I was kinda thinkin....

[lazz]

Every year I get a neighbor or 2 that want to do a little more for halloween....

Last year I had one couple who put nearly as much effort into their haunt as I did... and they had less than 75 kids for the evening.... there was the guy down the street that wanted to do something... but just didnt get it done... I get several offers to help... all that kind of stuff....

Sooo this years grand idea is to do my normal yard display and..... maybe a scavenger hunt.....

on the average I get 500ish kids per year.... the year before last 550 kids went thru the line.... the mirror guy was fast.... but this year the mirror guy was chatty... he made the experience personal.... but only 350 made it thru the line and another 200 bracelets I gave out to kids that didnt want to wait in the line...


The Grande Idea

I need a way to share the crowd....
my idea is a scavenger hunt... maybe I print out a map of the hood....with houses included in the hunt marked somehow.... lets say each house gives a piece of the puzzle .... when a kid gets all the parts of the puzzle it tells him where and how to get the prize...

The Mechanics ( the how do I do it)

I made one of the ledtriks panel this year... and it's great .....I am thinkin about setting it on my roof in august...after dark with a message to recruit neighbors....

If 10 neighbors take on the challenge and each neighbor puts $10 into the pot we could buy 100 of the big chocolate bars....and it would spread the halloween kids to the folks that wanna get involved....also the first 100 kids that collect all the parts get a monster candy bar....

okay folks that is the rough idea.... anyone got any suggestions? do I do a puzzle and let them collect the parts? is it a riddle? does anyone have any down fall warnings? does anyone have any real fun memories of something like this?

[Macrosill]

Lazz,
That sounds like a super idea. I really like it! The hard part is the logistics of it.

I would keep the participating houses relatively close, maybe within a block or two.

Do not make it so difficult that one needs to spend a long time on the hunt and lose out on trick or treating at other homes. 3 or 4 homes in total seems like a nice amount of locations.

You could do it in a fashion of Letterboxing. That is like Geocaching but no need for a gps unit. You give out a clue or directions when they come to your house. Then they have to go find the stash, which will be a clue to the second part, then that stach could eb the clue to the location of the treasure. Be sure to let the hunters know on the 1st clue how many parts there are so no one gets discouraged by thinking "does this hunt ever end?"

As to the prize, I know parents around here are not very fond of large peices of chocolate. Never know what psycho put stuff into it. Why not make the prize a gift certificate to a kids place for an ice cream sundae or something similar. Parents would not need to worry about anything.

Just some suggestions.

[alwysrit2]

Lazz, That sounds really fun.
Idea - If you hand out a map, the map could have an area to get stamps from each of the houses, when they reach 5 or so stamps, they get the big prize.
-Don

[cruizer]

So Lazz, did you set out to accomplish this?

Also, i want to know more on your mirror guy.

[lazz]

I tried......
I even registered a domain just for this project.....

well I did not do it this year....

I ran out of time... I could offer excuses all over the place.... but thats all I have... I didnt follow thru....
no time....

this is where I got the idea for the mirror....
http://homepage.mac.com/nephilim/imagineerieing/yorick.html
I use their software.... pay the guy his $15 and be the cool house on the block....