In mid-March, the staff of HauntedIllinois.com made the journey to St. Louis, Missouri to attend Transworld's Halloween and Attractions Show. Over the years, it has become the "must see" show of the Haunted Attraction Industry and this year was no different.

The show floor was huge! It seems like Transworld just keeps growing. A few years ago, the trade show expanded to include "Escape Room City" and now this year it got even larger with the Transworld Christmas Show. To the uninitiated, it may seem like an odd combination... a haunted house show and a Christmas show. Considering the current trends in the industry, though, it does make sense. Every year, more and more haunted attractions are hosting holiday versions of their haunted houses. Last year, several Illinois attractions were open during the month of December, most of which were holiday themed! Just like they did for the trend of escape rooms, Transworld Trade Shows is now supporting the trend of holiday attractions.

In addition to the Christmas haunts, multiple haunted houses (at least in Illinois) are also opening up for St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Memorial Day and other special non-October dates. It seems like this industry is constantly evolving and it will be interesting to see which trends will emerge next.


Regarding the Christmas Show, though, unfortunately you won't find any coverage of that here. With the massive increase in the size of the show floor, there just wasn't enough time to cover everything, so we decided to focus our efforts on the haunted attraction and escape room sections of the show.

One interesting thing that I noticed was that many vendors were conducting "cash and carry" at their booths. That is something I really haven't seen that much of before... at least at this kind of a show. Cash and Carry is something that you would typically see at the Midwest Haunters Convention , not Transworld. In some ways, it seems like the line between trade show and convention are beginning to blur.

Anyway, as I was saying before, the show was massive! There was a plethora of vendors, as far as the eye could see. With the increased size of the show, it is no surprise that this is the largest Transworld review that we've ever put together. In our write-up, we have included more than 670 pictures and 38 video clips from the show floor and after-hours events held during the weekend. The show floor pictures / videos posted all have captions and vendor website links, so you can find out more about what the exhibitors have to offer the industry. Well, we hope you enjoy the review! Please feel free to send feedback to hauntedillinois@gmail.com with comments, questions or suggestions for future reviews!

Happy Haunting,

Adam Drendel
Webmaster of HauntedIllinois.com