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Hours, pricing depending on night for larger crowds?

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  • Hours, pricing depending on night for larger crowds?

    We open for 4 weekends Fri 8-11, Sat 7-11, Sun 7-10 in October. Our pricing falls in line with other area haunts and we have't had any complaints regarding pricing of $20. The issue we would like to address is what ideas to bring in more patrons on opening night/weekend which is usually slower since people aren't into the season yet. The next few weekends our Sat nights get the highest volume which got over capacity where we had to wait until people left to get more patrons in. What techniques have other haunters used to solve these issues. I have seen some haunts offer discounts for opening weekend and on busier evenings higher pricing. Does this work? How do you answer patrons that ask what they get for their money on the more expensive nights? I feel that this would be a nagging question. Have longer hours helped on the busier nights by extending an hour to the beginning and end of the night?

  • #2
    You aren't raising the price on the weekends, you are lowering the price on the weekdays.
    Fright In Falcon Haunted Maze
    http://frightinfalcon.com

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    • #3
      I can tell you what we do...

      1) On the BUSIEST NIGHTS and I mean the four busiest nights of the year we open ONE HOUR EARLY and it makes all the difference let me tell you. So instead of opening at 7pm we open at 6pm. And let me tell you people show up but the big difference is that by the time of your normal opening time 7 pm you are already rolling full steam. Crowds won't back up until later ... the one hour makes the difference.

      Secondly to that its all for nothing unless at 6pm you are putting them as fast or same pace as you would if the line was around the block. You must keep up the pace.

      2) I've heard of haunts doing this dynamic pricing now where you charge MORE for the busiest nights trying to push people into slower nights. Not sure if its working or not. Bottom line is you need to look at everything to increase revenue and shorten lines. Look at everything.

      Larry
      Larry Kirchner
      President
      www.HalloweenProductions.com
      www.BlacklightAttractions.com
      www.HauntedHouseSupplies.com
      www.HauntedHouseMagazine.com

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      • #4
        Originally posted by mrfoos
        Our first two years we opened every weekend in Oct. We tried giving discounts on the first weekend. Then we tried special says like "come dressed as a zombie". And then we gave up. On the third year we just opened the last three weekends. It was the best decision we've made as a startup haunt. I think people are just gonna come when they want to come. And there's too many factors involved to master mind control them.

        On the years we did have discounts on the first weekend, we didn't have any problem telling people "no" when they asked for a discount on the busiest weekends. We just explained the discount was to try and get them to come the non-busiest weekend. They understood. It won't be a problem.

        Extending your hours won't affect your final ticket talleys. It will however make a hell of a difference on the lines on your busy nights if you start early. I learned that here on this forum from Mr. Kirchner... and it was sage advice. We tried it and it worked like a charm. We have never had to stay open late (after midnight for us) because we did a good job training the staff to scare forward and did a good job pushing them through consistently. So even on our peek nights we got everyone through by 12pm. We really never have people showing up after 11am.

        That's my experience.
        Right there. People will come when they want to come. I own 3 businesses - a nail salon, a skincare line and now haunted house. I can dangle specials in people's faces all day every day and I have! If people aren't ready to buy my product or receive my services they won't. I would say maybe 1 or 2 out of every hundred people will wait for a "sale" or "special price night" but overall I think that people just know that our season is short so they better get there when they can!!
        ~nail in the coffin~

        **Crawford School of Terror**
        Connellsville, PA

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        • #5
          Everyone here is correct but here is a different perspective on it. Your market will dictate exactly when you should be opening. If you are bringing in 4000 people then you should not be opening in September, and opening from 7pm-12am every night. With those numbers, you operate weekends only in October, maybe Nov 1st if it falls on a saturday and you run 8pm-10pm on most nights and perhaps 8pm-11pm or perhaps 12am on the 4 big nights of the month (or something similar that you are comfortable with). Only when you start increasing, bringing in 8000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, etc, do you need to start opening up September, adding some thursdays, expanding your hours, etc. If you are fortunate enough to start hitting high high numbers like 50,000 or more, then you can open up every night. But you need to operate for the level you are at. Staying open more hours and days with low numbers is not going to give you more exposure. It's just going to cost you more money. You will know when it's time to open more. You will start to have a hard time managing your current customer base with the nights/hours you are currently open. So instead of trying to force yourself to be open when it's not needed, operate for your current level and let the customer base dictate your hours. Its the smart way to operate.

          Rich Gonci
          Brighton Asylum
          www.brightonasylum.com

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          • #6
            Good advice

            Some good advice and perspective on this post! I agree with Rich, opening hours and days should be determined by your anticipated crowd. It was our first year last year and decisions were made to open early and stay open later in November (which I did not agree with), including a couple Thursdays and Sundays. We ended up putting though about 7000 in our first year, with nearly no advertising, but those early and late days were pretty dismal. I think we only had one night where we lost money or broke even (we paid all our actors), but some nights it was only barely in the black for the night, which is disheartening for not only the owners, but I'm sure also weighs on the actors. Hopefully we can dial this in a bit more this year, and have more steady flow on "off" nights.

            And we did experience what Larry mentioned on a few nights; opening a little early on nights we knew would be big was a great idea and helped us not be there until 3 AM putting people through.
            -Eric
            Chief Engineer/Co-Creative Director
            HUSH Haunted Attraction

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            • #7
              Great advice. We are thinking about opening an hour earlier but the other issue is our outdoor portion will be ruined since it will be too light out.
              I like the weekday and weekend pricing. We might offer a discount on opening night to improve the first nights crowds which is usually the only low number night. Sundays are a tad lower but Saturdays are the busiest and we try our best to get people through and out in time to allow more people in the parking lot and through our event.

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