Hayride or Trail or both possible?

[N2SPOOKINU]

Jim, lets make it simple. YOU NEED THESE! Come see me at TW booth 341 ZOMBIE SAFARI PAINTBALL ATTRACTIONSTW trailer photos 003.jpg

[legendsofthefog]

Jim,
Overall, Hayrides and trails are different animals. You need to pick what best fits your needs. You need to take into consideration everything that you will have to construct, what you can leave and what you will have to set and re-set from year to year. For the long-term, you'll find yourself more room to grow with a walk thru haunt, and you will find the capacity of a hayride is limiting vs. a trail. Coordinating a hayride is much more complicated then a walk-thru too.

Food for thought - is this golf course the BEST location for your business? Just because something is free and convenient, doesn't necessarily mean it is the best decision to start a business. Look around at a few other locations just to get a different perspective on things and affirm that the golf course is the best available location. Don't commit something for you to have to set up and take down every night, you'll kill youself and/or crew.

I absolutely believe that you can put more customers through per hour in a walk-thru haunt.

I believe to start-up a hayride will be more expensive than a trail. (tractors, wagons, and fuel are just a drop in the bucket)

I am happy to discuss this with you at TW further.

Patrick

[spookjj]

Yeah, I think the cooridination of hayride creates alot more overhead than realizing. Good point about free usage not being the best critia to judge location by, I think this is something I need to reconsider, it's a bit awkward to think of making one onto a golf course, but, it does have it's benefits in many ways. The biggest factor is there's literally about thousand homes within walking distance and they have all the contact and email information of the residents already, that they send fliers out. With so many families around I thought the hayride might be the best way to start and then follow up with a trail the following year. The comment about having more diverse building options with your huant trail (excellant point!). But, even so... it's must be a good fit for both parties as I agree very much so with what you're saying. Sounds good brother, we'll catch up this week at Transworld....


Jim

[legendsofthefog]

I don't want to shoot you down on the spot, I don't know the area or the course... I am just suggesting that you want to explore your options before you jump in feet first. Once you pick your spot to start, you can always move... If you choose to build your haunt on space that isn't designated for your business all the time, it will be hard to grow. There are many great haunts that set up and take down every year, or even some that operate hayrides on public roads and bring in every set at night. If you were given a section of woods that could be secluded from the rest of the course and you could keep everything up year-round, then you'll be in much better shape.

I guess what you have to ask yourself is, how big do you want this thing to be at its best. Is this something you want to do for a living (somewhere down the road) or a hobby to supplement your income. Next, do you want to entertain parents and kids? Or teens and young adults?

I don't want to give any unsolicited advice, nor do I want to do anything to distort your vision.

Patrick

[scary bill]

spookjj, one thing about the hayride is you can target younger kids and parents/grandparents. I find most of our income is from the older groups. another thing to think about is sound. We have a sound system on the train for background and for scares. That was a huge upgrade on the ride when we did it, you might consider that. An advantage to the ride is that you control the ride speed. Also you have some effects you could not with a trail (flash pots, flame thrower).
Good luck on your choices.

[legendsofthefog]

How did you design your sound system? We used 1000w power inverters to power 550w 120v Behringer self powered, full range PA speakers. This route has just proved to be too unreliable for us to this point. I would like to go with a 12v surround system. Just curious to see what others use.

[scary bill]

legend,
Here is our set-up. It was my design so take it for what its worth. We have a train with two 40' long cars. I use 3 sets of speakers in each car evenly spaced. To power it i use a 600watt car stereo amp. The speakers are form best buy, indoor/outdoor, about 6x9 in size. I run the sysem on 4 channels, 2 for each car. It is wired in parrallel(this is for ohms). The amp can go down to 2 ohms(thant would be 4 speakers in parrallel). We use 2 deep cycle bateries wired together in parrallel. I think I have a 3000 watt inverter used on it. The amp is 12 volt, but i run sound off my lap-top computor(120vac). I also have 20 electronic fire crackers that are hooked up also(these are under the seats, nice effect. I run audacity for the background track, and the idle track. For this i spliced together some good background clips. our ride is between 16 and 19 minutes, so my track is 22 min long. Then I also use windows audio player for individule scare tracks. I ride in the car and run it. Hope this helps. I want to do the indiviules clips on powerpoint as slides so i can just push a button at each scare. I is not possible to set it as the speed varies .

I came up with this 3 years ago, not a single problem(not counting operator), the customers thought this was the best improvement we made on the event.

Rock River Thresheree "TRAIN OF TERROR"

[spookjj]

scary bill... quick recap, you have 2 heavy duty 12 volt car batteries connected together (doesn't that add up to 24v ?) or not sure what you mean by parallel and connected to you tractor's alternator, or, just recharge with chargers daily? Then these power your 600watt car stereo amp which your laptop audio out runs to...correct? Do you power your laptop from the inverter or just run off laptop battery? would think former

Patrick.. are you having problems with sound going off (think fautly inverter?) or just inconsistancies with inverter performing the 12v to 110v? I've never used inverter yet, so unsure of the issues at hand. But, as mentioned, going to 12v all the way around might be the most reliable.

[scary bill]

spooky, I run the laptop off of the inverter. As far as the other, you could just hook the stereo and inverter to the tractor battery. You would only need a small inverter for the lap-top(400watt is fine). We use the batteries because we have a steam powered locomotive,( it doesnt have an alternator or battery). Hooking to the tractor would make it easy.

[screamforadream]

So now that this is about sound I am SO in on the CONVO!

Behringer= yuck! Mackie = yay!

All this inverter talk and whatnot is overkill guys!

Depending on your setup your sound situation will vary GREATLY.

When at all possible send that sound from above, one speaker on each end should do you fine!

For ease of use purposes, use PASSIVE speakers. That way you wont need to plug each speaker in, just run a 1/4" or XLR cable into the back of the speaker, and a poweactualr amp near ou to control the volume. Now as far as music goes, download Virtual DJ, unlike Sedative, you can run it without a controller, its a two channel mixer so you can easily and seamlessly play whatever you whenever you want and can even set hot cues! That's the best way to go in my opinion. You will only need to power the amp so there's only one thing to plug in other than your laptop and you can literally run those speaker cables anywhere invisibly! That and passive speaker's tend to be harder to break than.active speakers and are far less expensive!