Singer Castle is the setting for new blockbuster reality competition show

CHIPPEWA BAY — Blindfolded and tied up to a chair, six ordinary people find themselves trapped in a 109-year-old castle sitting on an unfamiliar island and struggle to break out using teamwork, wit and brute force.

Another clichéd summer blockbuster? Nope. This is the setting for a reality TV show pilot called “The Great Escape,” shot at Dark Island's Singer Castle in the heart of the Thousand Islands.

Bertram Van Munster, co-creator and executive producer of “The Amazing Race,” teamed up with Academy Award-winning director and producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer to create this “Amazing Race”-meets-“Prison Break” competition series for TNT and shot the pilot episode Sept. 14 on Dark Island.

“They decided that Singer Castle would work very well because of its secret passageways, underground tunnels, turret dungeon, north boathouse, south boathouse and clock tower,” said Thomas A. Weldon, general manager of Singer Castle.

Preparation for the 42-minute episode took two weeks, and the project was kept under a tight lid, with the castle operating normally until Sept. 14, the day of the shooting, Mr. Weldon said.

The Atlanta-based TNT, hoping to hit reality TV gold with the show, went to the length of “transforming” the century-old castle back into its Gilded Age glory by repairing hidden levers, secret passageways — used by servants in its heyday to attend unassumingly to house guests' needs — gates, jail locks and doors.

Fake walls, fake floors and other obstacles were installed throughout the castle to force contestants to think outside of the box.

One hundred people, a 10-ton lighting truck — which made its way from Boston to help light the island “like a Christmas forest” — and a $1.7 million helicopter that had been used to film Super Bowl championships and the World Series were brought to the island that night for the 5½-hour shooting.

The show's entire budget is unknown, but Mr. Weldon said about $100,000 was spent locally to build the course for the pilot episode.

Also, Schermerhorn Harbor, Hammond, supplied boats and captains; Uncle Sam Boat Tours, Alexandria Bay, provided one of its tour boats for the staff to use as a dining hall, and Coyote Moon Vineyard in Clayton provided wine to fill Singer Castle's wine cellar, where contestants were tricked into believing they had hit a dead-end in the show, as well.

“They did that whole course throughout the castle. And when they were finished, they took down every obstruction and left them all for us. So once the show airs, we will be able to recreate the course if we want to. We plan on doing a brand-new tour next year,” Mr. Weldon said.

Three teams of two contestants competed for a hefty cash reward that night. While contestants were free to use tools and, at times, break through obstacles, they had to obey two rules: no windows, no antiques.

“Things were broken, but nothing that couldn't be repaired. No antiques were damaged,” Mr. Weldon said. “They basically came to our sandbox with all of their cool toys and when they gave us our sandbox back, it was better than when we gave it to them.”

Through part of the course, contestants had to swim through the castle's boathouse in 15-foot-deep, 67-degree water.

“I love that temperature. But the contestants came from California. They thought that was pretty cold water. They were freezing by the end of the night because they had to swim through this course several times,” Mr. Weldon said.

Mr. Weldon said surveillance cameras were installed on every corner of the castle to monitor the contestants' every move and there were no major injuries during the “escape.”

Having been sworn to secrecy, Mr. Weldon declined to discuss the happenings of the night of the shooting in too much detail, saying people will have to watch the show to learn the winners and prize amount when it airs in three to six months.

If the pilot is a success, five more episodes will be shot in different environments, such as an insane asylum or a sinking ship, he said.

Annually, some 22,000 people visit Singer Castle, which is open from May to October. Mr. Weldon said he expects the historic castle to attract as many as 30,000 or even 40,000 visitors to the Thousand Islands region in the following years after “The Great Escape” airs.

“Thousand Islands will be the cream of the crop of those shows because they wanted to shoot the best one first,” Mr. Weldon said. “Singer Castle, Dark Island, will be the most Googled thing that night.”