[0:19] Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And this is Hot Weekly,

[0:24] a weekly podcast on attraction, entertainment, and industry.

[0:27] Whether you're an owner or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you. And we return to you this week, A, without missing a week.

[0:36] Yeah. We're still trying to nail down the exact day that's best, but that's going to be an ongoing fight until shit goes down at your job. But we are indeed back this week to talk about, well, one half of our usual doubleheader we do sometime around this time of year, about why the 2025 season is looking rough and why it might be looking good. Reasons to be pessimistic and reasons to be optimistic. And since this is the first half, we're starting with the bad news. And unfortunately, as we're about to get into, there's a lot of it. Yeah, this one is much easier to write. Like next week for the optimist side i don't know what i'm gonna put in yeah we've had some there's not a lot we've had some conversations there are a couple of things and we're actually gonna like graze a couple of them as we're going through these concerns but yeah this was not a difficult list in fact we had to cut and merge things they kind of make this work as an episode and keep it to just seven topics so yeah anyway understand if that's not the episode for you if it isn't guess what there's 484 other episodes you can find them at hauntweekly.com or haunt weekly on facebook or youtube.com slash haunt weekly and you can also check us out wherever you get your podcasts from doing this for way too long so please feel free to find an episode that fits your mood so to speak.

[2:04] Um, on housekeeping stuff, as I mentioned at the very top of the show, we're still trying to nail down the best day of the week to target for new episodes, trying to work with your new job and just sort of the realities of life right now. Um, and we're still trying to nail that down, obviously. We're putting this one out on a Wednesday, but Tuesday or Wednesday is looking like the best days. Yeah. It gives us an opportunity to get this episode written, edited, and all that stuff. And out. And it gives us time on the weekend to actually relax. Yeah. Because that's why we can't do it on Sundays.

[2:41] Yeah. The weekend has kind of become consumed. And we'll be talking more about that in just a bit, like right about now, because work we did for the Haunt, we just got some partially good news. Yeah. One of the things, one of the sort of Damocles has been hanging over us has been our home insurance information. Those familiar with the housing insurance climate in New Orleans broadly, or in, I would say anywhere on Gulf Coast broadly. Anywhere that has, you know. Natural disasters. Natural disasters, because California is also facing this. But we, years ago, lost our commercial provider. Yes.

[3:24] And we were moved to the state insurance plan, which is never ideal, but sometimes it's necessary. And we've been on them for a bunch of years. Well, we are getting ready to transition back to a commercial provider, not our choice. This is like how the system works. If someone comes along and says they'll do it and they charge less than the state plan does, then we have to move to it. It's kind of just how it works. And so we're going to be moving sometime in June, and it looks like everything's good pretty much. We have to do some maintenance stuff that we were planning on doing anyway. We're going to escalate those efforts.

[4:04] But we have two months to finish everything. It's a perfectly reasonable time frame. I'm not too worried about getting all this done, even with how busy things have been. So we do have good news. Right now, knock on wood, it looks like our homeowner's situation is good. Yeah, but, you know, I'm still worried because they're going to do an actual on-site inspection that hasn't been done in years. and it just, it's. Well, with homeowners inspections, it's typically just to make sure the property exists and isn't already decrepit and falling down. Yeah, well, I don't know. For some reason, that's what my brain is stuck on right now. Yeah, my brain was stuck on this when we got the inspection from the state provider too. Yeah. We had the same issue. So I don't think this is going to be as serious as anyone thinks, but hopefully this is a knock-on-wood situation. We're on the path to getting that settled on a more permanent basis for us. Yeah. So that's good. That's good news for our haunt. That's good news for everyone.

[5:07] All right. Well, on that note, everyone, every week we try to ask a question. Last week we asked, well, kind of the theme of the next couple weeks. How optimistic are you about the 2025 haunt season? And James Munzel said, I'm an optimistic pessimist. I understand that completely. Totally. You're hitting home, man. You're hitting home. hope for the best but plan for the worst or at least the not so good hoping attractions aren't cutting back on staff this year since i'm currently in the market for a new haunt home the one that he's been out um closed.

[5:45] The one he's been at for the past few years has just closed, basically. Which is sad. That is sad. And as we're going to discuss, I don't think that's a very uncommon experience. Tim Fowler, I'm really curious to see how the tariffs affect prices at big box stores. The price of lumber will definitely impact plans. Right now, it seems like the tariffs on Mexico and Canada, Canada being the important one for lumber, are not that bad.

[6:11] But as we're going to discuss in approximately two minutes from now basically that is not a i don't know that could have changed between the last time i had a browser tab open and now literally no and finally for this week fairly savage said send positive vibrations basically a jeff of positive vibrations yeah so i you know i i admire the effort but i am finding it much more difficult to be upbeat this year as we discussed i i think i probably listened to too many political heads well political podcast and things like i want to keep up but at the same time it does make me sad and it's kind of weird like we talked about how we talked about on here and elsewhere about how like recently like we used to be huge fans john oliver show yeah and i still do like John Oliver in the show, but there was like a lengthy period of time there, especially during COVID and so forth. We didn't watch it. It just got too depressing. And even that time, it wasn't even necessarily political. It was just, everything's falling the fuck apart. I don't need my anxiety, feet drip, and a drip to me with comedy.

[7:29] So yeah, I get that completely. There's... We're all right now kind of torn between our desire to be informed and our desire to remain sane yeah well and like the i think i'm up to five podcasts a week now and there are people that i would listen to no matter what they were talking about and usually well before january it was not always about politics and now it is yeah i mean anyway so kind of like us right now Yeah. And it's kind of easy. Like, we've done this episode, this pair of episodes.

[8:08] We've done this, I think, every year for the last three or four years. Yeah. Because this always comes up in May when we're looking ahead to the next May or June. We're looking at the next year. But usually it's not a political thing. No. This time around it feels way more political than usual. It does. Because a lot of the things that could really impact this industry are, Jake's notes, check notes, political. Yeah. and but anyways uh this week's question of the week is are you making any adjustments to your haunt plans this year's with everything going on it could be the stuff we're talking about below or the stuff we're talking about in the good episode coming up the as of now unwritten and unreleased episode yes it may only have one thing on it we don't know class is that early goodbye exactly, No. But yeah, are you making any adjustments to your plans as you're... Let us know, HauntWeekly.com, HauntWeekly, and Facebook, and YouTube.com, slash HauntWeekly. Send us an email, post a comment, or watch the Facebook page and answer the question a week there. All right. So as I've said now, like 8,000 times in the past nine-ish minutes...

[9:19] We do this episode, these two episodes, pretty much every year. And it's why are we excited about this upcoming season? And why are we concerned? And I'll say this. We do it in the same order every year. We always do it because even with the news episodes, we like to get the heavier shit out of the way as quickly as we can. So that way we can end on something fun, something happy, something silly. And we can leave the room happy. and hopefully you can end the episode happy. That's the goal. We want everybody to be as happy as we can make it. So obviously we're going to do the heavier one first and then the more upbeat one next. But this has been a year where I think it's been much harder to come up with ways to look forward to 2025.

[10:10] And yeah, this one, like we said, was almost too easy to write the outline for. It felt like cheating. Okay, so reason one, let's get it off the top, right? Tariffs. I was originally, when I was outlining this in my head, going to fold this into the economy and just have one long topic here. Spoiler for the next topic. Sorry. But yeah, unfolded in this one large topic, but I realized this is actually a completely separate issue in its own way. Connected, but separate. yeah they they interact with each other but yeah it's not the same thing.

[10:55] As of when these notes were written and these words were spoken into a microphone, which is the evening of May 7, 2025, the tariff against China is still, and has been for about a month now, a little bit over a month now, 145%, which is just a gobsmacking number.

[11:17] However, we cannot predict where this will be when October rolls around. We are still functionally half a year from Halloween. We can't predict what it will be tomorrow, much less. Yeah, I probably should have said the exact time I'm reading this into the microphone. 8.20-ish p.m. Central Time.

[11:37] Daylight savings. Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, there's no way to know what this is going to be. No, and where this is going to go. But here's the bad news. We don't really have to. Right now, your major big box retailers are putting in their orders, not just for Halloween, but for Christmas. Yeah. So your Home Depots, your Lowe's, your Spirit, and furthermore, your Walmarts, your Target, Sam's Clubs, whatever. They are putting in their orders. Now, we talked about this in one of the recent news episodes. Yeah. And then some of them have tried to delay orders and hoping to either find a way to circumvent the tariffs, which we're seeing some are trying to do now, like T-Move said they're doing. This big complicated thing to try to, quote unquote, circumvent. I don't know how that's going to go. Yeah, I don't see it working well. I mean, they said they're going to do something about domestic distribution. I don't know. I'm not an expert on tariffs, but I'm kind of dubious on the idea. But basically, if you're one of these big box retailers, you're putting in your order for fall and winter stuff now-ish. And you don't have a lot of time to wait.

[12:53] No, and you're trying basically to future-proof yourself in a future that is very uncertain. Yeah, 100%. And it's a major, major, major frustration. Um but what it basically means is that halloween is very likely going to get a lot more expensive people very suddenly this year and christmas too i mean and that's one thing i've been learning and reading all these articles about this is that like lowe's and home depot they they kind of bundle the season these the two seasonal decoration things together well yeah we always talk about how Christmas invades Halloween. Yeah, and it turns out it's because they're making the orders and receiving the shit at about the same time. Which makes sense. It really does. And the stores don't really have space to store it.

[13:48] Modern retail warehouses don't have a the back to keep things in really. And you would know that from working in retail briefly recently. What was the back at Michael's like?

[14:01] Nothing. A closet? Yeah. The break room, maybe. No, the break room wasn't in the back. It was basically the loading dock, and we staged everything, and then it went out on shelves. There was not stuff, like just stacks of stuff back there. Yeah, like when I worked in a grocery store, the back was basically a 10-foot wide space that you went through from the loading dock to the floor. Exactly. As you were bringing stuff out, you could put a few things there, but you didn't really use it for storage much. No. The floor was the storage. Yeah, I think that most of the back there was probably for the framing department. But that's not a shock because that is something that's going to get a decent amount of storage because you've got to keep all that different weird lumber and backings and things ready for whenever some wealthy customer who doesn't know anything about framing decides they want michael's frame something yeah anyway but the point of the matter is they put those orders in together and so yeah it's going to get a lot more expensive and they talked about how that kid's costume that was $20 last year could easily be $40 or $45.

[15:15] It couldn't double the prices of a lot of the very common things. You want a new inflatable for your yard? Whatever you were paying last year, look at roughly doubling it. So yeah, it's going to be rough. Halloween and Christmas are going to get a lot more expensive. Now, on one hand, this is kind of sort of maybe a little bit good news. Because tickets, like attraction tickets, are not as impacted by this. You know, since an in-person event is not subject to tariffs. Yeah.

[15:50] We're not going to have this huge bump in cost, other than the cost we face having to buy stuff at these tariff prices. Yeah. Well, in a lot of haunts, at least the smaller haunts, do a lot of, you know, buying of used goods. They're already gently loved. Yeah. Well, I mean, I know that when we do buy new stuff, we typically buy it in November. Yeah.

[16:17] So what that oddly could mean is that for us and other home haunts that do that, next year could be the problem here. Yeah. You know, especially since if people try to keep costs low in spite of tariffs, they might not be able to offer those juicy November 1st discounts that we often jump on. Right. So that might be something to think about. But yeah, tickets might look like a better deal compared to other Halloween-related things, but the fact of the matter is people only have so much money they can spend on halloween or any holiday for that matter and if that their kid wants a teenage mutant ninja turtle costume because that's a thing again yes it is um then yeah that might mean that they don't go to the local haunted attraction it's more important that their kid have the right costume when they go trick-or-treating halloween night their parents and families were making decisions well and that that kind of leads into the next part um because well and and the other thing that was part of the terror thing is since this is directly connected to inflation um haunt tickets have been out stripping inflation um for at least a decade yeah we've been tracking it we with the same set of haunts over the years. So we know what it looks like.

[17:43] Haunts have been going up an average of like 15-20% every couple of years. Inflation had not been doing that until super recently. And so... Yeah, and if you can afford one thing, is it going to be a haunt or is it going to be some other experience that the whole family wants to do? Yeah, are you going to go to a haunt that may be 15, 20 minutes long or are you going to go to a big party event? Yeah, or an escape room that's an hour long or a concert. Or really invest in trick-or-treating this year. Yeah, or try to give back. Or maybe doing your own little porch haunt or something instead. Yeah especially if you've got a lot of good you know stuff that you can use and you know get handy with so yeah i i don't know it's going to be a difficult year halloween budgets are going to be stretched and it doesn't really matter even if the tariffs went away tomorrow a lot of these decisions have probably been locked in yeah so there's still a very very realistic chance that Halloween is going to be very expensive this year, and that's going to hurt us.

[18:52] Reason two. The economy. It's the economy, stupid. No. Yeah. But, yeah, basically, I looked it up.

[19:04] Okay, see if I can say this right. The confidence boards, consumer confidence index. Conference boards. No, it's not a correct. But basically, it hit a five-year low in April. Consumer confidence hit a five-year low in April. Yeah. And that is not good because if you'll remember what was going on in April five years ago, there was a very strong reason consumer confidence was in the toilet. Five years ago would be 2020. Yeah. But here's the even more damning thing, which is this is the fifth month it has declined in a row. Because usually it goes up, it goes down, it goes up. You know what I mean? It has a lot of fluctuations. It has gone down five months in a row. That is the longest negative streak since 2008. And if you discount COVID, the last time consumer confidence was this low was April 2009.

[20:08] Hmm. So, shit ain't good, dog. Yeah. Well, and if consumer confidence is low, people aren't buying shit. No. Because they don't know what their finances are going to look like in the near future. In a month, in three months, or whatever. Yeah. And so they become more conservative about spending. And in this way, the economy is kind of like a fairy. If everybody believes in it, the economy thrives. So if you clap your hands and say, I do believe in the economy, I do believe in the economy, it will do better. It will grow brighter and save Peter Pan.

[20:48] It was Tinkerbell. No, no, no. No, Tinkerbell saved Peter Pan. The economy is Tinkerbell in this case. Okay. And the economy would save Peter Pan. Gotcha. But no, that's not what's happening here. People are not clapping that. No. There is extremely low confidence. And when people are unsure, like you said, what happens in the next month or six months, they start looking for ways to save. They start looking for ways to hoard money and corners to cut. And guess what gets cut first, folks? Luxury experiences. Yeah. And guess what's a luxury experience these days? Haunted houses. Yep. In a big, big, big way. So, yeah, this uncertainty, and to be clear, this has nothing to do with how the actual economy is doing. No, it just is. It has zero to do with it. It's how people feel that the economy is doing. Yeah. It's completely perception. The economy could be soaring with the eagles right now. It's not, but it could be soaring with the fucking eagles right now. But if consumer confidence were this low, it would still be the same problem. Yeah. Because that means people think the eagle's sick and going to crash.

[22:05] No. No, the issue is the consumers are spending less. They're less sure. And that is kind of a downward spiral moment because once that trend becomes normalized, business just start making less money. They start laying off people. The realization of the economy going down becomes true.

[22:24] You know? Yeah. We basically go into an anxiety panic spiral as a whole. As a whole damn country or a whole damned world in some cases. Yeah.

[22:36] So, yeah. people are not feeling confident right now and that is not good well and this is something that they've been talking about a lot on the podcast that i listen to is how before before trump yeah and the tariffs um or which should say the second second iteration um the american economy was the best in the world it was the strongest yeah like all metrics everybody was like wow y'all are doing so great and we were the envy of the world in ways that americans thought we were doing very bad like inflation and yet inflation was high but when you go looking at like australia or germany or uk yeah well and there's this disconnect because we have you know the people who are looking at our economy and saying, well, your economy is great. And then the people who are lower income who aren't able to afford as much as they used to be able to afford. Yeah, because inflation was still a problem. Because inflation was a problem. So you've got this disjunct and that's kind of where we're at. Well, it's kind of like, and I learned this recently, New Orleans, the city of New Orleans where we live, has its lowest murder rate in like 15 years right now. Yeah. It's insane. Our murder rate is like tanked.

[23:59] Nobody's killing each other here we're just letting nature do it for us now we decided we're going a whole little thunderstorms baby um but yeah it's so yeah but nobody feels safe no no it definitely doesn't i go on like the local neighborhood groups nobody you wouldn't know that no not at all people don't feel safe and that perception often matters way more than the reality, so even if this trump economy ends up where everything works great and we're just yeah kick-ass america fuck yeah it doesn't matter if people don't believe it yeah especially when it comes to people like our industry that are trying to sell a luxury experience you know yeah and you don't want to be selling rolexes yeah it's a soup lines yeah there was a study done a long time ago that would be interesting to haunts. I've got to look it up, but it said that when people are one kind of unsure, they're more into vampires, and the other kind of unsure, they're more into zombies, and it's all political ideologies. Oh, yeah. The zombies represent mass consumerism. Yeah. And vampires typically represent the ruling class and the draining of the life force of everyday people. So go with vampires this year. Yeah.

[25:21] There you go, folks. If you're going to pick one of the two tropes. I just imagine one listener out there going, zombie or vampire? Zombie or vampire? And they're like, go and vampire this year. Okay. Mutton chops. Goatee. If you understood that reference, let us know at hauntweekly.com,

[25:42] hauntweekly on Facebook and YouTube.com slash hauntweekly. Mutton chops or goatee. Mutton chops. All right reason number three weather concerns okay to be a hundred percent clear i put this one in the middle because it's kind of the weakest yeah but i was actually but according to the patterns we are looking at a potentially very wet october slash mid autumn season in general especially in the northeast of the u.s and along the far west coast california included and the reason is we are sort of in between the el nino and la nina cycles so we're getting like the rain from one and the rain from the other at the same time so we're getting double teamed here by the by the brother and sister and the problem with that is it does mean that it will be there's a likelihood for much larger bigger than that normal rainfall in certain regions of the country Now, Texas and our area is looking to be super dry.

[26:50] So we sitting in this room, at least according to this forecast, and knock on wood, probably have less to worry about. But the northeast corridor, like Pennsylvania, all the way through Maine and all that, is looking to have a very wet time this autumn, as is Seattle right down the west coast. So two major population centers in this country. And the thing is, rain, yeah, it completely nukes outdoor haunts for obvious reasons. Yeah. Imagine that. But it also tamps down indoor haunts, too. Because how many times have we sat here one evening when we had planned to go to a bar or a concert or a restaurant or whatever. Yeah. And been like, ah, but it's raining. Yeah. I don't feel like going out anymore. It's rainy. It's cold rain because it's October. No, according to the song, it's the cold November rain you really have to watch out for.

[27:53] But yeah it actually makes people go out significantly less and that can hurt haunt ticket sales anytime for any haunt basically so if you're an indoor haunt this is still something you can turn yourself with yeah i honestly think that if you're doing pre-sale tickets now's the time probably to do that before everything tanks and while people are trying to make these decisions for their future yeah i you know we've talked about my issues with like the far pre-sale tickets yeah but yeah i agree if you're gonna do it now would be a great time to pop up now or maybe even like next month because we're in may so maybe june a lot of times they come up in june july yeah but sometime soon pop up with an incredible deal yeah that makes taking that risk justifiable, give like half off your normal ticket price if you pick, you know, your date and time you're coming, you know, make it so that I can justify taking that risk. That I don't have the flu that day, that it's not downpouring that day, that I don't have a flat tire that day. But please don't make people pick specific day and time. Yeah, right off the bat immediately. No. But yeah, but that would be, but I agree. You can get ahead a lot of these concerns by selling tickets today.

[29:13] Because, yeah, consumer confidence sucks, but one of the things that actually really does well when consumers have low confidence is sales and deals. Mm-hmm. Because those customers are, like I said, they're pinching their pennies, but they're looking for bargains. Yeah. And so if you can give them what feels like a bargain, what gives them that dopamine, it's all about the dopamine, baby. Mm-hmm. Guess what? You probably will, you might be able to get some, might be able to mitigate this somehow. There is some good news on the weather front, I found out. Uh-huh. This just came out, I think, yesterday or today. But the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico or America, I don't fucking want to play this game. In the Gulf. In the Gulf and in the Atlantic Ocean, ocean temperatures are lower than they were this time last year. Yay. That is good news. It means fewer and weaker hurricanes knocked on all the goddamn wood I can fucking find.

[30:13] Because that would be great now as New Orleanians, we know to always take that with a super large pinch of salt. Yeah, because usually, well, so, yeah, this actually is worrisome to me, because every time they say, oh, yeah, it's going to be a, it's going to be a quiet season. Yeah, it's quiet season. There's always... Fucking torrential downpours and like more storms yeah because it seems to flip well and it's like and i this is where i have to remind the court the 2005 not only was the year of katrina and rita for us and the year of wilma for key west and south florida it was also one of the i think still the busiest hurricane season we've had to remember they ended up using greek letters yeah they they I went through the alphabet. Okay, you're now alpha, beta. Yeah. Like that. Yeah, that list was thrown out the window. Yeah.

[31:07] That year initially was supposed to be a slower year or a medium-sized year. Exactly. And I think that hearing that they're predicting fewer or weaker hurricanes, it just gives me PTSD. Well, they had predicted more hurricanes because of the shit I just mentioned about Nino and La Nina. Yeah. But now we've got the ocean temps giving us some potential good news. So who the fuck knows, man? I don't have to ask my person at work. Man, you want to feel like you can't predict anything? Try the weather. Yeah. All right. Reason number four, and this one is complicated. Yeah. But I think I'm all to something here. I think so, and I think I can add to it. All right. The pushback against Halloween. Now, this has been in progress for a while. And, in fact, when I went looking for news stories, current news stories about this happening, because I remember we'd seen a few doing the news episodes. I was finding ones going back to 2018 and 2019. So it has not just been since the pandemic. What's been happening is a lot of townships have been like, oh, we don't like Halloween. Our house won't celebrate Halloween. And so therefore these community events that would take place are either being closed or being rebranded as fall events and moving earlier or later than Halloween. Right. Because they don't want to be associated with it.

[32:33] Then came the pandemic, and a lot of those events were canceled temporarily. Many just never returned.

[32:41] But the ones that did, it seemed like it was a return to normal. But now we have religious conservatives in power, not just on the national level, but often at the local level, too. Yeah, and the local level is worrisome because they're not fans of Halloween. No. They see it as, you know. Devil worship or paganism. Yeah. Or anti-Christian whatever. Yeah. And it doesn't help. So there's going to be more Niwala. Yeah. Celebrations. And then, like I said. Because turning things around backwards never makes it evil, right? Yeah. I mean, I always thought that's how you make things evil. Well, if you actually read. Yeah. But, no, it's. And it's not helped by the fact that Halloween events have always, or at least historically, been very good about inclusion. Yeah. Wanting to make sure, because things like the Teal Bucket Program and things like that. So the history of being very inclusive, well, that's the eye from DEI. Yeah. Literally.

[33:48] So that's not a popular thing right now. And so a lot of local grassroots pushback is taking place against halloween and getting community events canceled rebranded moved changed drastically i read about one where a church held a fundraiser and there's held an annual fundraiser in their cemetery where they would show like a kid-friendly scary movie and everyone could come and watch like a drive-in movie type thing just Just hang out in the cemetery. They had to cancel it because people thought it was too sacrilegious and disrespectful of the dead. And personally, if I do end up with a gravestone and you're not doing this shit at my gravestone, why did you put me there? Yeah. Well, the other thing is that I think that they probably... Felt it was more sacrilegious because it was a church doing it. Now, to me, it says, oh, that might be a cool church. Yeah. Because I have a complicated history with religion. But basically, yeah, there's been a serious pushback against Halloween broadly and Halloween connected things.

[34:56] And there's been ultra-conservative Christians, you know, raising more stink about stuff that they're against. You know, we've been very lucky. I think a lot of it is because we were in New Orleans. Yeah. We've never faced that kind of backlash. No. We've faced other kinds of backlash, but not that kind. In fact, we haven't faced that much backlash at all, now that I think about it. No. We're very supportive. Yeah.

[35:22] But I could see us facing other kinds of backlash, but I don't really see that happening here. But, man, in a lot of small towns and all that place, and to be clear, a lot of very large haunts are in small towns. Yeah. And our success as an industry, despite our efforts to make it more year-round, is still very much tied to Halloween. Yeah, and if you haven't been building that relationship with your local community, it is too late. Yeah. Start work on next year. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah no i mean i mean if you've been around for years and years you've got to build that every year because we've seen multiple haunts and reported on multiple haunts coming to loggerheads with their local community and getting shut down or eminent domain or whatever because they don't want them there anymore yeah i mean like we talked about story last episode exactly the honda was shut down by eminent domain because it wasn't the best business use of this very nice property So now we're going to put a restaurant and an office building on it. Yeah. Fuck you. Yeah. Just fuck you guys. Not the Han. Fuck the people that made the decisions. Yeah, exactly. Play that in your council meeting next to the council meeting. Fuck you all.

[36:41] All right. Reason five. And I triple check this. Yeah. There are no major horror film releases this year coming out. We always, as an industry, do better when a major horror film event happens that kind of sort of coincides with haunted attractions a little bit and gets people more in that horror mindset, especially considering some haunts are just going to outright commit trademark and copyright infringement and throw the goddamn Pennywise into their haunt, even though they probably fucking shouldn't. Yeah.

[37:15] Yeah, we really, because we've talked about this before. This is how small of an industry we are. A single blockbuster release, a Hollywood film release, will generate more revenue than the entire haunted attraction industry. So, yeah, in this regard, when it comes to entertainment and cultural awareness, we're basically writing Hollywood's coattails a lot. Yeah. And some of us are doing it creatively as well. You know who you are.

[37:46] So the point of the matter is there aren't any really great films this year that people are excited about um i know what you did last summer the remake i think that is yeah well and this is part of you know the problem with hollywood right now is because there are issues in the industry oh yeah and the movie industry broadly um and most of it's about is going to be you know remakes and, jump off, because I watched recently someone talking about the death of the movie star, the concept of the movie star. Some people don't go and see their favorite stars anymore, because the companies have decided that the IP is where everything, all the money is, because they can just crank out more of that same IP over and over and over. Yeah, rather than betting on a bankable actor that you have to pay more and more money to. Exactly.

[38:45] Yeah, but like I said, illustrate the problem. Here are some of the bigger horror releases coming up. Yeah. I know what you did last summer. It's coming out in mid-July. That's the remake of that. The Toxic Avenger, the remake of that, will be coming out late August-ish, which probably is about as realistically as early in the year as a well-timed film can. Yeah. I'm actually kind of interested in that. Yeah, we will be going to see it. We have met Toxie. Yes, we have. The Long Walk of Stephen King adaptation will be on mid-September. Salt 11 there's 11 of them yeah we'll be out around the same time um but basically there's no big film like remember like both it part one and part two how they were big cultural phenomenons beetlejuice beetlejuice was everywhere last year um annabelle had a sequel out i think a few years ago that did gangbusters yeah i think i saw an advertisement that the annabelle doll is touring the country, which is kind of adjacent to that. Don't we have enough curses on us this year? You're like those fucking scientists finding extinct viruses in the fucking heart. Whoa, let's throw this shit out. No! You leave that shit where you found it! Bad!

[40:03] Bad son, I'm going to hit you with a rolled up newspaper. I mean, so the, but from a Hollywood perspective, the best hope we have is that one of these independent ones kind of goes gangbusters and pulls like a Blair Witch and just becomes a cultural phenomenon. Yeah. Well, and it's very possible because like I was talking about, you know, people are kind of tired of the same old shit being recycled. And so I am. Yeah. Something new and exciting and original would be awesome. Which is why I think Haunt should invest in that also. Yeah, and to give you an idea of how tired people are, I'm sitting in a room with four Lilo and Stitch dolls.

[40:41] Four Lilo and Stitch dolls in it. And we have at least five more downstairs, including the talking one. That's probably the most surprising thing you've said on this podcast. That I own all these Stitch dolls? Yeah, that we own a lot of Lilo and Stitch. I love Lilo and Stitch. Yeah, I know. I love Lilo and Stitch. I do not want to go see this live-action bullshit remake. I am not interested. No. I'm going to sit my candy ass at home, and I'm going to watch the original again, then I'm going to watch the sequel, and then I'm watching the TV series again. TV series was surprising. It was. It was fun. TV series was really good. But, yeah, we don't have any major film releases. Maybe one of the new IPs will break loose. But that's up. Oh, there is also a new Aliens TV, based upon Aliens, the movies. But let's all be honest. Aliens hasn't stirred much interest in a long, long time. I think Aliens Colonial Marines might have been the death of that. And that was the video game.

[41:39] Yeah. Number six. Back to the economy. Yeah. In our own weird way. Because we put these in random order. But yeah, there could be a reduction in workforce. Because it could be harder to find actors to work for you this year. I mean, we're already seeing the high-profile firings of government employees. Yeah. Now, to date, right now...

[42:06] This goes back to the whole consumer confidence thing a little bit. Yeah. Job reports are actually good. Mm-hmm. There were fewer jobless claims than last week. You know what I mean? Basically, we're not seeing skyrocketing unemployment yet. But if the other dominoes do fall, that is very likely to happen.

[42:25] And, yeah, basically, sorry. No, that's okay. Hunts don't offer competitive wages. Like, we can't. Well, even if we can offer a competitive hourly rate, we can't offer like a competitive weekly salary. Right, exactly. And we can't offer year-round work because we're not year-round businesses mostly. You know, most haunts that have year-round employees will have like a couple of hundred seasonal ones and maybe like four or five. Yeah, they do all the builds and everything. Yeah, and that's how it typically works. um and so yeah we can't you know be the full-time employment for the seasonal actors and the problem is and this was one of your points that you made when we're discussing it was that um if you are struggling to make ends meet and struggling to find work haunts might go well come to us and make a little extra money but the haunt actor will go but actually your rates aren't that great, and I need to keep myself open for the real career work I might be still looking for. Yeah. I mean, that's the problem. We are, as you said, I'm taking your line, God damn it. This is complete plagiarism here, but by crediting you fully.

[43:40] Or I could just say it. Yeah, just say the line. Say the line, Paul. Because we're not only a luxury product, we are a luxury workplace. Yes. You know, people who can afford to work for haunts are in a fortunate position, typically. That means they either don't need a job, and this is just nice extra income. Yeah. Nice little fun thing to do. And maybe make some beer money or some going out spending money, you know. Because that's just it. Even if the rate is great, the hours will never be. Right. No one's making a full-time living of being a seasonal haunt actor. No. There's no way to. The season's too short.

[44:24] And final reason. All these fucking executive orders. Now... And I'm not just talking about tariffs. No. No, you could definitely go back and lump this with it. But no, this is a separate problem. Because a lot of haunted attractions, especially non-profit haunted attractions, rely upon various breaks, duties, exemptions. Grants, tax-free. Exactly. Status. And they're all up in the air right now. Yeah. I mean, whether you would think they should be or not, the truth is, everything's up in the air like this. One of the areas this could really hit hard is agro business. Yeah. Your corn mazes, you know, your agro entertainment locations. Because they get a lot of exemptions, a lot of grants, and a lot of help to do this. That's something very, historically at least, has been very strongly supported by the government at all levels. Well now we don't know where all that shit's gonna be come october no we we really and truly don't know are you a woman-owned business are you gaining grants from that that could go away.

[45:41] Are you getting tax breaks benefits etc from that could be it could be the last of that yeah lgbtq-owned business uh black-owned business yeah and well that could be gone too yeah any Anything that could be considered DEI that doesn't help, you know, rich white guys. Yeah. Well, and that's kind of the thing. It's like DEI almost describes everybody the way it's used. Exactly. Like, I don't, like, if you are not a wealthy, white, cisgender, heterosexual male, Christian. Yeah. And not a military veteran, then you are a DEI hire.

[46:29] And even military vets a special status that's why i said not a military veteran okay because part of dei is seeking out more military vets yeah that's part of that initiative yeah and like one of the the worst jarring things i guess um i so my new job is working for an environmental, government contractor. We do the studies for when things want to work. Government decides they want to do a project here or build something. We've got to go and send scientists to see if there's anything that's going to become extinct by doing this.

[47:13] And it's a long process. And a lot of people are upset with the process. One of the other things I've been hearing is how long everything takes. But I think it's, you know, a good thing. Anyway, I went to a conference, and one of the things that they were talking about is that for government contractors, for women-owned businesses, you had to be born with lady bits. Or else you're not considered a woman-owned business anymore by the government. Yeah, but now even the whole idea of a woman-owned business could be seen as DEI and go away. It could. Yeah, they're going to extend that. And there's, you know, there's a supposedly this week, and it may have come out and I just missed it. The any green. Business that is considered tax-free or reduced tax or reduced tax is losing that status they are no longer going to be considered that they're just taking it away which hurts business and industry um yeah um so and a lot of haunts and a lot because especially non-profit ones You know.

[48:33] Part of their whole business model are these grants that for the entire time we've been doing Haunt Weekly, we never once had to question whether they'd be there in six months. Right. The other thing is, is there's a big attack right now going on on higher education and different types of higher education, specifically, you know, grants for students to go who wouldn't be able to go to college otherwise. Yeah um and that means there's going to be less college kids available in your area to work for you and also to go yeah to be attendees as we have discussed many times the typical audience for a haunted attraction is young people you know typically late teens to maybe late 20s, yeah that's the core audience and one of the reasons they've been the core audience is because they often have a lot of free time because they're in school or they're doing or they're taking jobs that aren't necessarily don't they don't necessarily have to earn all they're living from right now right guess what um their situation could change drastically over the next six months yeah and that could have a direct impact on your demographics of your haunt both your employees and your customers mm-hmm.

[49:53] So, yeah, that's seven reasons that we're kind of looking at this year's side-eyed. Yeah. And it's rough. And like I said, we've done this exact episode multiple years now. And I don't think it ever felt political in any way. No. But the problem is a lot of these dangers are coming directly from the current administration.

[50:13] Yeah, exactly. And honestly, we didn't feel this way with the first Trump term.

[50:18] No. We weren't asking these same questions in 2016, 2017.

[50:22] No this is a different this is this time around entirely yeah i as someone who's day job is very dependent upon businesses having to spend expense spendable income yeah um i'm worried what the fuck's going to go with me yeah i mean i've never had that concern before yeah and there's a lot of worry in my industry but it knock on all of the wood again so far we are we are still getting contracts that are multi-year which is good yeah so so yeah i'm so here's hoping that none of these come to pass and 2025 is an amazing season and next episode we're going to talk about reasons for optimism and what that means is between now and when one of us sits down to write the show notes we need to actually come up with a list of reasons to be optimistic yeah and that's not gonna be easy no i can only think of one thing right now i can think of a couple but yeah yeah yeah anyway on that note everyone thank you very much for spending the past 50 so minutes with us greatly appreciate it please check out more haunt weekly we're at hauntweekly.com hauntweekly.com facebook youtube.com slash hauntweekly and wherever you get your podcasts from until next time i'm jonathan i'm crystal and we will see you all next week.