Another Halloween is fast approaching and if you have kids, this means parties. School parties, trick-or-treat parties, or just plain old Halloween shindigs take a bit of planning – especially if you have multiple children in multiple age ranges. The idea of a party planning app to keep track of it all is vastly appealing to busy moms and dads and of course, there is an app for that – but just one that we could find. Plan-it Halloween is a party planning app for iPhone with a Halloween theme, but unfortunately its form and function is a little bit scary.
The Plan-it Halloween app allows users to plan and track multiple parties, create and view a party itinerary and provides tips and suggestions for activities and food with just a few taps. As a 12-year veteran room mother accustomed to throwing together several parties for several different age groups, an organized, functional app that presents itself like a combination Franklin Covey planner and Family Circle magazine would be the bomb. Plan-it Halloween is a valiant effort, but its wow factor is more like a dollar store firecracker than a bomb.
The programming for Plan-it Halloween seems to need a bit of tweaking. Adding events to a party should be quick and easy and then they should automatically fall into chronological order. Except, sometimes they don’t. Cue function fail number one. The second problem is in navigation. Occasionally the Plan-it Halloween app fails to switch screens or creates an overlay within itself. Whether this is a processing glitch or a complete programming mishap isn’t clear, but it’s annoying and time-consuming to have to exit the app and re-launch it to start over.
On the upside, since after all this is supposed to be a party, Plan-it Halloween does provide a few good ideas for fun Halloween party games and food for kids. It does not come with any sound bytes or a way to even store downloaded music, which would be cool, and there are also no pretty images of food or decorations – just written suggestions or simple directions and a very basic party planning organizer.
If Plan-it Halloween were a free app, it might be worth recommending. But even at a buck, it doesn’t offer anything that you can’t get elsewhere for free and doesn’t really provide enough all-in-one convenience to make it a reasonable purchase. In the end, it looks like Plan-it Halloween will simply RIP in the App Store graveyard. If there are any good, all-inclusive party planning/organizing apps for the season lurking out there, please share.