First Year Going Pro - single theme or no?

[hAuNtS]

Greetings Haunters!

I registered on this forum a couple years ago to get ideas and learn about how to make my home haunt better. This year I have been offered the opportunity to potentially take my haunt to the next level, which I am extremely excited about! I also look forward to being more involved on the forums and getting to know everybody. I'm definitely a newbie to professional haunting but I want to learn as much as I can from you all!

My first question is for a first-year pro haunt, do you think it's better to do a single theme haunt or one that has a wide variety of sets and themes? I love the storyline and detail that goes into single-theme haunts but I have so much random stuff from my home haunting days that I feel could be put to use if I had a haunt with a bunch of scenes... if that makes sense. If this year goes well, my goal is to have several different houses at my attraction at which point each would have a unique theme, but for this year I am at a loss...

Thank you so much!

[Deathwing]

Starting your account over since just yesterday???

Jake

[hAuNtS]

Not sure what your question is, but I registered back in 2009 and unfortunately didn't make any posts during the time I was viewing the forums (felt insignificant compared to all of the pros :P) but I'm back and will definitely be more engaged this time around.

[Deathwing]

I may be confusing you with another guy who was defending the Money back haunt guy yesterday.

Sorry

Jake

[Bradenton Haunted Trail]

Congrats and good luck from Twisted Woods in Sarasota Fla. If you need some local help just PM me I will share any info that I can.

Shawn
http://www.twistedwoods.com

[Scenic Art Productions]

I really am a fan of themes with a story to tell. I, if you are wanting to use items you have from your home haunt would ask myself some questions. First I would look at these items and weed out items that would look like they were made for a home haunt. Since you are going pro you want to look pro. Then I would look at these items and see if there was something in common with them. Find a common ground. From that you can start a theme. Then from there you can get your story line answering these questions. Where am I? What happend here? How and why did it happen? Who did it? Who was it done to? Who else was involved? Once these questions are answered you can start designing and building. I hope this helped. Please let me know when you open. I would love to see it. I was thinking of drving down this year to see Twisted Woods also.

Thank You,
Robert Travis
Scenic Art Productions
ScenicArtProductions@Yahoo.COM
http://www.facebook.com/scenicartproductions

[icarian]

Personally, im a fan of single-storyline haunts. I, personally, find them much more original and entertaining... (thus they usually appear to be a good value for my entertainment dollar!)

Ive NEVER been to or worked for a haunt that theme-jumped and still impressed me... i might be completely wrong and missing the good ones, but i just havent seen it done well enough to seem impressive.

I'd really like to hear everyones input and suggestions as to how you would successfully theme-jump extremely and still come across as a wow the crowd pro show. input? anyone?

[hAuNtS]

Shawn: Thank you so much! We're pretty close in distance; I live in Tampa but the haunt will be in Fort Myers. I would love to collaborate and also visit your haunt.

Robert: I really appreciate the feedback and suggestions. The goal is to go pro... so I will definitely need to re-evaluate a lot of my inventory to maintain that professionalism. Great ideas.

icarian: The theme-jumping element would definitely be the most challenging... and I'm a sucker for a good backstory and theme too, so I'll probably end up deciding on single-theme attraction.

Thanks guys for all of the feedback - very much appreciated!

[Howie Slobber Erlich]

Since I have owned the haunt that I own now, half the years had a specific theme and the rest were rooms I just liked. Both ways have worked for me. If you do it right, either way can work. I have had customers who loved the mixed up rooms not knowing at all what to expect and then I have patrons who liked the theme haunts much better. I change every room in my entire haunt every year so that allows me a bit more freedom in room designs. So if you have a permanent location and you are using, a "Mansion" theme for example and don't want to have to change it over completely each year then you may want to stick with the same theme. If you're starting fresh each year you can mix it up or provide a theme. Either way, just make sure to give your customers a good show worth the ticket price and you will be just fine.

Good Luck,

Howie "Slobber" Erlich
Deadly Intentions Haunted Attraction
www.deadlyintentionshaunt.com

[SCfearfarm]

Just my opinion of course, but our haunt is on a farm so we immediately thought we needed a farm themed haunt with a back story etc. but then once we really looked at it.....it is HARD to theme a 8-10K sq. ft. haunt with nothing but farm rooms and.....even harder to change it year after year. So we decided to put in a little of everything into our haunted house in hopes that eventually we can reuse the props again. For instance we have an asylum in the haunted house....if we ever want to do a seperate attraction of an asylum we will already have half of the set and props. Once I again it may just be my target audience but they really enjoy the different themes and I'm not sure they "miss" not having one theme or backstory that matches if there isnt one there. If you tried to tie in egyptians with hazardous with aliens with asylums under one story then yeah I could see where it would be a problem......but I agree with the post above I think opening a door and not really knowing what kind of room is next is just another element.