ISSUE 41 : THE BOO BUSINESSProfiting from FearBy Greg Shultz$o you have opened, or are contemplating opening your own haunted attraction. You have developed the story line, built impressive props, enlisted actors and are ready for the upcoming "BOO!" season. Or are you? I have entered into many business ventures over the years, each of which was a passion from my heart. Some failed while others were very successful. In fact, 60% of all businesses fail in the first 3 years, and the dark attraction industry is no different. The level of your past success is irrelevant, and your passion for the project provides no guarantees. I have learned this at great personal pain and expense, and would like to keep you from making those same mistakes! So, before you go any further please answer the following question. "I want to open a haunted attraction because…?" (Do not continue reading until you have written the answer to this question down on paper!)
Now, what was your honest reply? Did your answer sound anything like the following?
Answers one through five are noble, but not very good reasons to open a Haunted House, and answers six and seven are simply false! Regardless of the reason you have decided to open a Haunted Attraction, one thing remains true; "If you are unable to make a profit, and pay yourself for your time, then your venture will end and your dream with die with it." I am not trying to sway you from your goal, but rather provide you with a reality check. The reality is that in order for your project to continue and grow you need to make money. Please do not take the stand of, "I will not sell out my vision for monetary gain," because you are not. However, a Haunted Attraction is a business and the simple truth about any business, is that unless you have a generous benefactor, you must make money to compensate you for your time. The Star Wars saga was an amazing theatrical experience, but if the first film had not been a financial success there would never have been any sequels (much less 3 prequels). Mr. Lucas has made money from his vision. You deserve the same. Now don’t be discouraged, because you have something working for you that other business owner’s only dream of. Your haunt attracts customers using emotion, and emotion is the most powerful sales tool in the world. No one purchases anything, including a ticket to your haunt, unless compelled by emotion. Cars, televisions, video games, clothes and everything else sold in America sells for how it makes the buyer feel, i.e. the video game excites me, the new clothes make me feel attractive, my new car makes me feel successful, etc. You are opening your haunt because of your emotions and guests will pay to experience it because of their emotions. Now I know that you have, by design, created the perfect haunt that will get your guests’ emotions running high, but how do you make certain that you make enough money for your dream to continue? Yes, we are back to money! To make sure that your event will make money, follow these three basic steps to any successful business venture; controlling cost, increasing income, and managing your cash flow. These accounting sounding terms will insure the growth for your dream and increase the thrills for your guests in the years to come.
STEP ONE:Determine the total pre-opening cost of your haunt. This could include; lease deposits, business licenses and fees, utility connection charges and deposits, advertising charges, prop development, set construction, costume and makeup design, and any other expense that you can reasonably expect to incur. Do not exaggerate or underestimate any of these expenses. Simply take the time to write them down and give them a reasonable cost.
STEP TWO:Calculate your expected operating cost. These can include; payroll, security, operating supplies, special promotions, utilities, repairs and every other expense that you can possibly imagine having during the course of operating your haunt. Use your imagination with this one. You will be amazed at how unexpected expenses crop up at the worst times!
STEP THREE:Detail your total closure cost. This is the one that really gets people! List the expenses associated with the haunt break down and storage/disposal, cleaning fees, taxes, repairs, refunds, unsold merchandise, ect. Take another deep breath and exhale. You have just done something that very few business owners take the time to complete. You have a general understanding of the cost of starting your venture and the expenses that you will incur during the haunting season. You are leaps ahead of your competition! Now put it to use. Add the three totals together and you have the expected cost of opening, operating and closing your haunt. As an example, assume the pre-opening cost to be $80,000, your operational cost to be $12,000 and the closure cost to be $8,000. You would have a total expense of $100,000. This is an example and your cost may be more or less depending on your budget and haunting market, but please follow the process and apply it to your needs. Now add an additional twenty percent to the total for contingencies, i.e. unexpected stuff that could happen, giving a total of $120,400. But this amount is the "break even" point, and your vision must turn a profit for your efforts. (Remember the Star Wars!) So, now add a reasonable profit and a salary for your time. For our example I will add a profit of $20,000 and a salary of $20,000. The example’s grand total is now $160,000. Divide the total by the expected number of guest and you have your ticket price, i.e. $160,000/10,000 tickets sold = $16 per ticket.
Cash FlowNot only do you have to have enough money to open your Haunted Attraction. But you have to have the money on hand when you need it. Have you ever had an experience where you were expecting a sum of money, but had to immediately pay bills? An unbalanced cash flow can also kill your dream. To keep this from happening to your dream, break your expected expenses down by day, including days that the attraction is closed, and apply the expected income from ticket sales also by the day. This is your general cash flow. On the days that you have an excess of money you are in the black (profitable) and are growing. However, the days where you owe more money than you made, you are in the red (under funded) and will have to take funds from a planned reserve to keep the project in operation. By charting your expected daily income and expenses you can make certain that your reserves can compensate for low income periods. Otherwise you may find yourself strapped for operating capital, and having to tell your guests that you are closed due to poor financial planning is your worst nightmare! Still breathing? I did not write this article to deter you from your dream, but rather to provide a simple reality check. Realize that even the best haunt in the country will not survive unless it makes money. So once again look deep into yourself and why you want to open a Haunted Attraction. Regardless of your answer, you must approach it as a business venture. Your total expenses must be paid from your total income, and you have to make a profit and pay yourself, or your dream will die a long and painful death. If your expected expenses were correct and you receive the expected number of guest, by the example, you would profit $20,000 and pay yourself a $20,000 salary. By no means is a Haunted Attraction a get rich quick scheme, but then very few businesses are! So use your guests’ emotions to increase your income, use your imagination to control your expenses and manage your cast flow daily. These actions may not appear to be very exciting, but if you are unable to make a profit, and pay yourself for your time, your venture will end and your dream with it. You must make certain that your project can continue to grow and make money. Your vision deserves the life that you have given it and by following these simple steps you will become the haunt that everyone remembers and can return to year after year. So, what is a great way to expand your vision? Greg Shultz owns Logistical Entertainment and Art Resource Group (LEAR Group) in Little Rock, Arkansas. He is a professional engineer and business consultant. Greg lives on Pinnacle Mountain with his son Jay, wife Shelley, two birds, an ancient cat, and the ghost of John Gould Fletcher. He has been the mountain’s Master Haunter for the last three years. You can reach him for questions at greg.shultz@comcast.net Although in no way do these represent your entire range of possibilities, here are a few ideas.
CONTROLLING EXPENSESFor some reason people think this is the boring part, but it is not. Use your imagination, just like you did to create your haunt, and find ways to control the cost of starting, operating and closing your venture.
INCREASE YOUR INCOME
Effective Throughput in a Haunted AttractionBy Norm Glenn2004 was our first year to make the jump to a professional Haunted Attraction, and our business plan called for a maximum throughput of at least 500 people pre hour. We knew that we would have to sacrifice some level of quality of the experience to meet this goal, but we knew we needed that throughput to reach our attendance goals. This high capacity would not be needed every night, but on the last Saturday of the month from 8pm to 11pm we knew we would need maximum throughput. Having a throughput friendly design alone would not have been enough to reach this high capacity. Actor training would also not create the capacity needed for the event. Through trial and error at the beginning of the season we learned that it was necessary to break the attraction into separate areas under the control of separate coordinators would help with actor substitution and locate bottleneck problems. It would take a three pronged attack to make sure this worked and still provided the level of experience that we wanted for the experience. To reach 500 patrons per hour, we needed to essentially run groups of 6 patrons through every 25 seconds. This is a lofty goal for a first time Haunt designer. I will always consider myself a student to the Haunting profession, but I believe we were very successful with our throughput goals. We did a great deal of research on our own by reading "Haunted House Room Designs - book I" by Leonard Pickel and by watching "House of the Living Dead" DVD by Rich Hanf a countless number of times. From there, we spoke with different Haunted Attraction owners and looked at Haunted House layouts. After hearing so much about the Morris Costume’s Haunted House designed by Leonard, I had the chance to visit the Haunt while I was working in the Charlotte area. The Morris staff was very gracious in giving me a lights-on backstage tour of both attractions that really helped me solidify some of the ideas I wanted to put into practice. From our research, we adapted the ideas that made sense for our type of attraction and __put them into practice. Throughput cannot be an afterthought! The capacity of an attraction must be a major part of the Haunt design, management structure and actor development. The design of a Haunted Attraction must create pathway turns and twists so as to avoid allowing a group of patrons to see the scare that is occurring ahead of them. Props must be able to reset quickly between groups spaced very closely together. With 13,000 square feet to work with, we intentionally created as many 90 degree and 180 degree turns as we could to limit the sightline of the patrons. When planning our room designs on paper, we looked at what impact the scare would have on the group ahead and behind the target group. Because of the shape of the building, we did have a couple of 20 foot straight run hallways, which were a concern. To solve this site-line problem, we created visual obstructions along the halls, either a curtain or a door that the patron had to open to proceed. The best obstructions were those that the patron had to touch. (Note: Doors must swing in the direction of travel, and can create a restricted dead end corridor on the pull side of the door. Doors also have to be able to open towards Emergency Exit signs to comply with local fire code) Having doors in the pathway design that patrons had to open, could cause groups to slow down and become a negative drag on throughput had we not implemented the ever so important, "scare forward" theory to these locations. As described in Pickel’s book, every effort was made to scare patrons forward accelerating the flow. Scaring patrons forward is by far the single most important part of the high throughput design. Design your scares to keep patrons moving forward. Even though the patrons were required to interact with the environment, our actors made sure the patrons were well aware that it was safer to move forward then to stay where they were and face the actors. Located inside a mall for 2004, our first area of patron control was the queue line. We had a façade of an old mansion and the queue line ended at the front porch. The mistress of the mansion led patrons from the queue line through two large menacing wooden doors into the first room. The first room in the Haunt was an old Great Room complete with a skull laden fireplace, deep velvet curtains on the walls, and a large black cobwebbed chandelier casting flickering shadows across the dimly lit room. Posing as a guide, the mistress would tell the patrons of the mansion’s dark history and then lead them through a hidden bookcase to a dark stone hallway. She would then leave the patrons in the dark hallway, and without saying a word, shut the hidden bookcase door behind them. From here the patrons traveled down the hallway into the rest of the Haunted House. The mistress acted as my throttle control to the entire Haunted House. She had three different stories for patrons, each taking between 25 seconds to a couple of minutes. On slow nights, she could take her time with patrons and help facilitate a suspension of disbelief while they were in the Great Room. I called this "first gear." On busier nights, she abbreviated her recital of the mansion’s history to about 60 seconds. This was called, "second gear." On very busy nights, she essentially, brought guests into the great room, stared the patrons straight in the eyes, and without smiling, told them they were all going to die, triggered the prop activations, and led them through the bookcase taking about 25 seconds total. This was, "third gear." It was my job to decide what gear we were in at all times. The rest of the actors in the Haunt also knew what the gears meant and they knew according to what gear, what the spacing of the patrons was going to be. So once I told the mistress of the mansion to go to "third gear", and announced it on the radio, everyone in the Haunted House knew what to expect and what was happening in the queue line. Most nights, we shifted through all the gears going up and then back down. Several nights we went to third gear, backed off to second gear when we saw a strain, then went back to third gear until we had the system optimized. Your actors play a crucial role in controlling or facilitating throughput. I can’t say enough about actor training when it comes to involving actors in the science behind effective throughput. Your actors have to know when they need to either move one group along faster, or slow a group down in order to maintain the pace of patrons through the Haunt. Along with actor training, we learned the huge importance of actor substitution on those busy nights. In his first book, Leonard spoke of swapping out actors for breaks as a constant task for busier nights. Honestly, I didn’t want to believe him and thought my actors were hardy, driven, supernatural forces of nature. I thought, so long as you feed them bottled water they’ll be scaring patrons non-stop all night. I was so very wrong! My misgiving was that I thought too much about putting actors in every possible scare spot that I overlooked the bigger need for quality over quantity. 16 burned out actors who need breaks aren’t going to scare as well as 10-12 constantly refreshed actors. On our busiest nights, we had zone directors, called "Floaters." These were seasoned actors whose jobs were to check on the actors in their area or "zone" for breaks, bring water and snacks to the actors, and monitor throughput in those areas. The Floaters were also in costume so they could step in and speed groups up or slow them down as needed. The Floaters also stepped in and out of tertiary scare spots while roaming their areas providing additional ad-lib scares. On the busiest nights we used three Floaters, each controlling about a 4000 square foot zone of the Haunt. The Floaters would give each other a break and swap actors out for breaks. On slower nights we would have one or two Floaters. The Floaters also helped look for potential trouble patrons and would communicate with each other when a potential problem went from one zone to another. As the throughput needs increase, group size also becomes more important. For the psychological aspect of it, I prefer group sizes of five or less. It’s that whole "safety in numbers" thing I try to avoid. On busy nights, we were pushing as many groups of five to six patrons each as we could. More than six I think was dangerous for our design and would have pushed one group across two scares. One thing I learned about large groups, is that people are affected by those around them. Typically, if we scared one person in a large group, the whole group would freak out, especially in dark areas. It seems the loudest voice, or screams, from within the group becomes contagious and energizes the whole group. Larger groups need to be treated differently in how you scare them. A large group is also more likely to get injured from falling all over each other than smaller groups, which has a direct impact on how you go about scaring them. After opening our doors we made a conscious effort to evaluate those things that were working and change what didn’t work toward higher throughput. One change we had not expected was in how our pneumatic props are activated. We use event control timers on most of our pneumatics and motion detectors alone on a couple of the pneumatics that drew very little air. Early on in the season we realized that our pneumatics were hindering our maximum throughput. Our compressors were not completely continuous duty and would shut down when the motors ran hot. I was overrunning each compressor's ability to refill it’s tank fast enough. I had already implemented small Bimba reservoirs at each prop, but the problem was that the distance from the props to the compressors was over 150’ in some instances. I ended up adding a 30 gallon air storage tank right smack in the middle of the Haunt so that my props only needed 50 feet to reach that tank. A 30 gallon storage tank is virtually silent compared to a noisy compressor. With two compressors both filling the central 30 gallon storage tank, there was always one compressor filling the tank even if one of them had shut down to cool down the motor. This arrangement also gave me back up protection. If one of my compressors went dead, the other compressor was still filling the tank. I then added a third 6hp compressor with a 26 gallon tank dedicated to feed the air blast and ankle tickler effects. Each of those effects had their own 7 or 8 gallon reservoir near the valves, but they drew a lot of air so I used one compressor for just those props, which helped divide out the load. I maintained a separate quick connect at each compressor and tank so that if this compressor went down, I could easily reroute one of the other two compressors to take over for this one. Our goal was 500 patrons per hour, but the true measurement was wait time in the queue line. I personally hate going to Disneyworld and waiting an hour in line to ride the Haunted Mansion. I don’t care if the queue line has entertainment or not, that is still a long time to wait. I believe that Haunted House patrons are more tolerant than I am , but still, my goal with the Haunted House was to limit waiting time in the queue line to around 30 minutes. The only time that we couldn’t achieve this goal was that Saturday night before Halloween when we had 45 minute long waits in the queue line. I do believe in queue line entertainment. I think it’s vital to start the buildup of expectation with patrons. This is where those Haunts that don’t have a façade really lose out. I also believe that too much of a wait makes for a bad experience even if you have a great Haunted House. This is just another measurement to consider when looking at your maximum throughput. Our mission statement was to provide a detailed Haunted House where patrons interacted with the environment. I either wanted patrons coming screaming out the back door or leaving the Haunted House saying, "That was cool." From all of the patron feedback, we had mission accomplished. If I expected to have to accommodate 750-1000 or more patrons per hour, I would have had to sacrifice in some of my design ideas dealing with the patrons interacting with the environment. (Perhaps two Great Rooms side by side to double up on the capacity.) The key is there is a balance that has to be achieved. I sacrificed some throughput for the type of show I wanted to provide. My show wasn’t long acting scripts, but rather detailed set design and forcing patrons to walk through a mausoleum rather than next to one. This forced patrons to open the door to move to the next room. I could have easily put up a barrier or railing between the actors/scenes and the patrons to facilitate greater throughput, but personally I felt that I wanted patrons to interact with the scenes. This slowed down my groups a bit, but I still think we faired very well and didn’t have to sacrifice form over function. I believe my strategy added to the suspension of disbelief and heightened patron’s fears. There is a distinct difference between a patron having to walk between corpses in a morgue rather than walk past a morgue with a handrail partition in the way. Making the jump to a professional Haunted Attraction was an exciting opportunity that was successful because we did our research, and developed a business plan. We knew that we would have to sacrifice some level of quality of the experience to meet the maximum throughput of at least 500 people per hour, but we knew we needed that throughput to reach our attendance goals. This high capacity was not required every night, but when we needed it, the design was there to handle the capacity. The actors knew what to do when the capacity was high, and dividing the attraction into separate areas under the control with separate coordinators helped actor substitution and located bottleneck problems in real time. The three pronged attack was just what was needed to provided the level of service that we wanted for the experience. Looking back at 2004, we accomplished our goals. I think you have to know your realistic maximum throughput per hour to work from for your demographic area, and then come up with a plan from there. For us, just having a throughput friendly design would not have been enough. Likewise, just having actors trained in managing throughput would not have been enough. For 2005, we are going to expand on the use of zones and make that a part of the room layout.
Norm and Kelly Glenn own and operate the Mansion of Terror Haunted House in Austin, Texas. Norm has been involved with different Haunted Attractions for over 10 years. The Mansion of Terror opened in 2004. Pictures of the Mansion of Terror can be found at www.mansionofterror.com/props.htm. You can e-mail Norm with questions at TheDarkTomb@mansionofterror.com.
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