Dr. Phibes

...fair enough.

Yeah, I can get to work on it later this evening.

Thank you. Were you still intending to do a black magic themed maze?

Yeah, that could be pretty much anything but authentic.

Skeleton House (I'm not very good at coming up with titles) The entrance to the sound-stage is outfitted with a facade built up to look like a wrought-iron and stone gateway leading into a cemetery. As guests enter the first room, they find themselves walking up a small incline into the decaying ruins of a cemetery that has apparently been neglected for a long time. The floor is carpeted with dirt and dead grass. This first room is built relatively wide, giving guests a view of some of the many crumbled monuments and weathered mausoleums that fill the grave yard. The guests must pass through this first patch of earth,with open graves and mounds of upturned earth on either side. Skeletons lie hidden in some of the partially filled graves, erupting from the earth sporadically as guests pass. At the end of the first room the trail lead guests past the rotting ruins of an old church sitting to their right. An eerie, organ version of "The Skeleton Dance" can be heard being played somewhere inside. As guests round the corner of the church, they pass by some broken windows on the other side. A sudden thunder and lightning effect draws their attention to their left, where they see a crucified, disemboweled corpse on display. As they are distracted by this sight, skeletons claw through the broken windows behind them to startle them. After rounding the church guests must move through a path that is bordered on both sides by mounds of earth and broken stone. Atop the mounds of dirt and stone are areas where actors can lie down, periodically emerging to claw down at passersby. Skeletal hands also jet out from the walls around them, and even coming up from the earth itself. At the end of the path guests turn left through an opening in the wall. Here, The Skeleton dance can be heard quite clearly coming from a music box resting an a tombstone. Here there are numerous skeletons dancing to the music, as their brethren sneak up on the distracted guests from behind tombstones. Several mausoleums are fitted with boo-doors, with skeletons clawing their way out of them. At the end of this room, guests see a live man held down to piece of broken stone by four skeletons, who can be seen cutting into his limbs and torso, pulling his bones out, and throwing them in a pile. Across the path from this scene is a mausoleum with a skeleton hiding on top of it, swiping at guests as they watch, and as they turn right around the mausoleum into the next room. In the next room, skeletons can be seen dancing with fresh, mutilated corpses as their partners. Other skeletons hold their partners against tombstones, and mausoleums, disemboweling them with their bony talons and pulling out their entrails. There are deep graves off to the side of the trail throughout this scene. In them, actors are positioned on small, personal trampolines that allow them to leap full length out of their graves right in front of passing guests. At the end of this room, there is an open grave with a massive monument. Scareactors beckon guests to enter the grave. They walk down a smooth ramp of dirt into the grave. Vines, tattered bits of cloth and other debris hang from the ceiling to block out light in the underground portion. The tunnels re flooded with the smell of fresh earth. The only lights come from black lights. The walks are black, so as to reflect as little of the black light as possible. They are rugged to the touch, and coated with a chalky, dirt-like substance to further the illusion that guests are underground. There are no skeletons in sight. Actors must feel around against the walls to find their way. The realized they must turn left. The music still echos in the darkness. Skeletal limbs reach out from the darkness. Actors are hidden behind boo-doors and in both sides of the tunnel. The skeletons are all bleach-white, appearing brilliantly illuminated in the black-light. Guests must follow the dark, winding path, with the music swelling to a hellish and frenzied tempo. Skeletons continually assail guests from all all sides, as well as reaching from the floor and the ceiling. Because they are hidden behind boo-doors until the strike, the skeletons seemingly appear out of nowhere. In the final room of these tunnels, guests enter a wider space, where multiple skeleton puppets are strung up on strings. Actors run in and out of the web of bones, swing puppets at guests and leaping out from behind cover. Strobe-lights fill the darkness in addition to the black-lights, and the music reaches it's fevered peak as skeletons dance and claw all around them, swing over their heads, and chase them out the exit. So what do you think?

Maze, I guess. Though, I'm a little confused as to how that would fit in with the theme.

I can work on it. The above post just was a general outline I came up with. I was going to decide if it was worth pursuing based on how people react to it.

I thought of an idea for the skeleton maze. I was moving in the direction of making a twisted version of Disney's classic cartoon the Skeleton Dance . The house is built to appear as though it's outdoors, much in the same way that the forest scenes in last year's Wolfman house, or the graveyard scene in the Haunted Mansion. To achieve this effect, white fog floods the ground and scrims are placed a few feet behind the actors. Inside of the show building is transformed into a decrepit graveyard. The walls in the house are the ruins of toppled monuments, rusting iron gates and huge mounds of upturned earth.Here, skeletons rise from their graves, dancing in festive ecstasy as they slaughter the living. Set pieces would be included in some rooms that feature skeletons massacring actors. These death scenes will distract patrons while other actors create scares by clawing at them from behind, or lunge out from behind graves. Throughout the house, the floor is actually built at an increasingly elevated angle, which creates a sort of crawlspace beneath. The angle rises slowly, however, so that patrons don't notice it. In early scenes, this space would be large enough to accommodate a scareactor, who can claw upwards through pre-made holes in the cemetery above them. Towards the end of the maze, the floor of the cemetery could be razed several feet above the actual sound stage floor, producing a space large enough for guests to walk through. This is done to allow for the climax scene: the dancing skeletons beckon guests into an open grave. The walk down a ramp of packed earth to find themselves in darkness illuminated only by blacklight. Hidden behind black walls and boo-doors that are invisible in the darkness, bleached-white skeletons can appear instantaneously, illuminated by the black light, creating the impression that the skeletons are literally appearing out of thin-air. the music here is up tempo, with hidden speakers placed all-around so that it seems to swell and fade randomly as the skeletons claw from the nothingness. To be honest, I have no idea if something of this scale would even work, so feel free to hit me up with some feed-back. Even if it is implausible, I think it's at least a good jumping off point.

Very well. I'll take a moment to review the thread and see if I can't make myself useful.

Am I too late for the party?

My interest is piqued.

I really want to see The Thing make a come back. I missed out on it when I went to 17, and after hearing everybody talk about how awesome it was, I really, really regret it.

Hey, I'm not saying Winston was as bad as Hitler, just that he was undeniably mad. In fact, you could argue that his determination to win the war was fueled by his madness. But returning to the topic of drinking, I can understand why some people would get plastered at HHN. Some people can't be scared by the event, but go anyways because it feels like one big, mad Halloween party. The only thing I don;t understand about getting drunk at HHN are the prices. Some of the drunks I've seen there are pretty big guys, who I imagine would have to throw back more than one or two beers to get anywhere. So right there, they ran through more than $10 just to get their buzz on, while they're paying something like $70 to get into the park in the first place.

However, Winston Churchill was also certifiably insane. He tried to start WWIII before WWII was even over. More to the point, I'm pretty sure alcohol sales are where a good sized chunck of HHN's profit margin come from. Beers are something like $3, and cocktails are between $4 and $6, and the lines for some of the stands are almost as long as the houses. Constantly. That's a tidy profit right there. In fact, I'm sure if there were no booze, ticket prices would be even higher than they already are.

You would think that, but apparently it just sort of confuses them.

You know, this may sound strange, but if there was no alcohol at HHN, I might actually miss the drunks. They've always been there, and to me they're part of the event, in a strange sort of way. Some of them have even given me some legitamet laughs.

But meanwhile you're stuck behind a jackass.

I'm not the military's biggest fan, but I wish you Godspeed, brother. Come back in time to hit up HHN next year.

I recon the toddlers aren't old enough to figure out that what's going on around them is scary.

Lines are one of the big reasons I like to go in a group, because at least then I have someone to talk to.

I'd actually like for the creative team to keep the movie tie-ins and what have you to a minimum. Part of why I like going to the event is seeing all the neat ideas they can come up with to scare me, and I tend to enjoy an entirely original angle over and movie-inspired one. Unless of course they should ever decide to bring The Thing back, because I still kick myself for missing that one.

Perhaps they're uptight about names because of the leaked house-list last year.

Like when you're in the conga line and it just comes to a dead halt, and you can't even see who's causing the hold-up because they're three rooms ahead of you?