The Haunted Attraction Association’s 2025 State of the Industry Seminar

0:08 The Haunted Attraction Association's annual State of the Industry seminar covered the insurance crisis, changes to the awards program AI and more that's coming up on today's show. Welcome to the show. I'm Philip on the Ajan Show. We bring you the news and information you need to prepare for Halloween. This show is just one small part of what we do, and the best place to find everything is our free weekly email newsletter all about what's going on in the Haunted Attraction industry. It is free. Check the link for that in our website and also in our show notes. Today we're playing the full audio from the Haunted Attraction Association's Annual State of the Industry Seminar, recorded live on Friday, Febry twenty eighth during Transworld tolloween Attractions Show. Note that during this present the name and details of their awards program isn't explained fully, so you can check out our show notes for a full corrected version of those requirements. Okay, here we go.

1:12 All right, we are going to get started. Welcome everyone to Stay of the Industry. For the Hundred Distraction Association, this is our twenty twenty five State of the industry. There's a lot happening. So for those of you that are members or prior to this meeting, we already elected officers and got the entire change of the guard in motion, which has been really exciting. So as we get. Ready as we exchange leadership and changing of the guard. My name Spencer Terry. I am the general manager and equity owner at fear Factory Hunted House and your outgoing president, thank you, and we had overall it was a really great years in association.

1:59 As we can continue to build and build and create and sustain and find ways that we can make the industry better, stronger, more unified, and really work on how do we support each other with resources, with education and great knowledge and skills From the board, there's a lot. So as a board, we're all volunteer. This is what we do. You have small, tiny horn houses, you have really big hard houses and everything in between. And that's kind of the idea is that we need to reflect our industry. We need to reflect all of you and we're happy to be able to do that. So if you see any of us with name tags on, that's the identifier that is going to be a good way to find us, and you please ask us any questions or.

2:41 Stop by the booth. It's both two zero two three. So that said, I get to stop talking and Jim gets to start talking. So mister President's all yours. Yeah, just kind of put my notes up here so I don't lose my place. Wow, look at all this room. This is incredible. This shows to me how much of our industry is invested in our industry. You guys are here early morning. I know the show for open soon. I'm sure you guys would like to be sitting quietly drinking coffee, but you have invested your time to come here and be part of a talk about what we do, and that is scare people, that is entertained people. So it's so magnificent. Thank you for coming this morning. We're going to talk about a lot of stuff. We're going to open the floor for some Q and A. We have a couple questions that were we were able to poll since the board members have lived here in Saint Louis from members, vendors, other people in the industry that have these pressing like what about this, what about that?

3:43 So we're going to talk about those as well. But to lead off, I. Really want to kind of update everybody on where the Haunted Attraction Association is. I think the President says, well, the state of the Union is strong. Well, I'm pretty sure the state of our industry is pretty damn strong. We are in an amazing place, and the Haunted Attraction Association is an incredible place. That we have been able to achieve some. Really big mile markers that are going to benefit the entire industry, our members especially, but the entire industry is going to benefit from the things that we've been working on. One of the more important things is our Top Haunt program, which has been a just an absolute star in the Winter column for haunts that have achieved the Top Haunt status.

4:31 It's an advertising, it's you get to use it for so many different things to help elevate your haunt. It has been expanded quite aggressively, and I would love if Vice President Kevin Donovan or Brett could explain just take or just take a quick moment and explain how we've expanded and officially expanded the Top Haunt program so that more haunted attractions are able to engage in it. Thanks Jim, you appreciate that. Anyways, So we expanded our Top PUNTS program. I'm sure there are a lot of folks in this room that are part of that program. It's got vigorous criteria including safety, including all different kinds of items. But now it's not just you know, for the folks over.

5:17 Ten thousand attendees. There's also two other levels at this point, you know, zero to three thousand and then three to ten. So that's just we've expanded that out so that way, it's not just a club for the folks at the top. We want to represent the entire industry and we want all of our programs to reflect that. So starting this. Year, we've expanded our Top Ponts program. So excellent, Thank you, Kevin. So so so far you guys have been introduced to me. You got to meet Spencer. Now, you know, Kevin, we're going to take a quick second. We're going to hand that mic down the line, so you guys commute all the other board members past and present who are representing you are more importantly the wealth of knowledge on this stage that's going to help us get through this state.

6:03 Of the industry. I'm Todd Patton with Dred Hollow out of Chattanooga, Tennessee. I'm Anthony Barbosa from Night Mary Kers in South Windster, Connecticuts. I'm Lee Jordan with Fear on the Farm, Winfield, West Virginia. They're a Little or a Hondered House, Peoria, Illinois. Aaron Smith with the Niles Screen Park in Niles, Michigan. Benng Gane with the Thirteenth Hower in Indianapolis, Indiana. Michael Edwards with Terror and the Corn Out in Erie, Colorado. Mike Quill from Feartown Haunted House and Factory of Terror in Massachusetts.

6:44 Shaley Mudget with the Fear PDX out of Portland, Oregon and also Vendor RCFX out of Portland. Organ Paggy McLaurin was of Terror Greensboro, North Carolina. Ashley Long with Fright Knights West Virginia and Daniels West Virginia. Alex Rodriguez from Frida Nights at West bom Beach, Florida. Krista Brower Wood wreck Room Haunted House in Idaho, and I'm the current Secretary. Terry Bernstein from the USS Nightmare and Cincinnati and I am the current treasurer. Alan Hops Dark Hour Haunted House in Plano, Texas. And Vendor with Stilpey Studios bred Mollicher Hysterium in for Wayne and I have a confession to make. I accepted a pop and a breakfast burrito from a member today for breakfast in wine. I tried to pay for it, but she wouldn't let me. Thank you for the lady from Virginia.

7:44 Don't worry, guys, We'll deal with that harshly, all right. We'll rethink the nan We'll refink all right. Cool. So once again, it's important that you guys know who we are up here. We want to make sure that you recognize our faces. If you see us through the course of this entire trade show and you got a question, a concern, a thought, Hey, you know, it would be cooler moment hit us up. That is why we're here. We're here to serve this industry. Every person up here is volunteering their time to make this industry stronger. So utilize us. That's what we want moving forward. One of the. Big mile markers that we hit with the Haunted Attraction Association. We have been doing our chaos program, our safety program for a great number of years. Typically you would come to trans Wild, do you take some classes you might be able to pick one or two credits up at Midwest and that's the process for getting Chaos. Over the last year that has changed dramatically. We are now offering obviously the Chaos at Transworld. We went from eight Chaos hours total last year to I believe fourteen Chaos accredited hours this year, which enables our members or those who want to pursue that training ample opportunity to achieve those credits.

8:53 While here at Transworld, we have also gone live with our online resource Chaos, which a little allow you to take Chaos training online. This bet that you can take the. Yeah, you're allowed to take two hours online for your primary, but now the entire research, which is every three years, can be done completely online. You don't have to make the pilgrimage and take the trans World trip just to keep your Chaos current. You can do it in any place that you may find yourself. I know some people want to do it on. The beach, and I endorse that all right. So that is a huge announcement because it's making Chaos more accessible. We also hear from a lot of our owner operators out there that they would love for more of their staff to be able to be Chaos certified to be able to take these safety oriented courses, but unfortunately, taking a pilgrimage of your entire staff to trans world can be a bit problematic and cost prohibitive because of that.

9:55 Last year was our initial offering, we actually went out and held a regional Chaos in conjunction. With the Legendary Haunt Tour. I'm very, very proud to say that we are. Going to again this year offer a regional Chaos course in the Salt Lake City area for the haunts out there. That'll be in conjunction with the Legendary Hant Tour again. We are also currently looking at our different areas and our different regions and we are working on developing regional Chaos classes. So no matter what part of the country you're in, you're never more than a year and a half two years away from a Chaos Credit core class being in your area. Our hope is is that by making our Chaos program more accessible to all of our industry, all of our industry will start engaging with it. Our Chaos Credit program is the benchmark for haunted safety, haunted attraction safety. It is recognized by the insurance industry. It is recognized by state agencies. We are very easy to look up. We offer certification level train. That's a big deal when you're dealing with your local inspectors.

11:03 That's a big deal when you're shopping for insurance. Saying that you took the time and the effort to be safety minded is what kind of changes your ballgame and puts you in that category of haunts that are appealing to insurance agencies. So that is a big deal for us. It was a lot of movement for us, but we have achieved it. It is live and it is moving forward. So I want to thank all the board members who worked on that because it was a collaborative effort. So what else do I have? Can we just jump into Q and A stuff? Right? I missing something? The top points I did chaos.

11:48 Oh, so one of the biggest And this is where we're going to kick off officially, kickoff State of the Industry. Where I said it, I did it right. I normally stay State of the Union. Sorry, We're going to kick off the State of the Industry with a very very pressing issue and I know it's on a lot of owner operator's minds. It has been on the haunted attraction Association's mind from the gate. We were one of the first to kind of learn about this pretty significant trend. But our industry is facing, to coin a bit of a term, a bit of an insurance crisis. We have a multitude of haunted attractions over the last year that lost their insurance at really no fault of their own, and the HAA immediately jumped in.

12:32 We tried to figure out why it was happening, how it was happening. We figured out that there are trends in the insurance industry that are working against our industry. There's trends where people are just targeting our industry as a as a quick payout. And that's because our industry looks like an easy target. I assure you were not. We are not an easy target, but we look like an easy target. Okay. We look like, you know, danger and darkness and peculiar places where you're putting people, all the things that would be a hallmark of oh yeah, lawyer gets hungry when they see that. But we're not a safety minded. Haunt is safer than going to the grocery store statistically, so we are viewing that we reached out to the different insurance companies, we started trying to gauge your pulse of what was going on. And one of the things that the ha is currently working on to help stem this and to help battle back against this is working in conjunction with insurance vendors in the future that would allow the HAA to have almost a sponsored insurance whereas you, as a Haunt owner, would be able to as a member you meet some certain standards, we can make sure that you have insurance that if you're.

13:47 Following the rules, isn't going to just drop you on a whim. It'll be consistent and more importantly, stable insurance coverage that meets your needs for the long term. Okay, And we think that's a huge offering that you know, for something they have to have. So that is something that we're working on. We are still in its infancy, but it's an active project. It's a big project. So we're hopefully excited that next. Year stated the industry did it again, We're going to roll that out to everyone where it's like, wow, this is now something that our industry has that if I meet these safety standards and these reporting standards, I have stable insurance. And I think that's a huge win for our entire industry.

14:32 All right, it's a real practic craft. So I'm going to go through some of our pre selected questions and just start off with some of our pre selected questions before we open up the floor. Since I talked about insurance, Since. I talked about the insurance, I thought it would be really good to open up with a member benefit that we offer. We were asked several times one of the members benefits that is offered by the HAA is a free lawyer benefit. So it's lawyer consultation for members. It's a half an hour. How does that work? What does it do? And I believe I tagged Aaron.

15:12 Yeah, Aaron from Nile's screen Park is going to give us a quick rundown of how you as a member can utilize that feature. I mean, yeah, as a as a member, you get a free thirty minute consultation, and pretty much how it works is you just reach out to the board and that will ping to our legal advisory committee. And there are different attorneys on that legal advisory committee that have obviously different experience, different legal backgrounds, and those that have the most experienced and the most knowledge on that topic that you're seeking we will get back with you on and oftentimes if it needs to be obviously result to that consultation with that individual. And we even have I don't. Recall at the top of my head today, but we also have at if you stop at the booth, you know, twenty twenty three, we have our legal advisory committee there.

16:00 I don't know who's there today at one o'clock one to teens. Who is it today? I think Pete's tomorrow. Yes, someone will be there from one to two today tomorrow. Pete Carlowitz, who was actually the owner of the Nile Screen Park and is he specializes, oddly enough in the States dead people, So not that necessarily that's a topic that you're seeking, but he has a he has a good variety of knowledge. That suits other needs as well. So we're here for you and definitely take advantage of that legal consultation if need be. All right, excellent, Thank you, Thank you so much. Another area of concern that came up this last year in the news, and I know all of us try to keep our fingers on the pulse. When stuff makes the news about our industry, we do tend to take notice.

16:50 And this last year was not the best year for hay rides there was on the eastern side of the United States. There was a couple of different incidents. A lot of them involved the more punk can patch market. But that's our neighbor, you know, haunted attractions and haides. Show hands hay ride operators, who do we have I have enough. I have enough. I have enough that this really matters. So my hay ride operators out there, we were questioned what is available for hay ride safety and hay ride certification. Truth is is, CHAOS hasn't really touched it at all. One of the expansions that we're going to do to the Chaos program is over the next several months we're developing a two hour hay ride safety and operation certification through CHAOS. So there will be a two hour certification of training and safety based information based on industry best practices.

17:45 Once again, it's not like it's going to make something up. It's actually going to be a mirror copy of the very extensive standard that was developed by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture for their hay rides in their state. They never voted it in the law, so it's just sitting there. But we have access to it. This is going to be an incredible resource because then our hay ride operators in our industry are going to say, no, no, no, we we did this right. We have the correct training, we have the correct certification. We didn't we didn't mess up the rules. And I think that's important because once again, you know, I don't believe there's anyone in our industry who doesn't want to do their best by their customers. I think that's we can all agree on that, and giving more tools to all of our members and all of our industry members is really the key to keep that trend going, you know.

18:35 So that's an exciting thing. That we're we're developing for hay rides. Let me see what else we got. Who knows economy, Terris? Any you guys want to talk about the economy real quick? Oh? I have a question? Yes, hi, hi, fine, reason, Thank you so much. Is the hay ride to our course going to be available online so that we can get it before this coming season? It would absolutely be one of the online offerings. Awesome, ye, great question. By the way, I love interaction, So if you want to you want to go, let's go all right another way? Hey, there he is are rare, Howdie Landing complete newbie here.

19:21 Uh if there's a way too, Is there a way that one can just access information to have an idea of who all the board members or people associated with the board members are at any given time, just so we can keep track of. Who is currently in the h a A. Absolutely so. Our website is a wealth of information. It includes our members as well as our board members. So ha dot hanted Attraction Assation, hauntedd Attraction Association dot com. And once again, we are you know, an association. We are a nonprofit, so all of our stuff is available. We want you guys to know us. We'll want you to know what we offer. And the website is one of the greatest resources we have because it's like the roadmap.

20:04 It kind of shows you where everything else is. The website, for those of you who are members, is also the portal to getting to the members area, which is packed to the gills with resources. We have a documents library, need a handbook, We got a handbook, you know, like it is. It is really a wealth of things for you anybody else. Have on the web? Okay, yep, I have one more. I think one of the benefits of our board as well is it's a great question, thank you, is because you essentially all elect us, and so part of the vetting process of even getting on the board is there's a pretty extensive skills analysis, and so that also was available, so where it has all of our names and what there's like thirty forty different skill sets and we rank ourselves zero to three zero not at all three expert.

20:53 So in that way you know specifically who to contact for what specific skill or knowledge or question you have as well. So that's on our website as well as on our social media. And thank you Spencer for reminding me about the skills the skills outline, because that allows you, Oh I have this problem, you look on the website, look at the skills outline and be like, I. Need to call Ben. I need to speak with Ben, because Ben does exactly what I need help with. It just narrows down and makes the process of finding help that much more efficient. Go for it. Jim, my name is Pete Clelowitz. I worked on a committee a few years ago, and so I want everybody here to know and the board to know as well, who's ever going to work on that.

21:38 Hay ride thing. There is a standard that has been adopted Aaron, what's the name of that. I don't know the name. What is it. ASTM is a national organization and they did adopt it after probably four or five years of a committee working on it. So that's just a heads up for you and the other people. I think normal people have to belong to that organization or it'll cost you money to view it. But they have a waste website. So thatt your heads up. Excellent, Thank you, good, good good. We have another kind of general question, and I'm hoping it'll generate some back and forth.

22:22 Someone was asking us how is AI being integrated into your attraction standards, marketing and that sort of stuff, And I want to maybe give it to Alan on Ai because I believe his thoughts are just so pertinent. I remember the last year at the State of the Union in Alan I'm bringing you, Mike Ellen said, quote unquote, it is a disservice to yourself if you are. Not using AI. So I just want to thank Hellen for saying that last year, because that pushed our hol On into using AI. At this point, saying I don't like AI, I'm not going to use it about the same thing as saying I don't like the sun, I'm not going to use it, because whether you know it or not, it's already being used on you, and you're already helping to feed it.

23:14 AI is a giant term that means one hundred little things. What we have to worry about, what we have to focus on is the apps that can help us. Right when chat GPT came out a little over two years ago, I was an early adopter right off the bat. Chat GPT is an LLM. It's a large language, large language model, and what it basically does is you give it a series of words and it figures out what the next series of words ought to be. It doesn't have all the answers, but it has read a lot of stuff. So what it gives you back isn't necessarily the right answer, but it's what is most likely to come back from your info.

24:05 All right. Why that's important is that it's learning from you the whole time that you're using it. I would dare to say that my chat GPT that I use on my account is a hearder attraction design expert. Because I use it all the time, I can bounce ideas off of it. I want to be able to see everybody's face when I say this okay, because this is so important and it's huge, and it's one of the things that made me click like I need this. I can bounce ideas off of it. It can give me ideas and I can say your ideas suck it's feelings doesn't get hurt, and immediately immediately it says, how about this, how about this? How about this? Okay? And it's only getting better.

25:00 But I have the way that I'm feeding mine in the way that I'm using chat GPT for design work. For you know, there are things that I just don't want to do. If I'm doing a factory haunted house, I can quickly hop into chat GPT and say, what are the most common rooms in areas in factories? What is the most common rooms? What rooms are in a nuclear power plant? If that's the haunt that I'm doing, What rooms are in a sawmill? What areas do they have? What are they called? It already knows it like it has sped up my research one hundred times. So that's one thing, right, But there's there's other apps that you can use for AI that you might walk around your haunted house with your phone and take a forty five minute video. You then feed that forty five minute video into any number of different apps. They're all over the place for this, and it's gonna pull out seven second snippets, ten second snippets, quotes, moments, guest reactions, and you can ask, I want every clip of people screaming in this video, and then it pulls out and makes them into separate clips that you can then turn into tiktoks that you can then turn into whatever for social media. Okay, the tools are out there. All that you have to do is ask online. I'm looking for an AI tool that

26:33 does this, and it'll give it to you. There are AI song generators. So one of the first things that I did. My Haunt is a fantasy themed show. I've got twelve witches. One of them is a sea witch. I had it generate me a sea shanty about my sea witch. I had it generate, you know, a song for every single witch. They have their own songs. This is important. I did not create ate that, and I cannot copyright or trademarket any AI art. You cannot copy your trademark. I highly urge you to look at the AI AR generators that you're using, and make sure that it says it's ethically sourced AI, meaning everything it was trained on gave permission. I have a YouTube channel and that YouTube channel has seven hundred hours of Haunted House how to videos.

27:29 I actually just signed a contract last week with a company who is training their AI on my videos because it's people doing things and that is what AI needs to learn about. So there is ethically sourced AI. It's not all stolen art. And fighting. It is like fighting the sun or fighting waves at the beach. You know it's coming, it's here. Find a way to ride the wave. That's that's what I'm saying. If you want help with specific tools, then you know, feel free to ask me, feel free to reach out, but also just search. Okay, big stuff, and I have a lot of AI tips in my sixty one and sixty class that I'm doing on specific things.

28:17 So you have a question on the crowd, mister Hopps, just on the thing over here are bell guy on where you're just saying. On the music creation a my day job, the boring one. I work with a lot of ascap bea my you know, music licensing stuff and I had looked into the AI apps for producing music, which they're getting close that quite there, but they're they're getting really good at least they're definitely good enough for a lot of what we do. But the question I'm asking is, I don't have the information on this, but I just kind of read a little bit about this before coming here and haven't had time to really do research. But it seemed like there's a lot of question and regulation concerned coming around on that music side of it, that there might be some performance licensing it US based around AI generated music and sound, And I wanted to see if you and I have no more information besides that headline, see if you had heard anything about this.

29:23 I'm actually familiar with that one too. Uh. Absolutely, there's because AI is here, AI has come, there's going to be a lot more regulation coming on every single front. What I had just mentioned about you can't copyright or trademark AI art. It's a bad idea to have AI design your logo because then you don't you can't actually own that. You know, you can use it to generate fifteen ideas and then you narrow it down and you do your own art based off of that, Right, and that's going to you know, speed up the time to do it. But as far as the ASCAP and BMI, that litigation is coming. But every almost every single AI entity, every app has.

30:07 A pro and a free use. Free use. You're only not allowed to use whatever is generated for commercial There is a layer of protection. I don't know how long it will last. I don't know what it will be in the future. But if you if you pay for the service and it specifies that you're allowed to use it for commercial use, then you have a degree of coverage until the law says otherwise. Yeah, and just the follow stuff for everybody else. If you don't know about licensing, you really need to make sure you understand the difference between performance licensans, Like if you're playing something at hont versus something that's attached to a video playing at your haunt versus something that might be.

30:47 Uh, you know, private public. There's there's a very wider range of licensing for music content. Yeah, just just a segue, because that is its own, unique individual topic. The U licensing industry in the last eighteen months suddenly seems to be very aware of our industry. They are, I'm saying, being probably much more aggressive hunting and looking for use of protected songs and music that they normally wouldn't have found because we're seasonal part time, we're there and gone, were there like the circus. But now they are seeing our industry. They are recognizing that our industry, for a great number of years has been broadly using a lot of licensed material, and now they're starting to crash in. But in regards to the ARII side of it, let's remember that the AI generated music, if it remains something that they're unable to cash in on, it.

31:46 Will put them out of business. They will no longer exist because anytime I want to use something in my show, I tell AI what I wanted to kind of sound like, and suddenly something brand new that didn't exist yesterday exists and I can use it without a ramifications. They have a vested interest in not letting that happen, so just they are going to be fighting very diligently for that. I've read an article on that specifically that they are finding every loophole everything they can do to stop the use of commercial AI generated music because they don't care. Cut. So all right, let me see here I have Sorry, I'm trying to keep it moving.

32:26 So quick, show hands. I know we have oh there is my phone. I know we have operators, I know we have owners. I know we have some actors. I know we have some staff members. We've got a whole plethora of people here. Quick, shehll of hands, because I'm sure we took polls, but I love this type of poll. Who's Haunted good this year? Who had a good season? I wrote, by whatever rulebric you decide, because for me, yeah, we made some money, but my staff was happy. That's a good season. My customers were happy. That's a good season. So it looks I mean, it looks like a pretty Uh, don't be don't be shy, because you know what. The next question is, whose Haunt didn't do to well this year? All right, fair, fair, And once again I feel it because all of us have experienced those down years. But I think, you know, this is a very impromptu cross section of our industry. In this room, I saw a lot of good how how many people just it was just it is what it is. It was even we didn't know, not really good, not really bad. Okay, Okay, I'm gonna be honest for you guys. Take that you know what I mean, not good, not bad.

33:30 We'll take that. This last year, when we were pulling and talking to different haunts, we did notice that a lot of haunts were a little down. The number that were way down wasn't as prevalent as some other years. I mean, obviously COVID kind of skewed all of the results forever when we pulled the cold COVID year. But we're noticing the trend that a lot of people just kind of status quo. Some people did pretty good and some people didn't do too well. The catastrophic loss category was somewhat small. Where it's not this was terrible. There were natural disasters this season. You know, the entire mountain community North Carolina was basically wiped out. Any haunts down there were wiped out. Anybody in the room from.

34:14 That area, God bless you. Seriously. Yeah nice, but I mean, I know there's haunts down there that didn't open. It may never open again because of that. And then let's add in the factor. No matter what side of the political aisle you fall under, election years almost universally are terrible for us. I'd like to blame a lot of it on the marketing cycle. People just don't want to hear. I don't want to deal with this anymore. They're not paying attention, they're checked out because it's just a barrage of information all the time from September till November, which is our peak season. Opening the floor up.

34:55 Anybody have economic questions, tariff questions, thoughts about the industry's economic outlook. Anybody have any thoughts? Any of my board members want to comm out. I've got one up front, boom, thank you for. Raising your hand. Tia from Skeleton Acres in Arkansas slash Missouri. Very small haunt. But from the experts in this room behind me and in front of me, what is one way that you're going to save money? How can you take some overhead out in a year where I think a lot of us feel like it's going to be either status quo or slightly down because of just the way the economic world is right now? Where can we cut costs? And where would you do it first? Anybody want to jump on it.

35:44 So the easiest way obviously to cut cost Every year, my biggest expense is labor. So if you have time, you're able to design your haunt it a way where actors can cover multiple scenes. I do a daisy method for my show, which is imagine an actor box where there's two actors in it, and the guests are moving towards that actor box to go down the hallway, they turn a corner, they go back to the actor box. At the end of every daisy, you have a visual thing where you have an animation. But that movement means that the guests are moving a lot more than your actors, So you can use less actors to get as many or more impacts. So just a little bit of a redesign to use less labor is a big one. Marketing should have gotten cheaper for everyone because is everybody still doing billboards? You know, people aren't doing newspaper anymore. But it's a matter of focusing and targeting your marketing on your customers. And I hate to talk about AI again, but AI is what allows you to figure out who your audience is and then you figure out how your customers are. Make thirty different profiles of customers. Think about when you're standing there, you're watching them leave your exit lobby, when you're looking at your line, who are those people?

37:17 Is that a Indian family with two kids? That's a customer profile is that a couple in their forties, that's a profile, and then you target those people when you're marketing, make a different profile for everybody and assign your content to go two people like that. One of the things that I do every years I put in I have a large, high end show. Right I'm a fifty dollars ticket, and so what I do is anybody in my area within two hours who have looked up Halloween horr nights, maybe they can't afford to go this year, but they can go to my show, which I want to put on the same quality. So if they search for Halloween horror nights, my stuff will come up. So it's a matter of targeting your marketing. If you want to spend less, you want to be precision target.

38:13 And if I want to segue in on it as well, cutting crew is always an option. But I'd like to remind everybody one of the free options that every owner operator has is developing procedures and standards that make their show more efficient. Everyone can do that and it's going to cost you nothing. Making it where your workers have a uniform and easy check in and check out policy so we're not bleeding the clock fifteen minutes on each end, making sure that their training standards are such that they're not breaking props every night, and that's a cost. Making sure that your crew's not messing with your fog and suddenly we blew through an extra one hundred gallons of fog. Those are all costs that we don't think about on the surface, But when you're looking at the overall budget of a year, properly trained crew with good policies and procedures will lower your late profile and you're building equipment profile, so those numbers drop, and that can be a yearly drop where you're just being more efficient, and then you get the real cost of your show. This is what it costs like when we're not breaking stuff, we're not running a home depot because something broke and I have to spend two hundred dollars on a fix.

39:15 That all adds up for the owner operator. So efficiency policies and procedures definitely, anything body can do that. Anybody want to add any more? Making me undo this? Give me a mic, don't. All right? I read a coument? How many people in the room know how much costs. You to open the door on any night of your haunt within a hookup hundred dollars, all right, If you don't, you need to, and then you can start working on costs. You can figure out bil is it good to open out a Thursday if I'm not bringing in enough revenue. I do that all the time. And every time you do an ad, make sure it's trackable specifically to what you're doing, because we did well.

40:03 We did newspaper ads twenty some years ago. We had a new whole new theme and stuff. So we advertised in like twenty three newspapers in the area, and every newspaper had coupon, but they all had something specifically on that coupon, a couple of letters or something we could differentiate. So really quickly we figured out which newspapers we got no coupons back from, and we went on it down for the next several years. And then you know, eleven years ago and I bought the Hysterium, which was a haunted cave at the time. I got the newspaper budget by ninety percent. Because nobody's reading newspapers anymore. My sixteen year old daughter at the time, I said, how often you read newspapers? She said, Dad, I've never read a newspaper, the comics on Sunday and the sale flyers with Mom and we don't even get the Sunday paper anymore.

40:54 Jim overar, Yep, go ahead. I'm not sure if this is an overly broad question or not, but in terms of certain trends in theming or attraction qualities that would be profitable or unprofitable, there has anything particularly noteworthy happened over the course of twenty and twenty four it's worth mentioning. So I can say affirmatively yes. But I think Spencer because he's the one who really kind of brought it up to me and made me, let go, oh wow about the idea, Spencer, if you'd like to expand on it of haunted houses that offer that extra bit, that little extra something, and we'd spoken on that, the places that we're gearing towards Screen Park and the whole night out experience, if you want to.

41:37 Yeah, it's something I'll be talking about a little bit later on in my Part one and Part two seminars tomorrow. But as you look at additional revenue, I think. Where we're seeing in the industry, it's something actually Philip Pronounce from a part attraction Network reported on a couple of times as well, So thanks Peiel. Phillip was that we're seeing this really unique trend that people and certainly from open certainly from what we see on the floor as well, and how people are buying, is that people are wanting not just that one single event, they want an entire night's experience. So rather than just you come to a show, it's a one hundred house broom, you're done, and that's it and you go home, Like, find other ways to keep them on your property.

42:18 If that's you know, look at the additional income. It might be merch. It might be like setting up a bunch of just photo ops and at the end of the day use them to market you. So I think all of those things are going to keep them on your property longer, they get to have a better experience. Everyone at this point wants to tell everybody else about what they did and what nobody else got to do. So use that to your advantage to make sure that people are essentially getting their money to you and they're doing it safely all the time. Yeah, just to piggyback off of that a little bit show of hands. How many people have a horror merch shop at their haunt right now. Okay, the folks who don't you need to. This year we had a major power outage on our second busiest night of the year, which probably in some ways could have sank us, that could have hurt us. And we opened up a horror shop this year, twenty by thirty horror shop. It made that loss plus so much more simple. I mean, so if you don't have a horror shop right now in terms of revenue, I highly recommend adding one.

43:25 I have one over here, Ben, do you want to? Okay, I'd like it when. Guys should talk. Patrick from Legends of the Fog. I just had a couple of questions about your guys' preseason training programs. So one, I'm curious how much time are you putting in with your employees and your preseason training programs, how much of that is paid, and how much of that is on them to complete on their own time. I'll just do it real quick and then I'll pass off to on your board members. We actually do trigging all year round. We call it everhunt yousity. So every month for our team, we do trainings, whether it's leadership training, whether it's an actor training throughout the off season to keep people engaged. That's all year round, and then obviously we have our orientation for everybody, our safety meetings.

44:13 And things like that. That's sort of the things that we do. We keep our employees engaged all year round, so that way, it's all voluntary. I'm in New York State, so. They are absolutely paid, so we're going to press over my. Yeah, we do a similar thing. We've been doing it now for the last two years, where we do a lot of training throughout the year. Really every month, we'll have. Two or three different events. Every last Friday of the month, we have an improv night and we have a couple of our actors that are really good at improv, and most of our actors show up, which is crazy. Most of the things you do in the off season are not paid. Everybody comes because they just love to be there and they just learn a lot from it. But we have at least two events a month, and then once we start doing our training and orientation part opening, we'll leave. From the point that you get hired after auditions, everything after that is paid. Everything in the off season is not is all volunteer.

45:12 It's always funny to do this because I like to have power for saying it. How many people do a dress rehearsal before you open full show lights, actors, if you're not doing it, do it it is you are going to see your show how your customers see it. You're able to correct things on the spot. Someone you have to split it up between multiple nights even just because it takes too long to try to fix everything, and you know, give all the coaching specifically their question. We do a one We do about three four hours of safety training, so we go through fire drills, we go through how to use a fire extinguisher, how to deal with aggressive guests one night and then the following night we do the dress rehearsal. So we build that in and that is all paid in our attraction.

46:00 So at dark hour, we've actually moved a lot of our orientation type stuff to online where we have videos that were made by well, you know, my directors at the show, and then they have to watch the video. There's a little quiz that they do afterwards to make sure that they hit some key points, and there's like sixty questions, but those questions rotate, so you know, they can't just share answers back and forth between each other, and that has greatly sped up my on site training. Because I'm not doing necessarily all of the safety how to use a fire extinguisher, a lot of that is done at home. We still end up doing a lot of We do a fire drill. We do from every spot in the haunt. I want you to be able to find two things. Fire exit, bathroom. I don't know about your haunt, but I lose actors, like physically lose them when they leave their spot that they're in for the first time to go to the bathroom and don't know how to get back.

47:12 They end up standing in the whine out front. And while while that seems a little ridiculous it happens to YouTube, it does so you know, if it's if it's their first time there, they have to find those couple things. And I also encourage exercises like hide and seek inside of the haunt because it just helps people know the layout, it helps them learn what the show is like. So that's another option. But if someone has to be a training, it's made. If they want to be a training, then it's not. We have a we have stilt walkers and sliders at my show. You have to have a certain number of hours of training to do that. It pays more. So I don't pay them to get their training because I'm going to pay them more when they are certified by US.

48:06 I'll have to find out and tell you. Yeah, all right. When I bought my second hand eleven years ago, they. Came to me and said, can we play Hide and Seek? And I said, okay, Look, any problems. They said, well, only in Cody. Only when Cody and Jim. Had got naked one night. It's okay. No alcohol for miners because I'm not going to jail for anybody, and no nakedness, okay. But hide and Seek is a great way for them to learn the haunt perfect way. It's great especially if you would have an emergency and lose power, or there's some smoke or you got too much fog. They can they can feel their way out. They know it. So and this year what we're going to do is we're going to take on a little bit what Alan's doing.

48:50 You know, a lot of times we have a rumor, a scene that we'd like to have do designed to have the actor know a certain way to do it, how to you know how it gets the best reaction. And so this year we're going to do some videos with our best actors doing that room and have a QR code so that if somebody says, well, I've never worked that room, here, watch his watch the video and just scan his QR code and watch couple minute video. So I have we'll take questions from before. I have one last submitted question, and this question I'm going to have to point towards our vendor board members. This is from a new vendor and they're wondering how they can make an imprint and splash within our industry. Are what are some strategies they can use to help grow their reputation?

49:38 That's you guys. Sorry, everybody talks. I know, at least for our CFX being on the board, it has allowed me and my team to gear our products towards what you guys need and longevity of makeup and longevity of the stage bloods and stuff like that for your guys' use. And so being able to get to know you guys on a better level allows me to then gear my products towards what you guys need. Excellent answer. Yeah, So. One tip I always gave is listen to people complain.

50:22 Can you find a way to solve what they're complaining about? That's that's number one. I'm going to be a little bit preachy here for a second, and everybody's shocked. As a vendor, it frustrates me when vendors ask what should I make? What should I make for haunts? What? What do? What do haunts want? What I want from vendors? And what I try to do is I want to make things that I think are fascinating. I think that are exciting, and maybe I think that they're what's next. You know, you're not always going to hit, but one of the best things that you can do to attract customers people is be uniquely yourself. If you're copying someone else's product or style, and a lot of people fool themselves and say that they're not, but if you're if you're copying someone else's product or style, then you're really not being yourself and you are actually denying the industry and your customers what you have to offer because and don't ask haunts because they're going to see something on the show floor.

51:42 If you say what do you want, they're gonna say I want that. Two hundred dollars cheaper. Of course they want that, but it's our job as vendors to make things that they don't know that they want, and that's going to amaze them. That's not easy. It's not an easy answer. But try to look at what is what's that next step over the line. As far as design, I have many times I've misstepped and I've gone two steps over the line too far. No one wants that. But if you're only one step over the line. Okay, that's next, and that's leading in a direction. Everybody wants direction. Haunts come here and they look and they see a product, and what do they love about it?

52:24 They love that it's a direction. I see that animatronic and in my head it fills out the details of the room. I see that wall treatment, and in my head it fills out the characters that are going to be in it. If they're looking for direction, So have products that direct, not just show up and you know, take up space. Really lead them in a direction with what you're selling. And that's going to be a brave choice, but I think that's the best way to go. But what makes a good haunted house? You can tell theres a director and I go through it, and I know what they care about out. I know it's important to those people when I go through their haunted house, you know, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I know they just like to buy stuff at trans World because's the same stuff I've seen in another Haunt. And that's okay. But you know, work on that direction, whether it's from a haunt standpoint or vendor standpoint. Be able to give direction with the products that you have, because that's going to inspire and lead their show down to success.

53:32 Hi. I also would suggest that I've noticed this year a lot of the exhibitors are not taking contact information when you buy something or getting a scan or getting a business card. So there's some basic marketing thing that I think a lot of the exhibitors could do to help build their audience. They can stay in touch, they can contact you again, because I'm going to see five hundred vendors six you know, whoever I'm talking to, and I'm not going to remember everyone does that follow up with me? Are ones I'm likely to buy from. So I think that there's a make your booth interactive, give something away, just like you would do at any trade show, and make yourself stand out at the trade show. It's going to get everybody's attention to look at your products. So that's my opinion. Get your customer data, build a database with your customers.

54:23 Follow up big time. To add to that. Also, if you're a new vendor, don't overextend yourself. If you can't make enough product and you're telling me you're. Going to get it to me by April and you don't get it to me till September, I'm not buying from you again. I'll be honest. It's because I need it by April. So don't overextend yourself as a new vendor. That's one of the things that we've seen in the industry, and. Don't do that. So at this time, the floor is completely open to you are a magnificent State of the Industry attendees. So if there is a thought and idea something you'd like to bring to the room into this panel up front, would love to hear. I already got a hand up. That's awesome, good good, he's coming with the mic.

55:08 This's actually just kind of about the meeting it self, kind of new to doing the whole process in HAA. When I see he stated the industry. I was wondering if we obviously were not at this point in the meeting, but we're for future meetings, or maybe this is on your website talking about like the state of the industry, like what numbers are looking like with the tenants is looking like, where things are going and other you hit on some other early on you hit on some very big topics. But like I just did the free seminar about the industry insurance and the risk that's coming from lawsuits and that to me, the way they put scared the Bejesus out of me. Seems like it's state of the industry. Everybody needs to know what's going on with insurance and lawsuits and things like that.

55:52 But wondering if you guys are. Kind of tracking overall health of the industry and numbers and metrics. We absolutely are. We evolve and progress with strategic planning typically about every two years to build so all of our members know where we're headed. Let's be honest, it should scare you. I'm being honest. When a group of lawyers get together for their trade show and their classes are about how to sue us, that's an issue and that's the reality of what's happening outside of our industry with the litigant industry, they feel that they can target us, and it is our responsibility as a board, as an industry, and as an association to combat that thought. And we are combating that thought the expansion of our safety programs.

56:44 I would say realistically, we have doubled our safety programs. We have expanded our document libraries to make sure that if someone says, well, does that say it in your handbook? Of course it says it in my handbook. My handbook was vetted and given to me by credible people. The resources that we're banding on and working closely with our friends in the insurance industry to make sure that we're presenting the strongest face possible and making sure that as many haunted attractions are presenting the strongest face possible. There's a lot to learn, you know. I'm gonna be doing a seminar in like two hours exclusively on how to make your attraction look better to an insurance company. That's a lesson like, we're aware, and we are we're prepared to fight for you and with you whatever storm comes.

57:36 Thank you. So just going off that, have you seen a higher rise in like having designed contracts for going into a haunt, even just for a no touch walk through. You're asking specifically about waivers because as well, it's not even I mean, any lawyer is going to tell you to have a waiter, But most insurance companies are switching to the idea that if you you should have a waiver. A lot of people you'll hear that back and foot, Well, the waiver doesn't actually do anything. I assure you, the wave matters. The waiver helps extend the idea of assumption of liability and gives it confirmation if you will. So that that is the crux of the entire issue, is that we have to present ourselves that our customers are aware of what they're about to experience and are choosing to experience it. So, yes, waivers, if you have the ability, do them, if you're already doing them.

58:27 Make sure they're good. Make sure it's a good waiver. You don't want to have three pages of legal lease. They'll tear that apart. You need simple language outlining the possible hazards and that the person who's entering is agreeing that they exist and they're okay with it. You have examples on the website. Sure do I yeah, we can definely send you one. Just being a haunt that wasn't required to have a waiver, we added it. And when we did it, our fellow haunts around our market, uh looked at us like, oh, you're crazy, your lines are ready to get backed up. We didn't care. It was about making sure that we were protecting ourselves. Shortly after a year later, now everybody in our market followed our waivers and it doesn't create lines. So if you're worried about that, don't worry about that.

59:12 Oh waivers check in waivers. I'll be honest with you that we are at the close of this, but that is a conversation that if you come to our booth, we would love to talk that out with you. On the efficient deployment of waivers in your system. There are several different models that do work. Yes, you to see me after. We have ours on our online ticketing system. So we actually have them signed two waivers, both of them they checked before they're buy the ticket and at the ticket booth. But I could walk you through how we if we never have align at all. So and I'm going to give it to us. So we use Labette Insurance with Kim right here. We just renewed our insurance and we can't even renew our insurance unless we present her with a waiver. The insurance company will not renew us. She has so many different underwriters.

59:55 But they all want to see the waiver and you have to have that waiver. As far as as how you know, the throughput or whatever. We use Spear Ticket as well, and they have just integrated smart Waiver with their ticketing company, so that. Has helped a lot. And we have a ton of QR codes as soon as you walk up to the front of our ticket booth that say scan this QR code for your waiver. You cannot enter our ticket booth, our ticket area without signing the waiver. We have security there to check those waivers. Yes, it's a pain in the ass, but unfortunately we have to do it. The lawsuits these years, they're getting insane. You know, you can take Timmer and Billy Grinville's you know classes, they're free seminars and those talk to you.

1:00:38 They do have seminars. The lawyers do have seminars about sealing haunted houses. And you know, we were sued last year and it was both times, same law firm, so you have to get the waivers. So, unfortunately we've come to a close on our availability to take more questions. Man, time flies when you're talking haunt right. I'm now going to give the four back to Spencer so he can wish you well and give you guys some updates about things that are happening today. So mister Spencer, terry, great questions. Thank you. I think the nice thing is that we had some questions that came in, but there's obviously more. This is why we're here, This is why the board also staffs booth two zero two three twenty twenty three.

1:01:22 Please come by, ask your questions. This this is what we do. So a couple of announcements really quick. Number one for those of you that are here for chaos or for safety. Who wants to hang on to that so you can come up and get that scanned. Number two again, things to still be studios and Alan coffee finally arrived yay, so. Please make sure that you take three cups of coffee with him. We also have Alan. Thanks for the reminder. The Statler Room for those of you that have been to the Marriott Bar or the Marriot Mez. There's also now the Marriot Metz two point zero, which is the Statler Room. That room is pretty great. It's got its own staff bar as well, but it's a great space just for mingling networking as board members. The Hunter's Action Association is sponsoring that room with Transworld and with Jen and rich and so I think that's been really exciting to help continue to grow that component as well. We're there for more networking as well.

1:02:14 Lastly, I call this the proof in the pudding. A lot of folks have asked me as far as you know, like, what's going to happen now that you're not president anymore? As you can see, nothing's changing. That's the reality. I think the team is ready to go on the strategic plan. We're already a year in on what has been done already by the board. It's been really exciting for me as we actually have had an entire year transition. We started looking at, you know, who do we want to as a board, who did we want to roluct to be able to move on to the future. And we've had a really great succession plan and training plan for the last year. So I shout out to the Board. I literally have done probably ten percent of my job this year, and they have done It's been amazing. So shout out to all the board. Thank you all for being amazing. For those of you. If you have more questions, please come ask. Thanks for being in trans World.

1:03:00 It's great to have you here. We'll see everyone back of the booth. 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 Hauntathon. 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 d'antum dot com slash demo. 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 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 Paliocchini.

1:04:05 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 Hantattraction Network dot com. We'll catch you back here tomorrow and every day until Halloween. Until next time, stay scary. This is a Haunted Attraction Network production.