It is time for part two of the Halloween Trail of Tears 2019 posts. Last post I took you through the multi day..err..weeks…err months process just to get ready for the one night event. That doesn’t even cover the work that goes on non-stop throughout the year to bring new additions to the trail. That pretty much just gets us to the starting line. Once everything is put together (to a point it can still be transported into the woods), it is time to start creating the experience. Up to a few years ago we did this all in about a day starting after work on Friday and then through until ~5-6pm the next day literally adding new and fixing stuff that wasn’t working right up to the point guests start arriving. With the size this has grown into since then, I have to take at least two days off of work to even have a chance of getting done – still a battle against time. The way the trail works is it gets scarier and more adult the further you go. The guests are responsible for how far they want to take it and more importantly how much to expose their kids to. We spend a lot of time making sure the kids and squeamish adults can have a good time if they only get a portion of the trail. Go the whole way and the nightmares are on you ha!
Keeping with tradition, bringing you the daylight tour. There is one caveat this year. We were too busy to get the shots done before the event started – as I said, a battle against time and Mr. Murphy. These shots were actually taken the next morning before tear down and thus some of the props had already been through a night’s worth of wear and tear as in the shot below.
New for this year was the life size zombie horse and companion homemade headless horseman. There was a lot of concern about a) fire deep in the woods, b) stability of the flaming pumpkin, c) how flammable the decoration might be and d) how hard it was going to be to get this monstrous prop down the big hills to the haunted trail. As a result, I added a solid stand to hold the flaming pumpkin and opted to keep the decoration up by the house. This way everyone could experience it and I could still keep an eye on it. You will see in the after dark post the stand merged into the darkness quite nicely. We received a lot of compliments for this new prop addition and can’t wait to take you through the build (upcoming post).
Hit the jump to see some scenes from the Haunted Trail day tour.
