Average Size Of Rooms

[oakhillshaunterTHEFEAR]

This a marketting survey Incrementum Fear is conducting.

Just wondering what the average size of the rooms all you haunt owners have. Example, 10x10, 10x20, 6x8, oblong with the longest wall 10'. The other question is what is the longest wall you have in your haunt, longest interior wall.

Thanks for any and all input.

[Boni]

The answer is, there is no good answer.

My haunt has rooms that are 3 foot wide by 6 feet long, and some that are 25 x 25. It depends on the scene.

In our hospital scene, one of our rooms is literally just a stretcher with an actor on it sunk back into the wall and our 25 x 25 room is the morgue which forces patrons to wind in and out of autopsy tables, cold storage, and body bags.

Several of my scenes are 12 x 12 these would be major surgical room scenes, but a lot are 6 x 6 for a dentist chair, Mad dentist, and patient.

When you ask for longest wall, do you mean modular wall or longest string of walls.

I use 8', 6', 4' and 3' wall sections and the longest stretch of walls with no T's or corners is about 35 feet.

[Jim Warfield]

Ravens Grin Rooms:

Since this is a guided tour my rooms should be accomodating the number of people in a group and hallways don't matter because they are in transition.
Of course different sized bodies make a big difference, when asked how many is a "group"? I often say, "Five NFL lineman or 25 -3year olds fill the room."
I mean...really?
Of course waiting for say 15 slow-walking older adults to file into a room really eats the timeclock, walking 5 teenagers along goes much faster.
Then some want a "quick Tour", which is actually more work for me since it will have to be a track meet and I'm not getting any faster with age...then the customer needing the quick tour begins asking me 20 questions every few feet and begins stopping to read things that don't have to be even considered. But at the end when the tour goes for a mere 46 minutes instead of the required 45 I will be the dumbass who screwed-up, not them, as is often the case (in their mind)
Woe is me.
Not really.

[Kelly Anderson]

room size

We own the building we do our haunt in. It was once an infirmary. All the exterior and interior walls are clay tile block with conctete floors. Other than cutting a doorway through a wall to provide a second enterance/exit out of that room, we havent taken any walls down.

The building is already set up with many rooms. Some were bedrooms approx. 10 x 10, the dinning room was a bit bigger at 12 x 12, and the old classroom was 12 x 25 approx. Those rooms we tipically just used as they were, maybe repaint or even frame some walls within the room.

One part of the basement is about 15 x 25. Usually we would frame the room to what ever we are trying to build so it could end up rather small. This year that basement has been built so it leaves approx 15 by 12 on an average. The room isnt totally squared off.

It really just depends on what we are wanting to do in each room. Some times having a group tight together in a smaller room fits the scare tactic better. Other times not. If your trying to make a room shrink, your better off building the room bigger so the group has more time to experience the fact that the room/walls are closing in on them.

Just my thoughts,

Kelly Anderson
www.hauntyourhouse.net

[The Mad Hatter]

The rooms over at The Reign of terror are mainly 12'X12' rooms and smaller. Some long hallways 4' by 24'. we keep the rooms small to give a more claustrophobic feel.

-Frank Balzer
FrankwillisBalzer@yahoo.com

[Jim Warfield]

Claustrophobic is good.

It makes them worry that Claus might make them into his trophys. Gutted, preserved, stuffed and sewn.

[Raycliff Manor]

We also have rooms of varying size. Something I learned from the many videotapes and disussions with haunted attraction owners is that you can make a small space feel much larger by lighting the scenes you want to be seen as your focus wall and leaving the space opposite very dark. The guests perceive the dark area as ongoing and they fill in the space with their imaginations. The mini-spotlights from minispotlights.com are great for this! The same goes for the ceiling. If you paint the ceiling black and you hang moss and vines from overhead camo-netting, and you light the scene right, the guests believe they are in an outdoor area and have no concept of the overhead ceiling. Adding outdoor sounds, such as crickets and frogs helps too. Other illusions can be achieved with mirrors, such as an endless hall, or using windows or arches giving the illusion that there is more depth to what is actually an outside wall helps too. Our main attraction, Raycliff Manor, is a little more than 4,000 square feet on the main floor, but when the guests come out we hear them say over and over again, "How did they get all that in there?!" or "I never expected the attraction to be this long!" Of course we use every inch of space on the main floor and we have a lot of twists and turns going through the attraction. It's also broken up into many different sets/scenes.

Hope this helps.

Kel

[Jim Warfield]

Fooling Customers

Hundreds of times a year I overhear them say:"We are in the basement now."
Maybe they think this because the temperature is lower?
They are surrounded by vines, they look up and it looks just like the moon looking down at them! (I do really good work!)
No, it's the real moon! Fooled Again!
The cicaitas and tree frogs chirping are real, they work very reasonably too!
(Same wages the Moon gets!)
The funny thing about this is, I am not trying to create such an illusion at all.