Last year the haunted house industry set a date with haunting history by attending the first ever tradeshow for professional attraction owners and operators. Over 6000 guests walked through the doors with hundreds of vendors in St. Louis 2009! The show was SO successful that now the show is back and bigger and scarier than ever before with more vendors, more buyers and more events than ever seen or planned in our industries history!
The show is back in St. Louis, Missouri again March 25 through the 28th (NOW FOUR DAYS) 2010. Visit the site today to register for the show www.HauntShow.com
Last year one of the biggest events was the tour through one of America's most acclaimed haunted attractions: The Darkness located in downtown St. Louis, Missouri.
The Darkness has been featured on multiple Travel Channel shows, National Geographic Channel and Modern Marvels. The Darkness has also been rated by some national articles as the best haunted house in America!
In 2009 we opened The Darkness to the industry, and produced a WORLD CLASS attraction for the industry to see investing nearly $300,000.00 into the attraction between November and March. Unfortunately we didn't hit the mark in all area's specifically found it difficult to train actors or hire actors on such turn around.
Last year many may or may not realize that we COULD NOT complete The Darkness prior to the show because not only did we renovate the existing Darkness but we BUILT FROM SCRATCH a 17,000 BUILDING attached to the existing building. In October 2008 THERE was NO building just an empty lot, in November of 2008 steel was being erected, in December floors and a roof where being installed, the building was being framed in January and windows, sprinkler systems, went in February, electric, emergency systems and much more all went in late February and early March.
We somehow in addition to building this new add on building managed to build the monster museum and the 3D Terror Visions inside. NO time was left for anything but trying to build the attractions, renovate the existing Darkness and try to get as much of the new building done as possible, which was not completed for another 2 months after the show last March 2009.
Now with our building 110% complete and another successful Haunt Season behind us, we have started the process to renovate The Darkness again for the 2010 Haunt Show in St. Louis.
The Darkness will OPEN again for this show and YOU CAN EXPECT to see A WORLD CLASS HAUNTED HOUSE AGAIN... with FIVE TIMES as many awesome sets, special effects, and scenes built to scare entire groups at the same time.
The Darkness second floor area is being TOTALLY GUTTED ... almost EVERYTHING YOU SAW last year is GONE! You will SEE NO animations, no props that any vendors currently sells, everything we'll showcase was custom made for this event and for the NEW Darkness.
We do NOT know how to do ANYTHING BUT ALL OUT... We are spending in excess of $200,000.00 for the renovation process with a planned completion date of March 1st, 2010 way in advance of the show, which will give us more time to hire and train actors to work the new show.
Lastly, we are planning THREE EVENTS at the Darkness... One will be a new behind the scenes tour which will include tours through our ticket booth, access to view our security systems, and to tour our WORLD CLASS actors room! This event will be held Thursday night... then we will open the Darkness to a LIMITED crowd on Friday and Saturday.
We are limiting the amount of tickets per night to attempt to break groups up into bigger gaps... haunters touring the haunt is NOT the same as a normal customer because HAUNTERS want to touch EVERYTHING, and WALK SLOW! Its HARD to SCARE ANYONE... so this year we'll put through HALF the amount of people per night and space the groups TWICE as much.
We learned a lot from last year! We hope you will attend our tour this year at Transworld 2010! Please check back on this site for photo updates of our progress and other updates.
Tickets will go on Sale January 2010!
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