Every year you see them, commonly you see the Halloween decorations then Christmas ones. Well one year as we were finding for something different to use in our haunted trail, I ran over those moving dancing Santas. They were motion activated or push button activated, and would dance and sing. finding closer I noticed that you can have your own music or sound played through the Santa.
So the evil wheels in my head started to spin and I snagged up a combine of these and headed home. The first one I opened up and speedily removed his hat and coat. I went to my box of costumes and pulled out a robe and put a cross colse to his neck and with the hood of the robe up he resembled a monk. I took my iPod, you can use any music player, and related it to the input port on the dancing Santa, or should I say my new story teller. In my range of Halloween music I have haunted stories together with the headless horseman, Edgar Allen Poe, and many more. Altogether I had about 3 hrs of haunted tales.
Animated Halloween Props
I then placed my "monk" in a well traveled area and just let him go, his mouth, head and arms would move as the story played through him. Setting the player to infinite loop allowed me to basically set and forget.
Every year we have a scene or two with pirates, so my second Santa, well became a pirate. Painting his beard and hair black, tossing on a child's pirate shirt, leaving his red pants on and the plastic pirate hat, I ended up with a nice finding pirate! Adding some pirate songs and sayings from a music player I was ready to go, well not quite yet. For the pirate scene I did not want the pirate to just repeating the same lines over and over for 4 to 5 hours. I needed to tweak the scene just a little bit, that is where the wireless modules came in.
The secret to having a great Halloween prop is the art of surprise. If they can see it or hear it, then they are ready for it. Instead of sitting in the bushes waiting for guest to come down the path to open the scene, I used the wireless modules to do it for me. The pirate was motion activated, so I used a combine of strobe lights, which strobe lights will make even a static prop look like it is moving.
Using the wireless motion sensor to open the strobe lights which in turned activated the dancing pirate singing Yo' ho' and a bottle of rum. Toss in a few skeleton hanging from the trees and you're all set to go. Now you could use a second motion sensor to turn everything off when they pass a clear point, or let the computer do all the work and shut the scene down after 15 - 30 seconds. The best part of all this is, you don't have to reset the scene, it is ready to go again!
Now I have gotten a few habitancy who have seen my other post using wireless devices for Halloween props, request how difficult it is to setup and configure. If it plugs into a wall outlet, lights, fans even power drills or saws, remove the bit and blades for safety. The device plugs into the wireless module which plugs into an outlet or even an prolongation cord. It is certainly plug it in and play! You can take an average party and make it an unforgettable one! making everybody think your some animatronic guru!
Always have a fun and safe Halloween!
How to Turn Your Dancing Santa Into a Halloween Animatronic Prop