Thread: Mistakes

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What is the biggest error that you've ever made in your hanunts? What did you learn from it? Help others to not do what you did. Mine has to be not getting adult actors for my haunt. Every year I tend to get one or two adults and a bunch of TOTers that wanted to help out. I'm not saying that kids can't be scary, they just didn't get any lessons from me. When I was younger, I was scary, but that's just because I've been a haunt guy since I was eight years old.

I always tried to spell haunts right. HA HA HA. Really, last year I attempted to have the Jeepers Creepers thing going on, with the scarecrow. All my shocks kept blowing over. We had a lot of wind in October. Seemed that nomatter what I did, they would not stay in place. Was a real pain in the wazzoo.

Mine is better lighting better lighting better lighting. What is the purpose of having a kick booty awesome haunt and then nighttime hits and no one can see it? I did get some lights but not the effect that I wanted. This year major difference. I hope

I'm working on lights too.

The biggest mistake I've made (granted i just decided to start building props last year) was when i made a fog chiller and didn't allow a few inches for the fog to expand. nothing came out we were disappointed and by the time i realized what went wrong (after Halloween) we had already thrown the chiller away.

I do a Haunted forest every year...and the thing I keep running into is that I have too much lights on the trail and people were able to see the ones doing the haunt. Also, if you have games going on that has prizes for winning...make sure this is well supervised, we had kids last year doing the games when no one was watching and taking the prizes, they found where I hid them.

My biggest mistake was using black plastic tarps for walls. In my 2007 haunt I almost had a group of ToTers fall through the wall because they were leaning against it.

I'll remember that.

Cardboard props are ok, unless they:
1) Get wet
2) Have something heavy on top of them
3) Get wet while something heavy is on top of them!

Awesome gargoyle + cardboard pillar for it to sit on + early morning dew for a month = smushed box & broken gargoyle.

This year, the gargoyle has a sturdy pillar made of wood.

The mistake I've made is putting to much work into the beginning of the haunt and not enough in the end. I do a walk thru HH in my basement. Two years ago I had a back story that ended with a little girl demanding her doll back. I thought it would be scary, it wasn't. Every one seemed let down after being scaried thru the haunt, then nothing. Same thing last year, I started out strong with a stone wall and portraits including one that dropped. But the last two rooms were let downs. I managed to pull the last room together in the end, because I learned the importance of pacing. Don't put too much in one area.