Halloween Haunted Houses, Hats, Ho-Hum
Sep. 4th, 2024 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taz_39On Sunday night Jameson and I went to Universal's Halloween Horror Nights!
A good time was had. We started with dinner at Cowfish Grill. Jameson got his usual bento box and I tried the cold sweet potato noodle salad. It was very good but I would've liked a hot sauce option for it.
We both had one boozy drink, and splurged on boozy milkshakes (I'm lactose intolerant so this is HIGHLY unusual for me, but YOLO) He got a banana peanut butter one, I went with a moonshine mudslide. They were wonderful :)
Now it's gonna be hard to ever go to Cowfish again without getting a shake!
From there we entered the park. I didn't take pictures.
It was absolutely PACKED in there. Jameson was terribly annoyed because there were SO many high school kids! Probably because it was a holiday weekend they were out in droves. We only had one bad experience, a gaggle of young boys who were play-fighting in front of us in an 80-minute queue for a haunted house. They were extremely loud, rowdy, jostling everyone around them, farting and making loud gagging/heaving noises...adolescent boy stuff. Tolerating 80 minutes of that would be hard on anyone. After that no one bothered us...but Jameson continued to be annoyed by the mere presence of so many kids. I figure this is a sign that we are getting old and cantankerous.
We were able to do three haunted houses: the Quiet Place house, the Eternal Bloodlines house, and a candy-themed house. The Quiet Place house was of course based on the scary movie series; we haven't kept up on it and only saw the first movie, so this was our first time seeing the actual monsters (they were revealed in later movies.) The jump scares and staging were very high quality in this house; in our experience the "branded" houses often have a larger budget for creating accurate scenes and such.
Eternal Bloodlines was interesting; the plot was that Van Helsing's sister was out to avenge her brother by killing the vampires who killed him, and she enlisted the help of other monsters to do it! Bride-Of-Frankenstein, for example, popped out at one point with a stake screaming about vengeance :D We weren't told the plot, it was given through the acting in the haunted house, and if we could figure it out just from that they did an amazing job! We couldn't figure out why there were so many mummies in that house though lol. There was one in almost every room and no real reason given.
The candy-themed house was just plain fun. Taffy made of human entrails, people dissolving in vats of sugar, insane candymakers and murderous factory workers, stuff like that. They were also pumping candy smells into the house. This wasn't really "scary" but it was very much fun, and we enjoyed the creativity of it :)
We walked through several scare zones on the street, including the obligatory "Chainsaw Gang" and "Zombie Hordes," all well done. Our favorite was a medieval torture scare zone, featuring plague doctors coming at you with scalpels; people entrapped in iron maidens and breaking wheels; and even a stage show where someone got "beheaded" in front of an audience!
Before leaving we walked through a souvenir shop but didn't buy anything.
Fun spooky night :)
---------------------------------------------------------
Monday was Labor Day so Jameson spend most of it chilling out and playing games with his friends.
I also took it easy but practiced Elf up until the entr'acte, then worked on Foodie Finds.
Since this will be for my personal use, you can see it HERE. I'm still working on it and there are parts copy/pasted just to keep the formatting, if that makes sense. But it should be finished by the end of this week.
I haven't been given a real contract yet so maybe it's too optimistic to plan, but I'm doing it anyway because it gives me something to feel excited and motivated about.
Today's hat:
Jameson says it looks like Lady Dimitrescu's hat from Resident Evil lol. Though hers is not red, and though I'm not 12ft tall with massive bewbs, I can see what he means! I had to take the photo at a sharp angle like that because the brim was putting my whole face in shadow under the one weak bulb back there.
It was a pretty normal shift, not as busy as expected for Labor Day but first of all people have work/school tomorrow, and secondly the main crowd for the drone show happened to be across the lake instead of on our side so we didn't get the post-show rush. Oh well.
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, still tired but I let myself sleep in until 8:30.
Worked on Foodie Finds and practiced Elf and Disney stuff, had lunch, went to Target for cheap sushi and random household things, chilled out until it was time for work.
Today's hat (yes I'm making a stupid face, so what):
It's a steampunk novelty hat with goggles, feathers, a faux stopwatch, clock gears, chains, and a sort of trailing veil attached. We also have these in black and grey/silver, and in a "marlow" top hat shape. Since they're novelties they fit rather poorly, and I had to take it off several times as it was squeezing my forehead pretty hard and giving me a headache.
It was a rainy day, but despite that we met our sales goal which is nice as we get a little bonus. I also got to spend about two hours running the sock kiosk at the end of the night. The kiosk is fully outdoors and very humid at night, but much more relaxing than the hat shop. I appreciated the change of pace. And also used my employee discount to buy six pairs of socks (there's a "buy 5 get 1 free" promo right now) for birthday and Christmas presents for people.
We got a new shipment of Kathy Jeanne cloche hats. A lot of them are rather strange colors, and put me in mind of Dr. Seuss. I want to wear all of these except that pea-soup-and-mustard one, I find those colors hideous and can't image what I could wear that could make that look good lol. But the others are nice! If nothing else, I'll bet an off-white shirt would work with most of them...a black shirt for the "ladybug" one.
We were a bit shorthanded and ended up closing late, so I didn't get home until after midnight. That's retail for you.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday I was very tired, barely slept.
Packed myself a dinner to bring to work, was unproductive for most of the morning, and chose not to practice in order to conserve energy. Eventually ate lunch and got ready for work.
Today's hat:
It's the cranberry-colored cloche pictured above. Yes I know I promised to give the cloche hats a break, but then we got five new HANDMADE ones :p It was an extremely slow sales day, the slowest day since I've started working here. When the store was empty we restocked, organized hats, cleaned, polished sunglasses, etc., but after a while there really was nothing left to do, so we stood around and chatted to kill time. There were a few small rushes and I managed to sell a leather cowboy hat and a Panama, but nothing else of note.
On the way home I stopped for groceries. Jameson was at Universal again with friends, and he should be able to get into the Insidious haunted house so I'm looking forward to his critique of it. The rest of my night was doing some basic chores and then relaxing with a cup of tea.
-------------------------------------------------
Thursday: a day off. I'll practice, make dinner, and maybe clean/garden.
Friday: night shift at the hat shop.
Saturday: a day off, more tedium.
Sunday: Going to see a friend at a Queen tribute show in Melbourne.
A good time was had. We started with dinner at Cowfish Grill. Jameson got his usual bento box and I tried the cold sweet potato noodle salad. It was very good but I would've liked a hot sauce option for it.
We both had one boozy drink, and splurged on boozy milkshakes (I'm lactose intolerant so this is HIGHLY unusual for me, but YOLO) He got a banana peanut butter one, I went with a moonshine mudslide. They were wonderful :)
Now it's gonna be hard to ever go to Cowfish again without getting a shake!
From there we entered the park. I didn't take pictures.
It was absolutely PACKED in there. Jameson was terribly annoyed because there were SO many high school kids! Probably because it was a holiday weekend they were out in droves. We only had one bad experience, a gaggle of young boys who were play-fighting in front of us in an 80-minute queue for a haunted house. They were extremely loud, rowdy, jostling everyone around them, farting and making loud gagging/heaving noises...adolescent boy stuff. Tolerating 80 minutes of that would be hard on anyone. After that no one bothered us...but Jameson continued to be annoyed by the mere presence of so many kids. I figure this is a sign that we are getting old and cantankerous.
We were able to do three haunted houses: the Quiet Place house, the Eternal Bloodlines house, and a candy-themed house. The Quiet Place house was of course based on the scary movie series; we haven't kept up on it and only saw the first movie, so this was our first time seeing the actual monsters (they were revealed in later movies.) The jump scares and staging were very high quality in this house; in our experience the "branded" houses often have a larger budget for creating accurate scenes and such.
Eternal Bloodlines was interesting; the plot was that Van Helsing's sister was out to avenge her brother by killing the vampires who killed him, and she enlisted the help of other monsters to do it! Bride-Of-Frankenstein, for example, popped out at one point with a stake screaming about vengeance :D We weren't told the plot, it was given through the acting in the haunted house, and if we could figure it out just from that they did an amazing job! We couldn't figure out why there were so many mummies in that house though lol. There was one in almost every room and no real reason given.
The candy-themed house was just plain fun. Taffy made of human entrails, people dissolving in vats of sugar, insane candymakers and murderous factory workers, stuff like that. They were also pumping candy smells into the house. This wasn't really "scary" but it was very much fun, and we enjoyed the creativity of it :)
We walked through several scare zones on the street, including the obligatory "Chainsaw Gang" and "Zombie Hordes," all well done. Our favorite was a medieval torture scare zone, featuring plague doctors coming at you with scalpels; people entrapped in iron maidens and breaking wheels; and even a stage show where someone got "beheaded" in front of an audience!
Before leaving we walked through a souvenir shop but didn't buy anything.
Fun spooky night :)
---------------------------------------------------------
Monday was Labor Day so Jameson spend most of it chilling out and playing games with his friends.
I also took it easy but practiced Elf up until the entr'acte, then worked on Foodie Finds.
Since this will be for my personal use, you can see it HERE. I'm still working on it and there are parts copy/pasted just to keep the formatting, if that makes sense. But it should be finished by the end of this week.
I haven't been given a real contract yet so maybe it's too optimistic to plan, but I'm doing it anyway because it gives me something to feel excited and motivated about.
Today's hat:
Jameson says it looks like Lady Dimitrescu's hat from Resident Evil lol. Though hers is not red, and though I'm not 12ft tall with massive bewbs, I can see what he means! I had to take the photo at a sharp angle like that because the brim was putting my whole face in shadow under the one weak bulb back there.
It was a pretty normal shift, not as busy as expected for Labor Day but first of all people have work/school tomorrow, and secondly the main crowd for the drone show happened to be across the lake instead of on our side so we didn't get the post-show rush. Oh well.
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, still tired but I let myself sleep in until 8:30.
Worked on Foodie Finds and practiced Elf and Disney stuff, had lunch, went to Target for cheap sushi and random household things, chilled out until it was time for work.
Today's hat (yes I'm making a stupid face, so what):
It's a steampunk novelty hat with goggles, feathers, a faux stopwatch, clock gears, chains, and a sort of trailing veil attached. We also have these in black and grey/silver, and in a "marlow" top hat shape. Since they're novelties they fit rather poorly, and I had to take it off several times as it was squeezing my forehead pretty hard and giving me a headache.
It was a rainy day, but despite that we met our sales goal which is nice as we get a little bonus. I also got to spend about two hours running the sock kiosk at the end of the night. The kiosk is fully outdoors and very humid at night, but much more relaxing than the hat shop. I appreciated the change of pace. And also used my employee discount to buy six pairs of socks (there's a "buy 5 get 1 free" promo right now) for birthday and Christmas presents for people.
We got a new shipment of Kathy Jeanne cloche hats. A lot of them are rather strange colors, and put me in mind of Dr. Seuss. I want to wear all of these except that pea-soup-and-mustard one, I find those colors hideous and can't image what I could wear that could make that look good lol. But the others are nice! If nothing else, I'll bet an off-white shirt would work with most of them...a black shirt for the "ladybug" one.
We were a bit shorthanded and ended up closing late, so I didn't get home until after midnight. That's retail for you.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday I was very tired, barely slept.
Packed myself a dinner to bring to work, was unproductive for most of the morning, and chose not to practice in order to conserve energy. Eventually ate lunch and got ready for work.
Today's hat:
It's the cranberry-colored cloche pictured above. Yes I know I promised to give the cloche hats a break, but then we got five new HANDMADE ones :p It was an extremely slow sales day, the slowest day since I've started working here. When the store was empty we restocked, organized hats, cleaned, polished sunglasses, etc., but after a while there really was nothing left to do, so we stood around and chatted to kill time. There were a few small rushes and I managed to sell a leather cowboy hat and a Panama, but nothing else of note.
On the way home I stopped for groceries. Jameson was at Universal again with friends, and he should be able to get into the Insidious haunted house so I'm looking forward to his critique of it. The rest of my night was doing some basic chores and then relaxing with a cup of tea.
-------------------------------------------------
Thursday: a day off. I'll practice, make dinner, and maybe clean/garden.
Friday: night shift at the hat shop.
Saturday: a day off, more tedium.
Sunday: Going to see a friend at a Queen tribute show in Melbourne.
