No Yard, Have Driveway, Advice Please?

I and a lot of other people on here set up Halloween day. Ends up being a full day for me usually. I've found a good thing to do is a test run before hand with prop positioning and lighting at night. You can set up, take photos of your setup to refer to later, and I've always had diagrams of what I'm going to do in addition. Label stuff on it so you don't forget to use that thing that you wanted to use (who hasn't left something in the garage and only realized it after halloween?).

Saw your photos from last year (loved the red lit windows, very creepy) and looks like you have some nice cemetery props that would be perfect for a long driveway. That way the kids get to walk by all the gravestones. Your not-MIL sounds great BTW. I like the idea of the gravel driveway. Can already hear in my mind the sound of little feet crunching the gravel with their feet. Could add to the eerie experience.

Will people need to access the driveway that day? Could see that being an issue otherwise. Do you have a garage door to decorate? Assume running a power cord might be difficult to do in which case do you have enough battery-equipped lighting devices to light your tombstones with? If you have battery lighting (tea lights, candles, lanterns, etc) with timers on them already (usually 5 hours on/19 hours off), set those aside from things that need attention on Halloween night and turn them on the night before so they will automatically come on Halloween night when you want them to (of course make sure to turn them on at the right hour the night before LOL). Anything you can do ahead of time like timed lighting will make your set up easier Halloween day. Of course have fresh batteries for everything.

There are a number of driveway setup photos I've seen on the forum. Some very clever ones too. Some people will use car tents and such, others just their driveway area with nothing overhead. I've seen cars that need to be parked in the driveway used as well. Some with legs sticking out after being run over, some with props inside them (will go this route when we do our Monster Movie DriveIn theme). This year if everything goes well I'm hoping to use one "lane" of our 2-car cement driveway to create a haunted submarine experience that kids will enter at one end near the street and then exit near a walkway to our house where we'll have more decor and the treats. Keeping fingers crossed that my idea using the several halloween arches I have can become the framework for the sub, black plastic sheeting for the sub's outer skin. Same idea could easily become a tunnel or cave.

Thanks so much everyone!

A few things: I already have PVC attached to the back of my tombstones, that's how I was able to stake them in our old yard that was very steep. It took maybe 30 minutes to do and that was mostly because I was crawling all over the yard. I used some kind of welding rod that was sitting in the garage to attach them to the ground. It does the job.

As much as I'd love to do a walk through haunt or even just set up inside the garage, 75% of the things I own are currently taking up a lot of room in the garage (we weren't expecting to have to move as quickly as we did) as well as my not Father-in-law's 1934 Plymouth. But I do love the idea of maybe pulling the antique car out of the garage and having a Skellie "driving". The only problem with blocking access to the driveway is that it has a wheelchair ramp attached to it as my not FIL is wheelchair bound for the most part. He doesn't leave the house every day but I don't want to purposely keep him trapped. I'll have to talk to him about it. My original idea for that was to take a broken wheelchair, put a skellie on it, and position it in the middle of the ramp.

I think I need to dig out my tombstones and do a trial run of how long it takes to set up. I also need to figure out my lighting. I love the idea of building posts out of postal boxes! I was thinking of buying a cheap garden arch from Lowes as the entrance to the cemetery.

Thanks again! I'll keep searching the forum but I think I have a good starting point. You guys are awesome!