Lumsden’s Happy Hallow closes early for the season

Two weeks after opening, Lumsden’s Happy Hallow announced in a Facebook post Thursday that it will be closed for the rest of the season.

Owner Tiffany Schaefer told Global News that the decision to close was made after talking with health officials.

“With more cases (of COVID-19) being brought up, the rules are getting a little more strict and we would have to revamp Happy Hallow to make it different,” Schaefer said.

“We would have to push people through more and really limit the number of guests at a time in certain areas, so financially it wouldn’t work.”

Instead, Schaefer said it made more sense to cut their loses now and focus on next year.

“At the beginning of the season it was just signs, hand sanitizer, social distance, mask when you can’t,” Schaefer said.

“We were in talks with Sask. health the whole time we were open. When they came out this week the rules got stricter and he said by next week, they could get more strict because of more cases popping up.”

One of the problems, Schaefer said, was with their four acre corn maze.

“Unfortunately, we had a maze where you get lost in some spots, you’d have to turn around and find a different route. So the congestion if you bump into some other person, that’s what they don’t want. We would have had to block off every wrong turn in the maze and make it like a walk through,” Schaefer said.

“The fact that we put all this money into opening it, what can we do. We definitely are losing a lot of money now.”

Even though Happy Hallow is closed for the rest of the season, Schaefer is hoping to keep the store open and continue the sale of pumpkins.

All tickets that were purchased online and not used will be refunded.