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What are the biggest weaknesses of your Haunt?

14K views 51 replies 46 participants last post by  GhostshipManistee 
#1 ·
What does your haunt need to have to improve?
I know I struggle with lighting and am always trying to improve it.
I also love to build complex props but never seem to make the time to work on all the background items necessary to really bring the scenes alive.
 
#30 ·
The time my town allows trick or treat. It is normally from 6 - 7 pm, yep only an hour, and it is really only dark when I begin to tear down after it is all over. We make the best of it and the tots always seem like they have a good time but I wish it was longer. We are hoping to move in the next year so hopefully the next community we live in will have better times.
 
#35 ·
Lighting and the stupid hill that my house is on. It shows off the tombstones really great because I don't have to worry about staggering them so they will be seen but on the same note I can't have anything like a mausoleum or such because there is no level place to put it unless I want it in front of my door. Heck even my cemetery fence had to be built at an angle.
 
#36 ·
Because I do my haunt stuff at work for the kids October half-term hols I am hampered by colleagues saying in August "why are you doing that now?" They don't seem to realise that if you are going to do it properly you have to have the time - other things always come first for them, so I end up doing it at home, unpaid, in my own time. Every year I say never again but I can't help myself.
 
#37 ·
Securing props was an issue for us last year. We are so worried that if we set up a day before things we put inside our walk through will go missing or that someone will slash a gash in one of our walls. So we tend to set up our base a few days before then the day of we put up walls and fill in the props but never have the time to secure them all before kiddies start arriving. This year we are going to set up the walls the night before so as to give ourselves the time to secure. Hopefully it all goes over without issue.
 
#40 ·
My weaknesses? I want more space. More porch space to put more animatronics and more time to make things. I would love the time to make the things alot of you have inspired me with. Time and space.
 
#42 ·
YES BACKGROUND, the SCENE setting and decorations! This year we were lucky our neighbor wanted to help and so I said ok do this room and lets see what you got. She decorated the background and put up spider webs with leaves, twigs, branches and i was like.. holy s**T! That is friggen awesome, ok you just do your magic you dont need to ask me anything here out you just do it cuz thats great. Sure enough, her and her b/f sig other, decorated behind the hack in the box, exorcist, nurse, and zombies and totally blew me away as we never had time to do the scene interior decorations, hell i would suck at that anyway, and she loves it.. we found our interior decorator :)
 
#43 ·
I am amazed at how many say lighting is an issue, with LED bulbs that are cheap and low energy that do very well for red and blues that give just enough to light up an area or scene I think we have a total of like 18 LED bulbs 7 from Spirit that were 9 bucks back in the day, and then i found these others online for like 4 bucks a pop and got like 9 half red and blue, and then got 2 from amazon that have remote to change to multiple colors, and thats enough for our maze and graveyard. Oh yeah we have like 3 red rope lights we used along the maze path to light the pathway on ground.
 
#45 ·
I get all my LED's from China so being in the US I don't think makes a difference. Also they run on 5v-12v DC so burning down anything isn't much of an issue either. I've purchased all my pre wired LED lamp bulbs on ebay and you can get whatever size, usually 5mm-10mm , color and numbers you want which makes building LED lights easy and cheap. These sellers ship everywhere so you'd have no problem getting them in Aussie! This past year was my first all LED lights used and I won't be going back to standard bulbs again!
Here's an example of the type of bulbs I use in my multi-bulb spot lights:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wholesale-P...hash=item51c0b44e57:m:mUWMvxVGhO8IYdHgzMKEbnw
 
#48 ·
We are housed on a natural historic landmark and can't start building till the 3rd week of September as the museum is open till then. Additionally we can't staple or ail or tape anything to the walls. We have to zip tie everything. We build flats basically everywhere and wedge that in places where normally people would just nail a wall up etc. Nothing can be permanent.
 
#49 ·
Sound for sure. Aside from a few store bought animatronic props, I have no sound at all. It is a pretty serious weakness in my mind, but it is something to a dress after all my other prop projects, as it is a different work style than I'm used to.
 
#50 ·
Our biggest struggle is the lack of fog. We are located inside a public library with super sensitive smoke detectors.

Thats the biggest problem we face and there isn't a whole lot we can do about it. Of course there's always this lights is too harsh or too dim or the sound isn't quite right. But, thats we we take all month to tinker with it.
 
#51 ·
Space. I have a full cemetery in the front yard. But I only have , well it's less than a 1 car garage. I do a small walk through, but to pull it off, I have to set most of it up in the driveway. Wind and rain give me fits, so the walk through goes up just a couple days before ToT and comes down the next day. What I wouldn't give to have at least a 2 car garage.
 
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