Last night we headed back to The Howl for our annual visit. Of course, this year is a big one for this event, as they are celebrating 10 years, which is truly incredible. The event is brilliant and has a bright future ahead, with much more to offer.
Thank you to the team at Ed Hopkins for the invite; however, all views are our own and not influenced by the gifted tickets.
Ding Dong Die –
Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to catch this show; honestly, I’m not sure exactly where it was held. It certainly was not transparent where it was held.
Squealers Yard: – 2/5
The scenes in here are decent as are the actors. It’s such a familiar theme you see amongst a lot of mazes but they all do their own take on it. This year has seen a new scene added which is nice to see that change. Unfortunately, we had one run-through, and we were consistently hounded to put away our phones despite having a filming pass lanyard on show which unfortunately heavily dampened our experience. The scares were taken away by the consistent badgering of the actors. Maybe it’s just one of those mazes where filming does take away the experience due to the intensity of saying no, distracting them from intense scares. Perhaps we were just unfortunate with our timing, but it has to be the weakest of this essence amongst the scare mazes we’ve done with the same story.
Shriek Easy – 3.5/5
This maze is truly brilliant and beautiful; it’s not necessarily scary as such; it is heavily based on storytelling and theming. Each room you go through is so gorgeously designed; it’s impossible to not be impressed. The actors are outstanding in here; they truly tap into their roles and play it out beautifully. It’s so easy to get lost within their characters and that’s how you know it’s done brilliantly. It is a very interactive experience but not too much where it’s uneasy; it’s fun and the actors don’t make you feel pressured or uncomfortable to join in which is good. We aren’t the people for interaction but this is something we can enjoy. This is such a unique maze to offer in comparison to other events; I think we said that last season too. It is brilliant and well produced to feel lost within that speak easy vibes.
Red – 3/5
My most anticipated maze of the evening as it’s our first time experiencing it. There are no hoods part of this maze anymore but I do feel you can tell it once was hooded. It was very short in comparison to the other mazes on offer. However, there’s a large number of actors looming in each area waiting for guests and their costumes are brilliant. They really do provide respectable scares; even if the maze is brief it is impactful and one you will leave thinking about too. It’s not often you get a short but memorable maze like this.
The Howl Valley High – 4/5
This has always been a bit of a hit-and-miss maze for us over the years; however, this year it’s really become one of our favourites. Of course, the zombie high school isn’t something we necessarily find scary as such. However, we had some decent scares even so. The actors were brilliant in here and used their spaces beautifully. We had some brilliant interaction & scares throughout this maze. Again, the theming and how immersive it is helps it shine alongside the actors using every scare tactic under the sun with some really decent hidey holes throughout.
Noxious Alley – 3/5
Clown mazes aren’t something we find all that scary in all honesty but this is one of our favourite we’ve ever experienced. How truly feral the actors are within this maze is mind-blowing. They just go wild. It’s so crammed packed with actors it’s impossible not to have a good run through I’m sure of it. It’s UV-heavy with big sets like cars inside and there are opportunities for actors to dangle above you and pop out of the least expected places. I find there’s such a draw for multiple run-throughs of this maze; it’s so much fun & easily the best clown maze there is.
The Full Moon Manor: – 5/5
We’ve done a few different hotel/motel themed scare mazes over the years but this has to be one of the best. The introduction to the maze is brilliant; the actor we had during our solo run was incredible. The lift effect never fails to make me chuckle; it feels so oddly realistic and there’s that tension with the doors being even on the side of the room. Into the maze itself and there are so many actors on you from the get-go. Again, a running theme of the night is how much attention to detail there is throughout. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen actors so consistently on form like they are in here. One of the strongest mazes at The Howl.
The Shed – 4/5
This is a great maze; it’s dark dingy and has a lot of places for substantial scares. Again, we did two run-throughs, both very different to one another. The first time, there were so many actors; it was truly mind-blowing, and the scares came in thick and fast. However, the second run-through was unfortunately not as good. We saw perhaps 3 actors throughout the entirety of the maze. But going by the first run-through, it was tremendous. It’s one of those mazes where sets and scenes just make it unnerving alone. There are a lot of areas that provide anticipation in where scares may come from. I don’t think we’ve seen quite so many actors in one maze perhaps ever like we did the first time around. It was quite something.
Roaming Characters:
Unfortunately, we didn’t see as many actors as we usually do; perhaps it was the fact that we were wet. But the very few we saw were brilliant and terrorising guests beautifully. It’s always a tricky one to talk about when it rains as much as it did during our visit but we know the roaming team are generally brilliant here when it’s not the weather conditions we had.
Overall:
This is a really good event and the mazes provide a lot of theming & most of them being unique and distinctive to other mazes you find elsewhere. The actors are always on top form throughout, and the batching of groups was great. However, the issue surrounding filming in mazes even with a filming pass is tough to overlook and can dampen the experience a lot when you are getting pestered to stop filming despite holding the pass next to the camera. But that issue aside the mazes were great; a lot of them were on top form and felt heavily improved compared to last year’s experience. This is a scream park with so much potential in the future and we’d love to see a shake-up in the maze offerings next season!
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Thank you for reading…
