Year 2 - SUCCESS!! Recap:

So everything was completed about 2 days before. The day before opening night, I made a quick sign (after 2 prior attempts at something fancier) we perfected the lighting, and put up the movie screen. Of course, after working a long day, we were beat and unorganized as usual so we ended up starting a little closer to 730pm than 700. Still, after an hour and a half, we already had about 60 visitors. All made it out alive, and we only had 1 crier.

We then called it a night and headed off to Meg-O-Ween for about 2 hours. Got home around 12:15, got to bed around 1:00 and got up at 5:00 for work. FUN FUN! Worked until noon and then headed home to prepare for HALLOWEEN NIGHT!!!

WOW!!! Is all I can say. We started only about 10 - 15 minutes late this time. It was pretty chaotic because we were missing 2 of our cast, and the air tank was empty so we didn't know what to do with Blake! So we threw mom in the cage which left us no one after the bodies (but we didn't have an extra costume for Blake to do the corner which left it empty) and Gustavo went into the butcher shop. Around 7:45, Alyssa got off of work early, and with a line down the driveway and down the sidewalk to my neighbors house, I ran out, grabbed her, ran her in, got her changed and make-uped within 2 minutes flat - RECORD TIME! So we were back to a normal cast, and we enlisted Blake as a bouncer after 2 little kids went running through at high speed and knocked almost everything over, and then had a kid trip on her dress and fall after running out of the butcher shop.

After a while, we had everything down pat. Dad was finally able to get up there and take over for Gustavo and Blake took over for Felipe. Terrance and I had our timing down perfectly and our crowd control lost count of people around 150... which was still a good hour and a half before we closed. By the end of the night, we figure we had well over 250. We had only 2 criers, 1 absolutely WASTED man, and the cemetery box was the only one that started to fall apart during the night. Jeremy only got hit in the face once (This may be an improvement from Josh last year) and only 2 walls ALMOST fell down. The table in the coffin area had to be removed after about 4 people knocked over the lamp and one kid fell backward onto it when I scared him. Not too bad after the amount of people that went through there!

Last year, every 15 minutes or so, kids would stop coming and we would get a break. Last night, I think we only got 5 breaks all night, and we just held up the line and told them to give us 5 minutes to recover and repair whatever was being knocked down. And of course, whenever we would get a break, the line would start accumulating very fast and soon we would have a line down to the sidewalk again.

All in all, it was a great SUCCESS and we had a BLAST! All of us are losing our voices and my whole body hurts. I must've lost 10 lbs in the last 2 days!!! Now we have to head out and clean it all up today and tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who came out for supporting us! It was a great year for Haunting! We look forward till next year! HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(pictures coming soon - the video was too dark but we got some footage of the outside)