On Friday 13th October (Spooky!) we made our way to Xtreme Scream Park to check out the events' offering for this year, featuring a total of 7 scare mazes, some with complete refurbs / changes as well as making it known that one has had some pretty significant changes this year.
We parked up within the main car park and made our way to the entrance, which Twinlakes has changed up slightly this year, with a scarecrow display and the iconic Twinlakes horse being no longer there, you may see it in one of the scare mazes though (hint... hint...)
Into the Scream Park itself and we noticed a plethora of infrastructural changes, the first being the addition of portable toilets in the smoking area outside of Belvior manners, which is great to see more facilities being provided closer to the hub, the event's main focal point and where most of the scare mazes can be accessed.
The biggest change is the addition of a large marquee in the middle of the hub covering the stage, containing many benches and a few photo ops, which was a great place to sit when grabbing a bite to eat at one of the many food stalls and a good undercover space to protect you from the typical British weather.
Less infrastructural and more thematic, a large monster truck is parked in the hub which provides a jump scare as its horn periodical beeps, and in the distance towards The Village scare maze, you may see some glaring red eyes watching you in the distance, which all builds a fantastic atmosphere within the area.
Onto the scares themselves, we will be covering the main new additions for this year in this review, however, all the mazes have seen upgrades and changes either this year with minor additions or in recent years with new scenes, Xtreme always tries to keep the maze feeling fresh every single year and our thoughts on those can be found in previous reviews / live blogs, but without further ado, this brings us to the new scare maze for this year, “Witches of Hard Luck Wood”.
Witches of Hard Luck Wood
This is located in the same building as ‘Hoodoo VooDoo’, which had been at the event since 2017 and has been a firm staple of the event for many years so we were interested to see how this new maze would differ.
Of course, as it’s a new maze the building features a new sign, with a large face of a witch and ‘Witches of Hard Luck Wood’ written in a rather crude font, as if it had been carved directly into the wood. As we entered the maze we noticed a change to the route, with a new section featuring a lot of “boo hole” scares, with faces of maniacal witches popping out left right, and center, which eventually came back around to where the maze in previous years would begin.
The theming from this point featured a lot of remnants of the maze of years past however, instead of voodoo dolls, these have been replaced with creepy dolls and a lot more shrubbery really emphasising the woodland theme, as well as a few new props and large set pieces throughout the unhooded scenes.
The maze feels very similar to its predecessor but still provides a lot of good scares and although we still feel that hooded mazes are not the best way to enjoy a scare maze, the hooded section features a lot of surprises that make it one of the better hooded mazes that we have experienced over the years.
Warehouse of Wierd Wonders
Another kind of new maze for this year is Warehouse of Wierd Wonders, an evolution of ‘The Unfair Funfair’ that was a free-flow scare zone style attraction that has been at the event since 2021, the zone is a free-to-enter part of Xtreme Scream Park and doesn’t get marked off as entering on your ticket, so you can enter as many times as you like, unlike the rest of the scare mazes at the event.
Since its inception, this was a zone where you entered and had free reign of your route, as well as the length of time you spent within the maze, and mostly, that is true this year however, there has been a route designated for the first half of the zone.
When you enter you have to make your way past the graveyard of slide parts where you meet some rather friendly clowns and I even got the opportunity to hold hands with one and skip through the section, around to the back of the warehouse where you could enter through, this year, areas you could previously walk between in the warehouse have been cordoned off and now have to follow a set path through, although don’t be fooled, there are still a few places you can up in a dead end.
As you are making your way through clowns are barging past and trying to make conversation with you, however, some may need to work on their interpersonal skills and typical circus-style music as well as screams from Colin and Coco trying to find each other.
You finish underneath the playground-like structure with red and yellow tassles hanging from the ceiling and this becomes the only fully free-flow section, with was quite enjoyable picking random directions and accidentally making other guests jump out there skin, they had the right to be worried as this is where some of the more nefarious clowns are located, get out quick, or you never will.
We love this area and it is great that this is a free, unlimited area for guests to enjoy, although we did enjoy it as a fully free-flow experience as we have very fond memories of the past few years playing hide and seek throughout all of the area with the clowns, which was hindered a little by this change but, regardless, the clowns within the warehouse of weird wonders still provide lots of laughs and frights and we hope the park looks into offering more of these experiences in the future.
The Village
Back for another year, this is one of the largest scare mazes at Xtreme Scream Park and can probably be officially classified as a village as there are several buildings, a school, houses, and even a church.
One area of The Village holds a dark secret, a place of experimentation and medical investigation, that being Professor Crows' laboratory, which this year has been completely reworked, with some rather horrifying scenes, and really accentuates the grotesque of the experiments taking place within, the doctors and scientists within these areas were really giving there all and was a great change to the maze and hope this is a sign for things to come at the event with a maze seeing brand new scenes every year or so.
Overall
Overall, there's a good reason we come back to Xtreme again and again, as the event is the whole package, great scare mazes, as well as a really good atmosphere around the event in non-scare maze areas, whether that be shows, music, street entertainment and more, we really look forward every year to seeing what Xtreme Scream Park has done and look forward to see what next year has to offer.
Xtreme Scream Park runs until 31st October and tickets are available from https://www.xtremescreampark.co.uk/
