Please be aware the following will contain SPOILERS.
Having not done Scarefest for a good few years I was looking forward to see what had changed; in particular, the new scare mazes!
Here is my review based on my experiences on Sunday 16th October;
Scare Mazes (in the order we did them);
Terror of the Towers
Having enjoyed this maze in the past I was looking forward to seeing how it had changed.
The maze had a fantastic atmosphere throughout, with a good use of audio and low-level lighting, as well as various items of theming and a few larger scenes; the church scene in particular was fantastic, really effective!
The maze has a completely different route to when I last went through it, and unfortunately feels much shorter. A lot of my favourite scenes have gone, and it felt like there were a lot of corridors with not much going on; there was also a lack of scares, with the actors opting for the "creepy" approach instead. The strobe maze was also a disappointment, as it was much shorter than in previous years and lacked a sense of chaos.
Overall, I'm baffled. When this was free, it was in excess of 10 minutes long with loads of huge scenes, as well as a long strobe maze finale. Now that it's a paid maze, it's much shorter with less scares, and felt disappointing overall - though as mentioned, it was very atmospheric.
5/10
Altonville Mine Tours
Our second maze was Altonville Mine Tours, and wow!
The maze is themed to a mine where you are going to uncover "the legend of the Skin Snatchers", and as such features lots of small corridors, but also some highly detailed scenes as well!
Scares were very good, with actors having lots of places to hide; the lighting made for a very disorientating and intense experience, with actors being very full-on in terms of pushing you, and holding up the person at the back (me!) on multiple occasions.
For me the biggest scare came from a scene near the beginning; corridor after corridor full of dummies with gas masks! The fact that I hate the things, combined with the fact that I was on my own at that point meant that for the first time in a while, I genuinely felt scared! The close proximity of the dummies also meant that you had to push your way through them, which added to the fear factor.
In our group three people were given miners helmets with lights on; my helmet changed its flash rate throughout - at points it was static, whereas at other times it was flashing frantically. Personally I wasn't a fan of these, it felt like a gimmick and having a helmet on made me feel less vulnerable. My only criticism is that the ending was very weak, consisting of a room full of fog - after which we just walked out without any "final" scare.
Overall I was hugely impressed with Altonville Mine Tours; the scares are brilliant, the theming is top notch and with a few adjustments it could be one of the best scare mazes in the country!
7/10
Sub Species
After all the hype I was looking forward to this, but unfortunately it didn't deliver.
Firstly, the soundtrack for this is great; it's intense, loud and raucous and sets the tone well for the attraction.
The preshow was first, however we couldn't hear the spiel (on the TV's) due to the music playing in the corridor behind us, as the door was left open! Just before the end of the speech an actor came and closed the door; but we'd missed the entire thing by then.
The first scene was fantastic with a number of doors; the lights went out and everyone was sent through the first door, but we were then pushed through the door immediately on the left.
Following this was a series of black corridors with no theming, hardly any actors and no scares. It felt like we missed most of the theming as there were times when I'd see a themed room ahead, only to be pushed the other way into yet another dull, empty corridor. In addition to this, we went the wrong way at one point and saw an actor in a fantastic 'alien' costume; however we completely missed out on this scare as it was aimed at the rest of the group who were on one of the other routes.
I feel that one of the biggest issues with this is that it's a multi-route maze, which means that you can essentially miss the best parts (as we seemed to). Considering that this is an upcharge maze, I feel that you should see everything in one run-through.
Near the end there was a crawling section which was good, and provided a good jump scare as there was an actor in the tunnel!
After this we reached the finale. Now I hate to say this, but this was diabolical. It's a chainsaw finale, however due to the exit door being open there was light spilling in and we could clearly see the actor sat on the chair before we reached him, which completely removed the element of surprise.
For me there were two positives; the soundtrack was good, and the scene with the doors was effective.
I found the layout boring, consisting of corridor after corridor with nothing to see, or to scare us! It felt like we had a bad runthrough, but in all honesty when you pay to experience an attraction that's not good enough; they get one chance to impress and as such it should maintain a high standard all the time.
4/10
General event
The theming around Towers Street was good, however there wasn't much around the rest of the park, aside from a few items here and there. There was lots of themed music playing around the park which was good, for example in front of the Towers.
Lighting was much better than in the last few years, with Nemesis lit up red, and the Towers lit up in a multitude of different colours; really effective!
I don't like the fact that, since we last visited, more attractions are paid yet the quality has (IMO) reduced. Terror of the Towers used to be free, and was a much stronger maze than it was on Sunday. In addition, the Zombies Scare Zone was much better than the two there were today, which were good, however they were 'themed pathways' rather than attractions.
