Cool idea. When people didn't recognize you, did you explode? I did not dress up. Instead, I escaped trick-or-treaters by going out to dinner.
Ha, I exploded when we had a costume contest, unfortunately it was poorly managed and a guy who didn't have a costume won first prize. They did have free (watered down) drinks and food which a bonus, though. We don't get any trick-or-treaters because we live on a farm, for better or for worse.
From where I sit, that aspect of farm living sounds nice. I wouldn't mind only a couple trick-or-treaters, but the neighborhood I'm in is one of those that people from out of town drive to on Halloween. Hundreds of kids, potentially a lot of money on candy. No thanks.
My mom was one of those people who would drive us kids to the best places in town for candy. It was fun, but exhausting, to stay up late and bounce around town filling our pillowcases. Then we'd hit up the churches which had halloween events going on and get some candy there. If they did it then we would've probably hit up the malls early as it seems to be a trend to do a mall trick-or-treat for kids. I imagine it gets worse in places like San Francisco with their abundance of comp sci and math graduates who treat trick-or-treating like a travelling salesman problem.