With the matching party out of the way and all the buddy pairs set, it was time for the first real Best Buddies event of the year: The Halloween party.
Participants arrived in the student cafeteria at 5 o clock to show off their Halloween costumes. Costumes ranged from a banana split sundae to the band Kiss. The first two hours of the party were dedicated to eating pizza and socializing. After that every buddy pair got a chance to show off their costume in front of the cafeteria with an introduction from Senior Vice President Rachel Powell. That was followed by some down time so the officers can decide on the finalists for the costume contest.
After talking it over Powell announced the finalists. The winner was then decided by audience applause. After two rounds of voting the final three left were the crayons, the banana split sundae, and Kiss. In the final round of voting the four girls wearing the kiss costumes, led by Jessica Volpe, ran away with the audience applause to win the contest.
Senior Treasurer Luke Soldano was extremely impressed with the costumes. “Jessica and her group’s kiss costumes were amazing. All the hard work paid off and it was a well deserved win,” he said.
Unlike most years, the Halloween Party didn’t stay in the school, but continued at the Brookfield Zoo. This year the zoo had a special Halloween event called “Creatures of the Night”. The zoo was decorated in a Halloween fashion and all the workers were dressed up as well. There were three main attractions during the event: “Trail of Terror,” “The Haunted Tram,” and a corn maze.
The “Trail of Terror” was a path people walked through that was set up to be a quarantined area where some sort of contagious killer disease has broken out. Throughout the walk, people would encounter zoo employees dressed as people with the disease in order to scare and surprise people as they walked by. It was an attempt at something you might see at Six Flags during Fright fest, but it wasn’t too bad.
“The Haunted Tram” was a haunted ride on a tram around the zoo. The lines were extremely long, but as a whole, a good experience for the buddies.
The Corn Maze was located in the southern end of the zoo and featured a fun maze with a lot of dead ends and flashing lights. The only downside of the maze was that it was crowded so it wasn’t too hard to find your way out because the people in front of you experienced the dead ends first. It was just a matter of following the person in front of you. It was still a fun little maze, and the B96 Radio Station was dj’ing outside of it.
Although Soldano enjoyed the zoo, he preferred the format of past Halloween parties. “From my experience, I enjoyed all the games from past years compared to this year. The costume and pizza party (this year) was a lot of fun, but the zoo was just alright,” Soldano said.
With all the festivities and Halloween fun over with, the next Best Buddies event is the more serious mandatory peer buddy training on November 5th.
