2013- Day 185- "Master...The Plaaaaaaans"

Here it is Ghouls! This year's layout. The theme as mentioned is the Haunted Hotel. Traffic flow is from the right entrance indicated by the arrows. Guests go through a back alley. Lots of thunder and lightning effects. Now this year we have something special planned. Stairs! Just a few, but in order to pull off the illusion of entering through a back storm door and also to effectively merge with a video projection onto the door, we had to put in about 3 steps. This creates some interesting scare options. Now the video projection is extremely effective and will consist of a ghost figure walking down the back stairs of the "hotel" to greet the guests! This is indicated by the yellow lines. the guests go up the steps and open the door. As soon as they get to the door, the ghost disappears, they open the door and enter a space where the flooring is slightly elevated due to the steps (indicated by the hatched area) This isn't too big a space, but will have to be engineered obviously for stability! While in that space there will be ghouls grabbing at their feet, an appearance by a bloodied peppers ghost and perhaps a cameo appearance by our friend from last year, the corpse! After that they enter the main event! A hotel lobby will be really detailed with down lighting, a front desk and a zombie bell hop to greet them and guide them into the "tower of terror" elevator. We basically will move the elevator from last year to occupy the space which was used by the crypt. Several upgrades to the elevator will be made and guests will be in there a little longer. Notice since this is a "service elevator" they will enter and exit through opposite doors. They exit into a "dot maze" which will be completely disorienting and include walls ceiling and floor! Probably 2 actors will be in there with dot suits. We will also re-employ the highly successful drop-panel as shown. Finally when they find the way out, they enter the vortex of course! So that's it! Other details of note are the expanded work space in the center for actors and other ghouls, the control room which is in the same spot as last year and the peppers ghost which is just 180 degrees oriented from last year, but because of the elevated space, we may decide to use a portion of our mud room as a back drop to also include the popular corpse chandelier!!
Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

2013- Day 201- We're baaaaaaaack!

What! Kmon now Doc,...it's still April! Yes of course it's only April. That's why we are getting started now! Actually there are a couple of practical reasons for starting now. One is my work schedule has gotten a lot busier so I will have to spread things out to be certain it gets done on time. The other is that this may be the last year of the Halls. It's not definite, but very possible. Very likely we will be relocating within the next year or so. My oldest is off to college. She was the original inspiration for this whole thing when she was back in the fifth grade! Anyway if this is in fact the case, we want this year to be the most spooktacular ever, so of course it will take more time.
Believe it or not Ghouls, I am still taking down the crypt from last year! We basically have not had a garage for about 3 years now. While I am doing this I promise to post the long overdue tutorial on the crush wall. I know a bunch of folks have been asking about that.

This year we will have a similar layout for the traffic flow. The theme is basically a haunted hotel. Guests will enter first a dark "back alley" with thunder and lightning overhead. They approach the back entrance of the hotel where they actually have to go up a few steps to the door! A ghost can be seen through the door window as they approach and she is walking down the steps inside. Just before she gets to the door, it opens into a room where there will be a bunch of scares, peppers ghost effect (one last time), etc. Then the guests will have to go down a few steps to the main hotel lobby where they are greeted by the zombie bell hop! He will guide them into the "tower of terror" elevator (based on the disney attraction) The elevator is basically the same concept from last year. We will have them spend a little more time in there and there will be much more actor participation. They will exit the elevator and enter  the "dot maze". This is just a souped up version of the well-known "dot room" which is a room with fluorescent dots. A couple actors are dressed up in dot suits and totally blend in to the surroundings until they move forward! We did this a few years ago and it works very well! Highly recommended. Anyway this is a great transition to the vortex of course which they will finish up with.

So that's a quick overview! Much more ahead, and thanks again Ghouls for reading and following!