Saturday, November 2, 2013

Halloween 2013 Review or "How NOT to enjoy Halloween in 2014"

First and foremost a belated "Happy Halloween" to everyone!

I'm not sure what happened for us. The week leading up to Halloween, the Florida weather was cool and breezy, we were on-time if not slightly ahead of schedule with prop building, we were enjoying ourselves with some things that have become October traditions and then... a full reversal! The weather turned hot and sticky humid, took longer for my family and I to get the props from storage out and setup so having everything running the day before Halloween didn't happen. New mausoleum facade gave me repeated headaches during setup including continual  breaking of what will be forever known as the "Columns from Hell"!

Rose Family Mausoleum covering one of the garage doors. "Columns from Hell" finally not breaking and stayed in place nicely.

On Halloween day we started early in the morning to try and finish and have some relaxation time before the Trick-or-Treaters came - didn't happen... getting things set up, errands to the store, a fog chiller not working well, and then the icing on the cake, NO SOUND. Yep, no music, no sound effects, nothing!
Ipod wouldn't sync to computer I had Halloween music on. Our only CD player breaks and won't play the lullaby music for the new Rocking Zombie Granny prop, and the only good sound effects CD we have decides that three Halloweens is the maximum number of times it wants to play.

New Rocking Zombie Granny from Distortions Unlimited
With literally minutes before the first customer of the night, my family gets it all figured out using a laptop for Granny and an Ipad connected to an Ipod stereo player with some You tube storm sounds.

So without any rest we began Halloween Night 2013.

We had about 70 trick-or- treaters and probably double that to 140 total visitors including parents, some adults walking the neighborhood, and the return of a double decker tour bus that we saw a couple years prior.  Not sure what happened that there were fewer children.

Rocking Zombie Granny prop on the porch kept some youngsters from braving it up the steps where we sat on the opposite side, but of course they got their treats. Belinda delivered some candy to the street to a few very little ones. I'm sure just looking at the yard was too scary for them much less walking down the sidewalk. Overall the children and their parents seemed to be having a great time, which is really what it's all about. We even talked to some folks that moved away but returned to the neighborhood for Halloween just to see our haunt. We felt that was probably the ultimate compliment. There were also a significant number of vehicles slowly driving by or stopping in front of the house this year which I don't remember previously.

New "Sorrow" statue we built this year was probably the only thing that didn't give us set-up problems.
The final problem of the night was the inadequate number of photos and the quality of what I did get. The ones posted here are probably the best of what I have so I'm not sure the annual Home Haunter's Video is going to be possible. I really enjoyed doing that last year too.

Despite not being our best Halloween, in the end the yard looked great, children loved it, adults were complimentary and we got to spend time and talk to lots of children, neighbors, friends and our family.

As I'm cleaning up and putting away this year's Halloween, I'm mentally compiling a list of the mistakes that made this Halloween so frustrating. Not advance checking every little item to make sure it still works seems to be the first one, especially the sound and music!

12 comments:

  1. Happy belated Halloween! I'd never know you had so many problems from looking at your photos. Everything looks really impressive! That is a whole lot of last minute stress. Maybe you had a technology poltergeist drop by for Halloween? ;) Good thing you guys had extra tools/players and knew how to use them. That zombie granny is pretty darn freaky. At our local museum there's an old (human) granny prop that rocks back and forth on a historical porch. That scares people enough! I found a photo of her:

    Human Granny replica

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    1. Yep! She's an unintentionally creepy granny! I can see kids being very wary of her! Thanks for the compliments. While we were happy with what we put together it should not have been so frustrating given the fact we only added 5 new props and two were from retail. Oh well, 2013 is over, planning for 2014!

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  2. Your Sorrow statue looks great! And the columns might be from hell, but they look really good!
    I think everyone had crappy weather this year - in SE Michigan we had wind & rain, but at least it wasn't too cold.

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    1. I guess we were blessed to avoid the wind and rain that so many had but I get to the point where I hate the heat when putting the graveyard together. Thanks, we were pleased how she (Sorrow) turned out, creepy but not frightening.

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  3. Things looked great Mark! Awesome display. It poured rain at our house in TN on Halloween, it just wasn't a great Halloween this year but I am glad you and yours did so good.

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    1. Thanks Kelly! I guess it not raining here was a plus I should be thankful for.

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  4. Happy belated Halloween to you Mark and all those at Shingle Creek. Sorry to hear all the techinical problems you had. That really can be a nightmare. Regardless, your haunt looks beautiful as usual. It is kind of fun in a way to learn year to year. What things work and which ones don't. Keeps that fire burning so you can say.."wait until next year"

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    1. My sentiment exactly OB! Next year I'll be better prepared... Thanks for the compliments. Was looking forward to putting the vid together with the rest of you but it's not looking terrible good at this point. Definitely not our best Halloween. Oh well!

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  5. Thanks for the note, Mark. The final pictures DID turn out good. Sorry to hear it didn't go all that smooth for you. But it sounds like you persevered and came out on top! Next year...

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    1. Thanks Jim! looking forward to seeing your prop builds for 2014!

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  6. Hey, everything looks great! Love the pics. The mausoleum facade is a great idea to cover the garage! I'm wondering for 2014 if I should hang canvas on mine thats painted with a backdrop scene like in the theatre. And I'm glad I'm not the only one who takes notes on right after Halloween.

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    1. Thanks Willow! I have a side entry garage and live on a corner so the kids have to walk by it to go up the sidewalk. Doing something about the garage doors has been a consideration since year one. Yes, I'll be de-briefing this year's Halloween well into 2014!

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