Thread: 2010: Low TOTer Turn-out?

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Man, what a disappointing night! I put on a very elaborate pirate display each year and usually get upwards of about 80-100 kids. This year though I was lucky to break 20! I don't know what to chalk it down to. Recession? Church?School events? All I know is that for all my labor (I almost fell off the bloody roof!) it turns out that the real Ghost Town was my own neighborhood. I should've suspected something afoot since hardly ANYONE decorated this year...

How did the rest of you fare?

I got just under 600. This year I got hit hard. It started at 5:00 and was a continuous line of kids until 8:00. I was fortunate to have help in crowd control to keep a line that wrapped my house and spilled into the street. For as many as I had, this has to have been the easiest year. I had no problems or trouble. By 8:30 I only had the occasional straggler.

The most we've ever had was 75, we even had about 50 last year in the rain, but this year just over 30.

I'm chalking it up to it being a Sunday night, a school night, & the changing of the guard. We had a bunch that got too old (in their opinions) to ToT so we lost about 10 right there. I know it's not for anyone else's yard because no on else in my little town does it.

We also have a lot of toddler/younger kids & sometimes it's just too much for them to walk the entire town, even though it's only one mile from end to end.

When I get down to less than 10 ToTers I'll stop decorating outside. Or until I can't get up & down the attic & basement stairs anymore, whichever comes first.

W e gave out 1500 pieces of candy. Of course we gave more than one piece as the night rolled on. I am guessing 3-4 hundred. Up from last year but last year was the first year for the big display. I think the word is getting out.

Maybe 200 this year numbers seemed low but whats one to do?

This year was the most we had...probably about 30, maybe slightly more. Last year it was about 15 and the year before was 10-12. Maybe we got more this year because all the kids from last year mentioned our house to their m8s so they all came out this year.

Our numbers have steadily declined... this year only 30 kids.. we did have HEAVY frost that night,, it was FREEZING!!! We love decorating for ourselves, our annual party and the TOT's.. but it was a bit of a bummer having a poor turnout..

This was our best year - approx 50.

my town is one of the few in our area that never allows TOTers to go out on Sunday. So TOTing was done on Saturday. We had pretty much all the surrounding towns come and hit us.

I gave out 1 piece per kid and burned through 950 pieces in 1 hour 25 minutes. I had LINES for about 45+ minutes of kids. My neighbor also gave out 1 piece of candy per kid and ran out almost towards the end of 1400 pieces. It was chaos for a while...my kids even started handing out their candy that they got.

It was fun and chaotic! lol

We only had about 12-15, which is actually high for us for the past 6 years.

People in my area keep going on about how Sunday night is bad for ToT, "it's a school night", etc. What about when it falls on Mon-Thur? I would think that's even worse since it's between school days. It's far more likely that it won't fall on Fri or Sat night, but somehow Sunday is the "problem day", and that's not counting people who have other kinds of reasons for not being able to celebrate on a Sunday, just the "on a school night is bad" crowd.