Sooooo.....
From a purely analytical sense, the festival was much more successful this year. It at least doubled in size, and gained news coverage.
https://www.ksl.com/?sid=40685390&nid=148&title=halloween-haunts-heat-up-at-summer-celebrationSubjectively, it took a step back. They're trying to do too much.
First of all, the booths:
They let there be a sole sponsor this year, and this was an incredibly bad move. That sponsor being Salt Lake City Comic Con, they turned it into just another advertising stunt for themselves (naturally). Now, LAST YEAR, when you had 3 different haunted houses sponsoring, they each were trying to one-up each other, and so we got to see all the professional grade costumes on display with over a dozen professional actors.
Those houses this year, just had a plain clothes handing out flyers. Why put in effort without the billing?
While the number of booths doubled (good thing) splitting them down two streets was a rather dumb move. And while I get the concept between mixing in the food trucks with the booths, it created a logistical nightmare where last years 'food court' style setup with all the trucks at one end kept things with a nice flow.
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The Wares:
Not much was to my taste, that's no real surprise. The prop makers were rather bland. One clearly got ahold of my method of building Father/Mother, but did something neat with it. Another stole the whole bifurcated pumpkins design.
Masks and dolls, I'll get the pictures edited and up later.
There was a rather cute diorama booth that used bugs and plants. Talia ended up buying a little terrarium piece from them.
Lots of more Martha Stewart stuff and various new agey mystical stuff that was just not up my alley.
No unpainted skulls this year.
The professional artists there to sell makeup lessons asked me how I managed Talia's (which looked better in motion than the stills really show)
Talia wanted some custom fangs (no, not till you're done growing)
And custom contacts (No, not till you're done growing and your mom can help because dad don't do eyeballs)
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Costumes.
Last year, if I had finished the costume I'm working on, I would have not been embarrassed to walk around.
This year, if I had finished, I would have been one of the most impressive.
There was one really good costume. And it was more of an admire the technical aspect than it was necessarily wow I'm impressed. (And both Talia and I are geek enough to have recognized both it and the lady escorting)
http://www.facebook.com/jennifer.roberts.12914/videos/804553439646186/The furry contingent was much less impressive this year. Only two of them were donning their full getups, which had been updated/altered. Mechanical/steampunk elements added, which was....interesting. They didn't stick around for pics either. The rest had devolved to just tails and ears, with the occasional footings or gloves mixed in.
6 new categories and 72 new items added to the shop!
