hitting the (freeform halloween) road

the old lady sent me a post she'd seen on instagram a few weeks ago about a halloween drive-thru attraction put on by the freeform channel.  they typically do a haunted house or something like that to promote their "31 days of halloween" lineup of movies, but we'd never actually been to one before.  the tickets are free, and you just have to hop onto the website and be lucky enough to be able to get through.  on the day they released the tickets, we gathered around the kitchen island armed with my laptop and all three of our phones.

when it was go time, the old lady fared far better on her phone than i did on either of my two devices.

the event was happening over just one weekend, in heritage park square in l.a.  while the guys were not quite as excited as we were to be going, they came with us anyway so we could have a little family time together.  

look at this super cute car we passed on our way out to the west side:

with the hub driving, we made really good time and arrived about 15 minutes early.  the staffers were happy to let us go in right away though, and our adventure began.

we scanned a QR code to get the official soundtrack going on our speakers.

here, we checked in using the bar code the old lady had received in her confirmation email.  they gave us trick-or-treat bags and let us know that we were not to get out of the car anywhere throughout the attraction.

we drove along the path slowly, although still not slow enough for me to get decent photos.  even with an awesome new phone with great camera features, i suck at photography.  it's just a given. any of the good photos i share here, just assume the old lady took them.

there were several trick-or-treat stops, and inside this little booth was a staffer armed with one of those claw things you use to pick stuff up off the ground, or somewhere up high.  it was pretty funny to see the arm come out with a bag of candy at the end of it.

they even managed to figure out how to create a photo op.  they had us stop and wave, and the photographer snapped a shot that was sent to the old lady's email.

we drove past more fun props and setups and things - a lot of them were on the other side of the car, but everything was from the halloween movies on their october lineup.  the usual suspects - nightmare before christmas, hocus pocus, halloweentown...you get it.

after we drove through this:

we stopped briefly to wait our turn at another photo op station.

the result was pretty fantastic.  this picture is probably always going to be funny to me.

as we continued along the path, the sets became bigger and more elaborate.  it was pretty cool to see everything and it kind of reminded me of being on the tram ride at universal studios...only better.

here we got to "spin" oogie boogie's wheel of misfortune.  we somehow managed to land on "oogie's prize," sending the super enthusiastic staffer behind the wheel to retrieve a package of goodies that we put in one of the trick-or-treat bags to inspect later.

and as we were approaching the "ghostbusters" house, we also spied a stage set up to our left.  

the hub threw the truck in "park" and we were treated to a live performance by the sanderson sisters from "hocus pocus."  it was really cute, and all done with proper social distancing.

and then it was over.

despite his initial reluctance to join in the fun, the hub later admitted that he thought it was all really well done and worth the trip out.  woohoo!

using yelp, we stopped to grab some dinner at cluck & blaze.

their packaging is really cute, and the chicken is perfectly cooked.  their sauce reminded me of the one at raising cane's, which is a good thing.

and once we were back home we took everything out to check out the goodies from freeform.  the trick-or-treat bags are super cute, although who knows when or if they'll be put to their actual use.

and we finally got to check out our prizes from the wheel of misfortune.  there was a set of pop-up halloween cards, light-up jack o'lantern bracelets and an orange box:

the girls opened the box to reveal a hocus pocus-themed ring that happened to fit the old lady perfectly.

aaaaaand that's likely the most halloween we'll get to do this year.  thanks, 2020.