This year was memorable for many reasons, none of them good. I was talked into using a tent (something I will never do again). This 40x100 foot fabric disaster was a nightmare from the time it went up. I ordered a tent with eight foot sides (my haunt panels were 4x8) and they put it up with seven foot sides (standard tent configuration).
So here I am raising the tent sides with my panels and creating another problem. When it rains the tent collects water. The interior tent poles are not in the customer path, but the outside perimeter ropes make emergency exiting a challenge. Are we having fun yet? This year I was in collaboration with another person. He provided the haunt design (no central corridor), location, prop suppliers and we shared advertising for both haunts. Another mistake I will never make. The location was an old amusement park parking lot. The city had some concerns about the fact that I was in the 100 year flood plane. Other than that it went smooth with the city. The fire inspection lasted less than five minutes and I would have missed it all together had I not noticed their car leaving. My helper let them in and then they were gone. The same basic location was used by the other person the year before and he gave me volunteer contacts. Another mistake I will never make, using someone else's volunteers. This is going well. I have not even opened and I have learned so much. Oh, well, the props are delivered opening night after we have opened (a little late). The volunteers are less than reliable, but the customers come. The show is not its best, but Saturday night most of the props are in place and the show is getting better. The show is making money and we are all set for Halloween week. Then comes the 100 year flood. It rains and rains and the haunt is under four feet of water the four days before Halloween. We are closed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday morning I arrive (I inspected the site midnight Wednesday and the water had gone up!) and all the water is gone. I sit in my car for a moment trying to figure out where it all went, then I begin not to care… a few moments go by and I realize that if I get my tail in gear I can open tonight. So much for good news. Everyone has written the haunt off. I can find no one to help. Then I remember a news story about the homeless. I drive to downtown Dallas to the area of the report under a bridge and hire twelve homeless people. I drive straight to a food place and feed them all. These folks worked their tails off. Cleaned the haunt, which was full of mud and other debris, and we opened on time. Now all during the day the weather is great, an hour before opening a blizzard arrives, driving rain, sleet and hail. It is so cold that wet things inside are cracking. After all of this we still did a little more than 1,000 people. My actors were the homeless people. They did an excellent job and I have sense used other homeless people as actors with great success. This haunt was the first time that I used the 70 volt sound system. It was great. I installed battery back up emergency lighting and created the final event (last scare in the haunt) that I still use in my current haunt. I built electronic effects, a cross fader, simple fader and audio effects generator. Loop audio tapes were used for the first time and I began to have reservations about masks for actors. The flood damage did not come to full light until the haunt was taken down. Many items had to be thrown away. Some items were washed away. The port-a-pot floated about a block away. The month contained one more exciting event. The police chased a car into our parking lot. The occupant jumped out and disappeared. They shut us down for about twenty minutes, till they caught the guy. We had more police cars, ambulances and fire trucks than I could count. One saving grace is that we had a police officer for security. With him on our side the transition from haunt to search area to haunt went smoothly. What we go through for the sake of our craft.Mad Hatter
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