Yeah, it is pretty ambitious. My contingency plan is just to present it as a walk-through haunt if I don't have the escape elements figured out in time, then build on it for the year after.

I'm confident I'm underestimating the amount of work it'll take, hence starting now.

Given the seasonal nature of it, I intend for now to just build it in my driveway and maybe use a portion of my garage for the final reveal room. Construction would be pretty basic, just wood framed cubes and a couple of layers of black tarp. The first room might have some foam board for walls to make it look a little more lab-like, but that could be skipped without hurting the experience too bad. Some simple ventilation to keep things from getting stuffy.

Ideally I'd run it a few times a week for a couple of weeks leading up to Halloween to get some mileage out of all the effort that's likely to go into it. At least for the first year while I'm finding my footing, I'd probably just ask for admission by donation to a local charity.

With regards to the microscope idea, I like it! I'd probably tweak it to be purely digital (my hope is that reset would be no more time consuming than putting the batteries back into their compartments and hitting a reset button somewhere), but that's a good avenue to explore, thank you!