Heads up, things are gonna get weeeeeird

and a bit spooky!

“When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls. Whenever candlelights flicker where the air is deathly still — that is the time when ghosts are present, practising their terror with ghoulish delight….”

As the summer sun slowly starts to set and the nights get shorter (boo) the BEST time of year rolls around, HALLOWEEN SEASON!

Back before I was obsessed with escaping, there was another love (which I still hold dear to my heart) – Scare Attractions!

What is a scare attraction?
Scare Attractions are highly themed, walk-through attractions of about 5-10 minutes in length, featuring lots of blood, guts, gore and scares! Typically in narrow, winding corridors with hidey holes for actors to jump out and scare you!

Houses (or mazes) can come in many, many themes… clowns/zombies/cannibals seemingly the most popular but realistically anything goes (in one house we had to stand in a toilet cubicle, in another we were going to be made into pies….)

Some of the bigger events, like Halloween Horror Nights utilise IP in their mazes, and some examples can by found in houses based on The Walking Dead and American Horror Story franchises (to name just a couple) – for fans of horror movies these events are amazing and the theming alone is enough to immerse you into their world (the less said about The Exorcist house the better)

Some events have roaming characters and scare zones and these can present some brilliant photo ops (should you be brave enough to approach the dead!)

Most places have places to get food and drink so you can refuel in between scares and get a warm drink, and some places have live music and street entertainment.
They’re a lot of fun and worth doing at least once!

A lot of cross over happens of people enjoying both escaping and scare attractions, with there being a fair few scary rooms in the UK (13utcher, Edith & The Gilman Hotel being our favourites) but as a whole, escape rooms aren’t scary and we have to wait until autumn to get our scare on!

I’ve previously also worked as a Zombie at a scare attraction, which I can assure you is an AMAZING job, seeing grown ups cowering in fear is a lot of fun!

Now you can see why people ran in fear… this was my first year, playing The Bride and it’s my fave picture over the 4 years I was there!

Admittedly scare attractions aren’t for everyone, and I was terrified the first time I went through one (well, I was 13 and alone…. what WAS I thinking) but after going to Halloween Horror Nights in 2009 I realised that scare attractions are safe, the actors are out to scare the crap out of you but never, ever to hurt or harm you. So armed with this knowledge, we started going to scare attractions in 2012, and slowly built up the addiction (it’s harder when they’re not year round like escaping!)

Amy, I hear you asking me AMY. WHY IS THIS RELEVANT TO ESCAPE ROOMS?

Well, it’s not if we’re going to be pedantic, but Halloween is coming early for me as on Tuesday I’m going to Farmaggedon’s press night and naturally my reviewing side will want to come out so there will be a neat review of Farmaggedon popping up on my site soon after!

We’ve got some great games booked in for the rest of September, but come October things are gonna get really spooky as the scare attractions take over (don’t worry, there will be at least one escape review during the month of October!) with visits to:

Scare Kingdom
Contained Liverpool
Screamfest Burton
Xtreme Scream Park
Dr Fright’s Halloween Nights
Lockdown Sanctum
Alton Tower’s Scarefest
Yorkshire Scaregrounds

And possibly a few more…. that I haven’t booked yet!

I’m rather excited, and don’t worry, normal service will be resumed as soon as the ghouls, goblins and zombies go back into hiding for another year!

Amy x