Escape from the Haunted Mansion Board Game

Well, Daddy finally finished making the board game, "Escape from the Haunted Mansion," and it turned out really well!  The last steps were cutting out lots of playing cards, and there's still an additional optional step of a dice tower, one that Daddy is already working on.  But the game pieces were created, as were the dice and everything else - so we were up and running!

Here it is from the front, impressive in scale and somewhat of a surprise, when you visit the other side of this game.

The game has many interior rooms that you meander through in your attempt to escape.  As such, it's a standard board game where you move along one space at a time, attempting to get to your destination, the finish line.  The random factor are the spaces dedicated to "FORTUNE," which Madam Leota directs by way of about fifty-something cards.  

Here you can see one side of the game, going from the attic down the stairs by the coffin, down the expanding room, and into Madam Leota's place.  Lots of different classic rooms seen in the ride!

Here's the aerial view of the dining room, which players pass by first from above, just like in the ride. Later on, players go by the table itself, on their way out the door to the graveyard.

This took a while to get made, all these individual pieces cut out and glued in various slots.  Players go through the area, passing the singing busts, the hitchhikers, and the singing vikings too.  

Here's the piece that was more supplemental than anything, something to drop the dice in, something with rods inside that tumble the dice this way and that, properly making them completely random when showing up at the base.  This piece alone took me a long time to create, with so many little pieces inside, and the front itself being a little challenging at the top.  It was the last thing finished.

But steady as ever, Daddy has been doing this one little bit at a time, cutting things out and gluing them in place as carefully as I could.  It's taken several weeks.  You can see the coffin in the photo above, with the windows curved behind.  Players go by this scene here, along with the classic one here below.

Note even the shadow at the top of the room here.  The paintings on the wall aren't expanded here, but the room is already pretty long.  This took a lot of patience, but it was a lot of fun to put together.

Ah, and there's the Bride in the Attic.  She may be mentioned from time to time in fortune cards, but doesn't have a huge role in the game.  She stands there, eerily looking on as the players make a run for it, escaping!

Madison and Daddy played the game a few times, with each of us winning once.  The clock never beat us, although in Madam Leota's room, things got a little dicy!  Mommy came downstairs and joined us for a round as well, and the three of us were moving along through the twists and turns of the giant paper craft mansion, in hopes of escaping before it was too late.  Mommy won the third time, due to a last-minute fortune card.

It's a fun game, and it was an accomplishment that I've been working towards, on-and-off a few weeks.  I read somewhere that someone could get this done all in one day, one starting super early, working straight, and getting done around three in the morning or something.  That sounds about right - it takes a while to cut the pieces out to precision, and glue them in position, waiting for glue to dry while holding things in place.  Happily, this is done just in time for October!  We'll be playing again soon!

Speaking of October movies, we watched one of our favorites tonight, "Chicken Little."  I'm not sure how this got into the October mix - perhaps it was the fact that there are aliens involved and a corn field.  Either way, it's a fun movie, and Madison was laughing out loud at a lot of it tonight, getting the humor even more than she has in the past.  Daddy has some favorite scenes from that movie, in his opinion a very underrated movie!

Tonight, before any of this, we did go to the dojo again.  Saying "go to the dojo" is much easier than saying, "going to taekwondo," which I always have to look up how to spell.  Eventually we'll get used to it, and get used to the very simple fact that it is not karate.  For some reason, we lump it all together, even kung fu.  We generally call it all "karate."  But Madison is not in "karate."  She's in taekwondo classes, and doing well enough tonight that she got her third stripe on her orange belt.  This clears the way for a few weeks of simple review, and then the big moment early in October:  advancement to a yellow belt!

So today was a day at work for Daddy, but it was a nice day because there was a guest speaker that came in to share with the staff for about four hours or so.  Lunch was provided, and it was a blessing for all of us, very much so.

Madison was working on her piano a little, and doing artwork with stencils, which she seems to be drawn to lately.  Mommy made some apple butter using the apples we harvested this weekend, and let me just say that the house smelled divine this afternoon and this morning.  The apple and cinnamon smell wafted upwards into the great room, filling it with that lovely fragrance, and then meandered down the hallways upstairs, saturating the house with the luscious scent of fall and apples.  It is a smell that puts an involuntary smile on your face, and perhaps a little involuntary grumble in your stomach:  the homemade apple butter is delicious!

Tonight we read from "The Penultimate Peril," and we read from our devotional as well.  The month of September is gliding by very fast, but we have another escape we're planning, one last big celebration for the month coming up very soon, a fun time for the family to get away for another breath of fresh air.