Santa's Haunted Coal Mine at Nightmares on the Rogue in Medford OR

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Nightmares on the Rogue in Medford,
Organ opened for its third annual Christmas haunt

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this month. That's coming up on
today's show. Welcome to the show.

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I'm Philip on the AJA and Show. We bring you the news and information

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you need to prepare for Halloween.
This show is just one part of the

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programming, so check our email newsletter
for the bold details. We're on a

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break right now through January ninth,
but we'll resume after that. Today we're

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on location at Nightmares on the Rogue
in Medford, Organ and I visited it

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for their Christmas event called Santa's coal
Mine. I sat down with owner Devin

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Price to hear about his journey creating
this haunt and where he sees it going

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in the future. We also have
a video walkthrough where you can see the

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entire haunt if you like. The
link to that is in the show notes.

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Here we go. My name is
Devin Price, and I am the

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owner of Nightmares on the Rogue Haunted
Attraction. Tell me about Nightmares on the

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Road on an attraction. So Nightmers
on the Road counted attraction is a haunted

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house a Mercia walk through experience in
southern Oregon. This is our third year,

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and we are now looking at moving
into a much larger location. So

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we provide entertainment for northern California,
the western coast, all the way up

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to the Eugene area. Okay,
and tell me a little bit about the

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attraction. We're recording this in December
because you are running a Christmas experience,

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which is, you know, the
last thing you're going to be doing here.

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But before you tell us about Christmas, tell us about the haunt itself.

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You know the footprint and how big
it is and all that stuff.

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Perfect. So when we moved into
the location we're at now, it is

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underground under a building, and so
we really wanted to figure out how to

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use our surroundings so that the story
makes sense. And so I really like

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Western and Haunted Mines and was inspired
by Big Thunder and the story at Disneyland,

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and so I thought it fit perfectly
to do the Haunted Mind since we

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were underground, and so originally we
were just Nightmares on the rou Conted attraction.

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We rebranded to Nightmares on the Roque
Hanted Mines and now our story is

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you're going underground into a mine shaft, and obviously with the Haunted house,

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something has to go horribly wrong,
and everything within our Haunted attraction is telling

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that story and pushing that further.
Yeah, so walking through, we did

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a quick tour before and it's you're
right, it's underground, so it's colder,

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yes, and you would above.
But also because of the ceiling height,

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you really feel like it's that mind
like you didn't have to really build

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ceilings because they're already so low to
the ground that you can feel like you're

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in the mind. Yes. So
it's a blessing and a curse. So

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we had three hundred and fifty wall
panels before we moved to this new place,

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and I had to cut it all
down to six' nine. So

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that was a frustrating part. But
it does make it easier to hang lides,

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to run sound, to just create
a creepy atmosphere. A lot of

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times in the Haunt you're trying to
create faux ceilings. We don't really have

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to do that since the selling is
created for us. Yeah. Yeah,

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and then so it's and also it's
a simple theme, right, It's not

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like you're changing themes every other room. It's like, this is a theme

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you're gonna mind. You go through
and things go terribly wrong. Yeah.

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So last year when we started the
Haunted Minds, we got a little too

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ambitious and crazy and tried to do
it where each shaft was it haunted by

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a different ghost and didn't really make
sense to the customer, and so we

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stripped it down, made it super
simple. The whole time you're going through

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a mind shaft and have our backstory
of why and how things went wrong.

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But it actually is pretty cool because
our area was in the middle of the

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gold Rush. We were just north
of San Francisco, and the Rogue Valley

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was known for its mind and so
we do try to tie back into a

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historical story and just put our own
little haunted twist on it. Yeah.

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Yeah. And then Christmas, this
is the first year you're doing Christmas.

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It is our third third year,
so it's our second at this location,

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and we kind of played into where
the haunted mind So Santa has to make

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his coal somewhere for the kids,
So that's why we went with Santa's Haunted

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coal Mine. And this year the
story is half the elves have revolted.

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They kidnapped Santa and now there's a
civil war among the elves. They at

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least a portal of all Christmas is
Nightmares, and so now you're going through

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a story of ho ho horror.
I had to throw that in there,

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but no on our in our original
in our October show, it's all original

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stuff, and we really try to
play into more of a fun, whimsical

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but still scary time for our Christmas
show. Yeah. Yeah, And I

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guess in this area there's really not
any other there's not really much competition,

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and you're you're you're partnered with another
but like the only other hunt in the

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area you're partnered with. So like, I guess my question actually is I

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was curious as to why you think
Christmas works in this area because it's like,

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it's like because you know, on
the one hand, there's not much

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competition, but on the other hand, you know, a market that has

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less haunted houses usually has less of
an audience for them just because there's you

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know, it's like, I think
it extend beyond the haunted attraction industry here.

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I think there's not as much stuff
to do for families and people.

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Southern Oregon really lacks entertainment. We
have a pretty big population in our counties

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two hundred and fifty thousand, and
then if you take northern California the coast,

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we have four hundred, four hundred
and fifty thousand people within an hour

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drive of us. And so the
fact that there's not a lot of stuff

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to do besides maybe go to the
movies helps us out. And so we're

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we're not competing with external forces and
then just providing something fun and unique gets

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people excited. Yeah, excellent,
And you run because I was looking at

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you run multiple nights. I mean, you know a lot of a lot

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of the you know, we have
our list of Christmas haunts and there's over

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one hundred of them we've been tracking
nationwide, and I think your run is

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one of the longest. And is
that why? I mean, now you've

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seen demand every night you're open.
Yeah. It kind of the reason we

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did that is when the Haunted House
that we partner with in terms of frights

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on front, so it's we brand
as a collection of haunted houses. There's

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two different unique on IT houses right
next to each other. They've been doing

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Christmas haunts and they kind of did
it for five nights, and so when

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we did our first Christmas haunt,
we kind of mirrored what they are doing

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I still want to explore what it
looks like doing it for two nights or

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a weekend and see if that will
get us the same numbers. But for

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the most part, we just see
a steady pace of people and that's kind

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of what people have come to know. And it's not like we have one

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night that's super packed and the rest
of night is not, so it's spread

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out. But we definitely are looking
to see do we do it for just

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a weekend or what that looks like. Yeah, yeah, and you mentioned

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this at the beginning, but this
is the last show in your building because

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you are moving again after just a
few years. Yes, yeah, so

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tell us about the new property and
what you're going to be able to do

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there that you can't do here.
Yeah. So this last October and for

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the last two years we've ran two
haunted attractions there are twenty five minutes away

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from each other, Carnival of Chaos
and Nimers on the Rogue. And though

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that was super fun, it is
hard to bread yourself thin. There's only

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one of you, and as an
owner, you know nobody really cares about

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it as much as you. And
we double the expenses with restrooms of security

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with staffing, and so we really
were figuring out ways of how to condense

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everything to one big event. And
at our current location, we have some

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barriers and obstacles that make it so
we can't do the event we want.

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Our building has a lower ceiling,
so we're limited on the amount of scope

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we can do. We don't really
have a midway, which our first year

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we did and people loved it,
and we really wanted to branch out beyond

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just a hunted attraction. We wanted
to make it a family night out,

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and so it's always been in our
five year plan to get into a larger

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location and we were fortunate enough to
broke or a deal with somebody who really

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thought we provided a benefit to our
community. And so the new space is

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over six times the size we have
now. It has thirty thousand square feet

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of fenced area. It's going to
allow us to do multiple attractions a midway.

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Really get back to the reason we
do do this, which is beyond

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just the haunted house, it's the
whole fun fall night out for families,

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and then extend that beyond October doing
Christmas events and potentially that aren't Halloween based,

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doing other events throughout the year,
and that's kind of what we're we're

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leaning towards, is just opening up
our horizon and the scope of people that

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can come and make it more than
just a fifteen thirty minute experience. I

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wasn't gonna ask about broadening the Christmas
event too, because it doesn't sound like

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you're married to having it be spooky
if your goal is to entertain the community.

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Yeah. So I am from an
area where there's big haunted houses.

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I lived in Salt Lake City,
Utah. When I moved here, haunted

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houses were a little different. So
when I met my wife and told her

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my dream was to one day on
a haunted house, and she comes from

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a different, more conservative background,
she was like, what, that's crazy,

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and that doesn't that sounds evil and
all this stuff, And we're big

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Disney people were inspired by Indiana Jones
q Ride I talked about Big Thunder Mountain,

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and so we really wanted I told
her, like, I want our

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haunted attractions to be adventure based,
and so she got on board. But

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we always at the back of our
mind new we want to extend beyond that

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because we love entertaining people along with
just the haunted house experience, The Haunted

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House is the avenue where you can
get people to go through and fill us

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an emotion like they're going through a
roller coaster, they're going through some sort

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of player performance. But we want
to figure out how to get that emotion

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elsewhere, and so we've looked at
different things from Christmas drive through shows,

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how can we extend to Christmas?
And I think that's the next evolution of

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our company is to broad and beyond
haunted attractions. We want to do concerts

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because that was our background, and
more big events for people to do along

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with the Haunted House. Okay,
got it? Yeah? So and then

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the bigger space plays into all of
that. Yeah. So the bigger space

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will allow us to do a next
stepping stone for what we want to do,

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allow us to do more seasonal events. We're planning on doing year round

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escape games. Escape industry in our
area is still relatively new, so there's

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a lot of potential for that.
But ultimately our next five year plan is

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to own a big piece of property
that would allow us to do more of

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a Christmas Ville, to do more
of a screen park beyond just what's in

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a city. So that's our end
goal is to buy a lot of land

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and then be able to live in
our work. Yeah, tell me about

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I mean, I understand that's a
five year plan and you have you know,

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you leased out the space, so
it may not it's probably not gonna

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be the same space. So it's
gonna be more. It's going to be

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transitioning again and again. But as
you're looking at moving into a larger building,

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tell me about how you're gonna kind
of keep I mean, I guess

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essentially, whenever people move into a
larger building, there's always that risk of

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spreading themselves too thin and trying to
do too much at once. You know,

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it corrodes the theme and it causes
the density of your stuff to go

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down. You know, it's such
a bigger space. So are you thinking

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about that at all or what is
plan for that? Yeah, we've kind

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of had a two year test run
for that by owning two haunted attractions.

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Yeah, we wouldn't be moving into
this next space if we were still planning

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on keeping the other Haunted house,
and so we knew we had an audience

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that went to both attractions. We
knew we had all the sets in the

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walls and the material to fill up
that space. And so for us,

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it's kind of more of a cyb
relief because we have been already running two

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attractions and feeling like we're spread thin, and so we want just everything at

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one location where the revenue can be
kept there. So you're basically going to

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change it into the model of like
multiple attractions, whether it be the same

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attractions that are in a space with
a midway so people have time in between

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and can relax and do other things. Yes, I don't think our area

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is ready for a thirty forty five
dollars one haunt that they walk through for

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twenty minutes. We want to make
sure that they have that value and we

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want to provide that value. And
so for us, it's allowing a family

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who might not be able to afford
forty dollars, but can afford a fifteen

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dollars hunt or do a combo for
two for thirty dollars and let people come

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through and pick. And so that's
the model we're going with. And it

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also allows us to stay within a
theme, but also not be tied to

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just that theme by having multiple attractions. Yeah, plus more space to keep

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people, because I know the facility
that we're in now there's not really parting

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and there's not an outside, so
it's hard, like you can't upsell people

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in when you can't hold onto them
if there's not enough space for them to

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stay. Yeah, and just remembered
with our new attraction. Our landlord actually

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right next door is building a brewery, tap room and an outdoor space with

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fifteen food trucks that shares a fence
line. So we also almost have an

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outdoor space of entertainment that's going to
be provided for us that they're gonna let

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us run during October once that does
open up, So that almost takes a

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lot of the workout for us and
still allows another fun event for people to

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come to. And then I also
enjoy the attraction while they're getting a mill

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or a beer. It adds to
it, but it but it cuts you

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out of the revenue for doing that
unfortunately. Yeah, thanks for pointing that

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out. Well, I'm just saying, no, I know it does.

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No, it does. But it's
also hard being in this space. For

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all that revenue stuff, you need
to have employees, you need to be

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able to do it right. And
one problem I have had in this business

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is being stretched thin as in most
honors do they want to try to do

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everything and I well, in this
area too, staffing, I mean like

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there's no again back to the competition, there's no competition, but there's also

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not enough hunts around, which means
there's not a pool of s characters that

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choose from. And then staffing also, in areas like this, you would

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have to staff people for food and
make a menu and whatnot. I'm just

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saying, you know the best way
Generally you're looking at revenue add ons and

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it's like after you've tapped out on
your velvet rope and your lines and whatnot

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and some of your merch then you
know it's like food and especially drinks the

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highest margin. No. Yeah,
so we also still, no matter what

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they do with their area, we're
still going to have our Nightmare grill and

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have themed food onto our attractions.
And we're also going to be doing some

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mock taels and looking at what does
a beer garden or VIP area and get

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a temporary liquor license and other things
like that. But for sure, the

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first step would be getting those fun
mocktail drinks that have to do with our

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attraction and kind of tie everything in
which then people pay more because they have

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that experience. Yeah. Yeah,
So I'm curious thinking you're not too many

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years into it now, are already
moving again the second time? It's a

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lot, right, I'm curious what
you would tell somebody who is just starting

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out, because I know, I
think we met when you were for starting

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out, yeah right, and you
were looking at trying to balance your you

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know, full time stuff with this. So what would you tell this person

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now, I'd say it's a lot
of work. It really is a lot

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of work. You have to have
buy in from your family. But also

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the other end of it is it
is doable and if you if you do

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truly believe, you can get out
there and create something that the community likes.

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We now it's awesome. You hear
people talk about our attraction or you

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see the social media posts and stuff, and they'll never know who I am,

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they'll never know my family, but
we were part of their memories and

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we're part of them doing something and
so that's what I find rewarding. And

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so if I had to do it
again, I would I think that this

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is a valuable experience. And when
I was a little kid, my dream

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was to own a top twenty five
hundred attraction in the nation, just because

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I went to Rocky Point. I
saw these things, and I know we're

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way, way, way far away
from that, but I think that in

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my mind back then, it's something
that I thought I would have to do

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when I retired from my job.
And so now I'm seeing that it is

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something that if you do it right, and you do treat it like a

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business, it is something that you
can live off of. I've kind of

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been doing other side things with it, but we do well enough where if

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I wanted to make this my only
thing, it could it could be.

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Tell me more about what you said
about treating it like a business. Tell

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me about that part, I think, because I think at least we get

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a lot of people that write in
ask about starting Haunting, and I frequently

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point them to the business plan and
it's like, what do you mean business

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plan? I mean, I know
that you've had to make them because you've

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had to get financing and whatnot.
So tell me. Tell me what you

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think people get wrong about treating it
like a business. So take a step

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back. So my degrees in business
management and paralegal studies, specifically contract law,

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and so I was fortunate enough after
college to start working for a nonprofit

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and eventually after a year, worked
up as a director level and had a

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staff under us, and we saw
we started the Haunted Attraction as a fundraiser

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for that nonprofit youth center, and
so I was already looking at the numbers

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and looking at cost analysis, and
it was something that was important to us

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because it was going to raise a
lot of money, but also we couldn't

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just drop all of this money.
And so I was fortunate enough to see

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that there was a demand in our
area four haunted attractions out of higher quality.

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And so once COVID hit and we
had to close down our youth center

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and we transitioned to an emergency childcare
facility, and Oregon had a lot of

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regulations. Eventually, when we closed
down our nonprofit, I had seen the

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demand and people kept asking us,
so you're going to do a hant A,

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You're going to do a hant And
so I, my wife who's the

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co owner, and myself we took
all of our savings and we put it

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in there. And that's a big
risk if you're doing that. We weren't

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going out there, and really we
did a little bit of financing, but

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a majority of the money was from
our own money, and so I knew

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that if we were going to do
that, we had to do it right,

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and so we created our business plan. We created a five year plan.

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I made sure that the most important
thing was marketing. So I went

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and got Chad Savage to do our
logo and website. I went and studied

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everything from Transworld and all of the
people who've been doing it and wanted to

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create a legitimate business out of it. But that's just because my whole life

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has been in business and not haunted
houses. So basically, I think if

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I were extrapolate that, you're saying, find a way to test the market

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first to make sure and then you
were fortunate enough to have the support of

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your family to self fund. Yes, but a lot of people are not.

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I mean, if you're not in
that situation, you wouldn't needed to

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take a much bigger financing mistake,
which is much more difficult depending on the

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business model you have. Yeah,
right, No, we are very fortunate

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that at the time I had a
really good job and so I had the

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income to help put it into that. And sometimes I think about is this

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worth it? Because the jobs I
had on the private market make a lot

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more. I can live off Haunted
attractions, but we're not making what I

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made when we're doing other stuff.
But I wouldn't change it for the world.

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And I don't know where we're going
to be in ten twenty years,

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but I think this is a good
stepping stone and I couldn't imagine doing another

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thing besides entertaining people. Okay,
I think we're at about we're about at

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time. Is there anything I didn't
ask you that you think is important?

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I think it's important just to I
know Philip says this a lot, but

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treat this like a business, and
if you are passionate about it, it

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really can you can make it work. And so but in order to do

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that, you have to make sure
you're doing things a smart way. And

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fortunately, fortunately I had a wife
that didn't let me blow all my money

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on big props and different things.
So we started within our means and it's

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helped us grow organically, opposed to
trying to create a big city Haunt in

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a medium sized city and then failing
after a year or two and running out

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of capital. So yeah, I
think the scaling within your means is the

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most important thing you know, because
the market, you know, it's I

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think people always kind of maybe people
because we're in this world, so I

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think we forget that a lot of
times. The customers don't have a reference

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point, yeah, you know,
and so it might be like, you

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know, you want a good experience
for them, but as long as they're

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entertained and you can create value as
a business within your means, that's all

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that businesses. Yeah, you know, I mean, look at how many

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coffee shops You're like, well that
was just strip coffee was fine, but

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I needed a coffee at the time. Yeah, I was here and it

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was there. So it's like,
you know, and it is hard at

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times. I compare our I try
to compare ourselves to like Dark Hour or

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fear Factory, but we're not that
we're in a smaller market. We never

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will have that, and at least
where we're at either they don't know those

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things either. So it's really figuring
out what your audience cares about, how

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can you make an impact in the
area you're at, and then being comfortable

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at pushing what you're doing in this
space that you're doing at. Today's episode

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00:19:53.480 --> 00:19:59.079
was edited by me Philippernandez, with
post production by David Swope and original music

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00:19:59.240 --> 00:20:03.279
composed by Chris Thomas. Support for
today's episode comes from Gantum Lightning and Controls.

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00:20:03.400 --> 00:20:08.920
Gantum illuminates attractions worldwide with the world's
smallest intelligent spotlights. From Dark hourg

318
00:20:08.920 --> 00:20:14.440
to nether World, Super Mario Land
to Hagrid's Bike. Gantum goes where other

319
00:20:14.480 --> 00:20:18.240
fixtures can't see what you're missing.
With a free demo sign up at gantum

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00:20:18.279 --> 00:20:22.480
dot com slash demo. That's scantum
dot com slash demo. The ha N

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00:20:22.599 --> 00:20:27.599
team includes Daryl Plunky, Emily Luis
Rua, Megan Spells, Gavin Burns and

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00:20:27.680 --> 00:20:37.599
Omniadventures. Until next Time, Stay
Scary. This is a Haunted Attraction Network production.