Haunted Attraction Rubric

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Party Rocker

Dec 23, 2011
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I am redoing the rubric to try and be more accurate but it will not be an end all to solve all the issues with the event.

Theming - This is mainly about the details, are you really transported to another time and place?

1 - Incredibly detailed, as if you are really on location
2 - Very Well detailed
3 - Decently detailed
4 - No detail

Scares - This is a mix of scare tactics and amount of scares.

1 - Innovative scare tactics leaving you constantly unexpected
2 - Very Well, enough to keep you on your toes, tactics are not so expected
3 - Decent, just enough to make you jump once or twice, tactics are expected
4 - No scares

Perfect Score - 2
Worst Score - 8
Average Score - 4 to 6
 
A lot of what you say makes sense on paper but in practice is very hard to do for one reason:

The General Public.

When I was working in Bitten back in 2011, I learned that you can put in the best props, have the dimmest lighting, and have the best cast and still be fighting to satisfy everyone.

The GP is also very destructive. Every night I would find myself patching a hole in a wall where some teenager thought it would be funny to punch it. Or repairing a prop because someone decided to take part of it as a souvenir. Or I was turning the lights up because people couldn't see where they were going and caused the house to bottleneck and create horrible capacity.

These are the things that keep HOS where it is. The upkeep is just incredible. To see the condition of those houses stay the way they do is nothing short of amazing once you see a full season unfold in front of you.

So I feel like some of those scores are a little off just because of limitations.
 
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Yes I know the GP ruins things, that is one reason why it isn't an end all solution, sure it can help guide you but it is nothing to live by.
 
Wow, you really meant it when you said you would make this! I think this is a well thought out and practical approach. It makes me wonder how the park evaluates their mazes to attain the pumpkin ratings. And nothing bugs me more than some punk teen (and hey, I'm a teen myself, at 16) trying to look cool for a group of hus buddies or a girl and doing something stupid and uncalled for.
 
Maybe I wasn't clear enough before in my original post, I said THIS IS NOT AN END ALL SOLUTION This is a step to the solution but it clearly is not the whole solution.
 
Party Rocker said:
Maybe I wasn't clear enough before in my original post, I said THIS IS NOT AN END ALL SOLUTION This is a step to the solution but it clearly is not the whole solution.
Click to expand...

Umm, who was this pointed at? We were being funny with pop culture quotes...chill grasshopper.
 
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PR: All of the numbers just made me think of Spinal Tap. Hence, "Mine goes to 11." Didn't mean to offend.

If you kids haven't seen it, you should. It is a brilliant mockumentary on a heavy metal band.
 
I saw an interview with them, talking about the Spinal Tap tour. Apparently they opened for themselves in their Mighty Wind personae, and got booed off the stage.

Are we in trouble yet for getting so off-topic?
 
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I would like to suggest a possible change to the first rubric grouping scores for details. Whether a prop is real or faux mistaken for real, seems like the effect would be the same. You know, 'cause it's not like there is going to be any REAL severed heads, entrails and whatnot.
 
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First off my post was more or less directed at everyone in general, I was trying to make it a bit more clear.

Secondly, CK, props can be real. They could use real pumpkins, hay, and corn stalks for a harvest idea. They could use bug displays in 13, they could rent real clowns for 13, they could do a lot for real things. Of course not everything can be real, but there is a lot that can be real.

With that said, it would be nearly impossible for anything to get a perfect score of 4 because well that is perfect and nothing is ever perfect.
 
Sarcasm man. Sarcasm. But...
My point was that in the "scoring" process, whether a prop is REAL or MISTAKEN FOR REAL, the end result is the same. So why would they be scored differently? If you can't tell the difference...equal scores.
BTW, real clowns? I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around this one.
 
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OK. I have been debating about saying anything, because I really don't wish to find myself down a rabbit hole, but what the heck.

While I understand the lighting rating for inside the houses, I might quibble with it across the board. One year (2008?) there was a path from one house to the next. A fairly long path, if I recall. For whatever reason, we started a bit early that year, so it was dusk. Walking from the first house to the second was super-eerie. One of the top five creepiest HOS experiences for me. As I said, it was dusk, so the light was dim, and it was foggy (can't recall if that was natural), and there were scare actors on the path. We were pretty much the only people out there, so they started stalking us. Even though I knew I was perfectly safe, it was very intimidating, like being followed by someone ominous alone on a street at night in London. My girlfriend and I agreed that it was the scariest part of the night.

Similarly, I recall an outdoor maze a year or prior to that, that was just awesome. And it wasn't completely dark either. It must have been in the Scotland/England general area, because I recall the scare actors looked like working class Londoners from the 19th century.

Now, I have to admit that I am that chick who screams at EVERYTHING in the houses. One guy got me three times in a row from three windows in the same room. I swear they radio ahead to let people know that there is a live one in the house.

But that said, I really think lighting can be used to create atmosphere in many ways, and "dark" in not always better than "gloomy."
 
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I will say that I did consider that, and I will be reviewing my rubric ever so carefully to try and perfect it, but in this world because there are so many things that could be good, it will be hard to hit that perfect mark.
 
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