Last night we headed up to Blackpool Pleasure Beach to attend their Journey to Hell preview event. This was our first-year experiencing this event as we never made the press event back in 2019. I’d like to say a massive thank you to the team for inviting us along and huge congrats on putting together a fab event for all to enjoy. Without further ado, let’s crack on and have a chat about our opinions on the event.
Upon arrival at the park, we headed to The Hub as we walked through what felt like a scare zone in some sense. There were special events such as fire etc. Once we arrived in The Hub we were being told what was about to happen and it was a chance for anyone unsure to leave.
THIS BLOG POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS, PLEASE DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU WISH TO AVOID THEM.
The event commences with a rather extra eerie ride on River Caves, more than normal in my case. Without giving too much away the ride itself is in near enough complete darkness with one source of light and that isn’t even exactly the brightest of lights anyway. The ride did incorporate actors and some of the scares we got were lush and for the places you’d least expect. I have always found this ride to be somewhat creepy anyway and this was the highlight for me and the exact way to kickstart the event. It played on my fears a lot and if you are someone who rides River Caves and finds it that bit daunting then you’ll love this addition spookiness.
In all honesty, I was lost with which zone and maze were what. So, just bear with me with talking about these haha. Okay, after River Caves you headed down what I think was Hell Tunnels. This is incredibly frightening but primarily due to the location in all honesty. I found it to be a lot more well lit than I had expected it to be. There was a few fun jump scares along the way but nothing too intense. But as I mentioned above the setting of this alone just gave it an all-mighty tense vibe.
Heading into the Planet Rock (unsure of what this zone/maze was called) building next to where there was a little bit of waiting outside to get a certain amount of people, we were a group of 4 soon to be a group of around 10-12. I did not know what to expect from this. There was a lot of swearing but in all honesty, the amount of swearing felt somewhat unnecessary and incredibly overcompensated for. If the cursing had being a little more natural into the script it could of made this bit a lot better given it got to the point it weren’t scary it was annoying. You enter to be immediately lined up against the wall with a woman who was interacting with everyone in the group. Heading inside you sat down and watch some kind of show. This is was alright but I was pretty confused as to what was going on in all honesty. You had the feeling of on the edge of your seat because of the setting yet nothing really “scary” happened inside. It was something quite different for an event to do from what we have seen.
The scare maze It was fun. We had a glorious distraction scare in here. It felt like there weren’t a lot of actors throughout but sufficient amount to make it quite tense with not knowing if there was any or not. It’s a section of this event I’d love to see expanded on & improved for future events. It more or less just needs a few more actors to ensure there is some proper jump scares happening throughout.
The clown-themed scare zone was tremendous and they all looked incredible too. It was more or less like subtle yet beneficial theming throughout this zone and the actors used it to their benefit so much. I wouldn’t say we had any major scares just little ones, to say the least. Yet it’s one of my other highlights from the evening.
The majority of the scare zones and the maze had some beautiful theming and some of which alone was adding a lot of intensity to the vibe with not knowing what was genuine or not. There was of course select areas of where future improvement could benefit from.
My first ride on Icon this whole season and it was with a rather unusual twist. The twist did make it feel a lot more sickly in my opinion but as a whole, it was nice to get back on and it was riding beautifully. The exit to the left felt rather wrong in all honesty but it tied in beautiful with the next encounter of the night.
Another first for me was finally getting to ride The Big One in the dark and it was remarkable too. We were sat on the back row of the first carriage, so as expected it was not the smoothest of rides. But just the sheer darkness was tremendous. It felt scary not being able to see clearly where you were heading.
I was anticipating more from this than what actually happened in all honesty. I anticipated some live actors to be dotted throughout the layout yet there weren’t any and that alone felt like a missed opportunity. By all means, it could of possibly came down to health and safety regulations as to why there weren’t any. It was wonderful to have it as part of the lineup anyway. I have always found this ghost train to terrify me on a normal day and last night was no different. But if it gets used for next years event I’d love to see it developed even further for this event to make it truly terrifying & an introduction to actors where it’s safe to do so throughout.
Overall the event was well thought off and put together. I found there was a lot of unique themes happening which is always a bold move to make and it seemed to work relatively well too. The constant flow from one ride to the next scare zone to the next ride was fab. The main downside I found was the absence of toilet breaks on offer until the end because it does come to the point you are more focussed on needing the loo you don’t get the full blow of the scare that you would if you could have nipped to the loo quickly. I thought Pleasure Beach had done an extraordinary job and we truly had a beautiful time. My highlight was River Caves it had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. The one thing I felt somewhat disappointed by was the Ghost Train. Each individual scare zone and the scare maze were created to such a high quality with some real fun scares added into the mix. It’s an event that is well worth checking out as it has a full package to it rather than just scare mazes it has the rides, eerie empty amusement park feeling and the scare zones. The eerie carousel opposite The Big One was ridiculously scary alone. All in all, it’s an event I think you guys should check out this October, it’s not one to be missed.
This event will be operating from the 8th-31st October & is an adult only event too. Have you booked your tickets for Journey to Hell yet? Here is the LINK to grab them now!
Thank you so much for reading and thank you to Blackpool Pleasure Beach for the invite.