2009 in Review

Details

Category: In Review

Written by Guy Wolford

Halloween 2009 : Swampland

We rolled out a few major changes for the Haunt At Boo 2009 as we're beginning to learn new techniques and grow our prop inventory.  The haunt stayed in our back yard this year, following the success of last year's change of venue and on October 30th, Jen and I were outside starting the preliminary setup.

2009 marked the removal of an old frustration of ours, "The Fountain o' Blood", in the interest of using the massive amount of space that it took up more effectively.  The fountain, always in danger of becoming a watery, collapsing, power-hungry disaster in the back corner of the graveyard gave way to our new Terror Carolers and our graveyard was expanded to include a new green-eyed reaper with lantern mannequin that we had built a few months before. We also added a talking vampire mannequin at the entrance to our haunt (his head fell off about 3 times before we got started and once glued back on... well that's another story altogether).

Back as usual for 2009 was the rest of the props and we dealt with a previous week of constant rain the best we could. The grass we usually build our haunt on was like a big muddy sponge and our Gorilla spent most of his evening standing in a puddle of about and inch of muddy water.  To our delight, the rain actually held back for us to both set up the haunt and tear it back down, but the cold temperatures didn't improve anyone's flexibility. We had an unprecedented amount of participants this year, and everyone really pitched in to help.

None of our equipment failed, although at about 2 hours before we were to open up, I could not find the wireless remote control for our electric chair twitcher.  We searched high and low for well over an hour and even had 2 of our actors en route to Evilusions to get another one when it dawned on me that I put it in with the LED lighting kit from last year.  Lesson learned for 2010: put it in a place that someone other than you knows about!

Our feedback was wonderful as usual, getting a lot of comments from visitors that all begin to echo the same theme:

These comments include:

"How did you do that?"

This comment usually ends in someone referring them to this site.

"This is so nice that you do this for the community."
This comment is always appreciated, and furthermore, outside of our personal love for Halloween, is the only reason we continue.

"Why don't I ever see your house featured in "The Plain Dealer" or "The Euclid Sun" (which is now gone) or "The News Herald" (ad infinitum).

My response to this is "I have NO idea." seriously, local news, come out and visit us! We're itching to talk to you!

In summation, 2009 was a great year. Better than 2008, with room left to improve and expand for 2010. We continue to look into new ways to present ourselves every year, and this site only opens up the forum for ideas and involvement. As I wrote earlier, our cast was the biggest it has EVER been and I only hope that as our presence on the web, plus our continuing local buzz will make our future years just as exciting and fulfilling.

Final totals for 2009: Hours of operation: 2.5, Hours of prep:  100+, Set up time: 18 hours, Tear down time: 1 hour, Time putting everything away until next year: 4 hours. Time until next Halloween: CHECK THE COUNTDOWN BAR TO YOUR LEFT!!!

See you all in 2010!