Thread: My awesome first year doing a yard haunt and night of failures

Tweet

Well I made it. It was an awesome night, even though it was full of failures. To recap I went from a total blank slate of a yard to a full yard display and built a complete haunt over the past year.

I was sick from Thursday through Sunday so I didn't get much of a chance to do a dry run. I tested everything to make sure it worked, but never tried everything at the same time. I kept blowing breakers and didn't have enough time or extension cords to spread the power consumption around. So I had to ditch more than half of my spot lights in the graveyard. I also had to scrap the thunder/lightning set up and only ran 1 fogger in my yard. The tombstone peeper worked for about 10 minutes then the motor screw stripped and he just became a static prop. The Grim's signing pumpkins weren't set up until about 1/2 hour after TOTs starting arriving and then they were not quite lined up right (people still thought they were awesome though). The FCG on the 22' flag pole was only about 10 feet in the air. Thank God for my brother and sister-in-law who helped out, I would have never survived the night without them. My brother loved hitting the button on the MIB remote control.

The MIB, Laser Vortex, FCG, Grims Pumpkins all got rave reviews, as did the overall appearance of my yard. I had many people ask how much it all cost and where I bought everything. They were dumbfounded when I told them I built everything. They couldn't believe that my columns were made out of rigid styrofoam.

The biggest failure of the night was underestimating the number of TOTs. I thought maybe 200.....we got well over 400 and probably pushing 500. I have no idea where all of the kids came from. I would like to think that they had seen my graveyard that had been set up for a week and word got around. I had 240 packs of Silly Bands from Eyegore's group buy and they were gone in about 40 minutes. They were a huge hit and the kids were screaming and going nuts over them. We went through almost 500 pieces of candy and I was giving out the LED fiber optic finger lights and only have a handful left. During the last 45 minutes kids were given a choice of candy or finger lights, I was giving them the lights and the candy earlier.

The second biggest failure was not taking a lot of good pictures. I was too busy before and during the TOT hours. At the end I was so sick that I just wanted everything taken down and packed into the garage. The video turned out too dark too. All in all it was totally awesome!! Lots of people said I had the best yard they had every seen and the kids really enjoyed it. Even my Halloween Widow said it beat all other Halloween's hands down.

First pics were taken a few days after Halloween 2009 and is how our yard looked on Halloween 2009.



On Saturday I did Hallowindow projections onto a 6'x8' screen in my garage door opening:






Rest of the yard for Halloween:

Wow you were busy! Sorry it didn't turn out as planned, but the yard looks fantastic!

That look's great! You guys did an awesome job.

Sorry to hear that you didn't get to enjoy it fully, BUT it looks amazing!!! Love the vortex eye on the garage!

Great job!

Very nice, spinachetr Quite a house, too...

looks great to me. Think of it as success and a springboard for next time.
Love the pumpkins!

Wow, this is a first attempt? Fantastic job. I know you are disappointed that everything didn't work the way you planned, but the kids and adults had quite a show. I loved the pics!

It looks great!! I know it's disappointing when not everything works out like you planned. Happens to me every year. But it was a wonderful display and the kids will never forget it i bet!

Wow....looks well cool.