Now you have to understand that as a child I was absolutely terrified of everything. I would scream, cry and carry on when anything loud, scary or surprising happened near me. Hell, even the people dressed as elves at the malls during Christmas time gave me the creeps. So I spent much of my childhood avoiding those things like the black plague!
Yet, I was greatly intrigued by spooky, eerie subjects and things. Blame watching too much of the Scooby Doo cartoon of the late ‘60’s early ‘70’s. This was a major contrast of interests for me. I loved spooky creepy things, however I avoided them. I can remember having my Mom and Dad take me downtown to the local March of Dimes haunted house. Not to go through it! Oh no. That would not do! But I would stand outside and watch all the people going in and out of it and watching their reactions. I did the same thing with the Dark Attractions at the midways of local fairs and festivals. You know, those rickety carts that would go through a very elaborately decorated semi truck where the horrific and bloody paintings on its outside were more terror inducing than the dull, pitch blackness of the inside. I could stand there and watch those things for hours while my imagination would whirl away.
Then something happened. Two words….. Disney World! Three more words… The Haunted Mansion. I was 11 years old and had an odd fascination with the infamous Dark Attraction that is a staple of Liberty Square at the park in Florida. I had listened to the Haunted Mansion record album (remember those?) about 100 times before the family went to Orlando. I had the song “Grim Grinning Ghosts”, as sung by Thurl Ravenscroft, stapled to the memory glands in my brain.
I remember passing by the huge gothic manse for the first time. It loomed far above us on a hill overlooking Liberty Square. Although it was a sunny day, the building looked menacing and foreboding. There’s was a part of me that really wanted to go up that hill and investigate the house for ghosts, just like Scooby and Shaggy did every Saturday morning. But fear got the best of me. I stayed behind as my family, including my 3 year old sister, went on the ride. I was an 11 year old woose!! The family went on yet again the next day while I sat outside and watched the people coming out of the ride. On our last day there, my Mom and Dad said to me, “Zangz (actually they called me by my birth name), You, OF ALL PEOPLE need to go on this ride.” Deep down, I knew they spoke the truth. So I bit my lip and went into the graveyard that acts as the ride’s queue (or where people line up) and never looked back. Well, it was an epiphany! I loved it. It broke the ice for me to start enjoying Haunted Attractions!!
Today, I make it a traditional ritual to drag a few friends along with me to a few of the local Haunted Attractions that pop up around Halloween time. I love ‘em!!! They’re the highlights of my Halloween season!!!
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on thier errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors."
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-82)
HAUNTED HOUSES X
#1. Leave your home EARLY!!!! Almost all of the Haunted Houses that pop up during the Halloween season operate on a “first come, first serve” basis and are usually some ways out of the city. The longer you wait to leave your home, the longer you will wait in line to get in!!!! So make sure those in your party that have a habit of dawdling get off there butts and are ready on time. Many popular Haunted Houses close off the lines once they reach capacity. This usually occurs anywhere around 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm. Leaving as early as possible is a MAJOR must (especially if you want to try and hit another haunt in the same evening)!!!!
#2. Get to the attraction EARLY!!! This goes hand in hand with #1. The earlier you arrive at the Haunted House, the earlier you’ll be able to go through the Haunted House and still have time in the evening to do other things… dinner, drinks, whatever.
#3. Be prepared to wait!!!! It’s a necessary evil when it comes to Haunted Houses. You WILL be waiting to get into the attraction from anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 ½ hours from the time you purchase your ticket. Don’t be a whiney fuddy-duddy. JUST DEAL WITH IT!!!
#4. Prepare for the weather!! Although many Haunted Houses provide indoor waiting facilities for their queues into the attraction, many are outdoors. October can be a very cold and rainy month, so be ready. Sometimes sweaters, winter coats and even long-johns are quite appropriate to wear while Haunted Housing especially if your going on a Haunted Hayride or corn maze!
#5. Don’t cram too many attractions into one evening! Some people wait until the last weekend of October to go to all of the Haunted Houses in the area. The fact of the matter is that in all reality, you will only squeeze in two per evening, if that. Many attractions are quite far apart and out in the country. Add to that fact the 30 minute to 2 ½ hour wait and you’ll soon realize that trying to cram a bunch of Haunted Houses in one evening is really pushing it.
#6. Don’t be a wise-ass. Remember that in the Horror movies it’s always the wise-ass that gets it first!
#7. Avoid going in with teeny-boppers if at all possible! It seems that people within the ages of 13 through 17 seem to have an urge to be as obnoxious as possible!! Their screaming, hollering and general buffoonery will detract from what’s going on in the attraction.
#8. Be aware of medical conditions of everyone in your group! People with bad hearts as well as people prone to seizers and pregnant women may want to sit the whole Haunted House experience out altogether and settle for the Halloween parties during the season.
#9. Don’t give the actors a bad time. It always astounds me when I hear of a story of some idiot punching an actor in a Haunted House ‘cause the idiot got scared of the actor. The actors are SUPPOSED to jump out and scare you!! That’s the whole idea! Insulting or trying to attack the actors just proves your own stupidity!
#10. HAVE A GOOD TIME!!! Most important while Haunted Housing! Don’t let the waits, the cold, the obnoxious teenagers get to you. Just immerse yourself in the holiday.
#1. LET US IN!!!! It gets very disappointing to those of us patrons that travel from a far, only to get turned away due to your haunt reaching capacity earlier in the evening. If your haunt is doing this before 8pm, then there’s something VERY wrong with your organization skills and output of guests!!!! Sure, it’s great to be popular and busy and have those bragging rights, but you need to find a way to remedy this, because you’re just cheesing off potential patrons…and their money! Many people who don’t get in will decide to avoid your haunt and go elsewhere rather than drive all the way out there again. They may also tell others to avoid it…“Don’t bother going! You won’t get in!” is one of the last word of mouth statements you want to be said about your haunt!
#2. Does your haunt have a website? If so, do you publicize it well? The web is a quick stop for those of us looking for information on local haunts! It helps to have directions, pictures of past haunts and times and prices on your website so we know what to expect. It’s equally advantageous to have it be visually stunning. Is there a good graphics artist you know of that’s willing to donate time to the site? There are also many Haunted Attraction recourse sites that will let you link your haunt’s website to them! This is a great way to get virtual publicity! Go to as many of these sites as you can, whether it’s for local haunts or national haunts. You want as many people to be educated about your haunt as possible!
#3. Entertain in the queue! Both the ticket line and the line to get into the actual attraction (these lines are also known as queues) can be quite long and boring for us patrons. One thing Walt Disney does with almost all of it’s attractions is have some sort of “something” to make the wait an actual part of the attraction, or at the very least, something to entertain us while we wait. One such way many Haunted Houses do this is to have cast members dressed as the undead and wander around the people in line, spooking them as they wait. If you really want to do it up, big time, then create an intense façade. Make the place look like we’re actually waiting outside of a haunted castle or dilapidated house or creepy building. Sometimes, haunts will have a waiting area with games and food. That’s great, but you may still want to incorporate the theme of the haunt into it! Perhaps you could have signs that have a back story (#4) to your haunt along the queue.
#4. Does your haunt have a back story? You know, a made up legend or story about the happenings of the haunt. Was it at one time a butcher shop where a mad butcher lived, a funeral home where people disappeared, was it built on an old Indian burial ground or secret cemetery or was it at on time an insane asylum run by a mad doctor? You can have a lot of fun with these and they add a sense of mystery and foreboding to your haunt. Fewer and fewer haunts are utilizing stories these days. That’s too bad. Be different!
#5. Make sure the haunt is a time consuming experience! I don’t want to be paying $10 to go through an attraction that takes less than 20 minutes, no matter how fast we run through it!!! Make sure the patrons going to your haunt get their moneys worth!!! This is how I rate the TRT (Total Running Time) of a haunt when going through…. 5-15 min.- Lame! 20-30 min. - Decent. 30-40 min. Good! 40-60 min. - Frellin’ Awesome (sadly, somewhat unheard of…yet!). Make sure your haunt has the length it takes to satisfy and not rip off the patrons.
#6. Do you really need to use child actors? Sorry, but when a 13 year old girl jumps out at me in a zombie costume, it does nothing for me. Too many times I see kids, barley out of grade school filling the roles of the undead in many haunts. Try and find people who are at least out of high school to fill the monster outfits. What I’ve said may seem rude, but I’ve seen one too many a ghost that is shorter than me and calls out in a weak, “boo”, then runs back to his or her hiding spot to jibber-jab with another young cast mate. If you truly want to scare the patrons, use adults as the creatures in your haunt, unless the role is specifically for a kid (i.e. the girl in the well in “The Ring”). If you are forced to use a mostly young cast, make sure they have the maturity to handle working in a haunt. Make sure they don’t spend their time goofing off when they should be in full scare mode!
#7. Don’t rely totally on the dark maze! I’ve been through too many haunts that are nothing more than dark maze after dark maze after dark maze. Oh… they may throw a scene or display every once in a while, but for the most part it’s all about the dark maze. Don’t get me wrong, the dark maze does have its place in a haunted attraction. But, to make 90% of your haunt a dark maze can be more annoying for us patrons than entertaining us. It’s an easy habit to fall into. It’s much cheaper and you don’t have to use up too much imagination when creating a haunt that is made up mostly of dark mazes. But that’s not a good thing! One or two mazes in a haunt can be creepy, but any more than that and it gets a bit old, if not annoying. Perhaps certain parts of the haunt, a dark maze will make sense, like a big cave, or catacombs in a graveyard where you enter the maze through a crypt. The dark maze is an important part of a haunt, just don’t over do it.
#8. Don’t be afraid to get rid of obnoxious patrons! Sure, we all act a little goofy when we’re nervous or scared. But, there are some people who take their obnoxious behavior too far. Big groups of teens as well as people under the influence fit this bill. You may want to break up huge groups of teenagers into much smaller groups to go through your haunt. You may also want to put a group of adults through between the teens. If you notice a group of people who may have taken a trip to the bar before they hit your haunt and are acting belligerent toward other patrons, workers or cast members , you may want to out and out eject them from it!! They don’t do any good to those of us trying to enjoy your haunt!
#9. Have your creatures be ready for us! It seems that there’s always one or two scenes in a haunt were we patrons enter and we’ll see the monster, zombie or whatever, just walking around, not hiding, not scaring us, just staring at us dumbfounded ‘cause we caught him off guard. Get with the program!!! Have your monsters in their spot, ready to scare the livin’ beejeeses out of us!!! They shouldn’t be conversing with other actors or out of their designated area when we come through.
#10. Do you have a climatic ending? Do you have that final terrifying crescendo to leave us breathless at the end of our dark journey? Lately, I’ve been going though more and more haunts that have their wiz-bang in the middle of the haunt and nothing more than a slight fizzle at the end. Maybe have the last scene be a big tableau or acting scenario. Or one last BIG scare could be implemented at the end. What best works is when we patrons think we’ve reached the end only to find that there’s one more big shock awaiting us. The ending should be the best part of the haunt, not the weakest!
#11. If you run an outdoor haunt (corn maze, haunted trail) be sure to keep potential patrons appraised of your weather situation. If it rains before your haunt is open and you are forced to close down that evening, be sure you update your website and / or phone message for your haunt with that information. Don’t let customers come from afar just to find out that you’re closed. Don’t be lazy and have a “well, they’ll find out when they get here” attitude! If there’s time, be communicative!!!
#12. Keep it fresh! God knows it can be a heck of a financial strain to do a complete redo of your haunt from year to year. But you don't want to do a complete, exact repeat of the year(s) prior. Find ways to dress effectcs up differently, or paint sets with a new motif. Don't get stuck in a rut from year to year. Patrons may feel inclined to skip your haunt if you've done the exact same thin in the last couple of years in favor of something fresh.
Thumbs Up:
- Haunts under the cost of $10 that still deliver the scares.
- Haunts that open the last weekend of September, if not, earlier.
- Haunts that have rally good actors that scare the frell out of you.
- Haunts that incorporate a good back story.
- Haunts that have good sets and atmosphere.
Thumbs Down:
- Haunts over the price of $12.
- Haunts that wait until the second week in October to open, if not later. Let alone haunts that are only open the weekend of Halloween.
- Haunts that are under 10 minutes.
- Haunts that use young kids to be the ghosts and monsters.
- Haunts that use the exact same show as the years before.
- Fake haunts that trick people into thinking they're authentic haunts, but in actuallity, are religous zealots preaching against Halloween.
-Haunts that turn patrons away early in the evening.
