not sure about 1 or 2 but depending on how long your attraction is you can break it up into sections and have a guide for each section. the guide would walk them though the section then go back to the beginning of their section and get the next group. it could work but then it woud all depend on how fast them moved. just an idea.

Dr Giggles~

When I used to work for a haunt ( Lockport Haunted Cave) which is the same place I have worked at for the past 10 years (#11 comming up) for historical tours in the Spring till early fall we did pretty strict timed ticketing.

As such we were able to have the charecters that were in theier respective spots be able to "escort" the patrons to the next area.

Mind you now our cave is pretty a "straight run" from begining to end to it made it easy.

However, that being said , it worked rather well. Each section had an approximate 5 - 7 minute acting time to it, so there was enough of a gap in between groups for the "guide" to get back to thier areaandf get ready for the next one.

With that also was SOMEWHAT of a requirement , that whom ever was the "guide" from one area to the next be someone who was a regular staff memeber during ther regular season OR someone who has done the Haunt before and knew what to expect even in the low light conditions that we created for ther haunt specifically and ALSO knew how to control a crowd or had a good voice for people to hear from area to area.

Again as I mentioned it worked REALLY WELL, however this concept would also depend,obviously on many differnt factors i.e. Haunt size, complexity, patron attandance, just to name a few.

I HAVE however worked and attended other commercial haunts that employed the "Tour guide method" and it did work; from extremly well to poor(not total failure) .

As you can obviously tell mileage varies depending on the haunt itself.

Hope that helps.
LoneWolf

How Can You Not Do It?

Having tour guides defeats some mischievious-ness on the part of customers.
It provides a hands-on potential not lost on many bad boys too, something a mere camera or threat of a camera can't do in real-time.
No one has to search for an emergency exit when a real living tour guide is taking them to it.
Of course setting your haunt up for guides sort of usually eliminates the freedom of allowing a teen group /club/charity people from running the place for you because of the required knowledge and talents peculair to escourting and controlling customers on the move.
My place is not a walled maze with only one way to be going through it so customers can not be left to wander here..usually.
Left to wander I would see some people in the house for 5 hours! (Also providing free, untethered "help", I'm sure.) No.

I respectfully disagree with Jim in that having a guided tour "eliminates the freedom of allowing a teen group /club/charity people from running the place...". Being a Jaycee haunt, those are EXACTLY the people we have volunteering.

Our attraction has always been a guided tour type attraction. Granted we don't do the volume of Netherworld or other high throughput shows, we do have heavy traffic on weekends around Halloween.

This past season we got away with having only 3 guides on average. 2 on SLOW nights and 5 on max capacity nights.

Our first room is always our rules video room and full length of the video+rules was roughly 3 minutes this past year. Our rooms lasted no longer than 2 minutes each and we had a self-guided, pitch-black, maze in the middle of our attraction. After the maze, the guide picked the group up once again to finish out the 3 remaining rooms.

Overall, having guides can be VERY successful for security reasons as well as giving the groups a more personal show. This season, I am ultimately pushing for a self-guided tour, only because our attendance increases yearly. Sure it would get rid of the intimacy we are known for, however, I believe our show quality is ultimately getting better.