[0:23] Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And this is Haunt Weekly, a weekly podcast for the undetractable entertainment community. Whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you. And we return to you this week. We hope that those of you in these United States had a good Labor Day weekend. Ours went significantly off the rails. Yes. We will be detailing that in just a minute, because when we get to the work we did for The Haunt, we have to explain why we didn't do shit for Laund. Yes, and it's not the usual reason that it's bad. Not the usual bullshit reason. No, no, actually we have extraordinarily pathetic reasons. It's worse than usual. Anyways, we will be discussing that in just a second. But in the meantime, we are at HauntWeekly.com or HauntWeekly on Twitter, HauntWeekly on Facebook, and YouTube.com slash HauntWeekly. Also, catch us wherever your podcasts are distributed. So, yes, indeed. We'll get into this week's main topic. But you can read the title. You know how to read. You're all illiterate. So I will just trust that you know what we're talking about this week. But I will make the promise at the top of the show, as we usually do, we will try to leave you on some positives.

[1:33] We try not to leave anyone going home sad or upset. That is the best that we can do here. But anyways, see, work we did for the haunt. Now we get to talk about the weekend. Yeah, so a long weekend. Yeah, a long weekend, three days.

[1:48] And two of them, Saturday and Sunday, were actually not... Friday and Saturday. I thought Saturday and Sunday were both cool. No, Sunday's when the trouble started. Well, yeah, no, we're getting there. But we theoretically had some cool weather. Oh, yes. That's what I'm trying to say. I think Saturday and Sunday, at least in the first half, was meant to be very cool. We knew Monday the heat index was going to jump again, and we were going to have problems on Monday. So our plan, honestly, was to get out there and do a fair amount of homework. Now, we didn't do it on Saturday, and that was a choice.

[2:23] Just a lot going on. Made the choice not to do it on Saturday. Promised we would do it in the evening when it cooled off on Sunday. Yes. That was the plan at the moment. So anyways, we were actually planning for Monday. day. And in this house with Ellie having her yarn store, we rarely get a day in which all three of us truly have the day off. Yes. We're closer, optional all day long, basically. Yeah. Rarely a day where there's no store, no work work, nothing. We don't have to leave the house. No semi-obligatory craft chat things, nothing. And we were excited about it. So we wanted to go to the grocery store and get our personal choice of lazy day cuisine.

[3:09] Tiny sandwiches. Like the little triangle sandwich. I don't know why they cut the crust out of mine. I like crust on sandwiches, but whatever. Basically the tiny sandwiches, potato salad, and whatever other snack food looks good. Yeah. Basically it's a combination of like a gas station food run with tiny sandwiches. Yeah. And we also picked up some liquor and some other necessities. And our plan was basically to spend the hot part of the day hanging out with ellie and join the day and then in the evening get homework done on monday and we were going to do more homework that night too yep beautiful plan it went awry when we went to the parking lot to leave the grocery store yeah it went awry horribly got in the car tried to turn it on and it didn't start and anyone who knows the dreaded click click click click click click sound of the starter doing its gosh darnedest but not getting anywhere, knows exactly what happened. And then it namely is that the battery is dead. Now.

[4:12] One of the things we normally do when we buy a car, a used car, we bought a lot of used cars. We never bought a new car, even. Yeah. One of the things we used to do every single time we bought a used car, change the spark plugs, replace the tires so they don't look brand spanking new. Yeah.

[4:29] Change the battery and change the other consumable stuff in it, just so you know the starting point. Right. We bought, this is the newest car we bought. Right. It's the only year old when we got it. Right. And it still actually had warranty on it, and it was only at, I think it was sub-45K miles. Yeah. It's out of warranty now, but we did not replace the battery, and we opened the hood, and it didn't take a fucking technical genius to see that the battery had just shit the bed. Yeah, there was corrosion all over the negative terminal. Yeah, and we found that it had cracked, too, at some point. It was leaking, which is not good for anybody. Ain't buddy yeah um but a very kind gentleman came over to help with a charger thing that i don't think he understood how it was meant to be used in this situation honestly very very nice i applaud the energy i do not want to say anything mad about it but it did not work and i don't think it was ever going to work very kind gentleman like i said was doing us a huge favor i do appreciate it but we ended up pulling ellie out of the store early this was about at six yeah and all this happened yeah because we got back to the car and had it not start at 5 30.

[5:43] So by six she was ready to shut the store down an hour early yeah rescue us and she took us and the problem is we have or had at one point jumper cables and um spark we had all this stuff we're usually very good about this but they were in the trunk of the car that got totaled yes and even though we cleaned the car far out we forgot to get them.

[6:08] So, some lucky tow yard or scrapper just got a bucking pair of jumper cables and some other stuff, too. Well, and the chargeable, chargey thing that you don't have to have it attached to another car. That's what we call the sparky thing. It's like the battery-powered car jumper thing. We love those. Yeah. So, we went to AutoZone. We wanted one anyway. We just bought one. Yeah. And we took it back to the car. And after some finagling, it worked. We were able to start our car back up. So, then we drove it to AutoZone to get the new battery. Mm-hmm. And then the fun began, the second tier.

[6:42] Because all my life, okay, I know how to change a car battery. I know, like, the process. Right. It's not complicated. But all my life, I've had a rule that says I don't fuck with electrics. And the general reason is that electricity can kill. And you're going from something that you might damage your car to something you might damage yourself to. So I've always been very weird about it, and I've always let the professionals do the battery swap out. No big deal. They weren't doing battery change-outs that night. No. I don't know if it was just that they were understaffed. I don't know if it's that they just didn't feel like doing it, but they weren't. So we bought the battery and took it home. I'm like, yeah, we have an Ellie here who knows a little bit more about car ledgerics, and we can get it changed out. Fun fact, no. No, because basically every step of the way in this process, relatively simple process, we had trouble. We had trouble getting the bracket off that holds the battery in place. We had trouble. We actually got the negative terminal off real easy. No, that one took a little more work because we had to clean it multiple times. Oh, yeah, but we did get it off fairly quickly. Yeah. Other than having to clean 18,000 pounds of corrosion off of it. Yeah. And then, when we went to do the positive terminal, the bolt that connects it to the fucking pose, that tightens the ring around the pose, snapped.

[8:08] Just broke and so we had to then take the connector off yes so you started this journey with us this is 5 30 uh sunday is when it started this is now at about 9 30 at night yeah it's about four hours we're getting way too late in the day it's getting close to 10. And so we go one more time to the auto parts store right before they close to pick up quote-unquote universal battery terminals no that was monday oh that was monday morning all right so yeah basically though we have to give up at about 9 30 10 yeah because it got too dark and our little light was not keeping up with at this point we were all so hot and tired and everyone was in the physical location they needed to be so yeah so we went to the bar we had a few drinks and bitched about our car and all the problems so then you're right next morning was when we went back and got the quote-unquote universal battery terminals and they swear they're universal but i don't think the word universal means what they seem to think it means well fiesta definitely doesn't think it does the ford because we have a ford fiesta and every part on that is yeah we have the special order windshield wipers off the internet because yes they have a type of connector i i used to change wipers all the time like when my parents were working on their cars my designated task was windshield wiper changer yeah i've probably changed windshield wipers on a dozen different cars in my life.

[9:31] I've never seen ones like the Fiesta has. Super special snowflake. So we get this universal battery terminal. It doesn't connect, obviously. Go back. We get one that looks like it connects and is the same shape inside. Well, you and Ellie go while I take off the negative because we did get a correct negative. Yeah, we got the negative wire. We replaced that whole wire because that was just a short wire to the frame. Yeah, that was an easy thing though. That was relatively easy to buy the right thing for. We did buy the red one also, the positive, but it was long and squirrely and underneath some shit. And we would have realistically needed to get under the car to get access to it with the way this car is designed. And a Fiesta is super low to the ground. That just wasn't happening. No. So, we would have to take it to a mechanic and get it on a lift or something. So, while I dealt with the negative terminal, we all went. And we got what looked like the exact right thing. Brought it it was too big it was the right shape right design just ever so slightly too big yeah it was too wide to make connection with the connection with the actual metal yeah so we went back again this time got found one that had the correct size connector went on and by now you got to realize we got up at about 9 00 a.m monday by now it is well past our regular launch time yeah it's like one or We've been standing out in the heat, driving back and forth to all car supply places. Luckily, we have two, so nobody knows just how embarrassingly bad this job went.

[10:57] Yeah. And then finally, after all that rigmarole, we hooked it all up, and the car turned right over. We still need to tighten down the post on the negative a little better, but the car does fire. It does work again.

[11:12] But literally after that, it was like 3 or 4 o'clock. We had been heat damaged. We were done. Yeah. there was nothing we could do yeah we've got Gatorade and liquids into us we keep Pedialyte freezer pops around which are great by the way I highly recommend these especially if you drink but even if you just get dehydrated I cannot recommend it highly enough and yeah but basically we had to recover so no nothing got done because of a 16-hour ordeal involving a fucking car battery.

[11:43] And not to mention the time, but we also ended up spending like $400 fucking dollars on it. Yeah, it was insane. I mean, and admittedly, most of that was for the battery. Because even getting the cheapest battery, it still was really fucking expensive. It was close to $200. Yeah, it was actually odd because that little car has a way more expensive battery than the full-size Kia sedan we had.

[12:09] And the full-size Kia sedan, that battery was like $90. dollars i don't i don't know it wasn't 100 it wasn't 100 and it wasn't 200 for the cheap no it wasn't it was in the hundreds after everything came out it was in the mid to low hundreds even but anyways.

[12:23] I don't know anyway that's why nothing got happening thank you for listening this bitch for about 10 minutes about car battery shit i know that's not why you signed up for this podcast i hope you fast forwarded if you weren't interested but just just be glad that you weren't there for the full 16 hours yeah just imagine it for 16 hours and realistically it's like oh well you were asleep for some of it yeah but none of us slept much because we were too overheated from being out we were too overheated um and just too stressed yeah it feels like we didn't get a weekend at all because this happened at the last half of it yeah what what weekend did we have i mean realistically even with a three-day weekend we lost one and a half days basically to this so it sucks but you know we'll rebound we'll find our own way so let's shift gears let's take a gear shift here talk about the question i mean last week we asked you what celebrity would you like to see part of the haunt y'all had answers yeah rachel boudreaux said doug jones for sure i could learn so much from him you know it's weird i knew vaguely who doug jones was but i looked it up i didn't realize he was playing saru and um these and uh discovery so yeah he's very well known for He has a very alien-like face to start with. That's not meant as an insult. He just does.

[13:41] And it goes well. It would just say unique. It does have a very unique face and a very unique build. And that makes him very good for these kinds of heavy prosthetics roles that he plays a lot of. Christian Risto said, I think that's a gimme. Yeah. Yeah, I love his work. Roberta McClellan said, Why? You can't see him. Exactly. No, he'd be perfect at the scare show. though you can come out from nowhere man um continuing with roberta's comment not saying it would make sense but it would be pretty epic and that's true it was a fun house of horror smash, against bray wyatt so you know i mean not the craziest thing jace palace wants to make sure everyone on the podcast has nightmares tonight by suggesting apex twin and the bastard even linked to come to daddy video in his comment well that is the video to link to if you're going to yeah Yeah, like, but...

[14:35] Yeah, I mean, okay, here's the thing. I agree it would be the creepiest haunt ever in existence to emulate that. But Jesus, dude, we're supposed to be a place people have fun, not get trauma for the rest of their lives. Yeah. Cole Ocker said, David Howard Thornton, Terrifier franchise, the mean one in stream with his mannerisms and improv skills. Even though he doesn't talk in Terrifier, he would make an awesome cue line. Yeah, he plays Art the Clown. Helm and Terrifier. And I've talked about Terrifier before. I'm talking about it again, actually, in a few minutes, oddly enough. But I do agree that the presentation of Art the Clown is very, very interesting and would make a good haunt character. But speaking of who I think from the Terrifier series should come in, Damian Leone, because he's the producer, director, visual effects, makeup artist, literally everything other than Art the Clown. And that was suggested by A.J. Brown. Yes, thank you. A.J. Brown said that, and I think that, honestly, that's who I would want from Terrifier. I mean, yeah, Cole is great. I mean, David Howard Thornton, rather, is great. Cole Auger's great, too, but he's not Art the Clown. David Howard Thornton is great, but honestly, yeah, I think I'd want him.

[15:53] Amanda Hughes said Robin Williams would have been great for this, with a sad face. Um maybe jack black or someone who's both a good actor and a good voice actor i would love to see jack black in a villain a true hardcore villain role yeah i don't know if maybe it's happened and i just missed it it's entirely possible but i remember when pimp gillette made the petition he wanted to be a villain in a movie um and he was trying to get crowdfunding for it because no one would cast him in that role organically which is weird silly because he he seems like he would play a great villain also. Yeah, but I think Jack Black is a hardcore, honest-to-God villain. Would be kind of cool. I agree. And finally this week, Brian Page. Elon Musk, could you imagine that bankroll? Yeah, he's got the money, but... There's so much cringe with that, though. I just, no, I don't want to... Basically, he would buy your haunt out from under you, fire 90% of your people. And then he would give himself the title of founder. Don't forget that stuff. Yeah. Don't forget that very important stuff.

[17:00] He founded Bernie Baxter 19 years after it was launched. Yeah. It'd be like that.

[17:06] Yeah, I could totally see that. But, no, I do agree it would be nice, though, to get, like, some moneyed people into it. Yeah. And, like, not just at, like, one haunt that they do for shits and giggles. Right. To actually really grow something nationally. Like a Patreon. Yeah, I think that could be cool. I do consider haunting art, so this could be a way for a wealthy individual, not just Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, any of them guys, you know, tell them that this is a way to patronize the arts and have fun doing it. Mm-hmm.

[17:37] Makes sense to me. me so this week's question week which ties in directly with the conversation how is your haunt season shaping up let us know hauntweekly.com hauntlink on twitter hauntweekly on facebook youtube.com slash hauntweekly and of course wherever you get your podcasts from well let's see it's september 3rd we don't have all of our walls up i'm getting really worried about where we're at and a dog shit in the hot over the weekend and has made a giant mess so we're doing great i forgot that's because you didn't have to clean it up no i didn't um did you already clean it up mostly okay no it's on concrete so it's not as easy as grass yeah what happened what she's talking about is yesterday in the middle of all this yeah because we didn't talk about the part where someone got your credit card information and no tried to pay for an uber with it no and we had to deal with that which that by the way the thing that pisses me off about that isn't that someone stole her credit card and then tried to do uber with it is they rang up an $80 uber tab and tried to only tip $8 yeah what the fuck isn't even your money why not just go make shit with the tip well and you know and there was other stuff you know like my.

[18:58] Mom uh i got the notification also this weekend and while all this was going on it was all the same time yeah nothing happened saturday i think this was saturday evening this was the start of the yeah but you finally got there yeah but anyways but anyway um i i got the call that she had fallen for the second time in the past week and had broken her ankle and well and after today's doctor after visit will have to have surgery for it, so. Yeah, it's. So yes, there's all of the things, Yeah, so there's been a lot. I'm not going to lie.

[19:35] But, so, yeah. But, yeah, then our neighbor's dog got a pretty cute, lovable little dog. Mm-hmm. Ran into our backyard because we had the gate open because we were taking some things back there earlier. Mm-hmm. I think Saturday we were. We were running back and forth to get different socket sets to try to fit the fucking bolt. Yeah, that and we also did go to at home on Saturday. We did do something Halloween related. We did do some Halloween shopping. We did. But we left the gate open. Dog ran in. We got the alert on the cameras that there was movement at our back door, which oversees the entrance to the haunt. And it was something I didn't recognize. Yeah, it wasn't a cat. It wasn't a possum. It was a dog. No. Or a raccoon.

[20:14] And went in there, and I whistled for the dog and got it out. Discovered it was our next-door neighbor's dog. I'd never seen this dog. No. And the nature of our next-door neighbor house is, for reasons that are ultimately very good, it is a place a lot of people come and don't stay very long yeah and that's by design so more of a transition yeah it's a train it's a get on your feet place basically and so we didn't know the dog and apparently while it was inside the garage for not very long i might add i got it out like five minutes after we saw it yeah apparently during that time it shit somewhere in a hot, so that's why right on the exit path okay anyways you didn't go in no but i did go in after that i don't know anywho but i don't know because it's not just where he did it he stepped in it and tracked it so basically um things have been going shitty yeah literally and figuratively yeah so please send us some love we could use the support yes send good haunt vibes our way too if you got Not any to spare. Yeah, I hear you. And then, unfortunately, like, this episode's going to be kind of a downer. Now, caveat here is that I can only speak to what I know about and what I'm seeing locally. Mm-hmm.

[21:29] But i can also see what i've been reading in the news as well and what kind of inspired me to think about this was just before we start we'll talk about the next news episode but the uh 40 a haunt that this year would have celebrated 40 years in rhode island yeah announced they're not opening yeah um and that came as a surprise that they would make that announcement in early september that's late it seems to make that kind of an announcement but i've been seeing a lot of warning signs locally haunt tickets have been staying on deeper discount for longer.

[22:01] New Orleans nightmare local locally sold out of their $13 sale but they have very very few of those and it still took a while yeah and we haven't actually said the actual title and I know that you said that people could read it but well yeah we probably should say it before we get deeper yeah is why we're seeing warning signs the haunt see this may be a struggle year for haunts basically why haunts may struggle this year and so but you know go ahead you know who's not on a struggle bus this year who japes and lost souls oh my god yeah we should talk about that later yeah we'll close with that that's another happy thing we'll put that with a happy shit at the bottom um but yes haunt tickets have been staying on deeper discount for longer haunts are struggling harder than usual to find actors um yeah it may be shaping up to be a rough season especially locally but given what i've been seeing in the news also some national components to it so the question is why what can be done about it and is there good news so what i've got are five reasons that the haunt season maybe a struggle haunt season some ideas to counter it and then some positive signs at the very end yeah and there's also been you know like a trend over the past few years so yeah 2023 most haunts said they were down too yeah and i think this one is going to continue that trend, unfortunately.

[23:22] So the first reason, the reason everyone's talking about, the inflation crisis or the inflation issues in general. Now, the thing about it is I actually looked up the inflation numbers.

[23:32] They peaked right before haunt season last year.

[23:38] Now, so you think, oh, that had the biggest impact on haunt season this year, but we've also now had a full year or two with greater than normal inflation. And haunt tickets have been outpacing inflation by a very significant amount. Yeah, we've talked about this before, about the rise in haunt prices. Ticket prices, yeah. And how it had been well outstripping inflation for decades. Yeah. And that was never going to be sustainable. And now this may be the breaking point for it because now... What are you going to do? I mean, inflation was 8 percent, you know, last year. What are you going to do? You know, raise it 10 percent downstream. You know what I mean? What's what's the goal here? And the thing is, the impact of inflation is often delayed because people look up and go, wow, everything's more expensive. I have less money now.

[24:36] You know, we're kind of hitting that moment a little bit. yeah um but yeah and to be completely clear the united states actually is doing very well compared to much of the world europe south america all of those regions are having much higher inflation percentages than we are but we're still having um very significant inflation and our personal income growth and this is according to the government bureau of statistics economic statistics is growing at about one-tenth the rate of inflation yeah that doesn't sound very Yeah. Inflation right now is 3%, which is actually not that bad. 2% is considered normal. Still 50% more normal, but not bad. But personal income growth is only 0.3%. Yeah. That's not a good price. No, not really. And people are super wary about high prices. Well, and we are a luxury industry. Yeah, exactly. This is an entertainment luxury industry. It is not, although it feels like it to haunters, it is not an essential for people who come to you. No, no, it is not. And, I mean, think about it. They're spending $25, $35 a ticket for something that may last an hour, if it's a really long hunt. Yeah. Yeah, I can go to the movies, even at these insane movie theater prices, and get a full movie theater experience that will last, you know, two to three times as long.

[26:01] For basically the same amount of money, if not less. And that includes all the popcorn I can shove in my face. Right. Which happens to be a lot of popcorn. Technically, I'm very proficient in popcorn. Look, popcorn and Guinness disappear in my presence. Everybody knows this. Yes. I am like a black hole for those things.

[26:23] But regardless, yeah, there were thousands of articles about the $18 Big Mac meal, which, I mean, that was a very special case. I think it was in Hawaii or some shit, a place where prices are insane anyways. But, yeah, what are people going to do when they see a $35 hot ticket? Yeah. If they're already balking at, you know, fast food prices. And to be clear, like I said, inflation is not as bad as perception. But perception is really the only thing that matters. I can give you the actual numbers. It doesn't change a goddamn thing if no one believes them. Exactly. So, yeah, we are a luxury industry. and I can see a lot of families and a lot of teen groups deciding to save their $100 to $200 or spend it somewhere else rather than take all four or five of them to a haunt. Especially if you are just a haunt and not a full park with other shit to do. Yeah, I agree with that. If you're just a haunt, you're going to be a tough sell. Yeah. And that actually comes up in our suggestions and tips. Reason number two, it is an election year. Don't know if you noticed. Yeah, people are kind of preoccupied with it.

[27:37] Basically, people's headspace right now is fully occupied on election year. And it also has another problem that we don't talk much about in this industry. But because our season is September through usually early November, we're trying to buy ads at the same time the political campaigns are doing their biggest ad spend. So if you're in a swing state or you're in a state that's otherwise seen as competitive for the presidential election especially, your local advertising market gets flooded every four years right now during this time, driving up the prices for advertising. Advertising yeah and they've got a lot more money than you do to throw at it oh shit so yeah, electioneers create an advertising crunch but also it just distracts everyone nobody is thinking about haunt season right now other than us weirdos who listen and record these podcasts yeah that's we are we are the market thinking about haunts right now um and i hate to break Take it to you, but it's not sustainable as a business. But, yeah, I mean, the thing is, like, haunts are meant to be escapism.

[28:46] And if people are anxious, and it doesn't matter what your politics are on this one, everyone's anxious, everyone's worried, everyone's kind of trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. Yeah, and I'm seeing, like, anxious rhetoric from both sides. Yeah. It's not just one side. Everybody's feeling very, very tumultuous right now. Yeah. And that just doesn't mean people aren't going to prioritize a haunt. Haunts are escapism, but they're not necessarily the right kind of escapism for this.

[29:16] And especially when the mortuary decides to make their theme fucking election theme. I do not understand why they did that. I don't either. And I really don't understand some of the decisions they've made. But we will still go. Yeah, we have our tickets already. They were on good discount for all the reasons we're talking about. So, yes, we will be going. But, oh, my God. Reason number three. I think we might be finally hitting post-COVID burnout.

[29:47] Um the coveted years sadly and frustratingly were actually very good for the haunt industry financially right should not have been but were unless you were an outdoor haunt or an outdoor haunt and or taking all the precautions that was required and desired right which we know that some of you weren't um you know some people just opened as normal yeah and we read the news stories about it yeah and it was sad because you know it's it was sad because they shouldn't have done that and they probably had a lot of people sick yeah the question is who died because your haunt was open yeah and not necessarily your direct customer but who got covid they gave it to someone they gave it to someone who died yeah you know i mean someone almost certainly did that would still be alive if the haunt hadn't been open but neither here nor there um but basically those years were good because there was a real desire to do things and the meat space right and there weren't a lot of things where you could meet up with your friends and go and do shit yeah um and and 2022 was the last of the covet years as i think of it yeah covet's still around it's still a thing don't get it wrong i'm not saying that but it was the end of the lockdowns it was the end of of COVID being so front of mind. Right, and I think that it's because.

[31:12] Seemingly at least the numbers of deaths have gone down because of the vaccines the vaccines and also just now more general immunity the goal wasn't to prevent people from getting covet yeah it was to prevent everybody from getting covet at the same fucking time yeah you know that was the goal it's pretty simple um but yeah 2023 was not majorly impacted by covet and we saw some decline there but you still also had some pent up especially from the people who were being extremely careful 2023 was the first year they probably went to a haunt yeah it was the first year we went anywhere really yeah with more than like a dozen people yeah a haunted a track yeah uh so but yeah 2024 we're back to fully normal that demand that pent-up demand is not there anymore no and all of the other things that you had to compete with all of the events the fall festivals the music festivals they're back that reminds me hidden um six reason um here in the middle of the third shut up it works hidden six reason that there's a warning sign is a lot of big name acts including the helmet tour yeah canceled tours yeah because of poor ticket sales if concerts and those promotions can't sell tickets then haunts are going to struggle too Yeah.

[32:39] Because we were going to go to the Helmet Local Age Concert and.

[32:45] Got canceled got canceled on us and then the local age the band we were actually there to see we like helmet they're fine but we're local age fans um but basically um the concert we were going to go to local ages now launched their own tour but it's a much smaller uh consolidated tour that doesn't come to new orleans yeah and there's a few other big big names oh yeah that have pulled out of the city too yeah and pulled out of tours completely completely yeah it's not just like I don't remember who all it was, but there have been several tours canceled due to struggling ticket sales. And I can guarantee you if they're struggling, we're going to struggle. Yeah, because it's a luxury item. It's a luxury item. It's a meet space activity.

[33:30] Everything we talked about above applies to concerts as well, basically, including the post-COVID burnout. So that gets us to our actual reason for no big horror releases this year. No. Terrifier 3 was probably the biggest. It will be. It's coming out on October 11th. Yeah. Yeah.

[33:47] But that's mid-season, so that doesn't really help as much as if it were at the beginning of October. Yeah, I mean, that does mean that, and it's also not a heavily marketed one, not traditional marketing. No. But if it were a traditionally marketed thing, like weeks of lead up, like what we saw with Deadpool and Wolverine, or like what we saw briefly with Borderlands, God help us all, and what we're seeing now with Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. Yeah. Which that may actually help us. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, even though it's not a horror necessarily. It's a horror comedy. It has tie-ins I think might be strong enough. But we don't have a big classic horror thing this year.

[34:30] Now, I did learn that Quiet Place Day 1 did really well. I heard about it, but I didn't. Yeah, it's being advertised at me on stream. Yeah, I did not. I don't know. I haven't seen the original Quiet Day, Quiet Place, rather. No. Now, 2023, it was kind of crazy. You had Megan, which was for your dystopian sci-fi horror fanatics. Scream 6, for those who wanted the next in the Scream franchise. May God help you. You and of course fanaf because five nights at freddy's because we made the baby jesus cry and we had to have it and we had to see it because a lot of our friends were in it we had some friends oh yeah i forgot we saw it we saw it and we had to see it because we had friends who were in it because it was shot in new orleans yes when the gang breaks in and damages everything in it uh We know some of the people that were in that. Yeah. Basically is what it comes down to. Yeah, there are great horror movies coming out, but none with, like, this big, huge presence that puts horror, like, in the national spotlight. So, yeah. We've done very... We did better, like, when It movies came out. Those helped the haunt industry a lot. Yeah. There just isn't one like that this year. No. Sorry, it just isn't. And reason five is something we've been talking about a lot over 457-ish episodes.

[35:57] Haunt consolidation challenges. To tie it all up, you take everything together, people are likely to reduce the number of haunts they go to, if they go to them at all. Right. They may go to their favorite. They may go to one instead of go to three.

[36:11] So which are they going to choose? They're going to choose the big bad one. They're going to choose the big boy haunt. They're going to choose the big explosive thing. And small, medium-sized, and charity haunts are going to struggle. So while I do think, and also big mega haunts will have the money to counter some of these advertising challenges we talked about. And maybe promote themselves out of this hole a little bit.

[36:33] But yeah, this means that, yes, all haunts will struggle. But some haunts are likely to struggle more than others. Yeah, and if you've been on the cusp of in the red. Yeah, if you're on the bubble, so to speak. yeah yeah this might be the year things pop exactly and that makes me sad to say that but it is true um so what can we do what are some ways we can alleviate this try to talk about happier shit yeah let's let's shift our focus to happier stuff now um the first is something else we've been saying for a long time consult collaborate and work together especially if you have a bunch of medium-sized haunts in your area collaborate work together haunts are stronger and more appealing when they work together yeah offer package deals offer upgrades if you bring tickets from the other hunt or do cross promotion stuff yep hold crossover events yeah I think it would be cool to see a competition between two ones that like the public pays to go to yeah I mean yeah I don't know what it would be well I mean like I think it would be cool.

[37:44] To do okay new orleans tradition here of the dance offs yeah we've seen like fright trail and other haunts do like basically flash mob dances i would love to see one of those a battle of the flash mob dances between haunts no that'd be fun i'd go to that i'm not even into that type of entertainment generally but that sounds fun or if you could have like um a treasure hunt or a scavenger hunt at different haunts oh yeah where you got to collect something from all three haunts yeah Yeah, exactly. Enter to win a prize or something. You've got to see this line character and say this phrase to get a thing. Or if you go to these three haunts and get photos with X, Y, and Z things, you can submit them to some centralized source to enter a contest and maybe win a prize. That could be cool. Exactly. But it also would increase engagement because now you're looking for these various things. Exactly. And just make sure that they're behind the ticketed wall, the paywall side of the haunt. Yeah.

[38:43] Obviously. I mean, and if you're one of those haunts, and a lot of haunts, like 13th Gate does this, and I think New Orleans Nightmare does this as well, where you have a photo booth inside the haunt. Yeah, after you... Turn in the ticket. Yeah, Rice does it too. Yeah. Because you have to buy the ticket, get in line, then go inside to the interior queue line. Yeah, your ticket is scanned at the door, the physical structure. Yeah. But inside there. But even though you're not actually in the haunt itself yet. Yeah, you're in an internal queue line, basically.

[39:15] Back at work, yeah. There's a lot of good ideas here. Basically, I think haunts collaborating, working together can generate some buzz as a unison. And also, if you collaborate on marketing and promotion, you may not have the marketing budget of a presidential campaign. Right. But three of you together can do media buys more cheaply than you can each individually. That's something that a lot of small businesses don't realize is that the advertising is like anything else the more you buy the better the price gets.

[39:49] So that's a good way to work together. Second item, focus on price differentiation. Once again, 457 episodes I've been talking about this. Price differentiation is crucial. That is where different customers pay different amounts. Coupons, discounts, upgrades, these all count. You can have price differentiation that goes south, goes down, and it goes up. So do both. Offer both. Offer coupons and things that people have to work for, turn over emails for, things like that, so that way those people who maybe can't afford to go to a haunt but might be willing to put in the extra work to get that discounted ticket can still give you something of value, but they get the ticket at a lower cost. And those that don't give a fuck and don't want to play your stupid petty marketing games, they can pay full price. And those that don't want to wait in your lines, man, and pay VIP, and then you can offer even better experiences on that. There's literally no ceiling to it. The only ceiling there is is what people are willing to pay.

[40:56] And it's often very surprising how much a quote-unquote whale will pay. So, yeah, offer those types of experiences. But, yeah, make sure that you find a way that you can differentiate customers by what they are able and willing to pay versus what they're willing to pay with their time, information, or other things. Yeah. And basically make it so that you get price-adverse customers, price-cautious customers can buy in, but that anyone who can pay more does.

[41:26] Um i have i have prize idea oh or an idea for this this is dangerous y'all yeah no hang on hang on i gotta sit down oh wait i am sitting yeah you are um haunt brunch with the characters of the haunt bringing out the stuff like disney does with the characters yeah and then you you could either win something there or you could win a chance to go to the haunt brunch if you go to the Oh, hot brunch. Like, yeah, I mean, I know that brunch is like a huge New Orleans thing. I don't know how big it is elsewhere. I really don't, but it is a huge thing here. I don't know, but I mean, like, just a meal with the characters would be cool, I think. No, it would be, and you could partner. This would be a great opportunity to partner with a local business. Yeah, exactly. And if you do it on a Sunday morning, which is the most common brunch day, I mean, it does not have any overlap with when your haunt is open. Right. Basically, because brunch hours, anyways, ends well before any haunt is likely opening, unless it's a tourist haunt. Yeah. Wow, that's not a bad idea.

[42:36] Who the hell are you and what did you do with Crystal? I always love it when I throw out ideas and you're like just blown away at how good they are. That's because I live with you. Oh, shut up. I'm used to the bad shit, insane ideas. is it's like crystal no you're defying six laws of physics.

[42:56] You're okay you're like that guy who built a bike that can be peddled to the speed of light they did the gear ratio so that in theory if you turn the pedals at 90 rotations per minute you'll travel at the speed of light of course so many physics problems with that, Yeah. Okay. Back on track. Yeah, back on track. Sorry. There you go. Finally, for the ideas that I have, I'd broaden marketing efforts.

[43:21] Basically, refocus your marketing. Your typical haunt, both employee and customer, is usually a teenager or late or early 20s. And they're going to be the ones hit the hardest by this. Yeah. They're the ones who have the least disposable income to begin with and also the least amount of disposable time. Yeah. So one of the things that I see local artists doing here to get their name out is hiding tiny little art things around the city and then giving clues about where to find them. And then people go and find them and then they share them on social media. Hey, just found Dada does artists thing here. You could do that with haunts. You could put out little clues for like a half price ticket or something. But it would get a lot of engagement. And also, if you're familiar with geocaching, you can play into that as well. Yeah, it's basically the modern day geocaching. I think geocaching is still a thing. Just because we stopped doing it doesn't mean others did. Yeah, that's true. It was always a weirdo activity. Yeah.

[44:29] There's a reason geocachers call most people muggles. A, because we didn't know about how horrible J.K. Rowling was then. And also, yeah, it's not an activity for most people to do. But basically, the idea here is to understand that you may need to reach older customers. If you have a Honda that's been around a while, man, do a nostalgia pump. Talk about, hey, you came here 15, 20 years ago. Revisit those memories, Ed. No. Whatever, and get people to come back. Because the older the customer, typically up to a certain point, They're higher income. They have more disposable income. And they may not be interested in a haunted attraction, but you might be able

[45:14] to make them interested in it. So targeting a slightly broader audience might make you less vulnerable to the shakeouts, these other shakes in the economy right now. And basically, the idea is just to cast a broader net, not to rely solely on the bread and butter haunted history.

[45:34] Reach out to people that you might not otherwise have. yeah yeah we um we tried to do something similar to this um by saying hey we opened in this year if you've been to us in any of these years i think this was for a 10-year anniversary, we put in props from previous years so that people could go through and say oh i remember when i first saw that did say that actually it was a pleasant i was skeptical that people would remember but they did yeah so that was very very cool oh yeah that hits that nostalgia button so yeah I do think that could that that's a good idea too yeah bring back anything that you have in storage that may or a really old beloved character that you would retire yeah anything the old-timers might an old-timers I mean like my age now yeah I'm realizing I'm talking about reaching myself with marketing yes so what would you like to see i'd like to be in bed by 9 p.m because you're open too late so you want them to open earlier so you're saying you know that isn't the dumbest thing either though you might get a different audience there all right but there are some positive notes we'll start with the one that we thought of on the way in which is japes is.

[46:51] Doing lost jake's palace is doing lost souls is here yeah and he's offering tickets to vips and vips in this context is just anybody that's been on the tour in the past yeah if you've had a seat with one of the tours you're on the email list you've been getting it um you wouldn't already know that his first night sold out yeah in fact the first night sold out literally so fast facebook won't tell me the difference in time between when he posted the tickets are on sale and the tickets that they're sold out things it happened that quick yeah so minutes seconds i don't know man but it was crazy quick is what it was so that's a positive sign and granted lost souls has such an amazing reputation such a hardcore following for very good fucking reason i might add yes.

[47:39] Um yeah i think um that that could be a positive sign especially in that area um the other some on other positive signs that I had before, you know, we thought of that one. Inflation is slowing. It is down, like I said, it's down to about 3%. 2% is considered, quote-unquote, normal or sustainable inflation. But it's way down compared to what it was last year at around, this time and a little bit before, it hit like 8% to 9%. So significant improvement there. But still, you're dealing with that drag effect from what happened in the past. But things are slowing down. Second is that deals are working. Yeah. McDonald's launched a $5 or a $6 meal, depending upon which market you're in. And it was supposed to just be for a couple of weeks.

[48:28] They extended it through, it was supposed to be, I think, like June, like late June. They extended it through July. They extended it through audience, and it's still available on the app. And the reason is the response was just that great. Yeah. Instead of buying all these things individually, you could just say, I want the $6 meal. Yeah. Yeah, and basically, you know, it worked really, really well for them. So putting something out there that actually was a deal or felt like a deal worked. So that still does work. So that goes back to the price differentiation point. If you can do a price differentiation strategy, it can and will likely work. I think that's a positive sign there. Deals still sell. We're not that bad. Right. We also have a longer haunt season this year. That's true. We have that because a lot of haunts are opening up September 13th because it is Friday the 13th. Right. So, and basically a week from this Friday. Yeah. And that is great. That gives us more nights to be open. It gives us more nights to shake the kink out and also have more nights to function.

[49:36] Uh and more nice to make money so that is a positive sign i will be very curious, what the crowds are like on friday the 13th this year yeah for the haunts that are doing it i think we're going to one right yeah i think we are i think we will be yeah because one of the local haunts makes us pick the day we're going yeah i think that yeah that's mortuary i'm just going to say it um but yeah we're going on friday the 13th um there so i'll be curious what the crowds are like yeah will people be ready for haunts will people be interested in going to haunt i don't know but we'll be talking about that in a few weeks time we'll have more on that later um so yeah that is a positive thing too and with that longer haunt season comes the news that okay this is obviously going to be taken with a grain of salt i mean literally this is from almanacs talking about general weather patterns but supposedly the weather predictions are good this year yeah well and and that's also like hard to say in new orleans right now because we don't want to to jinx it yeah but basically right now the weather predictions are on the positive side.

[50:46] Uh most places are expected to have hot appropriate temperatures we'll say they're not going to be too cool not going to be too hot hot and it's supposed to be drier outside of certain areas but most of the areas where the weather is supposed to be rough or not heavily populated areas like over the plains things like that so in like the northeast corridor it's supposed to be cooler but dry and the west coast is supposed to be a little more wet toward um like the the northern side of the coast but drier down into california and so forth yeah um and that just is based upon weather patterns obviously i mean the way weather forecasting is is like super accurate like maybe a few hours out but that tail falls off very fast so this could completely change but at least you know the macro things look positive.

[51:39] So, maybe you won't have to use that rain insurance this year. Yeah. Maybe. Well, on that note, everyone, I think that is everything. Hopefully, you came away with this, even though we talked about a lot of potential

[51:54] problems this year, not feeling like it's going to be a complete disaster. Yeah. There are things, yes, I do think there is a lot of warning signs that say this could be a rough year. But I don't think that necessarily it has to be a complete epic disaster. Make sense? Well, on that note, everyone, thank you very much for listening to us for the last 50 minutes or so. Hope it was helpful and educational and entertaining. Check out more Haunt Weekly. We're at hauntweekly.com, hauntweekly.com, Twitter, hauntweekly.com, Facebook, and youtube.com slash hauntweekly, as well as all the major podcast distribution apps. Until next time, I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And we will see you all next week. Hopefully, we'll do the episode we planned for this week. But, like, you heard what happened this week. Yeah. Shit went sideways. So hopefully we'll be able to do that then. See you next week.