Halloween Mode NOT WORKING?

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

I thought they did one year. I recall locking the Rivian and hearing the jingle of bells

You got me. But it was very limited in scope.

OTA 2024.47

• Jingle bell lock sound: A festive jingle bell sound replaced the normal lock sound.
• Festive light animation: The vehicle's light bar displayed a red and green animation (Gen 2 vehicles) or a jolly green effect (Gen 1 vehicles).
• Admire a jolly snowman and festive pine trees on the center display when your vehicle is in Snow mode.

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[schlosrat]

I'm stuck in the same boat with all the other Gen 1 owners, having issues with this. In fact, all the stupid effort needed just to get this to work so my grandkids can enjoy it has resulted in a net loss in functionality.

I've tried all the hokey poky dance steps. Hard resets - several. Soft resets - several. Rebooting my iPhone several times. Removing and reinstalling the GD app multiple times. And now, the car is saying it can't pair with my phone via Bluetooth, so a net loss in functionality.

At no time have I ever seen a Get Spooky card in the app. When I first downloaded and installed 2025.38.0, the car said the Halloween mode was available. I've got the Bog Frog lock sound, and I can get to the vehicle screen where you can spin the windmill and other very minor features, but since there is no way to launch Get Spooky mode from the vehicle, and the latest iPhone app doesn't display the Get Spooky card, I'm without that functionality. Worse, I've spent literally hours of my time trying to get it to work, and all that's gotten me is a net loss in functionality as my phone no longer sees the Rivian Audio bluetooth device, and the car claims the phone isn't paired. The phone does lock and unlock the doors, and I can put it in gear, so those major functions work, but I'll bet I'm SOL for playing my audiobook via Bluetooth. Gee, thanks, Rivian. At least I can drive it.

I know these things are minor, but the grandkids would like to see the Halloween mode - they're young and would get a kick out of it even if it is far more lame than what we had last year.

The thing that irritates me about this is that they promote this, then make it a limited-time deal, then roll it out slowly, and then screw it all up so that at the 11th hour when it finally does arrive, it doesn't work. It may be a first-world problem, but the limited-time availability window, coupled with very late deployment, and then compounded with the utterly buggy state of it, just leaves a very sour taste.

They don't owe any of us a Halloween mode, but quite honestly, I'd prefer they not give us anything over the buillshit limited-time, late-deployment crap. They should have rolled this out in the update before this one so that we could have worked through these stupid bugs and had it in time for the holiday - but no. We can't have that, can we?

 

[FightLikeBadger]

New iOS app update! Updated my phone, wife's phone! No change - doesn't work.
Removed phones as keys, rebooted, hard vehicle reset, no change.

The vehicle simply does not take any instructions from the spooky portion of the app. All other app functions work as required - spooky does not. Sad wife, sad life.

 

[Kheires]

Doesn’t work for me also. Has worked previously. Big bummer

 

[jmtreetop]

Same - updated and nada.

 

[Badtoro]

It's a hot mess. When I turn it off from the app while standing away from the R1, it turns on the car stereo and AC and the inside acts as if I was in it and ready to drive off. Also, why does all the R1 Fans spin up just for a few led lights and some audio? It feels rushed and half baked.

 

[schlosrat]

Mine mysteriously began working at the 11th hour (literally, around 4 PM on 10/31, shortly before we were going to take the kids trick or treating). However, my previous effort to get it working has left my phone/car in a state where they will not pair on Bluetooth for audio. The phone works as a key, so I can lock/unlock/drive, thank goodness, but listen to an audiobook on my phone? Nope, no way.

Now that I've seen this year's Halloween mode for myself, I'm even more disappointed that I bothered to try to get it to work. Maybe next year will be better. Maybe they'll learn a thing or two about how to produce and roll out something like this - but, frankly, my hopes are not high. They seem to be wedded to the whole limited-time, late-deployment approach, which is a recipe for disaster.

Why should we not get something like this on 10/1 instead of 10/29 or whenever it was they finally deployed to my vehicle? More time would not only give owners a bit more time to enjoy it, but would also give Rivian a chance to fix things when they go wrong.

Why should these things go away at all? Why not leave it around to enjoy for later, and just update to the new one once a year, around 10/1? It might be cool to be able to pull it up later and show someone what Rivian gave us last year.

Instead, they seem to be wedded to an approach that creates a stupid sense of urgency where they hype things, then deploy late, and have little time to fix the bugs in the deployment, while those who are impacted by the bugs get to feel like they are missing out. Sure, those who were fortunately not impacted can tell them "hey, you're not missing out on much this year", but that doesn't really cut it.

All in all, I'd rather they just skip it and save us the stupid stress. It's just not worth it, and has the potential to mess up other things that were working fine and have more intrinsic value.

 

[mcjohnson]

An update on my end, talked to Rivian service and did a hard reset. That (like others here) fixed my issue completely and we enjoyed a great Halloween w/ "spooky" truck to scare the kids. It was a lot of fun.

Also, side note.. the door rattle I had was also remedied. There was a small piece of plastic hidden in the side compartment that I found/removed.

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