In a year where real life has been scarier than Halloween, a pair of local businesses are making sure Chatham-Kent residents can still enjoy the spirits of autumn despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Tilbilly Halloween Village in Tilbury and the iMaze Thamesville Corn Maize both opened recently for the 2020 season.
While they have only been open for a few weekends, the operators of both attractions said they've noticed an uptick in business so far.
"We've been busier than other years for September," said Ingrid Dieleman, owner of the Thamesville maze. "I think people are excited to get out and do something different."
Dielman's corn maze spans 10 acres and this year features a design of Terry Fox carved into the cornfield to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Terry Fox Marathon of Hope.
Despite having acres of space, Dieleman said they did have to make some changes this year including not operating the hayride and working with local health officials to ensure the correct procedures are in place to keep visitors safe.
"We have hand sanitizers everywhere, we have an extra wash station. We've done away with our hayride because of the close proximity that people have to sit," she said. "We're happy to see that people are doing a fabulous job at social distancing. Where they don't feel like they can social distance, we recommend that they wear a mask and that has been going extremely well."
The 2020 Thamesville Corn Maize (via imaze.come)
Visitors can also expect to see some slight changes to the Tilbilly Halloween Village. Located on Tecumseh Road, the attraction offers a pick your own pumpkin patch, a nighttime haunted barn and corn maze. However, owner James Demers said they had to make the tough decision to get rid of some visitor favourites for the time being.
"We had to take a few things down, our fires pits, the peddle carts. There's just too much volume of people hanging around those areas," he explained. "We separated out the activates and we moved our food area to a separate area instead of throughout the business. We used to have fire pits everywhere. The corn maze, we made it like one direction. Instead of a maze, it's more of a wacky walkthrough."
Like the corn maze, Demers said the Tilbilly Village is equipped with extra hand washing stations and hand sanitizers.
It takes months of preparation for both businesses to get ready for the upcoming season, with Demers saying that he spends most his year thinking of the next autumn.
According to Dieleman, planning for the corn maze design starts in the winter months and cutting the maze, which takes about a week, takes place in June.
When lockdowns, closures and quarantines started to hit the province in March, Dieleman said her initial thought was that the family would not be able to open the maze to the public this year. But, she said while it might not be a "normal" year, she's glad things worked out.
"As things progressed over the summer and we moved to Stage 2 then to Stage 3, we thought 'oh, maybe we can open' and that's when we started our discussions with public health," she explained. "We're also very aware of the mental health issues, people have been cooped up, unable to really go outdoors and have space to play. That encouraged us to say 'we can provide the services for people to get out and do something different.'"
Demers said he initially thought the pandemic would only last a few months at most. When it became clear that wasn't the case, he had to choose how to proceed. In addition, he said the farm dealt with heavy flooding this summer which put the pumpkin patch at risk.
Now, as COVID-19 cases continue to creep back up in the province and health officials issue concerning warnings, Demers said like most business owners, he's keeping a watchful eye on the situation and hoping for a positive end to a challenging and uncertain year.
"It's a little nerve-wracking. You're trying to put on a good show but yet you don't want to invest so much time and money... Hopefully, I can get through if a Stage 2 comes backs. We've got five more weekends to go," said Demers. "We're trying to do the best of our ability...you can spend some quality time with the family, take some pictures, pick a pumpkin, corn maze, we've got the farm animals here. We're just trying to do the best we can to get people out and enjoy themselves."