gifting them with roses. And on Instagram, influencers posed around a central set piece, an oversized book open to a chapter called The Cathedral, emblazoned with the slogan Good Girls Go for the Bad Boys. Some of the TikToks from the scare zone went viral, garnering mixed reactions. Booktok dark romantasy cancer is RUINING heterosexuality, wrote one X user, every little tasteful drop of eros has to be squeezed out of everything so it can be refined into pure concentrated fucking CRINGE. The fact that the event took place at SeaWorld, an amusement park franchise that is perhaps most closely associated with a harrowing documentary about an orca, also lent to the absurdity. But I did speak to one content creator present at the scare zone who had an entirely different reaction. I wouldn’t say it was scary, said the creator, who declined to provide their name because they did not want to jeopardize their relationship with SeaWorld. But it did leave me with a good feeling—I guess you could say a sexy feeling, in a way. According to Jessie Kinsey,the art director at SeaWorld Orlando,that was precisely the point. She came up with the idea for the event last year, after seeing romantasy bestsellers like Lights Out & Haunting Adeline go viral on TikTok. She knew that a dark romance-themed scare zone was not necessarily something that you would expect from a traditional horror event, but she had a feeling it would resonate with the BookTok girlies. I remember texting my production manager, saying,’Don’t judge me, but I have an idea,’she tells WIRED.
A fiction writer in her spare time—she actually wrote the text for the oversized book set piece at SeaWorld—Kinsey came up with the narrative for the zone: It would be set in a crumbling Gothic cathedral, built in a town run by a wealthy family calledthe Blackthorns. These roses grew up around it,& created this beauty out of destruction, Kinsey puts it. Which I thought was kind of fitting for the themes of these books. Romantasy, or romance & fantasy, fuses mythology & supernatural figures such as faeries or demons with explicit sex scenes, exemplified by books like Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm & Sarah J.Maas’ A Court of Thorns & Roses series. The genre has exploded in popularity thanks to BookTok,with Bloomberg reporting that romantasy pulled in an estimated $610 million in 2024 alone.The male antiheroes of the genre,such as the shadow-daddy Rhysand in Maas’ A Court of Mist & Fury & dragon rider Xaden Riorson from Yarros’ Fourth Wing,are tortured,dangerous,(at best) morally complex,& egregiously hot.
This is not an accident, and it is not even purely a marketing gimmick, though it is certainlythat too. Kinsey, who writes fiction in her spare time, understood that the appeal of romantasy lies not just in the explicit scenes but in the emotional architecture built around them: the yearning, the forbidden, the charge of a dangerous man who softens only for the heroine. The Cathedral zone is designed to make visitors feel like they’ve stumbled into the middle of one of these novels, where every shadow might hide a morally grey love interest and everyone rose carries a hint of menace. The actors, with their sculpted torsos and half-masks, are not trying to make you jump out of your skin; they’re trying to make you feel seen, perhaps even desired, in that slightly embarrassing way that only a well-executed theme-park fantasy can. It’s a strange but oddly natural evolution for Halloween events, which have long traded on the thrill of fear. Why not trade on the thrill of attraction instead, especially when both make your heart race in almost the same way? The zone leans into the absurdity rather than apologizing for it, turning a dark cathedral into a playground for people who have ever secretly wished a fictional villain would step off the page and fix them with a smoldering stare.
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The genre’s explosive growth has been fueled by online book communities, particularly TikTok’s BookTok, where readers share their favorite spicy passages, swoon over fictional men, and debate the finer points of fae courts and dragon bonds. Romantasy has become a cultural force, with millions of readers—mostly women—embracing a form of escapism that unapologetically centers female desire in all its complicated, messy glory. The male characters are not just love interests; they are walking fantasies of power and vulnerability, often brooding, emotionally wounded, and devastatingly attractive in a way that feels almost dangerous to admit liking. They are the kind of men who would burn down the world for you, or perhaps the kind who would burn it down anyway and expect you to be impressed. This is precisely the energy that SeaWorld has tried to bottle inside its Halloween event, and to many attendees, it works surprisingly well. The content creator who spoke to WIRED captured the strange, delighted confusion of it all: the zone didn’t scare her, but it left her with a good feeling, a sexy feeling, even. That is not a typical reaction to a haunted house, but it is a perfect reaction to a dark romance novel brought to life, however kitschy the execution.
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The public reaction, of course, has been anything but unanimous. The internet, as it tends to do, split into two camps: those who find the whole concept cringe-worthy beyond belief, and those who find it hilarious, delightful, or weirdly empowering. The X user who declared that BookTok dark romantasy cancer is RUINING heterosexuality captured a certain kind of online disdain, one that views the earnest, breathless consumption of fantasy romance as somehow beneath proper taste, or as a corruption of more legitimate forms of desire. There is also the inevitable irony that SeaWorld, a park forever shadowed by the documentary Blackfish and the ethical questions surrounding orca captivity, would choose to lean into a fantasy about dangerous, untamed creatures. The cognitive dissonance is rich: a brand built on the spectacle of wild animals in concrete tanks now invites guests to interact with shirtless men playing fantasy monsters in a fake cathedral. But perhaps that is exactly why the juxtaposition works, at least as a conversation starter. It forces people to ask why we are so comfortable commodifying female fantasy when we are so quick to mock it, and why a theme park can host a gory haunted house without eyebrow-raising, but a romance-inspired scare zone becomes a national joke. The mockery itself reveals something about how we still treat women’s desires—especially the bold, unapologetic, slightly ridiculous ones—as embarrassing, even when they are profitable enough to justify a major theme park installation.
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In the end, Just One More Chapter is a strange and perfect artifact of the current cultural moment, where fandoms intersects with corporate entertainment, where irony and sincerity blur, and where a generation of women who grew up being told to hide their feelings now walk through a fake cathedral and accept roses from masked strangers with painted-on abs. It is silly, yes. It isslightly ridiculous, certainly. But it is also, in its own way, a small act of validation for everyone who has ever been made to feel ashamed of loving something deeply, whether that something is a book, a character, or a particular kind of fantasy. SeaWorld may not be the most obvious home for romantasy, but perhaps that is precisely why it works: it takes the genre seriously enough to build an entire world around it, and not so seriously that it forgets to have fun. In a season that is supposed to be about fear, this zone dares to ask what happens if you let yourself want something instead of just being scared of it. And for the people who line up to meet the bad boys of the Blackthorn cathedral, the answer is simpler than the cynics might expect: they feel good, maybe even a little sexy, and for one Halloween night, that is more than enough.
