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Spookywoods: A Case Study Using Radios For Haunts

Haunted attractions, or haunts, as they are called, are big business. While many of them are small, mom and pop operations, some are much larger; collectively they generate millions in revenue each year, creating an entire industry that is all their own.

Tony Wohlgemuth knows the haunt business inside and out. Tony and his wife, Donna, own and operate Kersey Valley Spookywoods, a haunt located on a 55 acre farm in High Point, North Carolina. It is huge compared to the typical haunt and bills itself as "North Carolina's largest haunted attraction". Spookywoods employs 150 actors during the haunt season.

Tony uses up the whole farm. "Most of your haunted houses are going to be inside a grocery store, a vacant store, or a warehouse setting", Tony says. "We're really unusual as far as the size goes and being outdoors."

Kersey Valley Spookywoods features numerous attractions, such as The House of Darkness, Corn Maze, and of course, the famous Spookywoods. With 150 actors and so much going on at once, quick and reliable communication is critical to the entire operation. To keep things running smoothly and on cue, Tony and his crew rely heavily on their arsenal of two way radios.

To keep things organized, the staff and radios are divided up into groups and Tony has managers who monitor everybody. "There's a lot of chatter, especially, you know, trying to get the show started; a lot of communication going on", Tony explains. "Our biggest challenge is, there's just so much talking going on, you know, that it's just hard to get through." To minimize the traffic, he constantly stresses a company policy of radio use during radio meetings: "don't talk unless you've gotta talk... don't talk unless you have to."

Typical haunts operate after dark. Spookywoods is unusual in the sense that they operate both day and night. The long hours have an impact on their radio communications strategy. "Battery life is so important to us", says Tony. "We open at night, obviously, for the haunt but we use the same radios during the day at our corn maze. So these radios are on from, say, 11 in the morning all the way to 11 at night."

While battery life is an issue, Tony doesn't let it affect the show. He says, "Some of our managers have two radios, so when one dies they just pick up another."

Although two way radios are important to the operation, it is equally important that they are not seen and certainly not heard by the guests. Almost every radio operator, guy and ghoul alike, is a visible part of the haunt and more often than not in character or costume. A two way radio in the hand of a spook can certainly ruin a scare or effect. For this reason the radios need to be small, lightweight and easy to hide. A hidden microphone and headset are critical. Tony makes this point perfectly clear. "Earphones are important because we don't want the customers to hear what's going on."

When it comes to mics and headsets, a surveillance earpiece with a PTT mic is ideal. "We like to be discreet and have the cables coming up behind our neck and you don't even notice we've got a radio on", Tony says. "Which I think is great; you know... we're quiet... you don't hear a bunch of chatter and the customers respect this. They don't know that we're in communication. And it's great when trying to catch somebody doing something."

Safety and security concerns also make the radios an indispensible part of the haunt. Guests can get out of hand and people can become unruly. "It's kind of nice to have that discreet communication", Tony says. "Like I could talk to our sheriffs and they don't even know I'm talking to the sheriff."

Kersey Valley Spookywoods utilizes two way radio communications in nearly every part of the operation to make the haunt entertaining, safe, secure and profitable. At the end of the night, it seems Tony considers his radios well worth the investment.

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