If you build it, will they come?

[Headstone Media]

True Jim, the entertainment industry isn't what it once was, but that is mostly because of the extreme high budgets with CGI, high dollar actors and enormous costs to give the audience the "wow" factor. This isn't to say though they still aren't making a huge profit. For example, in the gaming world, where much of our business comes from, the have many titles that are considered a loss before the game is even produced.

The reason they do the titles is for a few reasons, good graces with the studios, plans for multiple titles, like Ice Age, Ice Age 2, etc, and to find something that may be a hit. For example, World of Warcraft is a HUGE money maker - but most of the other games Sierra makes (Blizzards parent company) either break even or loose money.

So I suppose in a way it is like a venture capitalist, they throw money at a ton of stuff and hope something hits big.

In terms of the Haunt Industry, while I am sure profits will be off like all other businesses this year, they will feel less impact than others - at least I hope. Plus, I am sure the target audience for a haunt (forgive my lack of knowledge on it) is between 13 to 30. This demographic seems to spend even in tough economic times because they have less responsibility. It is just convincing them as you said to spend it on getting scared over getting drunk!

[Jolly Pumpkin]

During the Fall season people are in the mood for going to haunted houses or seeing horror movies and this will most likely never change. If you're known for having a great haunt you'll more than likely get plenty of business from those who live within at least an hour of your haunt and especially those that are real close by. I honestly don't think that the rising gas prices will have that big effect on people visiting haunts. But I can see this effecting some of the top haunts in the United States that get tons of press. The people who lived hours away from these haunts drove the distance to tour these haunts, but will be more reluctant to do so this year.

But as I said before if you have a great haunt people will more than likely visit you first and then the others. But the high gas prices may help out inferior haunts that are near yours. After someone is finished touring your haunt they don't want to spend tons of gas money going to one that's 30 min-1hr away so they may just decide to visit the haunt that's only 5 minutes from yours even though it may be pretty pathetic. It's convenient and will cost less driving too instead of the incredible haunt they wanted to visit that's an hour away. I don't know anything about your haunt to say if you should raise your price or not. You could maybe think of raising the price of parking just a little and that may help with the loss of customers which I doubt you'll have a loss of.