Haunted Design - Large Areas

HANDLING LARGE AREAS

Part of the House of Pain Haunted House is a school gym. And asalways large areas can pose a large problem for HauntedAttractions. The basic reasoning is this - in a seasonal hauntedattraction the event is constructed several weeks beforeHalloween and after Halloween needs to be taken down. Thisresults in temporary walls and a lot of plastic which is used totry and control traffic flow and seal off areas. The problems with large areas of temporary walls and plastic isthat often they start coming down as soon as they are put up. Infact at the House of Pain we had scared vistors push, tear andin other ways make an exit thru areas of plastic and temporarywalls. In our second year we came up with an idea which worked realwell for us. We used the gym area and constructed a hall ofdoors. This six door octagon not only took up a large area ofthe gym but gave us ways to confuse the visitors and lengthenthe stay in the house. The second advantage of having thisoctagon constructed in the center of the gym area is it could beused to stabilize and strengthen temporary walls so that thingsbasically stayed together. If you look at the graphic the vistors came off the gym stage atarea 1 and proceeded down the hall into the octagon area whereour actor was hiding in area " A " . Hallway 3 was basically adead end with graphics, the visitors then went thru a door toarea 4 where they were taken thru a " backstage " area andaround thru area 5 back into the octagon where the guide wasattacked by the actor leaving the visitors to go out into area 6and into a tight maze to the exit. Using the Hall of Doors and the various ways in and out gave thevisitors more time in the gym area and lengthened the stay inthe house. It also gave us a lot of different areas to hideactors especially those who came in just for the night anddidn't have a great costume. There was a cover on the octagon and several of the tunnelsgiving vistors a closed in feeling which added to thedisorientation and kept them in the gym area before entering themaze and exiting the house. The Hall of Doors was constructed using pegboard ( or you canchoose any cheap plywoof or tile board ) , 2 X 4 studs and cheapdoors found at yardsales, discount stores etc. The doors werepainted black and the walls covered with scene setters. It waslite with one black light in the center of the octagon and thenthe halls were lite with black lights and decorated with graphics.

For more information check out the Hauntmasters site at www.pendragonscastle.com/hauntmasters