Is everyone going up the creek???

[Greg Chrise]

A really high percentage of haunts are not making their total yearly income from their haunt and do rely on day jobs to support their habit. I have had to sit here and plain ass wonder how or why am I helping a charity when I might need some help mysef and realy wouldn't expect any help? The bottom line is even the low producing money haunts do it because it is fun. This is the same reason the customers and actors show up. Certainly there is money required to put on an event but, it just might not be a ton spent as in years past.

On the other side, traditionally if you poll every haunt and what year they started, almost every success was begun in a year where the economy was horrible and the would be haunt owners needed to suppliment or come up with an income and putting on a show like another one they saw only better came to mind.

If you are in a market long enough eventually your customers show up. A cycle of new excited people rather than trying to offer cheaper things because the old dudes are holding back or going broke or fearful. Frankly never made it to the big leagues. As the new competition steps up the game the old ones will have to get with the program or get creative rather than going on the cheap.

Like in my day job business, we started in remodels when no one wanted to do them, worked up to luxury stuff and we are back to remodeling the luxury stuff because we have been in business for 15 years. It isn't the easy money because it is all work, just waiting for the customers to come around by being the new owner of that old home or deciding to pretty the place up to sell or firmly not moving and cleaning it all up again. Maintaining their investment at the very least.

Of course only you know your market better than anyone. Sometimes you just do lots of things at cost to keep in touch for the big economic rebound where you have been talking to someone for 4 years about spending $12,000 and it fnally happens.

[Jim Warfield]

Recently ..

Quite a few local people have been inquiring about my business here at The Ravens Grin Inn?
No, I have not had much business at all these last ten days, three weeks, whatever, but then most people don't think about seeing a haunted house after Black Friday and during the Christmas shopping season when the snow is falling everyday and the temperatures are 3 degrees , just like EVERY OTHER YEAR!

[drfrightner]

Jason,

More and more haunted house owners are going solo, meaning leaving their jobs and running their haunts year around. I think the concern as a vendor should be dead square on how did haunted houses do in 2008? How their normal jobs are doing isn't as big a factor today as it was 10 years ago.

Did haunts make money, will they be spending money at Transworld.

I think haunted house owners did awesome, I think Halloween retailers did awesome, I think pumpkin catches and everyone else related made a killing.

I say have no fears about the upcoming tradeshow season!

Larry

[Greg Chrise]

Last night I went through a drive through Christmas thing. First off, God I hate Christmas and it was about half an hour of torture I may not totally be over. There was a line of cars and one being released at $15 a car every two minutes. Even every single minute. The cars were all SUVs full of unknown types of people behind tinted windows.

Of course Haunted houses too give this impression of people standing in line and the money being collected for so many people but, All this miles of lights appears to have cost some bucks. They had a radio station that was somehow synced to what you were looking at. I'm not sure how they did that. The Charlie Brown music came on and there was CHarlie Brown at least 3 car lengths away, some of the light globes went with the music.

As cheesy as it all was it appeared to be getting the customers. Not as great as the one some 20 mile away on the Interstate. Yet, they are getting the customers. I spent all night calculating how they may actually be doing more money than a few of the haunted houses here and trying to figure out why. First off it only takes a minute to say tune your radio to this, give me some money, how did you hear about us, get your ass in gear. They may in appearences be making 4 times more due to traffic but it looks to me like the dispays to fill acres of trail non stop might have cost 10 times what an excellent haunt costs.

To make myself happy I will paint the following scenario. Each SUV is behind on payments and days from being repoed. The children inside have been eating nothing but macaroini and cheese for months and this $15 tour is all they are getting for Christmas. Daddy is having to travel 150 miles to work and this is the only stupid family time they get and they are all fighting with each other behind the tinted windows. Mom is pissed because she could have bought 3 bottles of wine for that $15. Here they are looking at tons of money spent and it's time for Grandma and Grandpa to loan us some money too! If they don't we may be all at the Salvation Army by Febuary, you damn kids are going to have to learn how to pray before every meal and not make us look like heathens.

The bottom line is perhaps that they did come up with $15 per car load and made an appearance despite all other things in their lives really being shit. Movies continue to have the biggest first weekends ever. Nothing says recession like paying $4 for a coke.

Somehow it bothers me how well insulated from the real world Larry is. I have no personal knowledge of who all of these people that recently have gotten big enough to have their sole income all of a sudden be from thier haunts. Out in the lower population areas it is a very slow transition and not over night magic. I would think by number there are more of those lower income haunts than ones in big cities raking in tons of money. In 2008 I haven't heard of one that has lost though.

I was once well insulated job wise from millions of people crying and screaming as they had to leave Pennsylvania. Every report about towns in trouble lists so many in Ohio right now. There are some large cities that have managed to go global over the past few decades or are centers of trade through out the country.

Alas maybe I don't fit in here at all. I use haunts to raise money for charities and don't bring it to Transworld to spend. I notice how a month ago the Goodwill actually laid off all their special needs workers because even the haves were no longer donating anything for them to process. I see the pictures on TV where the food banks have totally empty shelves and the fork trucks are sitting idle. I notice how the Salvation Army hosted an evening out in the cold to inform about 200 curious people what it is like to be homeless.

I notice how the fire halls have an annual school supply drive and this year they only got one box of pencils and it is going to suck for so many children. I remember being a kid and it seemed like every week some school supply that was mandatory or some homework project was going to cost a few dollars every week when my parents didn't have it. So I learned how to be really creative and made it look like I was the fool rather than my parents were strapped.

What ever made all these situations occur is real. Apparently I have helped too many people and it has dragged me down with it. I could have been like Larry and bitching about how instead of opening his haunt for other haunters he could have been making intrest on that $250,000 but, no, I already gave it all away over the years.

I actually turned my phones off the whole month of November because it was nothing but people pleading for $30 or $80 they have not earned and I did not have to spare. Or it was other charities asking my company to advertise on some stupid calendar. Some scam internet yellow pages confirming my mailing address. No one calling to say they would like to give ME money.

Maybe I can get a therapist to tell me it is okay to screw everyone else. It isn't my fault and I shouldn't care. Go to Transworld and get rich. It's alright.

Transworld will be a success but, that isn't what this thread was started out to be. While people are all moving into each others homes and moving away, you will have to keep slinging latex like it is all happy somewhere else in another market. You are going to have to be cold and buy the latex rather than help someone out of a bind. So many tradesmen do the same thing, makng something and taking it to market hundreds of miles away.

You are very lucky to have a product rather than a service these days. I have screwed up and everything, all the companies I do offer a service of some nature. That's a day by day thing. Even out Halloween things are only so many weeks out of the year, a continuation of how much we need to make for a days work.

I'm constantly sitting here ever day or every week calculating whether we made money each day or spent too much. I am starting to feel like I have done that too many years.

But of course, I'm completely insane and will tell anyone just how I'm doing or what I see out in the real world.

[screamline studios]

Greg,

Holly shit can you go off!!!

Larry thinks this post was about haunts???? As far as i am concerned larry can kiss the ass of all the people that may loose there homes, or the child that gets a gift for christmas (if there lucky)I posted on this forum because i thought i had friends here!! but if people want to have this big ego head and be oblivious to the times that are around us than shame on you!!!!!!!!! This world is much bigger than the haunt world and mark my words by next season everyone will be crying the blues, and then i will re-post this tread..........I am glad everyone did well this season, but i want to know about the person that may only have $20.00 dollars to spend and where we can help ! and as far as larry goes he can kiss off while he drinks his tea by the fireplace and forgets the world around him...

Jason Blaszczak

[shawnc]

In Larry's defense, you did post this question on a haunt forum.

[Greg Chrise]

One product that is totally missing is cheap dummy bodies. I wouldn't care if they were blow mold or vaccuum formed or rigid foam sections of legs, torsos and arms that could be cut at the knees and elbows or come in pieces. Very low tech just to fill out a costume and mask to be seen at some distance.

All that is available costs $180 to $250 or more for some soft foam body or autopsy display. For some reason everyone that is being canniblized is only 5'5 inches tall. The bodys need to be 6 foot tall.

Way back I made a duct tape dummy of myself and that was great but then I filled it with a frame of PVC and rigid foam. I then cut the arms into sections so they could be posed and Something that cost about $50 in foam has entertained thousands as a very believable werewolf character. Under the clothes the legs are shaped properly with some human definition and the arms are as well. It looks enough like a person that people really check it out and when Henry the werewolf is here at the shop, they get a fright and think it is me with a werewolf mask on. Then I speak to them from behind.

I have scenes I would like to have hundreds out in the woods and this rigid foam does deteriorate but lasts fine since this would be on the cheap. The heads would be properly shaped featureless heads. Using production equipment, the cost per figure could be down to $20 maybe after the molds are worked out and sell for around $50 or $60 each.

They could be totally crude like plastic is put in the mold and even packaging foam kits used to fill the bag and this becomes a lower leg portion. The clothing is what actually holds the pieces together or outside out of view structures the haunter would make.

This way you can have 100 cheap helpers out there some move some do not. The finish on the body pats can be as ugly as ever as it is only the shape of being amatomically correct that will sell. For all the detail on a bucky and you used to be able to get them for $50 to $80, such another filled out body form could be offered that isn't high end mannequin nor stick figures made out of newspaper. Nore would the bodies be 5'6" latex blobs with no internal bones.

It would replace the use of floppy props representing characters indoors or out and can be embellished to any degree from a $12 mask and gloves to a $175 mask and $30 hands and some used shoes.

Coming around a corner and someone is standing there not knowing when they will move is very powerful. Of course it does look human and never moves so they just freaked themselves out. But not just one room like that where one of the 5 is real, the whole haunt or trail can be that way. Just like in real life, you drive by a road constuction site and there are 10 guys standing there and only two moving.

If it was plastic shells it would be cool that it has to be duct taped together by the customers to save weight and size on shipping.

I would like to have scenes where a hayride goes by and sees 50 monsters each detailed slightly different only because this product doesn't exist, I have seen it done with rebar and one cross bar like a scare crow in the wind and it still looked wild bit could have been so much more impressive if they looked real by having proper form.

The model should have some muscle definition, not just grab some little guy off the couch that has been out of work for two years and cast him. There will always be people trying to do magnificent scenes over a larger area and instead today's industry provides one $12,000 animatronic every 200 linear feet and that's it. Just like MY acting style, I want a dude every 12 feet and when you ad up all those it adds up over so many square feet.

Because of the cost haunts generally don't have great detail until they have been at it for a decade or two. Why not offer where any haunt could be stupendous right out of the box and this would speak well for all haunts to get patronage.

[shawnc]

Greg: ?????

[Greg Chrise]

What??????

[Jim Warfield]

Most female haunt customers wouldn't go for soft, flopping non-muscularly defined body parts on their Halloween trail.

We watched an on-line video last night of a rare worm with legs, maybe 100 legs and they all work from beig pumped up with liquid to make them move to effect walking. No leg bones, just sort of a thin sack acting as a leg, when pumped up.

[Greg Chrise]

That is something I thought is needed. It makes no sense to spend $500 to $1000 attending Transworld for a $20 item. One $20 item is not going to change an entire haunt even if it is a DVD for $20 with a few ideas.

Some how the Christmas display I just had my people drive me through, has been able to put miles and miles of stupid lights on plastic frames out there to be worth $15 a car. Haunts need to be able to as inexpensively as possible be more spectacular and cover miles like a Christmas deal.

In the big picture, I'm tired of seeing haunts where you go down a 50 foot hall way with a room with one thing in it and then though another hall way. Or go through a trail or hayride with 500 feet between every supposedly scary scene. It needs to be wall to wall detail and lots of monsters.

How do you do that if everything costs $250 per piece? You don't and so haunters are left to their own devices in most locations and do without.

Forms can be made squirt squirt squirt with American technology and make available lots of creatures that are detailed per haunt. I'm tired of seeing stupid looking dummies. I'm sure the customers are too.

[shawnc]

Greg, Excellent idea. I agree, especially about the size. But I think this is a topic for another thread. If I came looking for this again, I would never look at this one based on the title.

[Greg Chrise]

Jason has asked what can be done to make products more afordable, is every body okay and so forth.

I don't care where these ideas belong. My real fans can look up on all posts made by Greg Chrise. If haunts are hurting, or could potentially get hurt it is because they are still at keep your day job level and so, products to make it better?

Another point I would like to make is a lot of haunts are started by do it yourselfers that if they had the foundations to build on each haunt would begin to have a defined character. We have now seen so many videos and incase no one has noticed they all are begining to look like the show floor at transworld. It's like going to Mc Donalds and every other one has a fiberglass Ronald outside.

We are starting to see a few home haunt videos that per capita have more groovy things than many so called pro haunts because they made everything and went crazy with detail. There are bunches of pro haunts on here that don't own a video camera and have no Utoob account and can't justify showing thier stuff to anyone but customers. You can tell more about what is happening with the ommissions that no one talks about.

This whole community is actors depending on haunt owners and designers keeping the attention of ticket buying customers. When possible employing the use of vendors and independent artists. I have run into over the years a number of old pros that obviously never wrote a check out to anyone. Larry is obviously the big exception but, offers service outside the regular haunted house market.

Why is it so tough for some to make it? Where they indeed make a living or are being paid even at charity haunts? How fun is this long term for anyone if you give and give and never recieve. It is because there are some resources missing. Are these 14 year olds really going to get into transworld and directly buy an Impailer?

Every vendor tries to show off their best talents but there is a transition to buying that $2500 item that isn't properly being represented. No one is going to admit they are broke and have no money, whether it is now or years ago.

It isn't seminars and videos, it is having things that can easily be fashioned into unique items. Hands on materials. 95% of haunts are not keeping some vendor busy for 6 months at a time or every good haunted house would have a vendor directly sub contracted to them. There would be no need for a convention.

Reading beween the lines, amusement parks are spending money and haunts might be. No matter how much more money haunts made in 2008 unless everyone turns off their TV set and believes haunts are recession proof? Everyone click your heels together 3 times and repeat "Performance based marketing is recession proof and we are not observing the recession"

[Speculo]

Shane!

Shane could you make cheap blow mold bodies to meet Gregs needs? Light hollow figures that would be cheaper than what is currently available?

Interesting idea...

Thanks!

[graystone]

Ben

To answer your question yes I think I can. However honestly I don't think they would look good by themselves. If you add a mask, ect then no one would ever know the difference I don't think anyway. I have never thought about it till you brought it up.

Ben on a different note I talk with Paul at Atrox and a few other 'Southern" Haunts and sometime this winter we all need to meet up for a dinner or something. Think it would be great to get some of the southern haunts together after all were neighbors. And the bunch at Froggys Fog would come too!!!! What ya think? Shane and its Merry Christmas Shane this time!!!