In this Halloween episode of Skip the Queue, Andy Povey is joined by Jason and Gavin Fox, the creative minds behind Death to the Flippers. They share how their passion for Halloween grew into an elaborate annual haunt, discuss immersive storytelling and scare design, and offer practical tips for attractions planning Halloween events on any budget.
What happens when two theme park creatives take their work home with them at Halloween?
In this Halloween episode of Skip the Queue, Andy Povey is joined by twins Jason and Gavin Fox, collectively known as the Flippers, Creative Directors in Framestore’s Immersive team and the people behind Death to the Flippers.
By day, they’ve helped create major attractions for the likes of Disney, Universal, Merlin and Lionsgate, working across everything from Jurassic World to The Twilight Saga. By night, or at least for a sizeable chunk of every year, they design and build increasingly elaborate Halloween experiences at home.
We’ll look at what keeps them curious about the attractions industry, how that curiosity turns into a new Halloween haunt each year, and what they learn from building something entirely by themselves. We’ll also get into the charities they choose to support, and why Halloween has become such an important fundraising moment for them.
Topics Covered
Gavin Fox - Creative Director at Framestore, Death to the Flippers
Jason Fox - Creative Director at Framestore, Death to the Flippers
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Credits:
Written by Emily Burrows (Plaster)
Edited by Steve Folland
Produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle (Plaster)
Jason Fox: People come out buzzy, you know, you never get that when come out of the cinema or finish reading a book. It's those very intense experiences.
Andy Povey: What happens when two theme pop creatives take their work home with them at Halloween? In this episode today, I'm joined by twins Jason and Gavin Fox, collectively known as the Flippers, creative directors in Framestore's immersive team. And the people behind Death to the Flippers.
Jason Fox: Needs to have some kind of heart, some kind of core.
Andy Povey: By day, they've helped create major attractions for the likes of Disney, Universal, Merlin and Lionsgate, working across everything from Jurassic World to the Twilight Saga. By night, or at least for a sizable chunk of every year, they design and build increasingly elaborate Halloween experiences at home.
Gavin Fox: The werewolf is a very bad idea.
Jason Fox: Make sure you have solvent remover for your fur.
Andy Povey: We'll look at what keeps them curious about the attractions industry and how that curiosity turns into a new Halloween haunt each year.
Jason Fox: It's gotta be fun. You gotta know your audience.
Andy Povey: We'll hear what they learn from building something entirely by themselves
Gavin Fox: Putting your hands on stuff and physically making stuff every year. So you do stay in touch with the physicality and what you do.
Andy Povey: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast for people working in and with visitor attractions brought to you by Merac. I'm your host, Andy Povey.
Jason Fox: My name's Jason Fox. My day job is a creative director in immersive media, immersive theme parks and things like that, but by night. So you could say we do kind of Halloween attractions and all sorts of kind of immersive attractions.
Gavin Fox: Yeah, I'm Gavin Fox, I'm his twin brother. Same. So the same companies and similar things on different projects. But then, you know, when we're not working during the day on the bigger projects, then we'll come together, you know, at home and work on our combined kind of self initiated projects at home.
Andy Povey: You've both spent a number of years working on creating rides and scare attractions. Halted experience. But yeah. Which of the two of you is easier to scare?
Jason Fox: I don't think either of us are really. You did jump once.
Gavin Fox: I did jump. Okay. There was one time I went through. We was going into. When it was the Alton Towers, when the haunted house was called Jewel. I think we were there during Halloween. So they had the more haunted.
Jason Fox: Haunters in the actual queue. Yeah.
Gavin Fox: And yeah, when I went through the queue, there was one point where a haunter just came around the corner and I jumped.
Jason Fox: That's it.
Gavin Fox: That's the Only time it's ever happened.
Jason Fox: Yeah.
Gavin Fox: Other than that, we're pretty much dead inside when we're walking through these things. We love to see these things, we enjoy them, but we don't really get scared by them. So the thing we always need is to take a normal human being with us who can jump and scream and that's make it fun.
Andy Povey: My wife gets very easily scared. So when we go on a ghost walk or anything like that, the majority of the fun and the entertainment is for me and the kids watching her reaction.
Jason Fox: Absolutely, yeah. You have to take a screamer. You know, we love going to these horror events, but it gets awkward when you don't have a screamer with you because the haunters feel like they didn't do their job or we're taking the mickey or whatever it might be. So, yeah,
Andy Povey: You got to have a screamer, otherwise you appear just too cynical.
Jason Fox: Well, maybe we are.
Andy Povey: I didn't say that.
Jason Fox: I do remember as kids we were scared of scary things and scary roller coasters and stuff when we were young. And I can remember specifically there was attraction. Was it in Great Yarmouth? Yeah, yeah, it was called Terror Castle and it was a walk around haunt and we go without Mum and Dad. We go to campsites on holiday around the UK when we were kids. But whenever we went to Yarmouth, we could always see Terror Castle. And it was a really cool, like, castle themed frontage on the seafront and there was like a dungeon door and there was a guy, like a mannequin holding the bars and behind him there was like a wolf creature with his hand on his shoulder and the guy would just be shaking the bars. And it took us a few years to pluck up courage to go into that.
Jason Fox: I can remember the first time we said to our dad, “Yes, we're going to do it. He got tickets, we got through the turnstile and immediately you turned and left.” It took another year for us to pluck up courage to go in, so we had to try and argue with the blokes to get the money back.
Andy Povey: And did it live up to expectations?
Jason Fox: Yeah, it was really cool. It was scary. But I think we've always loved horror as a kind of theme for kind of attractions and films and comics and games and all that side of things. So I think when you're so immersed in that type of, like, theme, it becomes, well, for us it becomes something almost analytical. You go around and think, “Oh, that's scary.” I assume so, like when someone leaps out, you have a chainsaw, you think, wow, that makeup's great. And that chainsaw smells really good. It smells like I'm terrible at being an audience member. I just walk around like reviewing. Oh, that's good.
Andy Povey: Before we dive into Halloween, how on earth did two brothers from Romford get involved in designing attractions for some of the biggest names in the world?
Gavin Fox: Before we did like the Halloween stuff? Well, what we do now, we used to do these parties in our garage, small garage in the garden. And we used to kind of have like Halloween parties. And one year we decided to make a little kind of halt in that kind of garage. And then that got more and more elaborate over the years into these big kind of more like almost like immersive theatre shows. And at one point we used to be working in like digital advertising. And we got friendly with at that point a company called Framestore that we work at now because they were a client of ours. And some of those guys come to see one of our parties in the garage and we kind of got friends with them for years.
Gavin Fox: And then a few years later, that's when Framestore wanted to get more into the immersive experiential work, theme park rides and museums and things like that. And that's when they asked us to come along and help out. And we joined Framestore to help out when were doing more kind of VR things and immersive kind of marketing events and things like that. But then it become we did a ride for Wonder in China and then we did some stuff for Lionsgate also in China, then Universal and Disney, then Merlin and then for museums. And it just kind of snowballed on from there. So it just kind of become natural.
Gavin Fox: We didn't really like heavily pursue it like we'd always kind of wanted to do it, but it's a kind of to us it was almost like living in like Romford where we do. Wanting to design theme parks is almost like wanted to be an astronaut. You know, you want to do it. It's never going to happen. We didn't think so. We never really pursued it, but it just seemed to kind of happen naturally.
Jason Fox: So we've been doing that now there at Framestore for about 12 years. And we're already proud with what we've built up because we kind of started that immersive department. But we've since worked on thea award winning attractions and one vess and stuff like that. So make good relationships with all the big theme park brands. And talking to new immersive experiences aren't really theme Parks, working into, like, museums and live events. So we do pinch ourselves on where we've got in a pretty short space of time.
Andy Povey: This is a Halloween special. Let's talk about Halloween. And first, how did the name Death to the Flippers Trick or Treat come from?
Jason Fox: Oh, so our nickname for years when we were younger, we were the Flippers. And I won't go into that.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Jason Fox: And then we've always grown up, like, in our careers through the kind of the digital design, kind of, like, realm. So there was a point where we needed a website, we needed to call it something, and we called ourselves Death to the Flippers.
Gavin Fox: Death to the Flippers came after literally the line in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.
Jason Fox: Yeah.
Gavin Fox: Where they say, deft of Bill and Ted. That was kind of a homage to that. So that's why we have Death to the Flippers as our website. And that's all that goes into it.
Jason Fox: Thousands of years
Andy Povey: And it will do I mean, what a fantastic label name.
Jason Fox: And we just glued that onto the Halloween thing. I think at some point it was fireworks something or other because it was a hybrid Halloween and firework party.
Gavin Fox: Yeah.
Jason Fox: Now it's the haunts at the front of the house. So that's where it's come as a legacy, but it's a bit of a kind of messy evolution.
Andy Povey: You spent a long time creating your Halloween experience. For those of us who aren't near Romford, tell us what it's all about.
Jason Fox: So it's just in our front garden, we're an end terrace of a house. So we've got a wide front garden, but it's. You can fit a car on it. And there's a pond and there was a bit in the middle, so there's not a whole lot of space. But at Halloween, we put up a marquee that just goes over the fence the next door. But we've got nice neighbors that allow us to tie onto their fence and stuff like that. And then for one night only on Halloween, we build a maze. So you'll come into like, the frontage will all be themed. For the past few years, theme has always been a kind of a haunted house that we've changed each year with a different feature, a different effect.
Jason Fox: But prior to that, we've had voodoo, sci fi, kind of toxic, kind of like zombies.
Gavin Fox: Yeah, lots of things. Yeah, we try to, like every year. We tried to change it quite dramatically each year. But then the haunted house things one year before, let's build some more substantially nicely themed walls and props that we can move around each year. So the haunted house kind of facade entrance has been changed quite a bit. So even though the building blocks are there, like it started off as being like a Frankenstein's lab.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Gavin Fox: It become more like a ghostly haunted house. And this year is going to be very different altogether. So they're already always different each year. And we get like, I don't. We get like about a thousand people come through it. Maybe more than that. We have like a lot of people turn up now and it's, you know, they all come in fancy dress. So it's a really great kind of community feeling to it. And there's lots of other people do Halloween stuff in our town. We don't get to see it because we're busy.
Andy Povey: You're busy.
Gavin Fox: But they go from there. You can hear them talking about it. They're going, oh, we're going down the next road now. And it's just nice to feel like you're part of this big community of groups. They're all in costume and it's all quite light hearted.
Gavin Fox: We very rarely get any kind of trouble. Yeah. So it's all nice and fun and everyone's very appreciative.
Andy Povey: So you really are bringing your work home with you, aren't you?
Jason Fox: Yeah, I think so. I think it's. We've learned a lot in doing these over the years and it does go back and forth a little bit, just understanding how to kind of create a, a narrative that's not too deep, that's still enough so you can understand it. Not putting too much exposition in. It's just a walk around thing. But it needs to have some kind of heart, some kind of core. We always believe that it's useful when you're creating any kind of film or anything really to really know the law and legend of everything you're doing. But you don't need to say, “Oh, it's like it's show it, don't say it. Kind of like vibe.” So we still put that into our haunts as well. So there is a story behind what's going on.
Jason Fox: But we don't sit people down and have a script to read. You know, it's very top line so you can absorb it. But it's understanding like what people react to, how you kind of like edit the kind of whole experience, how you can have a good finale. And yeah, it goes back and forth to our professional jobs as well.
Andy Povey: And so your neighbours and the people of Romford have got to be really lucky to have this on their doorsteps.
Jason Fox: I'm not sure that's the right word.
Gavin Fox: Don't tell too many people. We're always nervous that somebody. We've never had anybody complain. We're always nervous as somebody. Somebody. Someone might.
Jason Fox: No, they're all. They're all lovely.
Gavin Fox: Yeah.
Jason Fox: Yeah, they're all lovely. And they all help out and stuff.
Gavin Fox: We're often like. We'll be building it. So we build it all throughout the year. Like, we make all the bits and pieces in our garage and all the main props and things. And then we'll be at the front of our house for two weeks constructing it. And as you're doing it, people are walking past us and, like, coming and chatting and wanting to see what we're doing and building up to it, and so they recognise what we're doing. And it's just nice to feel like they're. They're ready to do it again this year. So it always feels nice.
Andy Povey: What do your neighbours think? Do they know what you do for your job?
Gavin Fox: Yeah, they do.
Jason Fox: I think they're very tolerant because they know what we're doing and we're all good friends and stuff like that. Even, like during Halloween, we're building stuff and running smoke machines, so there's all smoke coming out the garage. And we're building things so they know not to be too alarmed. But sometimes.
Gavin Fox: They'll sometimes come and make us a cup of tea and things like that. They're, like, genuinely appreciative, and they'll walk down the alley.
Jason Fox: And they'll see us, ask us what we're doing and that. But even during the year, our day jobs, I'm often out in the back garden filming reference for animators and stuff, and in silly things and stuff like that. And they know, like, you know, we're very hard to embarrass, so we'll just say no. Crack on.
Gavin Fox: They know not to call the police, so that's always good.
Andy Povey: So what happens on the 1st of November?
Gavin Fox: First November, we get up a little bit later.
Jason Fox: And try and wash the makeup off your pillow.
Gavin Fox: Yeah, the makeup is all over our faces. I always forget to get the makeup remover stuff. That's always a mistake.
Jason Fox: At one time, you. The werewolf.
Gavin Fox: The werewolf is a very bad idea like that.
Jason Fox: Make sure you have a solvent remover for your fur.
Gavin Fox: That was bad.
Jason Fox: Yeah.
Gavin Fox: But normally on the 1st of November, we managed to get the bulk of things packed away. Like the. Anything electronics and stuff like that. But it takes another like two or three days still to slowly get everything transferred around and stashed away. We try to reuse a lot of things and retheme them for the next years, especially all the timber. So it's trying to store it somewhere that future us is still going to be able to get to it.
Jason Fox: But we have to strike it as quick as we can. I remember, yeah, we've always been really lucky with the weather.
Gavin Fox: Now you said that this year.
Jason Fox: I know. But quite often there's a storm a brewing so we have to like strike it because the wind comes and stuff like that. And so we do want to get it down as quick as we can. But we have a big garage at the back and then another garage down on our alley where we all pack everything away. So it's trying to pack it away and then you sort of forget about it until next year. Then you've got to get it all out again and re theme it. Build unique new props, unique ideas. It's always like. We always try to have like magic tricks and stuff like that in there. They're all illusions, optical illusions. How you make the monster feel bigger, how you bring like basic animatronics to life and sensors and stuff.
Jason Fox: So those are the things we're building throughout the year. So we have to get back down the garage and pull out that one piece, cut it up, re change it, paint it, but it back again. So it's like a jigsaw puzzle where you're constantly like cutting the ends off of the jigsaw bits. So it's a bit.
Andy Povey: They get smaller and smaller. You have to replace them.
Jason Fox: That's it. Yeah.
Andy Povey: When do you start planning next year?
Gavin Fox: Normally we're starting to build it up now. We're starting to already think about. You can't help but think what you would do next time. The excitement for the next project always overlaps. So we're already starting to like discuss slash argue about what next year might be and what things we can reuse and how much effort we need to put into it again. But yeah, we've got a couple of like possible themes for next year already. We don't start obviously making it yet, but we'll pull it into our heads and we'll just be. That'll be boiling away for a while, bubbling away and then normally around like April, May, something like that. We may be on holiday together somewhere and that's what we'll just. Okay. Let's work this out properly and then we'll start to then design it.
Gavin Fox: Normally do like 3D models of things and then start to work it out at that point. But it's a continual kind of always in the back of your mind.
Jason Fox: It's useful for us to sort of try and at least set a theme as early as we can because then when we are out and about, you go to a car boot or something and you find a prop because it's all like found stuff to dress the whole thing out. So if you know theme is going to be sci fi, then you're looking for weird glassware and shiny bits of chrome or whatever it might be. So you always got an eye on stuff when you're in a shop. So if we at least know theme as early as we can start collecting stuff to sort of dress the whole place out.
Andy Povey: I love that idea. I used to work with a theme park in northern Germany where they employed a guy whose job was to buy interesting things.
Jason Fox: Oh, I'd love that job.
Andy Povey: Yeah. And there was a field just to the side of the park where he would leave all these interesting things. And it could be a lamp post, there was a bridge. And then when it came to theme, the next area they'd go to the field of interesting things.
Jason Fox: Oh wow.
Andy Povey: Decide what theme they were going to have from what they'd got.
Gavin Fox: It sounds like that can be the next area. The next area is just the field of interesting things. That's a perfectly good theme.
Jason Fox: That's the attraction.
Andy Povey: I'm not sure. Let's talk to the marketing people, see how that's going to fly. How is this different to working with the big multi million budgets and whatever the places like Disney, Merlin, Universal?
Gavin Fox: One of the biggest things is there isn't a multi million budget.
Jason Fox: There's also no client. So the buck starts and stops with us. So we're the only ones sort of in control of it. We've got a very defined brief. It's a one night only if it's for the Halloween haunts. So we're the ones building everything and making everything. You have obviously a lot more freedom with being your own boss when it comes to building and creating something. When you're working with the big guys, you work in collaboration with them. So they'll come to us with an initial outline of what they want from us and then we'll go back and forth, make suggestions until you collaboratively come together with what the creative is. And then you work with your huge team of 100 plus artists to create whatever. The experience is going to be so very very different.
Gavin Fox: But I guess it's also as Jason says, like when we're working on the big projects, you have a team of artists that we're directing and so they're the people that, the craftsmanships and the artists that are making it. And when we come home we get to roll our sleeves up and do that stuff ourselves. So it's like, so it's all on us and it just, it gets to keep you in touch with the physicality of making things. So you're not just, you know, just always just telling somebody else how to make something pretty. It's like just very, I guess therapeutic to be playing a part in actually putting your hands on stuff and physically making stuff every year. So you do stay in touch with the physicality of what you do.
Andy Povey: I can imagine there is, it's keeping it real, isn't it? It must give you an awful lot of credibility when you are talking to all of your professional artists and creators.
Gavin Fox: I think it really helps when you, that you're always. If I'm going to ask animator to do something, a lighting director to do something, you know, I kind of have a very crude thought in my mind how I would do it and I can do it in a very crude level. I talk to people that are experts in it. But you know, because we can just do little bits of all the stuff but we kind of know enough about the language, how to explain it to somebody so they'll know what we're talking about.
Andy Povey: Let's talk a little bit about the psychology behind a scare attraction and how do you make it work?
Jason Fox: I guess being fans of these things for so many years and visiting a lot of different attractions, they're not always horror attractions. Be that theme parks, escape rooms, immersive theatre, tours of old castles, whatever it might be. You learn a lot of the kind of how you react to those sort of like spaces and those attractions. So, and then you obviously, you make your own subjective edit what works, what doesn't. Psychologically, the basic thing that works for us out the front of our Halloween haunts and what people are looking for is ultimately a cheap thrill. So like jump scares obviously work great.
Jason Fox: There's some of the haunts that we've visited there are a lot more elegant and they are more into the kind of storytelling and performance which we've done a few, we did like 139 Copeland Road, this immersive theatre show down in Peckham a few years ago, which was one of those. More of a kind of an adult immersive theatre attraction, where it did allow us to be a bit more sophisticated with the narrative and stuff like that. But that's not right for this audience, this attraction. These are like kids and they want to have fun. So you need to kind of always pander to your audience. What do they want? And to do a kind of a piece of art nouveau at the front with some expressive. No, it won't work. You've got to have. It's got to be fun.
Jason Fox: You've got to know your audience, understand, put yourself in their shoes always. And just think when they turn the corner, what you want them to see and how do you want them to react. And that comes down to even. Like, they're going to want to photograph certain things, so you need to light it certain way so they can film and they can do a selfie here. You need to think what people are going to want to do in that space. So it's all about putting yourself into the audience's POV and trying to really dial up those kind of like, spikes and the edits and stuff like that. But you've got to understand your audience first.
Gavin Fox: I think we have like a nice mix of. It's basically jump scares plus spectacle, because we. It starts off like we've opened the doors about 5 o’clock, so we get a lot of kids coming at that point, and you get older kids and teenagers as the. As the night goes on. So the haunting itself needs to kind of evolve during the night. The basics are normally there's spectacle, like the. There's normally a big finale, a big physical thing that people stop and will go wow at and they photograph. That's normally how we end it. But then before that, they're going through the. The whimsy of the. The little corridors and the lighting and the sound effects can be quite whimsical and quite fun and jolly.
Gavin Fox: But then we introduce our ability to interact with them by doing jump scares. That's the thing that can actually make it more actually scary. So we can choose not to do those. If they're little kids going through there, we won't jump out and they'll just go through the fun maze. But we can. We find, you know, there's lots of. For the years we've done it, we've finessed the timing and the positions of how those jump scares work. So we can add those to it. So you can add that as a layer on top. So when you get teenagers going through it, we can make it actually scary for them. So we can mix the two.
Andy Povey: Fantastic. And where do you get the people to help you with this? I'm assuming you're not standing in the entrance and then also going. Running around the back.
Jason Fox:
We are a bit. We are a bit, to be fair. So normally our mum and dad, they're out the front with their chuggers and friends down the street come and sort of like hang out with cups of tea and stuff like that. We design it solely so me and Gavin can run the show. So we'll be inside pulling certain levers and pushing puppets out of holes. Whatever we need to do to be the Scarers when our friends turn up. Takes them a few hours to get in because we're stuck out in East London. So when. When they turn up, we often recruit them to go in and do a bit of the scare, which they love doing. And we can go and have a cup of tea then. So we do pass the baton when people turn up. So they love getting involved.
Jason Fox: But we have to design it so it can be run by us and also know that we will get tired and we won't break. So there are things that can be automated throughout the night, but, yeah, we don't want to put the onus on anybody else having to do it. It's our burden to bear.
Gavin Fox: I mean, we enjoy being behind the scenes. That's kind of one of the perks of it. To be the Scarers is fun. We try to also, though we. We always kind of shun away from having too much automation in it anyway, because ultimating it is like we've got some this year, some automated bits just to flesh it out, but we also make too much of it. It just doesn't become that scary. And there is an. An art to just the humour of how you do controlling things. You kind of need to know when to time it. So many of the kids go through like maybe 10 times. And so if they're running for it, many times you kind of get. Almost get to know them and you'll do different jokes with them and things like that. You couldn't do if it was automated.
Gavin Fox: So, like, yeah, or handmade experience is what we want to do. Which means we've got to be in it the whole night most of the time. And that's fine, you know, that we've got nothing else to do that night anyway.
Andy Povey: So, I mean, that's the fun of this industry, isn't it?
Jason Fox: Yeah, absolutely.
Gavin Fox: Yeah.
Andy Povey: It's very easy to get removed from the reality of that human experience.
Jason Fox: And especially as it's like one night only, you want to throw your heart and soul into it. It's like being in theater or something, isn't it? It's. It's putting on a show. We only need to do it for one night, so we love mucking in.
Gavin Fox: The whole family's going through and you can see it's like all the different dynamics, but often it's the parents and the more scared wants to go in there, so they won't go in there. Or sometimes it's like a couple of years ago there was a family that come along, quite a big group, and they all enjoyed going through it and there was a big crowd outside and then they went away. And then maybe an hour or so later it was a lot quieter and the mum and the boy come back. The boy was about maybe like 10 years old. Yeah. And turned out that he was too scared to go through it the last time. And she'd spent the whole last hour convincing him that he'd love it because he loves horror movies.
Gavin Fox: And he came back, it's all quiet, and he still couldn't bring himself to go through it. And she was asking us to help him go for it. And we didn't want to force him to go through it. And in the end I said to him, like, rather than going through the maze, why don't you come with me behind the scenes and you can pull the scarer.
Andy Povey: Fantastic.
Gavin Fox: Okay, great. And he did that and he loved doing that. And as soon as he'd seen what actually was inside, he'd then run for it. Run, run around it 10 times. And he loved it. So it's all this nice little kind of the families are coming and they're enjoying, you know, have the interaction with the kids and reacting with their dads and their mums.
Jason Fox: As you say, it's like you seeing the generations that bring their dogs.
Gavin Fox: A lot of dogs get through. Yeah.
Jason Fox: Yeah. You have to be careful on the loud noises and stuff. Like Gav said earlier, you always have to just have an eye on who's coming. If someone's bringing a little toddler through or you know, just to sort of turn things down very quickly. Don't really terrify people quite so much.
Gavin Fox: Yeah.
Andy Povey: What you've just described Gavin, is really the reason why we all do this and it's why the reason we love this industry, isn't it?
Jason Fox: Yeah, yeah. I think it's, it's not just the haunts, it's the attractions we do as well. When you, when you see somebody get off of a theme park ride, be that whatever, a dark ride, a roller coaster, anything, they're dizzy physically, they're buzzing, they're chatting, they want to see the photo that took of them screaming at the top of the log flume. It's such a kind of an intense, boiled down emotional roller coaster, literally, of an experience. So to be able to sort of like spike all those. Be it funny, scary, emotional, wonder and awe, all those things you can sort of squeeze down into like a 5 to 10 minute attraction. Same with the haunts. People come out buzzy, you know, you never get that when you come out of the cinema, finish reading a book.
Jason Fox: It's like, it's those very intense experiences that are completely immersive, completely, like dropping you into a different world. And nothing else can do that than a piece of immersive art.
Andy Povey: So you mentioned chuggers. All your mum and dad are in front with your chuggers. You're raising a lot of money for local charities.
Jason Fox: Yeah. When we first started, to be all honest with you, when it was just doing simple haunts at the front of the house, we didn't collect the charity at that point.
Gavin Fox: It never crossed our mind.
Jason Fox: It didn't. It didn't because we're quite mean.
Andy Povey: I doubt that's the case.
Jason Fox: It wasn't until a few years in and it started to get more and more popular that friends recommended that we do it. So we did. We started collecting and we collect for Cancer Research UK. It's such a kind of a global condition. It's better people in our family and our friends and stuff like that. So everyone's very happy to contribute to that and cancer research, you know, they're very grateful as well for the money we collect, but that's how we do it. We just have chuggers. We have a QR code so people can donate digitally as well. We send it around on social. When we send a video of like the final piece and stuff, so we try and throw it out as far as we can.
Gavin Fox: A lot of people even like donate. They haven't been to the haunt, they just appreciate, like, they'll see the YouTube video and they'll donate just from seeing it that way. So it's just really grateful for the amount of support you get for that.
Jason Fox: Even some neighbours strolling down, when we just start putting the thing up, they'll come back with a tenner or something because they know we do any and they know what the charity is. So, yeah, we're humbled for that money that we receive and the charity are very grateful as well.
Andy Povey: This has obviously been a labour of love for a long time. How big is too big? Where would you draw the line?
Gavin Fox: Well, we never draw a line. Obviously, there's no line. But it's just what's possible or what's not. I mean, there's always been. Always trying to add new things to it. New bigger events, big elements. Like this year's got quite a. The thing we're doing the thing for this year is a pirate thing. But we've won a lot more effort this year into the facade. So the facade this year is going to have a large. The bow of a boat that's going to go right out into like the pavement and go over the road a bit. So that's kind of the. One of the things that push us this year is to have something that can have a big visible thing outside because as Jay says, people just like the selfies and stuff, want to stand next to something, take a photograph, aircraft.
Gavin Fox: But it just has a nice. Gives it a nice icon. And there's always other things we've always wanted to do, but we never have like a ride. Everyone says, where isn't. Why don't you make a vehicle and put people in a vehicle and push them around? And we would.
Jason Fox: We always toy with the idea.
Gavin Fox: We know how we would do it, but it's just. I mean, it seems silly, but it's the throughput. It's like we have like people coming around constantly. And then you get into our day jobs of having to worry about, like throughput and things.
Jason Fox: It depends what it is. But some type of vehicle or mechanism. We often think about it. That's what we’re interesting to do because we always want to do something new. We've got quite an exciting lighting feature in this one. Doesn't sound that exciting, but there's an exciting feature in this one. So there's always something new going on.
Gavin Fox: I want to put big power hose in someone's face.
Jason Fox: I want to do an attraction. Gets people really wet.
Gavin Fox: Yeah, people.
Andy Povey: So maybe not in Rome for the end of October.
Gavin Fox: No, no, in October.
Jason Fox: We haven't tested yet. We've got that drip system.
Gavin Fox: We do need to do it this year.
Jason Fox: Yeah, well we've got it. We've not tested it.
Gavin Fox: Yeah, people are going to get a bit wet this year. Just a little bit.
Jason Fox: There is a chance you might.
Gavin Fox: When you want a pirate ship that's kind of sinking, you need to get a little bit wet.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gavin Fox: But yeah, there isn't really a line. It's just like.
Jason Fox: Well the line is the boundary of the garden, isn't it? And maybe the big and physically. Yeah, whatever you can cram in there safe ishly and get enough people to experience it. Is that sort of like balance? But we're up for anything really.
Andy Povey: One thing we try and do on every episode of Skip the Queue is tips and hints for people who are running their own attractions. I know a number of attractions where really significant chunk of the annual revenue comes over Halloween. So for those attraction operators and owners who are listening that don't yet have a Halloween experience, where would you advise them to start?
Jason Fox: Go out and experience them. Travel around. Go to all the farms that turn themselves into Halloween events throughout Halloween travel experience things I guess.
Gavin Fox: Also like depend on who you are. But there's always a way. I mean we'll make use of the assets that you already got by the application that you already have. Don't think like you gotta build a whole new thing. Sometimes you can like re theme something you may have like site specific things. You can relight something. There's always often areas of your attraction that you can put a theme onto and twist. It doesn't need to be built from scratch and sometimes that's kind of like because you'll have regular guests and they'll kind of find that kind of fun to see that something in a different light. A haunted, twisted version of something you already have. So there's a way of doing it so you still have the infrastructure.
Gavin Fox: That's the probably the most expensive, trickiest thing is when you're trying to build something new, it's just the infrastructure, the physical building, the all that kind of stuff that goes into it. So if you can do something of a rethink or something you already have, that's probably a good way to start.
Jason Fox: I'd say that one of the haunts I really like going to because it's quite unique. Most of the haunts around the UK are all very similar. They've got like, you know, there'll be a post apocalyptic one, a zombie one or witch one. All these haunts within like a. What is normally a petting zoo or something like that during the year. But there's a place called Kentwell, this big stately home. And during the year they do Tudor and Victorian reenactments in their kitchens and stuff like that. But for Halloween, they have this beautiful. It's just a nice walk. You just walk around the grounds. But as you walk around the grounds at night, in these forests and fields and paddocks and outbuildings, there's various little haunts, experiences you go through, but it being one long linear path rather than stopping again.
Jason Fox: A hot dog and then there's some live music and stuff, which are all great, but it's finding those ones that are quite unique. And Kentwell I've always really enjoyed because it is a unique experience. It's like one big haunts that has these nice evocative walks through forests and in hrough hedge mazes and. And all things like that. And always the stately home is like this icon that you walk around the whole time.
Gavin Fox: Yes.
Jason Fox: So it's trying.
Gavin Fox: It's a good example of somebody using their assets.
Jason Fox: Exactly. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So they've already got the grounds, they've already got the outbuildings, and it's reusing those things and just put a different lens on what you've already got, rather than having to tear it all down and build something new.
Andy Povey: And that's Kentwell.
Jason Fox: Kentwell, yeah. Kentwell.
Gavin Fox: Yeah. That's the scare event. They call it Scaresville. I think the actual Halloween event is. It's Suffolk, I think, somewhere like that. Up a bit west, a bit up.
Jason Fox: In that way over there. Up and to the right, I think. Yeah.
Andy Povey: And make sure, if you do go to Kentwell listeners, that you let them know where you came from. They suggested that you turn up.
Jason Fox: Yep. Indeed.
Andy Povey: Gavin, Jason, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed the conversation, the passion that you have, the visitor at the center of everything you're doing and just resonates so well with everything else that we're trying to do in our world and the other stories that we're hearing of Q. So thank you very much and best of luck for this year.
Gavin Fox: Thank you very much. Thank you.
Jason Fox: Fingers crossed for the weather.
Gavin Fox: We don't want any wind because we have a massive sail out the front of this one.
Jason Fox: Want a little bit of life in it, but not too much.
Gavin Fox: A little bit of wind, little bit of rain's fine, but not too much.
Jason Fox: Our pleasure. Thank you for inviting us on the show.
Andy Povey: Not at all.
Jason Fox: It's been great to chat to you.
Gavin Fox: Yeah, thank you.
Andy Povey: Wow. Jason Gavin, thank you so much for sharing listeners. If you're near Romford on 31st October, do try and visit. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Now, for those attraction operators thinking of starting their own Halloween experience, what's stopping you? Obviously we don't all have access to the creative genius of Gavin and Jason, but if they can do this in their front garden, then think of what you could do at your attraction.
If you've enjoyed what you've heard, please take a moment to like or even recommend us on whatever platform you use. It really helps others to find us.
Today's episode was co produced by Sami and Emily from Plaster, edited by Steve Folland with scheduling and socials by Wenalyn back at Merac. I've been your host, Andy Povey. Thank you and goodbye.