Travelling to other areas for trick or treating

I think it's cheeky and rather one-sided, especially people who travel and don't give sweets back. Parents in our road organise (and supervise) visits to all houses that have pre-agreed to take part. But we occasionally get bunches of, usually older, kids who don't live here and get quite abusive when you don't answer the door or don't offer them sweets. If you're organised enough to get a group together to travel, then you're organised enough to make something happen in your own local area.

Exactly

If people trim up to a fabulous level, they expect people to come, surely?

Why does it bother you? Everyone who wants to take part does. Everyone who doesn't, doesn't.

Treat or treating was never a thing where I grew up. I remember the first time children came to my house trick or treating. It wasn’t my first house, but was the first place I’d ever lived where it happened. I’d just got in from work, and was starting to cook my dinner. Some children knocked on my door and shouted trick or treat, I didn’t really know what to do. I think they even had to say to me ‘You either give us a treat or we play a trick on you,’ Ok I’ll do the treat I said. So I hunted around the kitchen but I didn’t have any sweets or chocolates, I was nice and slim then so didn’t buy crap! I ended up looking in the fruit bowl and giving them all an orange! They looked at the oranges in horror. Then went on their way. The next lot came and I thought ‘Oh what the hell can I give these children?’ I knew the fruit hadn’t gone down too well so I routed about in my purse and gave them all some money! This was met with a slightly more positive response but I remember getting the distinct impression that this wasn’t the done thing either.
Soon I’d run out of cash to hand out.
The following year I was well prepared, think I bought in several tubs of sweets.

Well I dress my house up and get sweet in, I really enjoy doing it.
Not many houses on my road do it so I try and make it more fun. My dc do our road then walk to other roads.
This year was great we had a steady trickle, some years it's v quiet.
Do I mind if they have come out from other places??????
Of course not!!

It's such a fun one off evening. Lighten up.

Ridiculous! Why is it cheeky? I live in a popular area, we love putting nice decorations out, i gave out around 200 sweets and all the kids were lovely and polite. And I saw so many beautiful costumes. I have no idea anyway where the kids are from, so they shouldn’t be allowed to get a sweet and enjoy decorations because they live in a shit part of town?! How miserable

It's definitely cheeky to travel outwith your own area, but folk are becoming increasingly entitled so I'm not surprised.

We get this. Cars parked all over the places. Swarms of people spilling out onto the street including both mum and dad. So who is at their house handing out treats?
I don’t participate, my DCs are grown up. I have a ring door bell and security cameras and I don’t open the door to strangers. Neither do I sit in darkness, I’m quite happy for children to know they are being ignored because they are rude. I think it’s very rude to knock on strangers doors encouraging your children to beg for chocolate and sweets.
I understand people travelling to look at heavily decorated houses. I used to take my dcs to look at decorated houses at Christmas. The difference being we only viewed houses we could walk to, so not leaving cars strewn all over, and we did not knock or bother the residents in any way. Neither did I encourage my DCs to go banging on the doors of undecorated houses, annoying the neighbours.

There is a specific road in my area which is very well known to go all out at Halloween - the decorations are amazing and the residents all dress up as well to add to the effect ....

As it's a fairly close community they know the kids who live there and their friends and they will ask if children live on their road - they tend to give extra to the kids that live on the road (goody bags / cones) and get the generic tins out for everyone else. Unfortunately a very few non local kids who come from outside the road can ruin it for others by being greedy and taking more than they need

You need to lighten up, some children could live in really unsafe/ rough areas so prefer to travel to trick or treat in the areas where the houses are nicely decorated. I don’t see the issue. And to think you you assume you know that everyone who knocks on your door is local or not. What a snob

Yep from the early 80s we went trick or treating, with plastic pumpkins that Thorntons sold to put our treats in (and they also sold loads of good Halloween chocolates then)

We travel further up the road. On our street we're the only ones who decorate (never get any kids round either), and between us and the estate we visit there's only one house who does trick or treat. The estate we go to has some very big displays, and they collect money for charity, so it does make it a destination around here

Wow, that's wild! Lovely if you were rural with 5 houses, but so much stuff if you're in a town!

It's already so many treats just from a single item bucket, do you just get to hand them all back out the next year?

having just been out with the DCs in a very generous T&T area, I have never seen this.Wow people must spend a lot of money.

EVERYONE makes up bags here, pics of some of Ds's as an example.

Why are you "making up bags"? You just hold out a bowl and they grab one treat of their choice. We've never even seen bags round here!

I made up 100 bags and it cost me £62, the last two years I'd just give out a few each and think I will go back to that next year as it ran out too quickly this year. Every year I say I'm going to stop but then I still do it.

That's not my experience at all. We had made up 100 bags (that were gone in an hour) and every child who came to the door was dressed up and all except one said a joke or something. The one who didn't said "I'm not doing jokes this year" 🤣

Our street is definitely the one they all come to, my drive genuinely had about 40 people (including parents) stood on it at one point last night. I screenshot my ring doorbell to send my DH as I was gobsmacked. We definitely get people driving here. We have a massive haunted house at the top of our road who go all out. The kids get to do a walk through from front to back door and the family including the granny are all dressed up, it's actually amazing the effort they go to.
People drive all over from the whole town to come to it.

The local neighbourhood committee also decorate the park a few doors down from me with lights all round and decorations, they all dress up and have a cauldron filled with sweets. It's a brilliant area for the kids to come, I don't mind where they are from.

I live on a road people travel to, so we make more effort and buy more sweets. We're delighted to have more kids from other areas, it adds to the fun and chaos. If people don't want to participate then they just don't put out decorations, it's easy.

You can spot recent arrivals to the area, as they run out of sweets before 6pm! They learn for later years... buying in for hundreds of kids at 5p-20p per item costs around £50 in sweets for a big variety if you're reasonably strict about one sweet only.

It happened in our area in the last few years, so instead of getting maybe 40 or so children round, it was well over 100. As a result we stopped playing and judging from last night so have quite a few families. My kids are older now and although I'm happy to hand out sweets to the littlies in the neighbourhood, it just felt like people taking the piss.

I guess though as more families round our way pull out, we'll be a less attractive target and in a year or two things will right themselves again.

Saw a van last year, pull up let out 3 kids they ran around the street swept up all the sweets jumped back in the van, later saw same van about 1/2 a mile away doing same, greedy isnt even the right word!

Ww've ramped up the crossing country lines mafias: first it was drug dealers, now it's extortion with menaces disguised as fun

I think it's fine. I don't begrudge kids shipping in to our area for trick or treating. The houses a decorated up to the eyeballs and the roads are safe. They're more than welcome, I'm only handing out sweets.

I would definitely take my kids elsewhere if our local area wasn’t trick or treating friendly. I think the stories of some people/streets being inundated to the point where it becomes a problem are pretty rare, and most likely exaggerated (as most things on MN are).

Whilst I've had kids doing it we've always just done our estate but if someone from a different area invited us to go with them I would.

When I was doing it I would go with my friends from a different village.

I wouldn't rock up somewhere random by myself (and the kids) unless I had no houses near me but I have no desire to drag the experience out longer than necessary.

I don't see it as a huge deal either way, you either participate or you don't, if you don't have enough sweets then it doesn't matter, bring the pumpkin in, switch the lights off and call it a night.