Day 131- Map Room details

Several challenges for this room. Obviously the moving wall from right to left. We are going to roll the wall on 2 2x4 beams ("wall tracks") I am hoping this new suspensory design for moving walls and doors will be smooth enough that I will be able to easily advance it from the control room. We will see! Next is the double door leading into the map room. Both doors are closed when guests first enter the elevator to go down to the crypt. Then the "hall door" is open exposing the crypt entry or map room entry door. We can have the elevator operator open the hall door when the guests are in the elevator. That's easy. Then when the guests come out into the crypt level the original hall door is no longer there! Only the crypt door is seen. Then the crypt door will open. Probably this will open to the left. We then have 2 props. P1 will probably be fixed to the moving wall. To the left is the air cannon. We will have to do a bunch of testing on this because as it turns out the cannon has to be fixed in place and can't be moved. I am a complete pneumatics newbie and have never used this stuff before but we are going to give it a try!. The other big feature not pictured here is the projector which will have to be suspended from above! Yikes!

Day 133- Master Schedule

Welcome back Ghouls! Here is a quick overview of how I think this is going to go down:
1) Map room- June 19- End of August
2) Elevator- July 15- End of Sept
3) Pepper's ghost- Aug 1- Sept 15
4) Entrance hall- Sept 1-30
5) Vortex hoop assembly- Sept 1-30
6) Vortex build- Oct 1-30
7) Haunt test- Oct 10-30

So that's a rough schedule. Projects overlap but there should be plenty of time. We want to be certain there is enough time at the end to test it and get all the bugs out. This year we will finish each area completely rather than framing everything first. Now on to the Map Room!

Day 134- Halls of Doom Officially Open!

Welcome back ghouls! WE are now ready to begin the journey together for 2011. The 'Halls" are back and better than ever! Today we will do a live walk through and show you the layout. Please refer to the plans from the last post after watching the video. The first area we are going to work on is....the Map Room. One of the key events this year. I figured I would start on my half of the garage. Recognize the music? Yes of course. Raiders of the Lost Ark. A portion will be used for the audio in that room! Now again this year we are limiting the events. One thing I have realized is that if you have a ton of halls or rooms and don't restrict the flow somehow, no one is going to see all the cool stuff you spend so many hours creating. We have 2 events (elevator and map room) where guests are trapped for possibly 15-20 seconds. They have no choice but to notice the surroundings. Timing is everything. So the breakdown is 10 seconds lets say to get to the elevators, 30 seconds to get in go down to the crypt and get out. Another 30 seconds to get into the map room and another 10 or so to get out into the vortex. So...we're figuring 1.5 minutes basically to clear the garage portion of the haunt before the next guests come in. 6 guests per entry. 2.5 hours total for Halloween this year. That means about 35 to 40 entries per hour x 6 or around 500 or so guests total. Probably that will work from what we have seen here before. OK ghouls, let's get cracking!

I did notice if you leave the music playing while running the video you can't hear me too well. Actually it's kind of a creepy effect if I must say so myself because it's like we are about to create something that is other worldly if you know what I mean, but feel free to hit the pause button on the player at the bottom of the page or you can turn the volume down at the far right on the bottom.

Day 143- The Map Room

'M' is what I am calling the 'Map Room'. Remember the film 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'? Of course you do! Indiana Jones is in that tomb in Egypt with all the snakes when he figures out how to open that secret chamber by holding up that septre so when the Sun comes up the sunlight hits it to activate that beam of light onto the keyhole. Anyway it went something like that. So back to our walkthrough here. People enter the doorway into 'M' which then closes behind them trapping them in that room. Now we have something a little special planned this year. We have a video projector with 3D video of snakes or spiders which will be projected somewhere in that room while folks are trapped in there. At the same time the wall with the vertical hatch marks will start moving inward toward the guests, the 'crush wall'. We will use our corpse in that room and have some snakes appear to come out of the mouth! And while all this is happening the guests will be getting blasted by the helpers in the area labelled 'AC' for Air Cannon! We will have ports which are designated by the blue hatched lines where they can target the guests. We are going to try this little pneumatic accessory this year as well. We'll see how that goes.
So a lot of scare is going into this one room and really after that, the guests are let out into the area marked 'V' which will have a ramp going out to the vortex tunnel. Maybe we'll have one final actor in that area as they go up the ramp. We can also have the cannon operators work that area as well, which is shown in the diagram.

Also notice the area 'C'. This is where the control room is located this year. This will enable me to operate the crush wall and hopefully at least open the elevator doors (That will be quite a trick!)

So that's the haunt this year! To recap: entrance to the right into the Haunted Mansion hallway, turn left to the elevator, go down the elevator to the crypt level, come out and get the ghost warning from the moving ghost in zone 4, go left into the map room and finally out to the vortex. Again, not as many spaces, but each one will be a LOT more involved with much more attention to detail!

Day 144- Return of the Pepper's Ghost Illusion

We now exit the elevator doors, again Zone 2 marked 'E' in the plans above. We will probably have a maximum of 6 people. The elevator size is slated to be around 5' deep, 6'long and 7'tall. Opening and closing the doors on cue is definitely going to be a challenge! No idea how that's going to happen right now. If you have any thoughts on this, by all means let me know! The problem is while we do have the left sided door accessible by helpers in the area marked 'AC', there is no one in the main entrance hallway 'H' to open the right sided door. Anyway that's what makes it fun, trying to figure things like this out.
OK so exiting the elevator we are now on the crypt level. The moving door to the right (red bar) is now acting as a wall so the original hallway is not seen. The door to the left is slid back so people now see the crypt entrance. Straight ahead is an apparition of a moving ghost. 'G' is the glass that is used to create the ghost image of the actor located in Zone 4 or 'P' (for Pepper's ghost) We used this effect last year and people really liked it so we're ramping it up a bit. See the post from last year here, then check out the video so you can see this in operation in this instructional DVD called 'Ghost Machines' by Jon Hyers right here
Obviously we will need a much larger piece of plate glass. The actor will be standing on a moving platform and will appear to come toward the guests out of nowhere warning them to turn back! Next the crypt door will suddenly open to the left and guests will be directed into the area marked 'M'

Day 149- "Dr Einstein..I presume.."

Ha! And you thought Einstein was just an astrophysicist! Well he was, but he brought to light the concept of relativity which we use in the haunt realm A LOT! Specifically the concept that motion is something which we can only interpret in our mind as occurring RELATIVE to some other reference frame. For example, those of you who followed us last year know we ran the 'vortex tunnel'. Many people asked us after they went through it: "How did you guys get the bridge to move?" Huh? We didn't have the bridge move, but it was the PERCEPTION by some people that the BRIDGE was moving RELATIVE to the tunnel! Perhaps some people out there ride commuter trains to and from work. At the end of the day you're in the train early waiting to depart. You look out the window next to you and see a train parked literally 1 foot away from you. Suddenly that train departs and starts moving out of the station. For several seconds however you could swear your train was the one moving forward! Again, motion is perceived in the mind relative to another point of reference. There is no such thing as absolute motion. So you see, Einstein was a haunter at heart!
"OK Doc" I can hear some of you ghouls saying to me, "what does all this stuff have to do with your haunt?"
It is what enables us to build an elevator in the garage!

Back to the plans. So we are at the elevator doors. They open. People go inside. We're talking obviously about Zone 2 in the diagram. The area labeled (E) with the asterisk. The doors close. At the back of the elevator you can see a sort of window cut out of the back panel. In the diagram above, this is the wall that has the diagonal hatched lines on there. The elevator is mounted onto a wooden frame that has springs so when people get into it it 'feels' like an elevator. Suddenly there is a weight that drops onto the the top of the elevator causing it to jerk downward. Then a series of wall panels are pulled upward by an elevator operator located in the area 'S' in the diagram or 'service area'. The panels are seen by the guests through the cutout window in the back of the elevator going upward and hence the sensation that the elevator is going down which you now understand because of our relativity discussion earlier!
So this will be quite a task! My thinking here was to link maybe 3 panels with hinges and build a sort of min- version of a garage door. The panels will be pulled up from the floor of the service area (S). Each panel will appear through the cutout window in the elevator right up against it but not too close so as not to actually contact the elevator wall. There will be a second camera in the elevator (Cam 2) which will enable me to activate the various sound effects and light effects. Now guess what ghouls? This is NOT a new idea. Here is an example of one that was attempted. The one we have planned is a variation of that. I'm not sure I have the time to install an actual motor to drive the panels. I hope to use one person to pull the panels up and once the guests leave the elevator they can simply lower them back down into the floor. The plan is to have the elevator 'descend' into the crypt area. When the elevator doors open at the crypt level, the red bar on the right (moving door, remember?)which we had pulled back into zone 4 is now returned to its position as shown in the entrance hall so the guests do not see the hallway they came through! This enhances the perception they are actually in a completely different space!
Stay tuned for the continuation of the simulated walkthrough!

Day 150- "Maaaaaster......the plaaaaaaaans!"

Well here it is! Day 150 is probably a good number to start things off for 2011! And now the plans: the actual diagram of what we need to do this year!

Looks quite complex, but actually it isn't. This shows the garage from above looking down obviously. The arrows on the right show the entry to the haunt. This is Zone 1.
What's in Zone 1? Click on the sound below for a hint while you keep reading!

02 - The Haunted Mansion

Found at: FilesTube

Yes of course! The guests enter the hallway (H) of The Haunted Mansion! They pass by the portraits and maybe a surprise along the way (to be decided on later). A corpse chandelier hangs from the ceiling and suddenly moves by itself (pulley operated from the control room (C)- I will be able to see the guests in the hall via 'cam 1'. They make a left turn and come upon a very creepy looking character who is very motionless under some black light (not shown in the diagram btw) until the guests come closer. He suddenly moves and directs the guests to enter......the elevator (E)!! Now the red bars indicate moving doors. As we go through an imaginary walkthrough you will understand the significance of these doors. For zone 1 the first red bar or moving door will have to be pulled back into zone 4 so the guests can get to the elevator E. The elevator operator will be responsible for safely escorting guests into the elevator to be certain there are no more than probably 6 people at one time. So those are the details for zone 1. If you look at the overall plans, notice there are only really 4 zones. As I mentioned in the last post, we are going to limit the zones so we can spend much more time developing each one to create a total experience while allowing everyone enough time to get to the vortex at the end. 2 of the zones will be complete enclosures, one of course being the elevator. The vertical blue line in the center represents the central wood frame which is what we build everything off of. Black lines with short single cross hatches or arrows through them represent doors. Next time we will discuss the elevator concept. Btw we aren't quite building stuff yet but definitely that will start this month. Until next time. Stay tuned ghouls!
DrDoom