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Nicole

and Team / Co
Administrator
Jul 22, 2013
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Arlington, VA
I have been thinking a lot about the perennial problem that both BGW and KD confront each year: how to take down their Halloween events and set up their holiday events in time. Especially with both parks reducing the time they have, it seems like an issue that isn’t going to fix itself.

This year, as we were wandering through Festa at HOS, and commenting on how little carnival theming there really was and how tiny the scare zone had become, an idea came to me: what if BGW could use the extensive CT decorations for HOS, as well? I thought this would have two benefits: it would reduce changeover time between HOS and CT, and it would provide the park with a complete Festa overlay for Halloween.

Before I go any further, let me apologize in advance, as I am sure I am going to offend some people with the premise of this concept. Hopefully, we can all agree to disagree and just focus on the mechanism, if not the target.

So. I have always felt that Holiday Hills was fairly creepy and not a little trashy. When the bulbs start burning out, this impression is just magnified. I find the huge Santa billboards and masks disturbing and the music to be in questionable taste. The now gone retro advertisements were kinda terrifying, as well.

I think that with very little effort, all of the Holiday Hills decorations could be tweaked to become a great HOS hamlet, themed to creepy Christmas.I am tentatively calling it Holiday Chills.

The park would need to bring back all of the incandescent-based props and make some of the bulbs blink and leave others burned out. The Santa’s could be tweaked to be even more sinister. Darker holiday tunes could be played. I think they could create a variety of mazes that would fit the theme, like a condemned Christmas shop or a creepy toy factory.

Obviously, the Rudolf stuff would be need to be added between the events, but that would take much less work than changing over the entire hamlet.

Finding ways to use the same decor for both events might start to solve their timeline constraints.
 
The retro Holiday Hills when it first pened was amazing, there is still a massive fandom for the blowmolds in todays world of crappy chinease made inflatables. The problem is they are now half assing it and it looks pittyful. I think the idea of using the same decorations for HOS then just screwing in the rest of the bulbs for CT is a horrible idea. While I do think a Krampus theme would be awesome it needs to all be seperate decor. Now there are areas that bgw is missing the mark on time savings. The lights on the buildings in say France if they would install RGB strings they could change them to HOS colors then to CT colors with just the stroke of the computer mouse.
 
I never said whether Holiday Hills was good or bad; I said I find it creepy. It can be both creepy and legitimate. Additionally, I think you are oversimplifying my suggestion. I never said that all they should do is add some lights to convert the area from HOS to CT.

I do agree that there are several ways they could use the same components for both events throughout . For example, I think they could modify the white balls in Heatherdowns to be ghosts for Halloween.
 
There are tons of things they could do but they wont mostly becase of money. Case in point if they changed out every PAR Floodlamp fixture with a DMX based light then networked them they could literally change over entire hamets lighting in seconds. Then in summer months just run them as regular white lighting. They could also use them for many things, like July 4 lighting, Summer nights, you name it. Just imagine how many man hours are spend for HOS and CT changing light bulbs from one color to the next.
Now, I do believe they have changed out the bulbs on the bridge between Italy and Germany with RGB bulbs but they either are running on wifi or bluetooth, basically consumer based bulbs.
 
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Did BGW ever convert to LED holiday lights? They make those packs with programmable colors. I find it hard to believe that they couldn’t wrap stuff for HoS in these lights (rails, trees, items like that) and program them orange, purple, neon green for HOS then reprogram them Red, Green, White for CT.
Unless that’s what you are trying to go for @Nicole then my bad for misunderstanding.
 
Did BGW ever convert to LED holiday lights? They make those packs with programmable colors. I find it hard to believe that they couldn’t wrap stuff for HoS in these lights (rails, trees, items like that) and program them orange, purple, neon green for HOS then reprogram them Red, Green, White for CT.
Unless that’s what you are trying to go for @Nicole then my bad for misunderstanding.
Almost all of the lights at BGW are LED lights. They just aren't programmable to my knowledge
 
Did BGW ever convert to LED holiday lights? They make those packs with programmable colors. I find it hard to believe that they couldn’t wrap stuff for HoS in these lights (rails, trees, items like that) and program them orange, purple, neon green for HOS then reprogram them Red, Green, White for CT.
Unless that’s what you are trying to go for @Nicole then my bad for misunderstanding.

Nope. For my concept, the incandescents are critical. The idea is to create the effect of a rundown, retro holiday display.

Switching light colors to go from one theme to another is completely different. In my opinion, colored lights aren’t enough for Halloween decorations.
 
Nope. For my concept, the incandescents are critical. The idea is to create the effect of a rundown, retro holiday display.

Switching light colors to go from one theme to another is completely different. In my opinion, colored lights aren’t enough for Halloween decorations.

Oh I missed that part of it. My bad. Maybe the LED changeover could be used in some spots though.

I wonder on the costs of propane supplied lanterns.

I do think you are on to something with the idea of certain aspects being dual purpose. As a known non-HoS goer, but CT goer, I wonder how well it would play for the quality of both events to have certain areas be HoS only and others to be CT only?
 
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I think the lighting change could work with the programmable lights as mentioned - however, instead of colors in this scenario, it would still be incandescent bulbs designed to work with the programming tech. Basically, the flickering and burnt out bulbs from HoS would be programmed to return to normal for CT.

As an overall concept, this would be a great idea for any park. My only concern is if the execution would be such that it wouldn't accidentally blend creepy into Christmas or vice versa and ruin it
 
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While Holiday Hills debuted with 100% traditional incandescent bulbs this season many of the lights have been converted to C-7 and C-9 screw base LEDs, a very good LED. In fact unless you really know your holiday light bulbs you wont be able to tell.
 
So, moving away from the lights...

I think that if the area were dark enough and foggy, the Santas wouldn’t need many modifications; they are already fairly unsettling. I imagine they could find broken toys and animatronics to scatter around, as well.

Part of what I like about the concept, is that there are a variety of maze themes that would work really well.
 
You think the Santas at BGW are creepy? Or just santa in general? I think the Santa images used at BGW are clssic images of him.
 
Oh yes Carolers aggressively singing at you. Shitty bell ringers asking you for money. It's easily done. HHN Hollywood has done this theme before, not just using the Krampus movie but also as a generic theme. It would 100% be super easy to do and work really well.

For makeup at the very least I would love it if some victims had their mouths "sewn" into a forced smile, for those over zealous people who think its a requirement for people to be happy because "It's Christmas!!!". Though I do realize that's wishful thinking since BGW loves full face masks. (You can get SO MUCH MORE OUT OF JUST PROSTHETICS AND MAKEUP THAT ACTUALLY WORKS. WHY WAS RIPPER ROW SKELETONS?????????? Just the tiniest bit of effort is what I'm asking for.) And for the record it would also work with Joker scars too, but that's so... bland and over done.

This all being said I feel like the near entirety of Williamsburg would be offended at the thought of Scary Christmas. >__>
 
What if the did a "holidays house". room after room of the US holidays, Valentines day room with a dememted cupid, Memorial day cookout gone wrong, Uncle Sam shooting fireworks at you, being chased by Pilgrims and turkeys....basically do every holiday a room.
 
So, regarding the house for this area, there is a long (and, in some cases, absurdly creepy) history of roadside Santa/Christmas-themed tourist traps throughout America. I believe the original concept of Holiday Hills was actually meant to capitalize on some of that history.

Anyway, Circo Sinistro NEEDS a replacement, right? Converting its existing circus theme over to a long-abandoned, condemned, Santa-themed Christmas village children's park seems pretty simple, no?

PS: If anyone out there who thinks this theme is absurd because old Christmas stuff isn't scary...


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