Thread: Competition Pressure

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I think it’s fair to say that most of us don’t have much neighborhood competition in our Halloween set ups. Lately, Mr. L and I will be discussing ideas and he’ll come up with something really good and I find myself saying, “That’s great but maybe we should save that for next year.” I find myself saying that a lot!

I feel like I’m competing with myself, always thinking about how to make it better for next year when this year hasn’t even happened yet. Does the competition for bigger, better , scarier within yourself ever end? Does there come a point where you say, it was good enough this year, it will be good enough next year? For those of you who have done this for many, many years, do you get to the point where it’s the best it can be and you don’t worry about next year or is it an ongoing, never-ending process?

First let me say, I don't think that Halloween should be about competition.

That said, a few points I would like to make about myself...

1. We never do the same haunt within 5 years of itself, the only exception to that rule was the 2nd, 3rd and 4th years as we moved between 2 and 3 and we relocated in 4. ( forest-witch house, grave yard-dungeon, mad sceintist, circus, graveyard(display), pirates(this year), alien something? (next year).

2. We change to keep the iminagination flowing and to keep the TOT guessing

3. since we moved and restarted, we have noticed more and more of our neighbours are putting more and more decorations up for Halloween. We even had a house on the street south of us go a bit further, (dummies under the car, hanging from the tree, etc.)

4. I have just found out that the administrators of Ontario Haunters Club are less than 5min drive from me. ( I am going to go and see their set up this year)
so if there was any competition that is where it would be.

5. I went to boneyard bargain's party and that did inspire aww but not cometition because I know that I do not have the funds to get as elaborate as most haunters who go with the big animatronic props.


just my $0.02 worth

LOL...good question, let me know the answer as well!

I actually get discouraged every year thinking that stuff looks corney and needs to be better and better. Compared to the rest of our area...it looks great...but I have the feeling of having to out do myself every year as well. We are running out of storage space...makes it even harder! How to do things better and better with out adding anything...hmmmmmm. Sooo, now we are just trying to re-vamp old props this year...hoping for the best!

I don't know if I try to do better...but I DO try to change things a little every year. Each year, I hit the November clearance sales. When I pull everything out at the beginning of October, it's like Christmas morning since I've FORGOTTEN all about the new stuff I'd bought.

I'm always trying to improve the way in which I give out treats, traffic flow, lighting effects, etc. But that just comes naturally to any haunter!

I think its good to revamp and recycle and keep it changing. Like halloweenking said, it keeps the TOTs guessing.
We were trying to top ourselves each year, but we realized you can only go so high before it becomes a burden...I'm refocusing on quality scares, not elaborate props or sets this year, and using mostly what I have at hand. Although freecycle and craigslist have to be the 2 best things I've ever found out about on here. I have a ton of lumber for building walls now, and last week got about 12 or so of the large, 10 foot long pallets for free.

I have bin doing my asylum themed haunt for the last five years. What I like to do is take a half hour of my scare time and just watch peoples reaction in each of my haunts rooms. The rooms that scare people the most return the next year, but the rooms that don't get any reaction get scraped. Of coarse I have scraped rooms that I thought were no good and people end up missing them. I guess I can't please everyone, but I should't have to any way. Right?

This is our 4th year doing a yard/home haunt and each of those years we've been obsessed with outdoing ourselves from the year before. This past December we moved to a new neighborhood in a new state and thought we could actually take it easy this year and just put up last year's stuff since it will all be new to this neighborhood...THEN we had new neighbors move in at the other end of our street who have started to spread the word that they need to try to close off the culdesac for their decorations on Halloween night because they go "all out". We don't know exactly what they mean by "all out" but needless to say, the pressure is back to go above and beyond once again. We know we can't slack off now because as they say, "first impressions are everything".

I compete with myself, each year I try to get more & more advanced. I'm now into pneumatics and I also build all my own props, just about everything I built has some sort of animation. I really could care less about competing with another haunter, we all help each other in my Area.

In my neighborhood kids dont even TOT which is sad. When I take my kids I have to drive about 10 miles to a neighborhood that does. Last year was my 1st year doing a haunt in my yard and it was small, funny thing was that the kids really didn't get scared but the scream from the parents were priceless and I found when it was over I was already planning for this year.

So in closing I say if you love what you do, then your imagination is endless and you will always come up with a bigger and badder idea. Only thing for me now is to convince the wife that I will not do much psychological damage to the kiddies.

I would agree with i compete with myself. I too have moved to a new state and am curious what they do for halloween. According to my neighbors not much. We live in the historic district which evidently means BORING. This is my first year having an outdoor display partly because i didnt want it to be wrecked by my neighbors since we lived in duplex, but partly because i didnt want crap. I have a hard time with the moeny thing. I dont wanna spend it, but yet ya gotta spend it to make it look good. I dont want someone commenting that something I made is crappy looking or unrealistic. THAT would kill me. I dont think the need to do things better or different will ever stop for me. Im always learning something new so im hoping as the years go by ill get a more and more elaborate haunt. Maybe someday actually have a walk through. I will definately be trying to incorporate pneumatics into my haunt as well as props that talk and move. I just have to understand that all that takes time AND money and i cant have it all at once. I have to keep telling myself that i dont need everything NOW, i can wait. LOL. See its a battle. So to answer your question, nope i dont think it will ever be enough, but i can see a point in the future where it wont be so much work. Just little tweaks to make it better.