Day 8- Random finishing details

Welcome back Ghouls! Only barely over a week to go. I think we're good. Today we finished off the prison room including all the sound and light effects. I will try to demonstrate the sequence of events tomorrow. The corpse effect in Zone 6 actually turned out a lot better than expected. I was happy that for once we got something to work great at the end. Usually we're so rushed to throw things together that the end of the haunt is kind of a dud. The video here shows the basic set-up in natural light which doesn't do it justice at all but you get the idea. Several years ago I prepared a skeleton to look like a corpse. If you google 'corpsing a Bucky' you will see the process. Anyhow, the corpse sits in the nearer of 2 trash cans. I secured 2 strobe lights to the bottom of each can so you get uplighting of the corpse. A rope is secured to the skeleton and runs through a pulley above, then across the ceiling to a second pulley which drops down to a handle in the prison. One of the prisoners will be in direct line of sight as the guests walk past the trash can and he will raise the corpse upward sharply. It's very startling as I also have the cans enclosed in a separate corridor with it's own fog machine!
Finally the vortex is coming along. Almost half of the fabric was painted today with the fluorescent dots. We tested it out and I believe it will work fine. One thing is we have to eliminate all outside references meaning the white canopy. We're going to try lines as well. Many have said that enhances the effect. So basically what's left are finishing the corpse room and vortex entry area which is basically sheeting there. And finally the cave room which should take all of about one day. Finishing touches and walk through the last few days.
Pictures shown today from the bottom up are:
1) Prison room showing a prop inside the prison which is actually just a diversion since there will be actors in there as well! I also have a head prop hanging in the main room you can see to the right. Again, it's so dark this year that I am having trouble showing this stuff. The images usually have to be overstretched
2) Looking back into the hall of the green mile room, Zone 5, through the gate.
3) Painting the vortex walls. We used fluorescent paint and cut-out round holes in paper to use as stencils so the paint would not run. One coat appears to be satisfactory.