Thread: Haunted Carnival

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We decided that our theme this year would be a haunted carnival with twisted gamed and freaks in cages, but we are having no luck at coming up with an appropriate name for the haunt. Any and all suggestions would be appreciated. Also, taking a tip from Devil's Chariot, we are planning on having a "bowl the skull" game and also a "pull the shrunken head" game. Any other ideas for fun, but distorted carnival games?

I have a carnival theme in the planning stages as well. I like giving the carnival haunt a name too instead of using something like CarnEvil which is a great name but used a lot. Two names I'm tossing around are Carnival of Souls and SpiritWorld. Won't decide until I have to make up the signage. Settling on the perfect name is the hardest part IMO. Try imaging a carnival barker calling out "Step right up and be prepared to be amazed and terrified. Welcome to (fill in the blank)! Where your most terrifying nightmare is our playground!" and see what sticks for you.

Not distorted but maybe you can improvise on it--I just picked up some decent sized rubber duckies from the DOLLAR TREE that I'm thinking of using in a carnival area called NightGames (set up in a garage most likely where it can be good and dark inside). They float and I'm thinking of painting them with GID or flourescent paint and having them in a water trough of some sort and carnival goers can win a prize or get tickets to "buy" a prize by tossing a GID bracelet around a duck's head. The TARGET GID bracelets I bought the other year work pretty well. It's doable but not real easy either. Might turn the ducks into skellie ducks and call the game "DeadRinger". Suppose you could gross it up a bit by using prop heads instead of the ducks and tossing GID necklaces instead of the bracelets as long as they will fall over the heads.

I also picked up a few of the DOLLAR TREE foam baseballs to possibly use in a baseball game toss (think of the carnival game with stacked bottles knocked down with a baseball). I'd like to paint the baseball stitching with GID paint and instead of bottles might use GID light-weight plastic skulls stacked on top of each other in a pyramid. Haven't tried this out yet so it's just conceptual at this point. Might call this one "Numb Skull" figuring the skull would be pretty numb after getting hit in the head with baseballs. The DT baseballs are white cloth and should glow nicely under blacklight and if they don't a soaking in GID laundry detergent should do the trick.

One last game idea. I have a few masks that have open mouths as part of their design, like they are screaming. Had this idea to use the masks mounted on a horizontal bar with beakers located underneath and behind the mask to catch fluid, and carnival goers would compete to fill their beaker first by using water guns. It would have to be set up so that only water that went through the open mouth would end up in the beaker. To go gory you could try coloring the water with a non-staining washable blood color if using human masks or maybe green "blood" if shooting at Alien faces. What color is zombie blood BTW? Or do zombies have blood?

There's a thread started a few years ago in the Props section called Circus Props that may have some ideas for you. I seem to recall someone posting a video (still up?) of a really nicely done carnival game area based on a body part toss (severed body parts like from DOLLAR TREE). Carnival goers stood at a line and had body parts to toss into the appropriate game board hole (the vertical target area was painted like a body with holes for the brain, heart, hand, etc. to pass through). If they missed the hole, the body part would fall down on a slanted board and tumble forward to be scooped up by the carnival assistant. The video was impressive and it looked like a lot of fun.

Good luck on choosing a haunt name.

Circus of the damned was our name when we did it. this is what our canival barker was in. just think of the guy dressed in a stripped suit.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=...type=3&theater

Naborhoodhaunts, your Facebook picture must be marked private because it won't show when I clicked on Your link. Message about not having permission. Can you add The photo to your HF album so everyone here can see it?

Spookie,
As usual, you come up with unique and totally spectacular ideas. LOVE the Dead Ringer idea, but I think I am going to tweak it and using body parts (hand, heart, foot, etc) all glued to a board instead of the ducks. Just an FYI, last year Oriental trading had some yellow ducks that had a Halloween theme, like a vampire duck, a Frankenstien duck, a skeleton duck, etc. that might work for your "pond".

I was also giving some thought to having the kiddos shoot those stretchy rubber chicken into the witch's cauldron. Call it something like "Pot Luck"

Still having a hard time with a name, but I'm sure something will come eventually. If you think of anything else, please let me know!

WOW! Thanks for the great ideas! I love the "numb skull" game and will probably use it, if you don't mind. Also read all of the postings in the Circus Props theme, and go some really good ideas to build on, although some were definitely out of my league. I can dream, though. We're setting up under our carport and ordered some red nd white striped plastic sheeting for create "tent" walls and bunting. Still playing around with name ideas, but I have some time yet to decide. I just want to make sure that I allow myself enough time to make the signage. Not doing any black lighting this year, but I definitely will be using neon paint everywhere I can. I'll add some circus music and balloons to the mix. I have a couple of clowns to set up, a fun house mirror, a talking clown head that I am going to set up on a pedestal to talk to the TOTs, one of those static lightening balls, and some vintage circus/side show posters to hang. Everything else will be done by live actors as side show characters (snake lady, the black widow, Pongo - the wild boy, the two headed-dog). Do you have any other suggestions that don't require an engineering background to make? I certainly game to try, but I know my limits!

Recently I found a child's bowling set at a garage sale, and think I will paint the pins to look like skeletons and have the kids use a softball sized skull to "bowl" down the pins for one of my games.

I was also playing with the idea of filling a child's pool with sand, small toys and "critters", and calling it "The Boneyard". Each TOT would take the big scoop and get one chance to scoop out a big scoop of the sand and drop it in the sieve to see what goodies they "dig" up. Then they would get to keep whatever they found.

Might set up a shooting gallery with shrunken heads as the targets, and let the kiddos shoot nerf balls at them. Not sure about that one and haven't come up with a name yet for it either.

Love this site so much! It has really inspired me to expand my haunts. Never done a carnival/circus theme before, but I'm having a ball coming up with ideas. Keep it coming, guys!

Thanks for kind words. I've found tons of great ideas and advice here as well.

I saw a kids' bowling ball set while at BIG LOTS! last night ($10) so was going to come here and suggest it for your arcade area but see that you already picked a set up elsewhere! Great minds!! I was going to suggest turning the pins (8.75 in) into ghosts and painting the bowling balls like eyeballs. The set at BL was nice in that it also came with a bowling alley mat (22 in x 60 in), two bowling balls. I thought elevating the bowling lane to banquet table level would be a good thing. Add some wood along the sides of the table top so the ball and pins don't fall off. I'd probably add some spooky cloth over the alley and make some kind of haunted display signage with the game name where the pins set up. You could probably punch some holes in the sign board and add globe lights from behind to illuminate it.

Sounds like you've got some fun stuff planned. I like the idea of the boneyard a lot. The sand could get all over things and the kids and get kind of messy. Kind of like glitter! But it works so well with the theme of digging up things though. BTW I had similar thoughts about creating a mess by having the rubber duckies floating in water or the kids using water guns.

Shebear1, have you ever seen Lemax's Spookytown "Heads Will Roll" display before? Thought it might give you some ideas for your bowling alley game. It's one of my favorite pieces (I have a lot of favorites from them actually but won't let myself start collecting though because I would be poor and have no room for anything). Here's a link to a photo of it: http://lemax-spookytown.com/LargePix...ages/94970.jpg

Just now came across this thread. Sorry for the tardiness. I posted a quick tutorial for a "Bloody Ring Toss" awhile back. Heres the link:Bloody Ring Toss
A very simple project and it literally cost less than ten bucks to build. The ToTs loved it and so did my party guest.
Hope it helps you out.