Haunted Houses in Tulsa | A Difficult Challenge

Haunted Houses in Tulsa | Challenging Parts

Haunted houses and Tulsa episode 21. I wanted to spend some time to talk about, um, employee hiring, employee training and everything that goes into it. When we decided to build and sandy farms one of the best haunted houses in Tulsa, we knew right away that the key to our success would be between how we build the business and our employees. The employees carry most of the bulk when you actually have customers there. Um, we spent nearly two years developing planning and making, um, and sandy farms, but without the employees help, we wouldn’t have been one of the best haunted houses in Tulsa without them. Uh, so the first thing we had to do once we decided we were going to do the haunted attraction and sandy farms, uh, the first thing we had to do was find really good qualified actors. And this seemed to be a really difficult challenge for us and probably anybody else that’s in the business.

Um, and especially since it was our first year, we had to start from scratch with our pumpkin patch. We usually have returning employees every year. Um, so it’s not as difficult to fill those positions, but for foreign sandy far in front of the best haunted houses and Tulsa, uh, we knew it was going to be a challenge to find as many actors as we needed as well as the qualified actors we would need. We didn’t just want a bunch of people that were there to, you know, just scary one people that were passionate about haunting, uh, we want people that are really family oriented and we wanted people that wanted to be there. We wanted somebody who was passionate about doing it. So those are really key things that we focused in on and trying to find some really good actors for sandy farms. One of the best haunted houses in Tulsa a.

So I sat down with my sister bridget, she’s usually in charge of the hiring process and I explained to her that, you know, we really need qualified a really good qualified employees and really good people that are passionate about acting, uh, that really enjoy family friendly places and we’re passionate about it. So, uh, we decided to start at some of the local theater departments. Uh, we started down at TCC south, which is closest to us and um, that’s Tulsa community college and we found that unfortunately they have a large production that occurs during the month of October that goes into November. Um, so they didn’t have any extra actors that they could, uh, that wanted to help us. So we had to cast a wider net. Uh, we found out that the theater departments were, I’m not the best place to find them. So we started with a, after that we started with craigslist and then we moved to indeed and we also put up signs by the road.

So we wanted to cast a really large net because we needed so many actors for our first year. And this was the first year we’ve ever done sandy farms, one of the best haunted houses and Tulsa. And we needed over 20 people just to act. That doesn’t include staff, Haunted Houses in Tulsa, that doesn’t include the ticket ticket people up front and it doesn’t include any of the maintenance security. Uh, so we had to hire a lot of people. Um, so once we found some people that wanted to do the acting for insanity farms, one of the best haunted houses and Tulsa, we knew we had to bring them in for tryouts. The first thing we did was bring them in and explain exactly what and sandy farms is the direction we’re headed in and exactly what type of experience we wanted to provide for our customer. So we brought everybody inside Pumpkin town and um, we began to, uh, do auditions and it was kind of like America’s got talent.

We’re, all of us had lined up, my parents, my sister and the manager for in sandy farms and we watched them act. The reason we did this is because it was, it was really easy to tell who the really good people were really good actors and who were the more timid actors. Um, the great thing about sandy farms, one of the best haunted houses and Tulsa was that we had roles for everybody. So if you were more timid and shy and not as outgoing, some of the other actors, we had a position for you. I’m like the scarecrow. We have a scarecrow allie inside of our field of fear and um, there’s about eight crosses with eight different scarecrows on him. Well, one of those crosses has a live actor on it and all that person literally needs to do is when customers walk by in the field of fear, all they have to do is step off their hay bale right in front of them.

Uh, this really creates a big scare, but it’s very simple and they don’t really, it doesn’t take much skills to do. Um, so even though some of the actors weren’t as outgoing as the others, we had positions for everybody at, in sandy farms, one of the best haunted houses and Tulsa. Haunted Houses in Tulsa, so like I said, we put them together in a group, uh, interview. Um, but it’s more like group auditions. Uh, we asked who wanted to be first to come up and there were about five or six hands that went up real fast and those, you knew right away where they’re really outgoing actors. Um, we put the, I really outgoing actors and what we call our midway in sandy farms. And our midway is the place where after you purchase your, um, your ticket to get inside, you walk in past the ticket booth and we have a little area that we call the midway in the midway we have string lights lead up to a pole, so it’s well lit.

Uh, we’ve got our in sandy farms, Cadillac hearse that’s inside of there that makes for a great picture off, um, and then we have our entrances and exits to each of our attractions. And um, so we really wanted the really outgoing actors to be in the midway because that’s where they were going to have the most interaction with the customers for the longest period of time. Um, so we did the, we did the group auditions and we found our actors. Haunted Houses in Tulsa, a lot of them were high school boys. We had one girl in which we could not put in the maze or anywhere by herself. We made sure for safety that she was up front and then we can see her and you know, we just don’t like putting a women in places where something could go wrong. So we decided to always have females together if there was two of them or if there was one that she was gonna be working in the midway.

So we dressed her up as this kind of really spooky, really spooky girl from the ring. And she looked terrifying. Haunted Houses in Tulsa, so it was a good fit. She did a great job because she had this blood curdling scream and she did a really good job. I was proud of her, um, after we had found all of our actors, we needed to do thorough training. Uh, so we did three weeks of training, three weekends of training each week, and we brought them out. We explained, we found out exactly what position they wanted to do, what position we thought was best for them. And then we took them out into their positions. Um, every actor has a certain area, whether it’s inside the field of fear, whether it’s inside our Zombie paintball or whether you’re chuckles the clown inside of our chaos Pallet Mais. Um, every place has a character.

And like I said earlier, our best actors were going to be in the middle. So those were our best costumes are best makeup and you know, the best actors will be in the middle, so they’d entertain the customers if they had to wait a little bit to get into the traction’s. Um, and I think with our thorough training, um, and, you know, sitting there and explaining exactly what we want them to do, I think that really helped contribute to and sandy foreigners becoming one of the best haunted houses and Tulsa, uh, once we did our three weeks of training, we felt like, um, that they, they were ready but not quite ready. So we did a soft opening on our first night. We invited family friends out and the actors families out to, you know, make a, make a live run through of the show.

Um, and during the live show we found certain issues that we had to fix address, uh, but we felt like that was very important to have that first run through before we went to the open to the public. Uh, we could correct things, we could fix things that we didn’t really want to do in front of the front of the public in conclusion, um, in order for insanity farms to be one of the best haunted houses and Tulsa, we really had to find great qualified actors. And then we had a thoroughly trained them on what they were going to do, how they’re going to scare and you know, how to interact with the, with the customers as they walk through. Um, by doing this and ensuring our employees and actors were doing what they’re supposed to. I feel very strongly that in sandy farms has become one of the best haunted houses in Tulsa.