Wow! [laughs] Typically, we do start the day after Haunt closes, because we have to. We don’t have the storage space to store everything and that’s the truth of it. We have to know what to tear apart and throw out or what will be used again. That’s a major factor of how the ball starts rolling.

From that point on, we don’t really touch it for a while. We talk about broad things….”How about Vegas? Let’s do a twisted Vegas. How about a Malice in Wunderland?”

There are also things that we need to maintain. We need to maintain two to three mazes that are U.V. [“ultra violet” 3-D mazes], so we kind of know what the best theme for U.V. would be.

There’s a whole list of things that we can do. We kind of separate them, “this is something that we can do that is kitschy and this is something that can do that’s really scary that will freak people out”. We just weed through them and present it and say, “this is what I would like to do”.

Around February or March, we really decide what the themes are and solidify where the mazes are going to be (which is a Jack Falfas and Charles Bradshaw [Entertainment Director] decision).

Now, for example, let’s say I get one maze. So, let’s say Malice in Wunderland for this example.

That was a U.V. maze. We wanted something that was scary and knew that U.V. was huge at the time. We couldn’t do this successfully unless it was both colorful and scary. That is very difficult. You guys at home, try that. It is not easy.

One thing that we struggled with Malice greatly was the copyright issue.

We had to do a little bit of research but the book by Lewis Carroll is public domain. Everyone kept asking, “How can you do that theme? It’s Disney!” The answer, is no, it’s Lewis Carroll. Disney owns the rights to that particular look. They own that particular cartoon image of "Alice in Wonderland". So, we changed it to Malice in Wunderland.

Once the legalities were sorted out, we knew that it would be going into the bumper cars.

In fact, I’m not sure how many people realize this but I didn’t change much from the previous maze. The year before, it was Elvira’s Nightmares. I reversed the order of the rooms. They were the same shape, for the most part. But with just a little bit of tweaking, it looked completely different.

First, we write a script which follows the basic format of the original story of "Alice in Wonderland" (which we twisted to our liking). Then we take the bumper car ground plan, which is top view. The scale is a quarter inch equals a foot. We then draft all of the rooms.

We knew we had to start with a spinning tunnel because of the “falling down the rabbit hole” scene, which is what we need to recreate. But a tunnel wouldn’t fit with the low ceiling of the bumper cars venue. So we decided to extend the maze to the outside.

What we tend to do is create an effect or something that will slow down the guests at the beginning of the maze to allow a little bit of space for the rest of the maze between the guests. We like to try and create that as much as possible.

Our ground plans have to be in ‘code’ --75 feet to each emergency exit anywhere inside the maze. It needs to be approved by the Fire Marshall. The hallways have to be four feet wide with five foot turn radiuses for A.D.A. compliance. They also have to be ramped up and ramped down.

When the ground plan is finished, we do a costume summary, which lists all of the characters. Typically, we do three characters per “breaker” (monsters reading this will know this). We put together the mask summary as well as choose the masks. We use the Morris catalog for the most part. We list what prop(s) the characters need. And we give this information over to costuming. Tim Barham is in charge of wardrobe and costuming as well as Bill Meier.

Lighting is the last list we come up with. We just do an Excel spreadsheet of all of the different looks we want and the Lighting Department goes in and puts up all of the lights. We basically get the mood we want. For example, “Uplighting on the Caterpillar to make it look scary". Or, we’ll just request a blue light for another area.

So, going back a bit, we distribute the lists to the different departments and we have breakout meetings on each maze and will walk through the ground plan so we all understand everything.

The carpenters get the first hack at the maze. They are an incredible group. A lot of monsters work as the carpenters. They are talented people that know how to build. God bless them!

In each of these departments, we give them wide latitude because we know that it’s a lot of work. Anyone who has worked the event knows that it takes incredible effort to make Haunt happen.

The designers work on the shoulders of the giant. They are incredibly gifted and hard workers.