Thread: What props stopped working on you on halloween night?

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yes it as finally happened in the past years i have been lucky , some props died before half the evening was done , the haunted chandelier stoped working 2 hours after it started and the thing was on a machine so it would only shake with louder noise once in a while and worked great on that last year the haunted books stoped working after one hour, my cool new gravedigger animated head stoped working at about 6 pm .....did a styrofoam crypt coffin almost in my sleep yesterday to put an animated skeleton in a coffin in it well once in the crypt sensor didnt work well hearing the sound you had to bang the coffin to hear it ....oh well ......what is sad is we are open 4 to 9 tomorow for visitors as well so i hope nothing else breaks done ...

so what prop gave up on you this halloween ?

We lucked out tonite....all of our props did great....

Lighting FX. I have the white christmas version I just got.

It looked and sounded AWESOME! Except the constant thunder sound might have rouined my amplifier. I have a small 15 watt fender amp that I use for my wireless mic when I do magic shows. It started crackling at about 7:15. I hope it is just the thunder sounds making it crackle. I spent so much on halloween this year I dont wanna drop another $50 on a new amp.

My for machines went empty on my with a half hour left until curfew, so that was not too bad.

I am just worried about my amp.

I made a last second decision to use a pair of 12" Godzilla figures that had a motion sensor. They each had a very loud and distinct roar/screech sound. I placed one at the bottom of the stairs to the front porch where the Tots had to come up to get the treats. The other I placed the back end of the porch where it abuts the wheelchair ramp. I was supposed to go off when they traversed the threshold, for which I had hung a sort of 'bat-ed' curtain. That is to say I strung up about 5 separate vertical strands of twine, w/ a rubber bat attached about every 1- 1 1/2 feet or so. Well that one only worked about 2 or 3 times, and only when I walked by. The one at the bottom of the stairs stopped working about 1/2 hour after things got started. Either it was cheap batteries or the things just drain the life out of any battery after a very short while...

I had probems today with my axeworthy ghost. I had been working on it for weeks, and thought that I had it all ready. Boy was I wrong! 4 hours later, I finally worked the kinks out of it and it worked great most of the evening. Only once did the ghost get caught and flip the fishing line off of the drive wheel.

Oy. The new MIB started flaking out after an hour or so. The battery on the PIR had to be changed, and then the PIR started acting squirrelly. It was OK, and it startled several TOTs and even parents, but it could've worked better. On an up note, it scared one girl (maybe 12 YO?) so badly that she ran all the way to the street!

The quadraphonic sound system that worked flawlessly in 06 & 07 flaked on us. The computer program would run for 30-45 min and then shut itself down. DH had to run up and turn it on a couple of times, and then I gave him a Midnight Syndicate CD to put in so we could be done with it. GRRR. I LOVE that surround-sound effect that we used to get reliably for 3-4 hours. Gotta figure out what's wrong with it for next year... On the positive, we got the "back" channel speakers mounted across the sidewalk so the sound was even better this year, when it worked properly!

What else... OH, light-sensitive "sensor" operated props suck in the dark. Useless. I guess I'll need to rig a break-beam setup if I'm going to bother with them in the future.

My ghosts and bats get caught flying from side to side but its a pretty easy fix

Gemmy Witch's eyes stopped lighting up. I also had some chrome look skull strobes and one glow in dark strobe all in a coffin on my porch, and though I put fresh batteries, none of them worked. They were old, but I had hoped to have that part of the display all strobing. Should have checked them out beforehand. I had a Donna the Dead groundbreaker being used as a prop in a bed, but after being lit up for a night her head drooped off to the side. I think it looks better like that in the setting she's in, but I wonder why that happened.

I was pretty lucky as well. All my animated props worked without a hitch!

My music actually stopped working. It played through one time then wouldn't play at all. I thought that it might be the CD player and the backup I had wouldn't play CDs at all. So I burned another disk on the spot. Luckily our burner is fast and it only took 60 seconds. The new CD worked just fine but for a moment there I was really paniced!