Our 2025 spooky season has come to an end and we’ve ended it with a first visit in 3 years to Screamfest! The event has changed quite a lot from our last visit with a fair few fresh for us mazes and a couple of returning classics. So, let’s talk about our evening!
Thank you so much to the team for inviting us along and providing us with RIP tickets! As with all these blogs are opinions are our own.
Scare Mazes:
Hill Billy Joe’s Zombee Zoo – 4/5
We absolutely love this maze. If you’re after intense jump scares this isn’t the maze for you. It’s not designed to be terrifying it’s more of a loosely scary but hilarious maze. It’s the ideal way to ease yourself into the scare maze world by getting a grip on the style. There are some unforgettable zombie-looking characters to encounter along the way including a chicken and Santa Claus. The acting is consistently brilliant throughout with that lighthearted sense of a joke too. It’s an unusual maze one of which you surely don’t see anywhere else but it’s the flawless starter for anyone visiting this event. It is rather well themed too and more notably it is FUN!
Insomnia – 3.5/5
We have waited a long time to experience this maze as it left the line-up then returned (praying Love Hurts has the same treatment). When you have such a highly anticipated maze there’s that worry if it’ll disappoint which it certainly didn’t. Firstly, it would be ranked higher but the batching of the groups really did make it tricky to fully engross in the environment. However, aside from the queue line after the initial briefing is horrifying alone. The story is instantly set up for guests to enjoy their leading the way through the little girl’s nightmares. Two queue line scenes are theatrically performed with genuinely terrifying moments. The characters you meet along the way are spooky. Something we found outstanding was the sheer attention to detail. There’s a lot to look at but also the intensity as you head further through is incredible. It is a brilliant maze but if the group sizes were tinier or spread further apart it would be immaculate & potentially one of the best mazes in the UK.
Mutation Domination – 4.5/5:
Brand new for this year is Mutation Damnation. This maze is established within a lab-style theme indoor sections and amongst crops for the outdoor sections. We ended up just us throughout until the finale and there were some very fierce jumps. It’s the perfect kind of duration too. There’s a lot of camouflage scares happening which alone aren’t cool cause the jumps are far harsher! The finale perhaps could have been more extreme if the groups hadn’t caught up with each other. It was an exceptional add-on to the already great line-up too. But also I’d say the substantial mazes of the evening too.
Freakout on Tour – 4.5/5
Two run-throughs of this maze and both of which were tremendous. The second run through was just us two and the scares were amplified. This is one of the strongest clown mazes we’ve experienced this Halloween for sure. The sneaky corners for the actors to hide and the consistent attempts at separation really play a massive part in producing a fun yet scary experience. By all means, it’s not excessively intense in terms of scares but it is still jumpy with a lot of fun moments too. The strobe lightning is so intense and the mirror section had me on edge both times I expected a two-mirror kind of scare. This maze is brilliant without a doubt. All of the things you want from a clown-themed attraction. I do perhaps think there were a couple of missed opportunities to deliver some major scares particularly in the mirror maze section as I said above. Nonetheless, it’s the strongest out of the clown maze we have done this year and we had the best time.
Hellcatraz:
This is an intense separation scare maze experience which unfortunately it’s above my limits. Maybe one year I’ll brave it! However, I’ve heard so many talking about how insanely good this maze is!
Scare Zone:
There’s a very small scare zone nearby Hellcatraz and it gave us one of the biggest jumps of the evening. Heading through the archway into the next section and there was a werewolf-like figure just standing on the fence extremely still. It was convincing enough for us to believe it wasn’t an actor and then it pounced at us. We truly screamed for our lives as it was far too convincing to be real. This is something I’d entirely love to see them develop on and create a few other more lengthy scare zones! If the team at Screamfest can nourish a scare quite like that from a less than 2 walkthrough we need more of this manner!
Street Theatre / Roaming Entertainment:
Upon entering the event there are so many roaming characters bothering people. All of which looked and interacted perfectly with guests. It was the best kind of welcome into the event. We stopped at the stage a couple of times to catch the shows we caught the band alongside the Freakshow. The band was terrific very much admired for their outfits especially the lead singer’s pretty cool suit. The Freakshow felt a bit gradual buildup in terms of the show it was putting on. But I guess that’s the point. We also stumbled upon a really fun flash mob we didn’t know this happened here before. The whole team we interacted with and caught were outstanding. They all had given it what they had and it was an excellent way to spend the evening in between mazes.
Food & Drinks:
We were kindly gifted food & drink during our visit. We grabbed two pizzas and 6 drinks between us. The pizzas were stunning stone-baked baked and extremely delicious. Reasonably priced as well at around £11-£16 for a 10-inch pizza. I also tested a cocktail from the cocktail bar near Hill Billy Joe’s. It was spectacular so refreshing and strong with a bitter yang and that was the Hill Berry Joes. The cocktails had a decent offer of 2 for £12 too.
Overall:
Heading back after 3 years away it’s safe to say it had changed quite a bit particularly in terms of mazes. The only two remaining between the two visits are Hill Billy Joe’s Zombee Zoo & Freakout on Tour. Of course, we really did miss Love Hurts tonight, BIG petition to have this maze return. However, the additional mazes we got to experience were fab. The only thing was the groups & the sizing. It meant there was a lot of stop & starts throughout the mazes, people were running backwards on themselves (into us), grabbing onto us for comfort. It did have an impact on our experience unfortunately. I’m hopeful this is something that could be changed for the future with smaller if not party-only only group entry into mazes. But this is a pattern we noticed the closer you get to Halloween at any event this is the kind of behaviour that keeps reoccurring amongst guests it’s not the event’s fault AT ALL. That issue aside the event has come so far. The maze quality feels premium and the attention to detail in some of it is extraordinary. The actors were all fantastic at what they do and really did try to give each person a personalised experience including scares. The whole atmosphere across the whole scream park is incredible it’s so warming but feel-good too. We missed visiting this place and hope to have it as a firm staple in our calendar every October now!
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Thank you so much to the team again! We had the best time! Thank you all for reading and supporting throughout October! There’ll be a roundup on the top 10 scare mazes coming VERY soon!
