Another year completed

All in all, this year turned out to be a success which is actually quite shocking...

To be honest, this year was very difficult for us. I'm not sure if our heart just wasn't in it or what, but it seems to be the case with many fellow haunters I have spoken to as well. The planning stages went great! We had great ideas and brainstorming, and decided on what to change and committed to it all. But for some reason, when it came to building, it became a chore this year. We would only work on the haunt because it was already started, and we kind of felt like we HAD to finish it. It lead to a lot of frustration and stress, and we decided that 2010 would be our final year.

We decided to have our first Halloween party which was organized way ahead of time, and I made fancy time-consuming invitations, but we didn't start decorating for the party until about 3 days before. Not to mention my costume mishap (it was shipped to the wrong house) so after some minor bumps, the party turned out to be a HUGE success. We had a great time and we decided that for future years, we'll have the party and no haunted house.

The morning of our haunts opening, we were STILL working on the butcher shop and the dot room. We had to finish a lot of little details and the amount of stress was at the point where it was overwhelming. I was seriously at the point where I didn't even want to open it that night. Being that it was a Saturday night, we were expecting our biggest night to be day #1 instead of actual Halloween. We also didn't advertise because we figured word-of-mouth from previous years would spread, and we didn't want to clog the streets. We were also expecting an entire baseball league. Boy, were we wrong! Opening night didn't even have 50 kids show up, after all that work. At that point, we were SURE it was our last year.

Then comes Halloween morning. My parents were finally home from their cruise and willing to give us some extra hands. Although it was mostly set up from the night before, we had family and friends stopping by to take a sneak peak, and that definitely didn't help matters. By the time we were opening, we were running so far behind, the popcorn machine was not set up and young trick-or-treaters were already coming by for their treats. Well that's when things made a turn for the better. We had 296 kids come through with NO advertising for Halloween night. Word of mouth DID spread. We were constantly busy and had to hold up the line to take breaks. It was as much fun as we remembered and we were having a BLAST!!!

That night, we started taking it down. The next day after work, we were continuing to pull it all apart, and I had already listed the "haunt for sale" on craigslist and floridahaunters.com. Then a woman stopped her car, and said "I know it's a little late, and you've probably taken some of it apart, but do you mind if I walk through real quick?". Once she left, the water-works started. It's SO much work, SO much stress, but it's SO much fun and the thought of selling it all killed me. I was flashing forward to the next year thinking "what the hell are we going to do on Halloween night?". I feel like we were letting the community down. And on Halloween night, it's so much fun that you forget all of the chaos from before.

That's when we decided to keep it. My husband who previous years just was a good participant to keep me happy didn't want to sell it either. It went from being "my" project to "our" project. We came up with a better plan for the future to reduce stress. And I was going to have to let my control-freak ways go, and enlist more help. And after I had promised "no more expansions", there's already talk of one. Let's see what happens haha.

So in the end, we're keeping the Tiburon Terror House alive for 2011. This year we will be advertising like crazy and enlisting all the help we can get, and I promise not to act like a lunatic :)

Thanks to everyone who made Tiburon Terror House 2010: "CarnEVIL of Screams" a success...
My wonderful husband Gustavo This "thank you" list comes from both of us, but I have to give him a special thank you for being so tolerant and helpful of EVERYTHING over the past 3 Halloween seasons. This would be impossible without his support.
Terrance behind the scenes, drop frame actor, builder, and friend who is tolerant of all of my mood swings, who does it sick and all
Dad builder, chain saw guy
Mom who repeatedly tells me I'm nuts, runs the popcorn machine and crowd control
Christina who helped run the popcorn machine, and was enlisted as our hilarious jack-in-the-box on day 2.
Alyssa my brilliant actress who was one of the STARS this year in the cage. Best actress award!
Leo helped us build and was the genius actor in the chop shop, drop frame AND dot room, and didn't mind getting punched in the face by a scared patron. Best actor award!
Jeremy was in our dot room, and even put of packing for his trip to help out
Carolina was our SCARY "worlds largest baby". Kids lost sleep from that cry. Honorable Mention for runner up as best actress.
Emperio was our scary caged beast, and also helped with some props
Kristan was our scary jack-in-the-box on day #1
Maggie was our amazing crazy carnie who was also crowd control, head counter, timing guide, makeup helper, and mood swing tolerator.
Donald painted our AWESOME clown!
Charlie and his wife for helping to paint and build
Donna for providing golf cart shuttle service to cars
Our neighbors for tolerating the noise and chaos that we cause in the neighborhood
Our amazing community for giving us the strength to get through it and the drive to stay open for more years to come. Thanks for all of your support over the years!!!

ENJOY!!!: