pt 2: The Orchard by Omar Najam

In which guests get a chance to take in the sights and sounds of the park, as well as tasty beverages and delicious baked goods.

Hello all, 

This year I’ll be, over the span of the next thirteen days, describing a Halloween-themed amusement park that I got to develop with Surena Marie, for fun, specifically for 13 Days.

As a big old imagineering nerd, this is a dream project and I’m so excited to share it with you all. Please excuse the shoddy sketches that accompany the overly written descriptions.

Enjoy.

Image by 8moments from Pixabay

Guests emerge into a cobbled together train station of sorts, the tram coming to a stop around bales of hay and wood signs reading “welcome the living!” and “we’re so glad you’re here.” This is a crossing of spaces. Where our world crosses with Halloween itself. And there are travelers moving to and fro. 

Human-sized cats and bats, walking on their hind legs, cartoonish in their design with kind eyes and happy smiles, welcome the guests and assist them off of the tram and explain to them where they have arrived. A necessary hospitality as the views from the station can be a bit overwhelming. Forests and swamps and distant villages decorate the horizon, along with a prominent pleasant hill capped with what seems to be a broken down castle. 

While the surrounding regions differ in each of their own ways, collectively this is regarded as Pumpkin Park. From here, guests can wander into other parts of the land, depending on their tastes and senses of adventure. 

Speaking of tastes and senses, guests are encouraged to partake in the local fare. The station provides a banquet of services and retail, from a clothing store run by a coven of spiders weaving together comfortable scarves and cardigans for those unprepared for the autumn chill, to the puppet maker’s wooden sundries shop that provides umbrellas and fans for guests that might need such things. In between are wondrous jewelry stands, face painting stalls and various hollowed out tree stumps that valuables can be placed and locked. 

But perhaps the most renowned stop at the station is the Orchard. An opening between the buildings that leads into a vast den of apple trees, benches and wandering scarecrows with jack-o’-lanterns for heads. While initially jarring to see these pumpkin-topped creatures moving about on their own, guests will come to learn that these hosts are not only friendly but also gracious. Handing out cups of freshly brewed coffee and cinnamon donuts, the Jack-of-the-Lanterns mark the first pleasant stop before embarking to the greater park. 

They also will let you know that if you sit at one of the benches and quietly take in the scenery, really allowing yourself to acclimate to the autumn of it all, one of the trees might just lean down to silently offer you one of their prized apples. Legend has it that these are the most delicious apples that have ever existed, and if you receive one, a Jack-of-the-Lantern will wrap it up for you in crinkled brown paper so you can take it home with you. 

Guests are allowed to spend as long as they want here. There’s no rush. Time moves differently around Halloween, and that’s doubly true for Pumpkin Park. It will be late morning for as long as you stay here. And there are all the coffee and donuts one could want. 

Of course eventually curiosity will get the best of even the most patient guest, and the rest of the park awaits. So on their way out of the Orchard, one last Jack-of-the-Lanterns will hand guests a map. It will be at this point that guests realize that somehow, impossibly, they have emerged not at the edge of but into the center of the land. 

From here, guests can go in any direction. 

But for our specific adventure, our next stop is the Midnight Forest.