Just because it is over doesn’t mean its actually over.
As you may be able to tell from other posts on this blog, the folks that make A Petrified Forest happen every year are more than just co-workers. They are an odd family of sorts. This means we get to see each other and build ongoing relationships that may not stay throughout the year, only to be rekindled every Halloween season.
This year, we have had some bonfires and two notable parties – 2012 A Petrified Forest Christmas Party and 2012 New Year’s Party.
Entrance to Christmas Party
A Petrified Forest Christmas Party
Here are some of the best photos I took of the 2012 Christmas party.
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We were all quite surprised at what was created for this party. In the pictures, what you see is what is typically backstage, and you visit this area during the backstage tours. However, for the holiday season, it was completely transformed into a comfy party area complete with mulch, fire pits, couches and chairs, heating units, and plenty of area to eat and socialize.
Our party included a white elephant gift exchange. Please look that up if you don’t know what that means. We also started several new traditions. All cast members that have been with A Petrified Forest for five or more years got an ornament to hang on the tree.
Many of you have a Christmas tradition where the oldest man in the family gets to put the star on top of the tree. Well, we have one now too. Ours is the oldest male cast memeber. Right now, that is “Grandfather” Zack.
“Grandfather” Zack Putting Star on the Tree
We also had a storyteller, Danial. You may remember him as our butler in the yard and Master of Ceremonies on our stage. He provided a naughty version of Twas a Night Before Christmas.
From our unique family to yours, we want to wish you all a Happy Holidays and New Year. We hope to get a chance to meet you and share some of our disfunction (we are scare actors!) with you next Halloween season.
I saw this article in the Wall Street Journal called Haunted Houses Get More Extreme and thought I would ask the question. The article discusses how the Haunted House industry has become more and more extreme. Everyone seems to be pushing the limits of what people are mentally and physically willing to endure, and pay for at the same time. It is event termed “immersive theatre”.
Do you really have a desire to experience a haunted attraction that is so intense that you lose control of your bodily functions and wet yourself? Do you want to be in a house that has you become blindfolded, thus depriving you of one of your most important senses – vision? Do you want to be in a haunted experience where you can and will be in full contact with the actors? In the past, there is a golden rule most houses live by – “We don’t touch you, so please don’t touch us”.
Would you want to visit these attractions?
BLACKOUT HAUNTED HOUSE At “Blackout Haunted House” in Manhattan, visitors pay up to $60 to be subjected to a litany of psychological and physical abuse, including extreme disorientation in a room filled with fog where your face is masked, your hands are strapped to a table and ear-piercing death metal music is blaring through headphones while a screaming actor bashes a mallet around your fingers. Visitors start their journey by being dragged backward through a door into a pitch-black hallway before being aggressively frisked by an anonymous person whispering their names. Moving through a series of rooms, visitors are embraced by a naked male dancer and have their face licked and bitten through a bag placed over their head.
THE NEST “The Nest” in Chandler, Arizona charges $25 and mines Facebook for personal details of visitors to its serial-killer-themed house. Visitors hear their names echoing through rooms while images of their friends and family appear zombified and blood-spattered.
GOREATORIUM
Would you be willing to visit a hotel themed after the horror movies Hostel and Cabin Fever? What about Paranormal Activity? Eli Roth thinks you would. He just spent $10 million to open a new themed attraction in Las Vegas called “Goreatorium”. The year-round haunted attraction incorporates the latest technology with good old-fashioned scares. The multi-level maze of frights submerges visitors into the tale of the city’s most deadly mythical hotel, The Delmont. A self-guided horror experience begins in the lobby and unveils gruesome and ghastly sights of past hotel guests/victims and the serial-killing family behind the mayhem.
KILLERS
This house is based on real-life serial killers, including John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and the Zodiac killer. It is a series of chambers in a gothic-style building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, each featuring a mass murderer in a meticulously designed set. Audience members who elect to have a cross marked on their forehead in fake blood get to play victims and accomplices.
TRAVEL CHANNEL
This year, the Travel Channel ran some “Scariest Haunted House” specials. Of them, some were houses built in real, but abandoned asylums and penetentaries, some were boats that went out into the bay/ocean so you could not leave. Some were hayrides through woods where there were dragons spewing flames.
These extreme houses draw on a pool of more talented actors, rather than the “boo” performers of the past. They require ones who can more convincingly deliver chilling monologues or make patrons believe they’re about to have their fingers chopped off. Also in the mix: masters of Hollywood makeup, props and traditional effects who have found themselves with less movie work amid the rise of digital effects.
Why has this level of experience become more popular? Is it because we have moved from the visceral experiences these horror movies used to create when the special effects and creatures were “real” to the more digital effects? Thus, our horror movie experience has become more passive. Do we, as human beings, need something more personalized? Do we need to immerse ourselves in a creative, horrific world that has no edges and blurs reality because we have become desensitized to these expriences because of our oversaturation of news and other media? Do we crave the primal emotional reactions of fight or flight because they have become increasingly remote in contemporary society? Most of our lives do not have high levels of what most would consider to be “high intensity” moments.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
I have been a part of the team that brings A Petrified Forest to Altamonte Springs every Halloween and the owners of this event have stayed away from the extreme haunted house style of event. We have seen plenty of people get scared with our event, starteled by the scareactors, and some as far as wetting themselves. We also see a lot of people that laugh at each other and enjoy the entertainment of people being scared and people trying to scare them. We like a little bit of shock and even to provide you with a room or two that sticks out and stays with you. We have even been known to chase a few people out the gates of the attraction with a fake chainsaw. So, we do scary, but we also do fun.
In regards to the animatronic characters, monsters, effects, and such, we tend to stay away from those because they are repetitive and predicable. They are cool, but if you spend $10,000 or more on an animatronic prop, unfortunately it does not change the next year and everyone sees the same effect multiple years in a row. It can’t call your name or respond to something you say. Honestly, there is something to be said for consistancey, however. We repeatedly go back to the Haunted Mansion and other attractions at Disney World and completely enjoy it every time – even though it is the same every time you go. Those ghosts don’t get tired either and they provide the same consistant show every time you visit.
Is this extreme horror the kind of entertainment you crave? Would you be willing to pay $30-$50 for an extreme event here in Orlando? Do you want actors to physically interact with you? Are you curious what it would be like to actually have a serial killer hunt you down and target you as a victim? Do you like the animatronic creatures some of the larger houses have?
As we start planning our event for next year, it would be interesting to see what kinds of horror entertainment you find interesting and what you would be willing to pay for. This year (2012), our price was $15 per visitor. At what point does a haunted attraction deserse a $25-$30 price tag? What do you expect to find in that kind of event? If you have visited us and we land right where you want us to be, let us know that also.
Last night KICKED at the forest! We had guests terrified on the scare trail till about midnight, even though we stopped selling tickets about an hour earlier. That’s AWESOME!
For a few lucky people, last night was a night of winning prizes and meeting a local radio personality. We had a special guest – Drunky the Bear, one of the Real Radio 104.1 personalities, along with another personality, Topher, came out and got to lay on the scares. If you found Drunky in the haunted house, you got a movie passes, concert tickets, or some other prize.
I had a great time acting as a liasion, alongside Kimmy. They guys were great.
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Topher had this to say…
“My normal gig is go to out, set up a tent, and pass out tickets. This is a really cool treat. I am having so much fun!”
Drunky had such a good time that when it came time for them to leave, he decided to stay and scare two more groups. So, if Drunky scared you around 11:10 or so last night, you were one of the lucky last few.
This is the second year Drunky came out to scare in the house. Maybe this is becoming a tradition for him. Last year, he came out in his bear bear outfit. He threatend that next year, he wanted to wield a chainsaw. We’ll see how that goes
He also shared that he learned there were two theories behind scaring people. First, there is the expected “jump scare”. This is when you just jump out, say something, and people jump. The other is the “anti-scare” as he called it. That’s when you just stand there and stare at someone. They expect you to do something and you don’t. The “anti-scare” is sometimes more creepy than the jump scare.
Drunky gave us an “before” and “after” interview. He is also going to be talking about A Petrified Forest and what a great time he had on the radio…monday morning. If you want to hear what he has to say, check them out. I think they have a podcast and you can find them on iHeart Radio, if you can’t catch them live, on Monday.
Topher agreed to send me the audio from their discussions, so hopefully, we can post that for you to hear, if you miss it.
If you got to see or meet Drunky last night, share your story!
I just saw that this was announced and you may want to set your DVR’s to record this.
If you love home-grown haunts, this is a documentary for you.
American Scream
From the same director/producer of the critically-acclaimed hit documentary Best Worst Movie, The American Scream is an unconventional look at the Halloween cultural phenomenon of homemade haunted houses and the enthusiasts behind the scenes. Filmed in the sleepy enclave of Fairhaven, MA, The American Scream follows the creative minds behind three local homemade haunts and their passionate – and sometimes harrowing – efforts in igniting their town’s Halloween spirit each year.
Filled with personality, humor, trouble and triumph, The American Scream offers a moving, real-life look into the lives of people for whom horror is much more than just a hobby.
Scare season is officially upon us. Deep within the woods, our scare trail is off to a roaring start! But that’s for another post.
This post is about the people. A haunted house can be creepy and it can be frightening…but by itself, it is just a house, or in our case a forest. The thing that really takes a haunted attraction to the next level and makes it different than any other haunted house is the actors, the people that build the house, that run the production, bring you behind the scenes stuff (like this blog, video, or web site), and that support the effort to make this type of event come to life. A Halloween attraction is truely a labor of love and the people you see in this video wait all year to make it come together for you.
As such, we felt it would be nice to share with you the events and people that bring this event to you. These are people that LOVE what they do and the scares they get to inflict on all our visitors. Over the course of the season, we will meet a few of them and share more detail about who they are. But, for now, sit back, enjoy, and get to see what happens during Casting day and Call Back day.
If you ever wanted to be a scare actor, or part of A Petrified Forest, this is what it will be like for you.
Last night, A Petrified Forest kicked off this Halloween season with a special fundraiser for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The goal was to break a world record for having the most costumed superhero’s in one place at one time. Well, we did not quite make that.
The final count…101.
Everyone that came out had a great time! We had live music, a dunk tank, vendors, a balloon artist, food trucks…and a bunch of crazy people dressed up like superheros.
We took a bunch of photos that will eventually end up in videos and such. But, we thought we would share a few.
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I got a chance to speak to several people and I was really quite surprised at how many people really look for opportunities to dress up like superheros, zombies, monsters, sci-fi characters, or whatever their fancy. So, to them it was a no-braininer – “Dress like a superhero? Other people doing the same? Food? Of Course…!”
So, from us to all of you…thank you for coming out and we are glad you had such a good time.
ONE MORE WEEK TILL WE OPEN THE FOREST! Let the scares begin!
When you have a really cool holiday event, like A Petrified Forest, that is part of the community and attracts over a thousand people per night, it is interesting to take that back to its roots. That way, you can understand where it comes from and how it got where it is today. You can see how they learned the lessons they use today, but on a much larger scale. It also really allows you to appreciate what they have created in the short amount of time they have been creating this annual Halloween event.
This was a long interview with Kimmy, Trish, and Chrissy, so we decided to break it up into three video pieces to make viewing it a little easier. During the interview, we get a trip back in time as the three ladies take us on a tour of what the original version of A Petrified Forest was like.
This Altamonte Springs haunted scare trail started out very humbly – it was an idea thrown around similar to “Hey! Why don’t we do a haunted house?” Chrissy offered up her house and Kimmy and Trish essentially turned her house into a neighborhood haunt. Surprisingly, it attracted about 500 people or so, many who were willing to donate to the cause so they could continue to do it year upon year.
During the second year, they were so large that they had lines down the street, port-a-potties in the driveway, police for traffic and security, and news crews jockying for a position to catch a story.
It was at that point that they decided they had something that was beneficial to the community and that there actually might be a business idea in this haunted house thing. That’s when they went commercial and found their current location – on SR 436 near 17-92. They are now in their 5th year of scaring the locals in Orlando during Halloween.
Were you one of our early visitors? Did you visit this attraction when it was a large-scale backyard haunt? Share your stories with us. We would love to hear them.
