Feedback on complaints please

[thehauntgr]

Fellow Haunters,

I am trying to gather feedback regarding customers. I am fully aware that we cannot and will not please everyone. I also know that 'as a whole', the compliments far outweigh the complaints (or at least they better be or you have big problem)

With that, will you please take a moment to comment on this thread? What is/are the most common "complaints" owners or management hears from paying customers?
*price?
*wait time?
*bottlenecks/trains?
*wasn't scary?
*too short?
*same as last year/didn't change?
*last year was better?
*other: plz describe...

Thank you for any feedback!

Jim

[eanderso13]

Complaints

Most common I heard in the haunt I helped with the last two years, in rough order from most frequent to less frequent:

Wait time
We caught up to a group/A group caught up to us
Its more expensive than last year (price increase was only $2.)
It was mostly the same as last year

Since I was not the owner, I had little say in changing anything to help with these (Other than the last one. But we added an entire second attraction last year, so the changes to the first attraction were mostly subtle. We were also constrained by the fact that the haunt is in 5 single-wide trailers.). As I work to open my own attraction this year I am looking at many ways to try and combat those first two.

[thehauntgr]

Feedback

Hi Eric,
Thanks for taking the time to offer feedback. I appreciate it!!
At least one person did out of 99 views....(SMH)
J

[drfrightner]

There is only ONE CLEAR winner... wasn't scary. And if ANY haunter says they haven't heard this complaint they're flat out liars.

You can go to any haunts facebook page and look at a bevy of reviews and almost all the complaints are not scary.

But why? Well because when you're Netherworld for example and you cram thru thousands of people over 5 hours how can you scare people. I'm only using them as an example. I went to Universal Horror Nights did I get scared AHHHH NO! One actor after another pressing a foot peddle ... yes it works on some people but not most.

I'm can 100% guarantee that if I go to 13th Gate to Netherworld to Knotts Scary Farm to whatever and you go on the busiest nights no one is even coming close to scaring me or even 50% of the customers at all... so with that being said we as an industry focus on entertainment.

Staying with Netherworld now... do they scare even 50% of their customers on their busiest nights I would not even entertain the idea they do. But do they do an amazing job of making up for it by entertaining people? Ahhh yea... they have videos playing outside, they have a parking lot of amazing actors running around some making you laugh and or just fun to watch the people they do scare. Now lets move to the show itself amazing monsters, costumes, cool stuff happening everywhere... the list goes on.

So the point is this... lets say 50% of the people are getting scared to some degree, then there is another lets say 30% who didn't get scared but LOVED the entertainment of the entire experience. So that leaves 20% of the people who think wasn't that great... if we break down that 20% the number 1 is going to be didn't get scared.

Why do they come? To get scared. What didn't happen? They didn't get scared. So what is the number one complaint? Didn't get scared. I would argue this is 99% of every complaint because you can roll into this the complaint that everyone was bunched up together, they let people in too fast, or even they let people in to slow (why to help with the scares). One way or another everything is tied to just one thing... SCARING PEOPLE!

So KNOWING 110% you can NOT NOT NOT NOT scare everyone you MUST MUST MUST entertain people. Getting back to say a 13th Gate or Netherworld or even Universal Studios did they do everything in their power to entertain you? YES YES YES! In fact I'll go on to say Universal couldn't scare me if I went thru 100 times probably... but did I love it all the same? OH YES! I find Universal as they best even in the country hands down... no they dont' scare everyone but they make it up by producing the biggest Halloween event ever produced. Maybe you jumped twice and that isn't worth 65 dollars but the shows, the live entertainment, the production, everything now makes up your rating not just scares.

But remember people come to get scared so when they don't for whatever the reason they rate you poorly end of story.

The moral of the story here is simple... do what Netherworld does, 13th Gate or The Darkness and produce an amazing overall entertainment experience. The ones who do it best do the most customers IE: 13th Gate, Netherworld, Universal and the list goes on. So not bashing any haunt merely stating a flat out fact... you can't scare people at the rate of your first Monday night as your busiest Saturday night in October. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE... so all the complaints will stem from that. SO AGAIN ENTERTAIN ON EVERY SINGLE LEVEL!

Larry

[hauntfarm]

I agree with Larry so not to beat that horse dead let me offer another. I think one of the biggest complaints is either we let them in to fast or to slow. On busy needs we speed it up and get complaints, on slow nights we go slower we get complaints. Seems like there is no winning here.

[thehauntgr]

Feedback

Thank you for the insight Larry and HauntFarm! I appreciate your time.
Jim