[drfrightner]

Yes we will do a tour of Darkness 2010 and yes we will once again renovate the Darkness but NO we WILL NOT be building a new 17,000 square foot building, pouring sidewalks, adding gutters, replacing windows, bringing in 50k worth of new electric, sprinker systems and the whole bit... WHOOOOOO...

Thank God!

No what we will do however is renovate just the attraction. I'm also going to do a lights on tour that will be part of your ticket... there will be NO FODO, NO DRINKS, NO PARTY just show up and walk through with the lights on and the next night you show up and you go through with actors.

There will be NO cameras during the scary tour allowed. I will have security all through out to keep the lines moving so people don't stop to look at everything holding up other groups. You will go through like a NORMAL haunted house and yes we'll stock the place with top shelf actors but the customers WILL NOT RUIN the show because they want to gaze at everything...this is why we'll do a pre-lights on tour the night before that will essentially be free.

I'm doing that so YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE to ruin the actually production show itself. Anyone with a camera they will be snatched, anyone stopping will be pushed along, blah, blah. We will break up the groups and you will go through like a normal customer.

The focus will be on showcasing the Darkness as a haunt and the product itself the actors, the make up, the costumes, the whole show.

What will we do new: We will almost totally redo the upstairs and we have designed GROUP SCARES... scares that will scare everyone at one time and almost every single room will be designed to scare everyone at once. Yes it will be something new and yes it will be cool. I think a lot of people will be amazed at what we will showcase this time around.

We are also totally making over EVERY OLD FASHION SCARE to be new and fresh... old scares with new twists. Consider this event as a live demo in the art of the scare. That is what you wanted or atleast some people wanted so that is what we will focus on.

But don't come back and complain it was too scary, or how I need to buy you new underwear! LOL

Terror Visions will also get a make over as well, actually it already has you just didn't see it yet. Anyway all the details will be announced right after the IAAPA show.

As for Creepyworld... that is still up in the air! We are going to build another 3D show for that place and it will be wicked with tons of gross gore all in 3D. It will be different than anything we've ever done. If we can get the Darkness done at least one month before the show we'll set up part of Creepyworld and tour the mansion, dominion of the vampire and the new 3D haunt but nothing else.

Again that will stay up in the air until I get The Darkness redone first.

Stay tuned here for all the updates, photos and more.

We will be ripping out tons of old scenes soon... and they are all for sale.

Larry

[drfrightner]

Okay BRAINSTORM STUDIOS will be making the new Darkness website, they are doing websites now and so they are going to make all the new graphics and put the site together for me. They are working on that now and hopefully the site www.thedarkness.com will be up and running by the first week of January and tickets will go on sale.

I did update the news blog with some information if you want to swing over there and read it! Advanced Ticket, Brainstorm Studios will once again sponsor the tour.

We will SPLIT the days of the show and LIMIT how many people can go on each day to allow us a chance to space groups out more...

I think we are going to limit 600 per day (Friday and Saturday). I'll let you know when the tickets go on sale and all the details.

Anyway I'm going down to the Darkness today and I will snag a few pictures however there isn't much to take pictures of unless you want to see the DEGREE to which we have DESTROYED the haunted house... LOL.

You'll see ONE BIG GIANT EMPTY ROOM... I think once you see the pictures you'll get a really good idea of just what level of renovation we are taking on here.

We have been doing some drawings ... I'm uploading some now.

Larry

[drfrightner]

Here is a different view another draft... and yeah we are going to build it!

It will be the most expensive room we are going to build and it will be the last scene in the attraction. It will feature a 10ft animated grim reaper as you'll see in the drawing, several crypts, a round routunda crypt, stone walls you walk between the whole nine yards.

Larry

[drfrightner]

I've had a few people ask me over the past couple of weeks... why don't you open Creepyworld instead of Darkness because we've already seen Darkness. Really... take a look at these photos and tell me if you've seen the Darkness.

We have taken down nearly 80% of the upstairs of the attractions, and when I say TAKEN DOWN I MEAN TAKEN DOWN and thrown in the trash walls and all...

Its being built FROM SCRATCH... look for yourself!

Some people said to me why did you throw all those walls in the trash they looked awesome... well those walls where very very old and for us it would be better to just rebuild from scratch. We are trying to build the attraction for the next 5 years not just this show.

It was time to remove and start from scratch... the only thing I'm upset about is taking down the wine cellar that was one of my favorite scenes.

Couple other updates that you might think are cool... we have going to be hanging a REAL airplane from the ceiling in our waterfall room the room with the gorillas... you will walk right under it, it will look like its caught and hanging in a bunch of vines but when you get close something will happen and you think your head will get cut off!!!

We are going to pick up the plane next week ... that should be cool!

I've also attached a photo of our security system which will be available to see on the behind the scenes tour!

I've also attached a photo of our art gallery which we are turning into a crypt you can see the small shelves that you put urns into...

More photos coming soon!

[drfrightner]

Okay today I was at the Darkness and man o man we have messed up some stuff, built some stuff wrong, and we seem to be way behind...

However Terror Visions is RIGHT ON TRACK and let me say UNREAL... what will be the biggest difference?

1) We themed the que room photo attached! Its not done because it will include all these weird signs telling people the rules written by clowns.

2) We have painted the floors EVERYWHERE... again not done yet but when you come check out the FLOORS YOU WON'T BELIEVE YOUR EYES! Pictures attached.

3) Changed one room and made like a crate room and actors hide inside. Picture attached.

4) Will be adding several custom animations.

5) Will be adding more gory custom made props ( no pics on that yet)

Lastly we are just adding some WILD artwork... the whole place will be painted and themed soup to nuts. You won't believe it! Sorry if some of the photos are blurry because I have to take the pics with extended exposure and I didn't have a tripod so I did the best I could.

Larry

[drfrightner]

Here are more photos...

We are painting ALL OF FLOORS every inch you will be in 3D head to toe! We've had a construction crew on it for a few days and painters will be working on it for at least another week or so. Once its DONE DONE I will get better photos.

Lastly you might be confused by the que line because the photos doesn't make it look very exciting but actually it really is... its really hard to take pictures of to show you what it is but it is suppose to look like a bunch of pallets and crates made into a make shift que line by cheap carnival people... it looks really cool! Its one of those things you have to see in person but you'll like it.

Another thing you will notice like this one photo attached here... you'll see how we're adding DEPTH to the photos in other words you see a front image then another one painted in green and another in blue, blah, blah. We are doing these all over the entire attraction!

Larry

[drfrightner]

Now as far as the Darkness itself still not much to see here... but if you want to look at bare wood here ya go!

We are doing a lot of stuff just will take a while to get anywhere. One you see the graveyard here it just looks like sticks of wood everywhere but all it really is just frame out. now we'll go in and apply plywood and or foam over everything.

The graveyard will be the first thing we built out totally... its going to be the coolest scene in the place but also is going to take the longest to complete. Also have some photos of the funeral home itself its still far off... in case you are wondering YES THOSE ARE REAL morgue cooler tables or whatever they are with real doors the whole bit. Yeah the slide in and out the whole nine yards!

Larry

[drfrightner]

More Terror Visions photos... we are painting the ENTIRE FLOOR from start to finish. It will be freaky! I think when its all said and done our plan was really to re-do the Darkness and make that the highlight but in retrospect I think the real highlight will end up being Terror Visions.

See last year we built Terror Visions from scratch and now that we have a full year to build it up, rather than building walls, scareboxes, all the basics now we are investing everything into just making it better.

Its turning out like a masterpiece... it will blow your mind!

I'm now starting to think The Darkness with the whole second floor being done from scratch it may not turn out exactly as I hope because we are building walls, re-doing electric, trying to search from props, blah, blah... it will be awesome but all the bugs probably wont' be worked out until long after the Transworld show.

Terror Visions will no doubt be the best 3D haunted house EVER created by ANYONE... we just keep working on Terror Visions and can't seem to get out of the attraction to work on Darkness.

Everytime we do something in Terror Visions we turn around and say... now that doesn't look right okay tear that out and build this... Terror Visions was planned as a one week project now its turning into a four week project.

It will be worth every penny... it will be unreal!

Here are more pics!

Larry

[drfrightner]

Haven't done much to Darkness itself but we are working on the morgue scenes... we are trying by weeks end to have both main morgue scenes completed. We decided to scrap the original design, tore it down ( i know i know) and we started over today.

I decided instead of a bunch of morgue vaults side by side I only wanted six with two rows so I could include a walk in where say the hospital would roll in a body on a gurney and just put the whole thing into a cooler. So by adding this we had to scrap everything we had already done and start over.

SMART IDEA ALERT: Rather than building some fake cooler I went to a used restaurant supply store and bought a used one, a real one included was shelves all the air condition stuff you name it... now I have a real one! The real one only cost me $800.00 and its real!

Take a look!

This scene doesn't look like much NOW but it will within a few days. Now we have to sheet the whole thing in stainless steel which we bought in 4x8 sheets, then age it, and then detail it.

Larry

[drfrightner]

As with last year I've seen some questions I'll answer them and delete the post... I want to do what I did last year and that is keep all the progress pics together so you can see from soup to nuts the attraction going together...

Anyway here is all the questions I saw answered plus tour updates.

Q: How do people walk on the floor without messing up the paintings?

A: With 3D you can actually put foot prints into the art and it will show up during the day but when the blacklights come on most dirt disappears. However we will seal the floor so that the art itself is protected but right now we are walking all over it and so did all the guests who walked through in 2009 and the floor still looks great.


Q: Are we going to show off group scares?

A: All the scares we are building that have an impact on entire rooms will be working. Right now we have the swamp house and falling floor from last year, and new this year will be a sewer tunnel, falling barrel wall, another falling barrel wall, a falling cage/ceiling, falling heads in terror visions, and a couple other things I can't remember off the top of my head but yeah they'll all be on and working.

Q: How can you scare everyone or anyone if you show everyone everything before you actually put actors inside?

A: Good question and to a point you are correct. Again the goal of the tour is NOT to scare anyone necessarily but to showcase an awesome haunted house, showing off custom animations, effects, detail work, and furthermore our actors room, security systems, and more. I think it would be almost impossible to scare haunt owners because they walk through so slow checking out everything. So whats the point? Haunt owners won't walk through like normal average day customers so its almost a mute point, so I don't think it will matter either way. We'll try our best!

Q: When will the website go live?

A: Brainstorm Studios is making the website and it will be done probably next week and from there we'll put it up live and start selling tickets. We are limiting the behind the scenes tour and the live tours so there are no long lines like last year. Also if you buy online you will save $15.00 if you buy prior to March 1st.

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Tour Updates:

1) Website and tickets will go online soon within days. If you order online you will save money if you buy before March 1st. We are doing timed ticketing again but this time we will be open one hour less each night and limit each hour to fewer people and total per night to only 600 so we can put people through SLOWER to have a better chance to scare people. So buy quickly if you are coming!

2) Ticket prices will be as follows: $100 behind the scenes tour with a ticket to come either friday or Saturday to a live show. No food no drinks just show up and go in... $50.00 for a ticket to either Friday or Saturday if purchased ONLINE prior to March 1st, 2010 and $65.00 purchased after March 1st online, at the show or at the box office. 600 per night max Friday/Saturday and 350 to the behind the scenes tour. Timed ticketing again but limiting the amount of people per hour and per night to create shorter lines and bigger gaps between groups.

3) Behind the scenes tour will be timed 7-8 8-9 or 9-10 you show up you go in... you get to see the security system, actors room, Halloween Productions workshop, new darkness, terror visions and museum. Plus you get a ticket to return either Friday or Saturday night live tour. Overhead lights will be off with all show lights ON and NO FOG so you can take pictures video or whatever. Actors room will be open. If it sells out fast and it looks like we have enough interest we might add another hour 10-11 but don't know.

4) Live tour... we plan on having more actors, we also hope to train our new actors best we can prior to the event, no cameras, no standing around, and we'll have a ton of security to make sure people walk faster this year so you can experience more like a REAL show to the best we can. The live show will be YOUR CHOICE either Friday or Saturday from 7:30 to 11:30pm. Each night is limited to 600 people once its sold out no more.

We will not add an extra hour and will not allow more than 600.

5) The Darkness is being remodeled head to toe...first floor will be mostly the same with a few changes and updates. The second floor will be almost totally re-done turned from a mansion into a funeral home. Terror Visions is mostly the same but 100 times better, built out more, more scares, some animations, tons more painting. What I mean by mostly the same is that most of last years artwork is still there and the maze didn't change much.

Lastly the museum will be a lot different with 3 or 4 monsters added, gift store will have darkness and new hauntworld t-shirts 4 sale.

Almost every animations will be turned digital sound, actors areas will also feature digital sound to assist actors scaring customers, plus TONS OF CUSTOM MADE PROPS AND ANIMATIONS made JUST FOR THIS TOUR!

Total cost of this event: $200,000.00 plus.

The main thing you will see is just how much we change our attraction from one year to the next... this isn't a few new animations shoved into a scene its a total remodel project.

We will have the website up online soon!

The website address like last year is www.thedarkness.com

Sponsors of this tour are: Brainstorm Studios, Interactive Ticketing, Halloween Productions, Haunted House Association and Hauntworld Magazine.

Last but not least I will update you right here with photos and video of all the updates, improvements and more for this tour. Our goal is to showcase one of the best haunts you'll ever tour, to show you Hollywood style detail, special effects, and detail.

Thanks
Larry