Hauntcon Reports

[Patti Ludwinski]

For the record, I am not a photographer for HauntWorld Magazine. I am a SALES REP for HauntWorld Magazine. I was taking those pics with my own little camera to show Larry pics of the show he missed. That's all. Larry never asked me to take pics for the upcoming magazine or anything. Larry didnt give me his high-powered camera to take pics with. If that's what he wanted, he shouldve communicated that to me. So I'm off the hook! LOL.

Patti

[Monster-Tronics]

National sham

There is a popular tradeshow seminar that goes around the country doing presentations and about the first slide they put up is one that says “Tradeshows with national in the title bring is more buyers”.

Gee wonder if they attended that seminar???? lol

[xxxdirk]

This was my third hauntcon. I have been to Michigans, and the Texas/NewOrleans one last year. I have also been to TW in Chicago & in St Louis and I have been to MHC 2-3 times.

I think LP puts on a good convention. Was it as big as Chicago or St Louis, NO. Did I learn more than in St Louis? Heck yes!! I am not willing to pay $40-$50 for a single seminar at St Louis unless it is a hell of a seminar. I attended a handfull of seminars and bought stuff at the show. The tours were great, my only complaint at many of them was the VERY long wait. I mean, I know it is because haunters go through at a snails pace, but sometimes they had 5 min between groups.

The costume ball seemed to bea lot of fun. I say seemed like it because I had to leave early due to a prior commitment, but from what I saw the costumes were great and the party was getting into mid gear when I left at 10.

Len & Jen are one of the reasons I like Hauntcon. Len is a great guy and actually goes out of his way to say hi and talk to people, something I find very cool, especially with everything he has going on.

There were some new vendors and some with smaller booths, but I still found some cool props I had overlooked at St Louis, or some I decided I had to have after St Louis.

I decided to attend the Bad Boys class on Monday, the all day seminar and it was well worth the money and I would strongly suggest for all to take it. They built a 8x12' tomb complete with distressed skeletons and mini spotlights. I picked up quite a few new ideas I had not thought of. At the end of the seminar they auctioned off the set, an 8x12 tomb and I was the high bidder. Having a haunt in Wisconsin, 30 min from TOF, worked out great because today they hand delivered the set to my storage building.

I am not sure what everyone is complaing about, I thought the convention was great, I met haunters from all over the country including North Carolina, TX, England, China, and Japan, so it is a NATIONAL convention.

Hope I can make it to Orlando next April....
Ron

[skullman]

Id love to see a pic of the Tomb that you bought!

[drfrightner]

I don't know how good all of the hauntcon seminars where or if any of them had top notch advice because I didn't attend. However I can say when you have 50 something seminars there has to be good info in there somewhere, so to say the show isn't worth 40 or 50 bucks is not accurate.

Information in this industry is undervalued, and people are critical of anything they pay for if it isn't earth shattering. Was Hauntcon worth $50 bucks I'm sure it was and I didn't even attend.

People who own haunts need to realize that education is the most important asset you can put your fingers on, more important than any animation, prop or whatever. Hauntcon was well worth the price of addmission no doubt about it. I would pay the fee without even a second guess... information is very important to your business very important.

People should buy everything they can get their hands on as long as the information is important to your business.

I agree!

Larry

[Brandon_K]

Not that it's a big deal, but to clarify, $40 gets you a single day pass and even then, I'm not sure if that included seminars or just floor access.

$95 was the entire 3 day registration. From those that I spoke to that did take the seminars, it was well worth it.

As I said, myself and our designer went. Between hotel lodging, the 2-day Pre-Con tour, the Thursday and Friday night tours, weekend registration and fuel, we easily put out $1200. Was it worth it? ABSOLUTELY. We went to St Louis to BUY. We went to HauntCon (and the tours) to LEARN. If you can learn something new and get 100 patrons to come back the next season because of something you learned on the trip, the trip paid for itself.

That being said, we ended up buying a few odds and ends at HauntCon as well. I picked up some CD's from JJ @ RFR, the latest issue of 13th Hour and we made the decision to re-light our entire haunt with LED spots from Kim and Bert at MiniSpotlight.

I can't wait until Orlando, sans unneeded false drama :roll:

[UndeadProd]

Those mini-spotlights are the most addictive haunt item on the planet. Awesome stuff.

[Badger]

Due to circumstances beyong my control, I was unable to attend the tours, but everyone who I talked to said they ROCKED! The only complaint I heard was the lines.

As a non-haunt owner and going to HC primarily to work for RFR, I found the seminars to be VERY informative. My only complaint was that three of the Saturday morning seminars that I really wanted to attend were being held at the same time. I guess that happens everywhere though. I gathered a bunch of information and networked with a lot of new people. It was great to see everyone that I hadn't seen since MHC too. I can't attend MHC this year due to scheduling conflicts so I decided to attend HC and I'm glad I did.

Listen to RFR this week AND next to find out what you missed...

[chuck weber]

Pure evil, thanks for the real story.....

Enough of the sugar-coating on how great hauntcon was.