There's no question we took it to another level this year! The amount of detailing was unprecedented. Of course we had the extra year to work with but everything seemed to flow very well despite the complexity of this year's build. The entrance door was huge as we noted earlier. The drop panel was a great scare and will be used again. Overall very little damage to the haunt. A couple of pictures were knocked off in the entrance hall. The elevator was a smash hit! I recommend the moving panel as it creates the most realistic sense of motion. The ghost worked better than I thought but we had the technical problem with the light on the back panel going out. It was perhaps a little too much to have people see the ghost as they were exiting the elevator before going into the crypt. The concept of changing sets for people going into and then out of the elevator through the same door was a little awkward but we did make it work, sort of. The crypt and crush wall were tremendous! The wall held up much better than I thought. Interestingly, many people did not even see the corpse because for some reason they were looking elsewhere!
And now some thoughts going forward for 2013:
1) The drop panel is a definite keeper. We will re-employ it somewhere else
2) The elevator will be rebuilt in a slightly different way
3) More will be done with video projection. The snake effect was very interesting, somewhat effective, but again the problem was that it had to be very brief because it was a floor projection where people were walking into it.
4) We're going for the peppers ghost 1 more time! We have to abandon the moving ghost because we just don't have the space for it.
5) The crush wall worked great, but I think we are going to rest the crypt theme for next year.
That's it Ghouls for 2012. Thank you all for reading and following. Stay tuned for the "Halls of Doom" 2013. The next build will be the most ambitious yet!
I am awed by your set-up. Currently I have a "good" garage haunt going that I add to every year. I get rave reviews, yada, yada, yada ... it's nothing compared to what you're doing. Thanks SO much for sharing. Can't believe you don't have 6 million followers.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, from some of your posts, I'm getting that you are at least on the East Coast. I'm in upstate NY, just west of Albany. I'd LOVE to see your haunt in action and get some pointers if you don't mind. I understand if you don't want that, but I'd love to.
Again, amazing work for a home haunt, and I WILL be taking pointers from you. Thanks for blogging.
Thank you Reina!
ReplyDeleteIt took several years of evolution and learning from experience to get to this point. Every year the sets become more elaborate which does increase the costs and the amount of time it takes to build them. Might have to start in May this year! Anyway feel free to email with any questions hallsofdoom13 gmail com. I will be posting a how-to on the crush wall in the next couple of weeks or so as I am still taking stuff down from this past Halloween!