Day 360- Postmortem, holiday sign-off

Still can't believe it happened. Yesterday we took down the vortex and canopy. No damage from the storm.That's great of course, but I think all of us here have been kind of walking around in a sort of empty fog. I can't think of any other way to describe it. I keep thinking it's a nightmare I haven't woken up from and when I do it will still be October. Apparently the town did reschedule trick or treating to this Sunday! Well first of all we will be away this weekend. Secondly I think the only chance you have is October 31. That's it. Halloween is that day and not a day after. Now everyone is preparing for the holiday season. So that's it Ghouls. I will call it 'The Curse of Xmasland' which led to the cancellation of the haunt for the first time in the history of the world!
Let's put it to rest and forget about it and look forward to next year. That will be the best haunt ever since this one would have been. As we were saying it will be the same exact build. I will investigate the possibility of using a motor to drive the elevator panel next time. We had planned to have someone do it manually with the pulley but it will make it a lot easier to do it right if we use power. Also we will spend more time on the front hall, add more dimension to it and a couple of additional scares if possible. Overall I think it was an ambitious plan that we did a nice job on. Both the crypt and elevator turned out better than expected. The moving ghost will have much more time to be tested, and if I come across a bigger piece of glass we will definitely use that. Obviously we can't wait to get started again!
Thanks all for reading, have a great holiday season and stay tuned for the next installment of 'Xtreme Garage Haunting' 2012 next Summer!

Day 364- Nightmare before Xmas

Happy belated Halloween everyone! Hope all you goblins and ghoulies had a great show! As far as our haunt went.....it didn't!! The Halloween Snow Storm which was a freaking disaster, came into New England on Saturday night and killed a thousand hours of building, planning and anticipation for what was going to be our greatest haunt ever! The forecast was for around 4" or so...add about a foot to that and that's what we got. Trees down everywhere, power out for days and I was out there every couple of hours getting snow off the canopy covering the vortex! We also had a pine tree go down about a foot away from the canopy! I was a complete wreck over the disaster unfolding,  but perhaps there is a good side to all this. While we did get everything done barely in time, we really weren't ready. Lot's of things had to be fine tuned we didn't get a chance to do. Now that this happened, we are simply going to do the exact same build for next year! That should give us plenty of time to get it right and take some of those last minute throw down areas to the next level! We can certainly make a few improvements to the design, and we know with certainty that the vortex can be quickly reassembled. This will definitely free up some budgeting for next year. And thankfully no precious assets were destroyed by the storm. If any of you decide to use a canopy, make sure to duct tape all the connections!. This is what saved us from the snow loads collapsing everything. We might have an additional post or 2 before the holiday sign-off and there might be a how-to page on the elevator. Haven't decided whether to do it this year or not. One really good thing also is that a lot of stuff I can save intact so both the take down and set-up will be way easier and less stressful. This October was probably the most stressed out I have been during a build. The level of detail and complexity was intense as you could probably tell. So not all bad that we have another year to perfect it!

So what did we do with no power and no haunted house on Halloween night! We played 'Nightmare before Xmas Monopoly'