Control Systems

When I was taking the control systems class, one of the requirements was to work the Haunted Hotel at City Tech. My specific role for the Haunted Hotel was to scare the living daylights out of the visitors as they walked down the staircase not knowing what lay ahead. To give you a detailed perspective on what to expect, it is a combination of a Halloween scare with a theme park attraction all built into one. The environment of the Haunted Hotel include actors, some of which are difficult to clearly see if they are real or not. This is done to scare the wits out of the visitors with really good lighting throughout and the use of space. Let me begin by giving you an in depth walk through of the Haunted Hotel. The first thing visitors do once they enter Haunted Hotel is walk down a narrow staircase where they are met by a silent actor wearing a cloak. He points them to their first room. In the first room an animatronic pirate talks to the visitors on how the hotel was founded. As visitors move on to the second room, they are met with a sudden flash of light and a huge pig that jumps out towards you from an oven in an instant. After looking at a few other rooms, visitors walk down a hallway towards a furnace, which resembles a face. After this, visitors walk down another hall where they find a phone that buzzes and an operator who says that the person you are looking for is dead. Visitors will also find a locked door with screaming and flashing lights. When visitors come around the corner, they see a bear’s head which suddenly begins to move and growl. From there visitors enter a room with a dining set, bookshelves and talking pictures. One particular picture talks to the visitors and tells them that they will not survive as he then disappears from the picture. Visitors then move on to an upside-down room, where mostly everything is hanging on the ceiling, except for the chandelier, and mirrors are on the floor. This makes you feel as if you are falling through the air. Let us not forget that there are sensors everywhere. The visitors movement through the space triggers different events to scare our visitors. Once the visitors have completed the tour of the Haunted Hotel, they will end up at the Voorhees theatre. Here they will notice two projection screens. One screen showing a camera view of the haunted house, the other is the map and control system in the theatre. Once you have emerged from the Haunted Hotel and into the Voorhees theatre, you can now watch your entire self replayed on camera.