We spent most of the evening thinking the trick or treat volume had been much less than last year. But we were WRONG. As it turns out, when I counted on the timelapse, we had 143 visitors last year, and… exactly 143 visitors this year too. How they were distributed through the night was a little different though, and made it SEEM like fewer people. Now, Amy points out that this year we had more repeat visitors, people coming back for seconds or thirds, but I figure if they come twice, they count twice. (And I counted the same way last year.) So whatever. As far I’m concerned, we had 143 both years. :-)

The timelapse includes us setting up, all the trick or treating, and then the dragon flapping its wings for a bit until it started to rain, water got into the power strip we were using, the breaker tripped, and the dragon deflated. Good stuff!

Anyway some stats:

• This year the first trick or treaters showed up at 0:47 UTC (5:47 PM Pacific)… that is 14 minutes earlier than last year.
• The peak 20 minute period was 02:00 UTC to 02:20 UTC (7:00 PM to 7:20 PM Pacific) with 41 people. Last year the peak was 20 minutes earlier with 35 people.
• The last trick or treaters came at 4:37 UTC (9:37 PM Pacific)… An hour and 27 minutes later than the last person last year.

And a histogram comparing 2017 and 2018:

I think the perception of there being fewer people this year was because we had more people before it got dark, and last year we had an hour long plateau where it stayed continuously very busy, where this year we had a sharper peak, and then a more rapid drop off, so it started feeling slow again earlier in the evening with a long tail with more people arriving even after we’d wrapped things up and gone inside, leaving our table with candy for the stragglers.

Anyway, we had fun. It was our first year with dragons in the driveway. Only one is visible in the timelapse. Here they are both: