BIG GOALS for Damian's Not-So-Haunted House: 2025 Edition!

Our "0% Scary, 100% Halloween Fun" walkthrough experience has been a favorite project of mine ever since we first made it in 2023 - can you believe this will be our third year doing it?

This year I will be making some improvements and additions and I'm excited to share them with you here, along with this year's operation schedule!

New things coming!

To be fair, I've got a never-ending list of things I want to do to make our walkthrough bigger and better, but I am going to cross off as many things on this list as I can before we open in a few weeks!

Facade Facelift

While the walkthrough itself feels full and fairly polished, I've been itching to make the front feel a little more substantial! Last year's Pumpkin Mickey project was a massive improvement, but we can definitely do more!

Earlier this season, I got to go to a big warehouse (accessible only by Disney cast members & their spouses) where they sold, among other things, decommissioned decorations once used in Disneyland! I jumped on the chance to pick up actual Main Street buntings, swags, pennants, and more and I have plans to deck out our front yard display in these bright and inviting colors!

Along with the new decor, I'm going to be displaying our parade train out front too! Those who follow me on social media know that for the past few weeks I've been fiberglassing our train engine for extra stability and it is looking SO GOOD now! Last night I gave it it's first spray coat of glossy navy paint and oh my goodness, dare I say it looks classy?? I can't wait to give it some finishing touches and some fall decor pieces to complete the look!

There's a lot that's going to be happening in the front of the house, here's the full list:

• Building a new wall frame in front of the garage door (that will accommodate both our Halloween and Christmas events, so I only need to build it once!)

• Train photo op display

• 2 NEW lampposts for either side of the Pumpkin Mickey

• All the new Disneyland decor is going up - all over!

Pluto's Pumpkin Patch

One of our best photo ops is about to be even better!

I absolutely love that our walkthrough ends at this fun scene with straw bales and real pumpkins. But it has ALWAYS bothered me that most of the photos taken here (including the one I took above) is not fully immersed in the scene - you see the edges of the backdrop. Some might say I'm being nit-picky but I can't help it. As a theme park design professional, I really really want to be fully immersed in the scene, especially if it's a photo op.

So to "finish" this photo op, I want to build out the sides of the scene - I'm thinking rustic wooden shelves of pumpkins, like this, on either side:

Walkthrough enhancements

I'm really happy, generally, with our walkthrough as-is, but of course I want to make as many improvements as I can. How many of these I will be able to get done before we open, I'm not sure, but I hope to tackle at least a couple of the items on my list!

• With the new structural frame being added to the front of the walkthrough, that gives me a new wall on the inside to play with (inside the portrait gallery/organ room) - I want to add a new portrait and maybe a fun new projection here!

• Madame Minnie is PERFECT and may be my favorite thing in the walkthrough - but I always planned to make her display a little more dimensional. Dimensional ears and bow (maybe even a glowing bow??)

• I've been wanting to add another character in the corner of this little seance room - I even have all the supplies already to make a moving Figaro (the cat) in here! I really hope I have time to make him!

• Of all the spaces that could use some sprucing up, it's the Corridor of Doors I would love to tackle. This space is the most narrow and the trickiest to work with because we still have to have regular access to the washer and dryer behind the wall, but there are some ways I think we can make this space a little more polished and "professional-looking"

• I also have all the supplies to make a working grandfather clock in here! I just got to get cracking on it!

• The ghost room finale improved SO much last year with the addition of our cute ghost Mickey (very convincingly voiced by Brock!) but there's a couple tweaks I'd like to make to this room to polish it up even more

Our BIGGEST GOAL of all!

While we hope the walkthrough in and of itself will introduce a lot new people to our campaign and raise a lot of funds for developing Damian's treatment, the making of our Not-So-Haunted House and sharing the videos online usually does the most for our outreach. With that said, I'm going to (nervously) put out into the universe our biggest monthly fundraising goal yet:

$15,000

Eeeeek, did I say that out loud?? It sounds big, but I've crunched numbers over and over and I actually think it is achievable! If just 750 people donated $20, we would raise that amount. I think we can find 750 people in a month, don't you?? I think we can!!

When does Damian's Not-So-Haunted House open??

Without further ado, here's the 2025 schedule!

I hope we see you there! And if you are not local to Santa Clarita, don't worry - we will make plenty of content online so you can still feel like you're part of the action, including a full walkthrough video when we're all finished!

I've got a LOT to do still, so I'll see you in Instagram/Facebook stories while we race (as always) to get all this fun stuff done!

<3