Sir Henry's Haunted Trail in Plant City FL

0:08 Sir Henry's Haunted Trail is celebrating its tenth anniversary by adding a hay ride that's coming up on today's show from the Haunted Attraction Network. I'm Philip and this is our hauntedon or We're counting down to Halloween by celebrating haunted houses daily via videos, podcasts, and the IP in person experiences. Remember that the best way you can support us is by sharing this Hauntathon with someone you think will enjoy it. And since there's so much going on beyond this podcast, the best way to follow along is by subscribing to our email list, because we email out a review every week of everything going on. Okay, Nestled halfway between Orlando and Tampa is Sir Henry's Hanted Trail, and it began as a simple outdoor haunt. Over the years, though they've grown into a full screen park with three trails, laser tag escape room, a midway, and food, and the lore of Sir Henry has inspired a podcast, book series, and even a movie. To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Sir Henry Hunter Trail added a Haunted hay ride today. We'll preview that hay ride with owner Zach Glarros and for those of you super fans, we are hosting a VIP event on November fourth at Sir Henry's. Even though it's after Halloween, I thought November fourth would be a great time for those who are still looking for a little bit of Halloween magic. At the event, you'll hear all about the hay Ride and you'll learn where they're going to go from here. Links to those tickets are in the show notes. Okay, here's Zach and I on

1:38 location at Sir Henry Hunter Trail in Plant City, Florida. I am Zach Gleros and I'm the owner of Sir Henry Saunta Trail here in Plant City, Florida. Okay, this is your tenth year, and this year you added a hay ride. First, tell us about this year and then we'll talk about the hay ride. Yeah. So this is our tenth season. We've come a very long way. We've got our feature three haunted trails. Just like always, they've been re themed, revamped in their own capacity. Each one features it's unique scares, characters and one of kind sets as well as a bunch of surprises. We have Moonlight Massacre, which is our we werewoof Trail. We have Tails of the Dead, which is a Sir Henry Icon trill, something new for us we've never done. And our third trail is Wicked Waters, which is a swamp which buy you. So we're excited to bring all three of those to life. And then as you mentioned, we did add a Haunted hay Ride for our tenth season, our fourth attraction.

2:38 Extremely excited to bring this to life for guests to experience it. We put a lot of theatrics into it and then the show elements that you're gonna see, and it's just a totally different experience being on a wagon going through these larger than life sets compared to walking through a trail. So it's been a passion project. We've been working on it for eight months. Larger than life sets, a ton of animatron as a lot of big show pieces. So we're excited. I can't say it enough. So we are previewing the hay Ride, so we got to see it about three weeks before it's going to actually launch the public, and I will say it is a really big departure I think for the stuff you've done in the past. I mean, not only is it obviously it's a hay ride, and you're actually riding wagons, and you know you're sitting on hay and whatnot. But I think if I would describe it essentially, it's set up to be like a little dark ride in a way, like you're going from scene to scene and there are audio cues that play, and actors come out and distract you right from the stuff that's creeping around you as it happens. Trying to carefully for an anhi evil reside within this land, a sworn which took her wrath upon hundreds of helpless souls many years ago. She twisted and contorted the and its creatures into monsters and death. On the night of All Haloes Eve, she turned these beauties and eats the townspeople. But when the witch perished, these creatures went into

4:12 a deep slop. If you are to venture down these woods tonight, beware of Beatrice and her ancient beasts of the dead, For if the Witch is brought back from the underworld, she will a leash these legends of Halloween to bring upon your destruction. I'm allows a wagon full of law to its dare cross into my woods. The skeletons and warned you not to come. I shall finish. She won't, as I will hear, but not for you suffer as she no, you will be tell greatly, just as this and this one too thrown, these woods will be awaken from the sun God sent to hunting down domain Bestius Exeter comment comment esq mess and then Thruster advers Santa.

5:18 Now you will see my full rat So tell me, like, why a hay ride and why did you decide to do it in that way? Particularly so, I've always wanted to do hay ride, even before Haunted Trails, but it's just it was a logistics thing, and then being our ten season, I wanted to add something special and Central Florida really doesn't have any kind of hay ride to speak of that's of this caliber. And the hay rides are huge up north. I love the Northeastern style Halloween and a lot of hay rides up there, and I wanted to bring that down here, and that's what we did. You're right. It's like a dark ride where you go from scene to scene and see the theatrics and the cues and the stage play almost so to speak. But I wanted to take our storytelling to another level of immersion and captivation for the audience, all while still being able to scare people in an effective way, which was one of our biggest things going into the hay Ride is how do we still scare people because hay rides might not necessarily be as scary for all the theatrics we have packed it equally with your jump scares, your distraction scares, and animatronics to play with your mind in a disturbing type of way. Our barn scene is I think one

6:49 of our more intense scenes on the hay Ride. There's just so much going on, it's like sensory overload. And as you mentioned, Philip, there's still about four weeks till we open. We still have a lot of key pieces, very big elements for our hay Ride that we still have to put in place to put it over top for where we want it to be. So it's just unlike anything we've ever done, and I think unlike anything guests we'll also see anywhere else. Myself and my show manager Calvin went to a handful of hay rides last year. As R and D we went to Baits Field of Screams. Both have phenomenal shows. Phil the Screams in particular, they did stop you at each scene, and that's something we wanted to take and do it our thing because I think we found the storytelling ability to be more effective and to engage the audience, and it just creates a longer experience too for the guests. So we took elements. We saw what they did, we wanted to do our own thing. We never want a copy or a straight imitate. It's never about that, but we definitely take influence and that's just a big shout out to them for how well they do their event.

8:00 Yeah, be sure to listen to our episode with Field the Scream just getting a little plug in there. That's okay. I just worked in naturally. I don't know, it's like we planned it. Attractions, by their very nature take nods to other people. I mean Disney and Tivoli, right even, I mean, everybody is aware of what's going on. But I was gonna say, because I was gonna say, it reminds me of those and it also reminds me a little bit of the La Hay Ride because it's like you're stopping and there are scenes are going through in sets, but really in this area. I'm trying to think of the end, you know, the end, customer. I don't think you know. I mean, we just heard it tonight, even with the preview, how many people had never been on a hay ride or they haven't been one since they were kids. And I think you're tapping into that there's no other hay ride around here.

8:43 Yeah, you're exactly right. Yeah, I'm extremely proud of what our team has done. And we have a very very small team. We're talking less than five people that work on this full time, year round, and we've just poured our heart and soul and to creating this experience, I mean, and equally vamping up the other trails and attractions to stay on an elevated level and to keep the experience fresh for guests. But the hay Ride, it's just all my heart and soul is going into it. And I can speak for Calvin because he was my right hand person doing all this, and this is only our first year doing this, and I think our fans who have come before and experienced our event, they're gonna love it even more once they experienced says hey ride, because this is just another level of scary fun the story has always been heavy, and you had the podcast, there's the book series that was inspired by the characters, there's the film that was shot here, right, There's so much that's built around the lore of it. Right.

9:43 But it seems like with the hay Ride this year, it's almost gone a little bit beyond Sir Henry because you have a new character that's been introduced. And also, I think Sir Henry was never really like classic Halloween, right, it feels like you're stepping more into Oh, this is a Lloween themed thing with witches, and it used to be like about Sir Henry in his background. So the way we've set it up, and you're exactly right, it's Legends of Halloween, and we're taking a lot of our ancient origin, historical you could call it icons we've done in the past. We've brought them over to the hay Ride. Sir Henry makes an appearance, because Sir Sir Henry is in everything we do, and you actually go through his mausoleum.

10:26 He warns you don't go any further, but of course you're going to go further. And the main villain on the hay Ride is Beatrice and Beatrice is Sir Henry's arch nemesis, a villain witch, and she and Sir Henry have this long history with their families, going back to the origins. You can actually find this origin one of the trails we did in twenty seventeen, Curse of Hollow Oak. So we set that up way back then, and now it's brought back full circle. How it goes as Beatrice has been dead many years and now she has been resurrected as you go into these ancient, long lost woods, and so Beatrice and her Witch's shack will be the very first scene you come upon, and she casts a spell over the whole hay Ride and basically resurrects these monsters from the dust. And that those are the legends of Halloween that you will go through and see in each scene. So that it's a cool way we brought back all these icons that enshrine them forever from what we've done the past ten years, and I'm excited to keep adding on to that too. I would normally ask you at the end here about what you have planned, but this year, we're gonna come see you on your last night, and we're gonna do an event and you will tell us at that time how the year went and what you're gonna do going forward.

11:48 Yes, you're absolutely right. November fourth, we're gonna be doing an exclusive VIP night here at Sir Henry's to wrap up the season. You know, it's kind of like, okay, now where do you go from here? Yeah? I am asking myself that question. But I just told Calvin, our show manager, the other day, Hey, I think I already have next year's lineup in my head, with some big surprises of course, as always, but our fans will start to see more of an expanded universe, and I'll leave it at that. Today's episode was produced and edited by me Philip Hernandez, with post production by David Swape and original music composed by Chris Thomas. We're counting down to Halloween with daily podcasts, videos, and events in our sixty one day Hantathon. Follow along at the link in our show notes. Our Hantathon is made possible through generous support from Gantum, Lighty and Controls. Gantum illuminates attractions worldwide with the world's smallest intelligent spotlights. See what you're missing with a free demo. Sign up at dantum dot com slash demo.

12:46 That's Gantum dot com slash demo. Our Hauntathon team includes Daryl Plunky, Emily Luis Rua, Megan Spells, Gavin Burns and omni Adventures, and our content partners for this year include Attractions Man Magazine, Creepy Kingdom, Freaks of Ajgen, hont Topic Radio, Kevin Heinbach News TV, omni Adventures, Scare Track, Sharp Productions, That Halloween Podcast, The Horror of Being, Emily The Scare Factor, and This Weekend with Nick Pegliocchini. The best way you can support us this Halloween season is by sharing our Haunted On with someone you think we'll enjoy it, and to follow along to our Haunted On, sign up for our weekly newsletter at haunt Attraction Network dot com. We'll catch you back here tomorrow and every day until Halloween. Until next time, Stay scary.

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