First year in the books.

[Frightguy1]

Hello all,

A few friends we have made on here have asked how we did in our first year as a new charity haunt so I thought I would post some results and I encourage anyone else who opened a new haunt large or small to do the same. Maybe we can share some ideas of what worked well and what didn't. As "newbies" to the haunt industry we are always looking to learn and field suggestions.

Our website www.grimlockmanor.com had over 2,000 unique views through the month of October and we continue to see a decent traffic rate through the first few days of November.

We were supposed to be open for 3 nights (30th, 31st & November 1st) however due to some difficulties with the weather and equipment we were only open all of Friday and most of Saturday, closed Sunday. With that said our numbers were as follows:

650 people came through Friday night in the span of 4 hours that we were open and close to 300 people came through Saturday until we had to close due to the weather but we had a large line of people as well as cars still pulling into our lot that we had to turn away Saturday night.

Our goal was to see 1,500 people through our event and we came close to doing that in a night and a half so I am confident in saying had we been open all three nights we probably would have surpassed our first year goal. It was bitter sweet really but seeing our opening night response being so well made things worth it and we did break even which I think was an accomplishment for year one and we are happy with that.

It's unfortunate because we had issues that came up last minute (we had to totally break down and relocate our show outside but that is a LONG STORY) but I think we faced the challenge well and everyone who came screamed their heads off so I'd say we did our job right and boy they were some authentic glass shattering screams so it was really fun to hear that!

We will be working on fine tuning the event but for now it is nice to be able to relax a bit! I hope you all had a successful year and I look forward to anyone who has some stories to share, questions to ask or suggestions. We will post pictures of our event shortly.

All the best!

J.
AKA Frightguy1
www.grimlockmanor.com

[Mr. Haunt]

Spooked!!!

I think for a lot of haunters, their sales were down. I have asked questin, and I think people are to "spooked" by their numbers to share. I know for the haunts that are to the north at least, me here in Minnesota, it rained most of the weekends. So I have a hunch that the numbers this year are down for a large portion of the haunters, unless peaple can speak up and share how they did?

Mr. Haunt

[Mr. Haunt]

OK I see some other haunts gave their 2 bones worth in another post, but some more would help!!!!

Mr. Haunt

[monsterwax]

We basically did the same, although we were down a little bit. We consider ourselves lucky though, as there were some real challenges: They were doing road work and putting people through detours around our street, while football games interfered with parking, flu took out workers (and customers), and of course, the economy is still in the tank. The media is saying the recession is over, but with over 10% unemployment, any one who thinks the recession is over, well, I have some prime Florida water front (swamp) property I wanna sell 'em!

[Rocky Mountain Terror]

I'm Trying to Start-Up Next Year

I'm trying to get my first haunt up and running for next year. I'd love to talk to you to see how your first season went. Any help you could give me from a new haunter’s perspective would be really appreciated.

Thanks!!!

[Lcox]

First year - RAIN!

Its our first year too. We were planning on opening 6 nights and only opened 4. It rained every single night. We were hoping to put about 4000 people through collectively and i think we managed about 3000. If we had been open all 6 nights and/or it was clear instead of raining we would have done it I'm sure!

Our biggest night we found that our actors were getting abused a bit. I was planning on starting a thread about it, the big boys must have some good ideas!