Orienteering NSW did some amazing work running a Halloween themed orienteering day involving orienteering for kids and Halloween games. They called it Spooks in the Park and it was a roaring success! Soo many kids and parents and they saw a good return of kids into their junior program. They do this kind of thing regularly with fantastic results! Always looks like soo much fun!!
http://blog.centennialparklands.com.au/spooks-in-t...So with ONSW's permission we (Orienteering WA, Australia) did our own smaller version in 2015 under their trademark Spooks in the Park. It involved a small little park, lots of games and interactive activities, a map telling you to follow the pumpkins. It was just like a string course for the kids but with activities, once the children completed the activity they would receive a hole punch on their map. At the end of the course they got a small prize (bubble wand or a small toy rat). It was a surprise to get over 600 kids and parents attending! First time running it and the local newspaper featured our event as the top event of the week for Halloween. Just to make it clear - Halloweeen isn't big in popularity in Australia (but it is catching on). Our sporting regualtors (DSR) wanted to nominate us for best state community event because it was so good! We did get soo many kids with their families that had never orienteered before but we weren't very organised in the follow through to get them coming back.
Check out our photos from spooks:
https://m.facebook.com/pg/OrienteeringWA/photos/?t... The year after we had a clashing MTBO Nationals in October, so we ran a small string course for the kids at a local urban event. It was a last minute thing with no advertising but was very well received. See photos here:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=113002...Maybe given how popular Halloween is in the US and Canada you guys could consider doing something similar?