After ripping the proverbial plaster off my fear of horrors and spooks with a visit to Tulleys at the start of the month, finding myself up in the Midlands with a spare evening could mean only one thing: some last-minute scares were in order!
I’d heard a few things about Screamfest prior to booking my (same day) ticket, almost entirely good, though comments had been made about their ability to handle a crowd. Thinking we’d be okay on a Sunday night turned out to be rather naive when tickets for the event were completely snapped up by mid-afternoon. So, knowing we were facing a sold-out crowd, we arrived at the National Forest Adventure Farm fully anticipating an evening of long, long waits.
I’d not yet done FEAR at Avon Valley (that has since been fixed!!) but have visited Avon Valley Adventure Park during October in the past and found the juxtaposition between the horror event and cutesy family farm park very entertaining, but this was even more so at Screamfest! As we walked into the reception desk to collect our wristbands, the walls were decorated with pictures of smiling children playing and baby farm animals, which couldn’t be further from the evening we had lined up!
Screamfest features 5 scare mazes, a live entertainment stage and a handful of fairground rides. Whilst significantly – and expectedly – much smaller than my only other farm attraction, Tulleys, there was still plenty on offer for a spooky night out!
We bought the standard admission ticket which for our night was £29 (we could have saved £3 had we not purchased on the day), and granted you five maze admissions. It didn’t matter which attractions you experienced – you could visit the same maze five times if you wanted – but five was your lot! Of course, being our first visit to the park we were definitely going to be trying out each of the attractions in turn.
Our first maze of the night was Freak Out, a clown maze. My main takeaway from this attraction – after being cornered by two different clowns and told as much – was that I am, in fact, a Silly Plonker. Parts of the maze were very interesting with plenty of mirrors used to create some relatively disorientating spaces, but it felt as if these weren’t used as well as they could have been. I would have loved to have looked into a mirror and seen a clown – or a similar style of mind trick! We did get a few proper scares in here though, and I loved the dramatic finale with a horrific clown caged up and throwing sparks across the space. We did find this maze had a bit of a batching issue, as we ended up catching up with the prior group which is always a little bit frustrating, but thankfully the actors were pretty good at distributing scares between the crowd.
Working our way around the site, our next stop was Insomnia. I hadn’t really heard anything about this maze, but it had appeared several times on my Twitter feed usually with very positive reviews so I was pretty excited. When we first entered we walked into an intense scene with a horrifying monster terrifying a small child, in a room absolutely packed with people. It was completely backed up and made me think that we were about to have a pretty miserable conga-line-esque run through one of my most anticipated attractions. But it turned out that this was – cleverly – part of the queue. As you wait in this room, you are told the story of the attraction. But this time, the story is not revealed by an actor setting the scene. No, here you are in the scene. The performance alternates between a mother calming her hysterical child in a brightly lit, colourful bedroom and a horrifying monster haunting the child – and you – in the mother’s absence. With no opening spiel, you learn everything you need to know about the story you are about to enter – genius. Having been pulled into this child’s nightmares, anything goes – Screamfest runs with this! From a dentist scene using some tech I’d not experienced in a maze before, to a run-in with some famous characters from historical horror, you never quite know what you’re going to walk into next. Some scenes in here are amongst the highest quality I’ve seen and I found myself trying to pause for a moment to drink in all the detail. Without a doubt, this was the best attraction at the park for me and is up there with my favourites across any Halloween event I’ve attended.
Next up was Hillbilly Joes Zombee Zoo. Judging purely on aesthetics, I had some seriously high hopes for this maze. The theming on the way in – and out – was top-notch with some signage that had me fully laughing out loud.
On first entering the attraction, it seemed like we might be in for quite a cleverly structured maze with guests immediately being divided into one of four wooden cubicles. Sadly these all just exited onto the same path and didn’t really seem to serve any purpose beyond batching – a bit of an anti-climax! The maze itself was essentially a series of differently themed shipping containers with short outdoor portions linking each container. The problem was there just weren’t many actors. Every outdoor section was a dead spot which, combined with stepping outdoors, just felt like we were taking a breather in between each scene and altogether ruined the pacing. Some of the indoor sections too weren’t utilised as well as they could have been; one room had a fantastic Christmas theme complete with zombie Santa, but we only caught a brief glimpse of this as we exited. Prior to this, the room didn’t have any light at all, rendering the impressive theming entirely pointless. This maze also taught me that maybe Zombies just aren’t a great theme, at least not for my tastes. Stuck moving slowly and groaning, the actors never delivered the level of scare offered in the park’s other attractions. All in all, just not very good.
Thankfully, we stopped by Creed Farm next. Where do I start with Creed Farm? Well, for starters this was the longest wait of the night and by a hefty margin. But – in the same way a bakery with a huge queue outside usually makes some pretty banging cakes – it turned out the wait was for good reason. This experience was frankly ridiculous! First up, we had a pre-show presented by two fantastic bloodied-up farmers who were great with the group and had a talent for singling out the scaredy cats. From here we were dispatched into the attraction on one of two sides of a wall, with the actors using a door to close off each side in turn – doing so when it caused the most distress to the group, particularly those who seemed the most afraid – and being sent into what may as well have been a hooded maze. This section was pure, pure darkness. The sort where you have to hold your hands out in front to try and find any sort of path to follow. I found myself grabbing onto netting, and onto strangers as I pushed my way through the dark. This was yet another maze where you find yourself forming new friendships, determined to make your way through the horrors together. Stumbling out of the dark, clutching on to two women I’d never spoken to before in my life, and into the cornfield, we were cornered by actors who insisted the rest of the group – every single other person – go ahead whilst I – just I – was held behind. And from here I had what I can only describe as the closest thing to being in a horror movie that I’ve ever experienced (except maybe rural Arkansas). Whilst held back I was asked my name – in a very no-is-not-an-answer fashion – and this actor must have had some sort of mic on because from here every other creature knew my name. So I continued, alone, stumbling in the rain through a corn field lit only by an ominous red light as various monsters came at me, threatened me, cornered me against the corn, all whilst screaming/hissing my name. It was a good 5 minutes of hell (wonderful, immersive hell) – this is a lengthy experience – before I reached the rest of the group… just in time to get surrounded by chainsaws! With the actors focused on a friend, I made a dash for it (sorry Matt!) and tried to get out the exit without further chainsaw harassment – alas! I got chased down. Of course I did. Chased furiously by a chainsaw far out of the maze and all the way into the funfair. This guy was relentless! But what’s a halloween event without a good chainsaw chase, eh?
After that ordeal my throat was entirely dried out from screams, making it the perfect time to grab a drink and check out some of the entertainment on offer. The rain was coming thick and fast at this point, so the sheltered music stage felt like absolute heaven – and to be fair it probably would have in good weather too! The band were actually very good, playing a few covers including a gorgeous version of Creep. All the while scare actors roamed the stage and the crowd, providing laughs and scares in equal measure. I could very easily have spent a decent amount of time relaxing here with friends and just soaking up those autumnal vibes. But we had scares to experience so onward we marched, to our final – and probably most anticipated – scare maze: Love Hurts.
Outside of ‘it’s good’ I didn’t really know what to expect from Love Hurts. What did I get? Well, a stunningly immersive, creative gem of an attraction, just one that… wasn’t that scary? This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but from how I’d heard others enthuse I expected a more relentless experience. Make no mistake, this is a beauty. The entrance into the attraction is so novel – and utterly disgusting – and the way you descend in to the sewer is gorgeous. Many of the effects used throughout stopped me in my tracks; I just wanted to keep watching the woman being minced in a grinder! (God, that’s a sentence I never saw myself writing.) But we just didn’t get many scares. I wonder if that was just a case of bad luck, being stuck at the back of the group meant that we continually aware of what was coming, but many mazes manage to spread their scares throughout the group so it was a shame that this didn’t seem to be the case here. Sadly, this was also true of the finale. I adored the concept of this finale – I really had no idea what would be behind that curtain! But, when the scares did come they seemed to stay mostly on one side of the room, leaving us to casually saunter out the room and out the attraction. I can definitely see why Love Hurts is a fan favourite. It’s creative, it’s atmospheric and it utilises multiple different styles of horror. Sadly, we didn’t have a particularly scary run, but hey. These things happen!
One final thing that seriously impressed me about Screamfest was how fairly priced it felt. The event’s shop sold a handful of merch items including a fully embroidered event shirt for £12.50. Twelve and a half Great British Pounds. For an embroidered shirt. That’s just madness! The sweet stand too was selling sweets at corner shop rates, which was really refreshing in an industry usually prone to squeezing every last coin from its captive audience! Also available from the shop were bonus maze tickets for £5 each, which was a nice touch. Had I not been 2 hours from home on a Sunday night, I definitely would have been buying an additional ticket and skipping straight down to Insomnia.
All in all, I had a fantastic evening at Screamfest. The event offered a varied and, at times, stunningly creative line-up of attractions that certainly wowed me. At under £30, it also offers fantastic value for a great spooky night out. Despite a few issues with batching, on the whole, our experience wasn’t dampened by the sold-out crowds. For my friends who love scares or set design, or just a good story well told, get yourself down here and check out Insomnia. It’s something special.
Finally, for those who love a good ranking, my rank of the Screamfest scare attractions is:
- Insomnia
- Creed Farm
- Love Hurts
- Freak Out
- Hillbilly Joes Zombee Zoo
Spook again soon,
Claire
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coasterclaire.co.uk 