The Polynesian Cultural Center won’t be as scary come Halloween this year.

"Haunted Lagoon," a nighttime Halloween-themed canoe ride that had been a popular family attraction at the center since 2008, is being dropped at least for this year, PCC President and CEO Alfred Grace said.

He said the short-term attraction, which has averaged about 33,000 people annually since it began, was minimally profitable and placed a drain on employees and community volunteers. Ticket prices would have had to increase significantly to make it financially worthwhile, he added.

"The challenge for us as a nonprofit or any company right now is making ends meet," Grace said. "And the cost of doing business continues to increase. So with that in mind, we’ve had to look at what we do and start focusing on what really matters most to our core visitor. Our core visitor would be visitors from North America, Japan, Korea, China and also the local residents, an important market. So when you look at those and what we do best and what we’re geared toward doing, ‘Haunted Lagoon’ was a wonderful activity but it was an incredible drain on us."

He said some employees ended up working from 7 a.m. to midnight for 20 days in October and by the end of that stint were exhausted.

"Any time you participate in activities like that you always take away energy and resources from your core product," Grace said. "It may continue next year, we’ll see. Right now we’re focusing on improving our key drivers — the island experiences at the PCC; the immersive cultural experiences; the night show, ‘Ha: Breath of Life’; the luau; the new movie experiences.

"These are the things that people drive all the way out there to the Polynesian Cultural Center to experience. So we want to be great at those."