MASON, Ohio - Kings Island amusement park has dropped a Halloween Haunt display showing skeletons of dead celebrities.
Don Helbig, Kings Island spokesman, spent a rainy Thursday helping to remove the scene of slain NFL quarterback Steve McNair and his dead mistress Sahel Kazemi, along with other skeletons made to look like dead celebrities, including Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson.
The skeletons were near The Beast rollercoaster and have been replaced with generic skeletons, Helbig said. "We weren't intending for it to be distasteful and we do apologize if we offended anyone," he said.
Reaction to the McNair display was negative, particularly in Nashville, where McNair played most of his career and was killed on July 4. Police said that Kazemi shot McNair to death before killing herself.
The McNair skeleton wore a jersey numbered 9 and sat on a couch with a dress-wearing skeleton sprawled in its lap. A gun was on the ground, and the jersey-clad skeleton held a Tennessee Titans snack bowl.
The celebrity skeleton scene included a Sonny Bono skeleton tied face first to a tree and geared in ski equipment. Bono, a singer, actor and U.S. Congressman, died in 1998 as a result of a skiing accident after he hit a tree. A skeleton of Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams was stuffed in a glass-door freezer. Williams was cryogenically frozen after his 2002 death.
Preview photographs showed skeletons representing Jackson, Ledger, "Charlie's Angels" actress Farrah Fawcett, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas and as-seen-on-TV product pitchman Billy Mays.
What do you think? Just plain bad taste, or pushing the envelope to an acceptable degree given the Halloween theme?
