Our next visit was to Alton Towers, stopping on site in one of their Star Gazing Pods for 2 days and nights. We wanted two days to make sure we get the most out of Scarefest as well as ride the great selection of rides!
I’ll do a separate little review of the Star Gazing Pods and facilities, so let jump into day 1 of Scarefest!
Day 1 – The Rides
We decided that one day would be ride focused, while the other we’d do more of the Scarefest side of things.
So our first stop was Galactica, purely because we were allowed to use the hotel entrance which takes us straight to Galactica and Nemesis.
Galactica had a late opening, which seems to be a common thing as we’ve had to wait a bit longer every time we’ve made Galactica our first ride of the day!
There wasn’t much to say about our ride here, the queue wasn’t quite as long as it usually is as it skipped out all the top section and the area did have the great soundtrack playing which was something at least! I hope they give this ride some attention during the closed season as it’ll be all alone next year when Nemesis closes.
Speaking of Nemesis, we headed there for our first of a few rides on this Towers staple. I believe both Rita and Nemesis are the only two rides we have ridden at every visit to Alton Towers so far!
Anyway, Nemesis was running very well and you wouldn’t think it was going for a retrack next year with how smoothly it was running over our two day visit. Even our night ride was excellent with no head banging at all!
Once we’d done in Forbidden Valley we headed up towards Gloomy Wood to see what was happening with Dual.
We were both well aware that Dual was closed but had seen photos that the area had had a little work done in line with the attractions closure. They have put boards up around the area that have been vandalised by the supposed possessed spirits of the haunted house. This has been done very tastefully and is a great way to theme an attraction that isn’t currently operating.
It is such a missed opportunity for them to have not run the ride through Scarefest and feature it in a scare attraction of sorts. One where the attraction features actors throughout the ride that makes it feel like the haunted house really has been possessed by someone new and it makes it much more dangerous and scary because of this!
Even just keeping Dual open as we remember it would have been better than closing the attraction in my eyes, but for all I know, there could have been something desperately wrong with the ride systems that made it unsafe for visitors. Until next year Dual!
After we’d finished up in Gloomy Wood, we moved onto Katanga Canyon for a ride on Runaway Mine Train and Congo River Rapids.
Runaway Mine train is another favourite of ours at the park, though it can sometimes be uncomfortable when both of us are crammed into one of the cars! The ride operator is always interacting with the trains as they fly through the station, and it seems to have an unofficial system in place that the more noise you make as you enter the station, the more chance you have of going around again, which is fun!
Congo River Rapids isn’t something we both go mad for but is still a fun time nonetheless! It could do with having the waterfalls working during hotter weather though as it does feel lacking when compared with American rapids rides!
Once we’d done with Katanga Canyon we headed around to Wicker Man for our first ride of the visit. Though the queue is always long on Wicker Man, it doesn’t always feel long. This is thanks, in part, to the ride being so photogenic and there is always something going on in the ride area. There’s a lot of energy around Wicker Man, thanks to the decent throughput of trains and Big Bob doing his thing too.
Once we’d had a look around the Wicker Man shop, we headed over to X-Sector for rides on Oblivion and The Smiler. The queue for Smiler was about 45 minutes, but interestingly, so was Oblivions’. Much like Nemesis, Oblivion rarely gets long queues whenever I’ve been but recently there does seem to be batching issues with Oblivion. For one thing the station only uses one loading platform out of the possible two, and the seats on the left side of the train are still not being filled. The camera that photos the whole train before its descent is working again though!
Next stop was Hex, a ride I’d been looking forward to getting back on for ages. This is one of my favourite flat rides here in the UK, and it has had a few issues all season. It wasn’t running the best, especially when compared with Haunted House Monster Party from the day before, but still a great time!
World of David Walliams next and Gangsta Granny. A short queue here and the area is back up and running as it was before the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. I’m glad they haven’t made any changes to the ride or surrounding areas as I don’t feel anything here is offensive or upsetting.
As the park slowly started to get dark, we headed to Spinball Whizzer and then into CBeebies land for rides on Postman Pat’s Parcel Post and Octonauts. All of these are good fun rides, the latter two purely for the photos you can take!
By the time we’d finished on Octonauts, the park was definitely dark so we headed back to Wicker Man for a night ride. We did one last year after the fireworks but unfortunately the camera didn’t take our photo so we missed out on that, thankfully it got us this time around!
Our final two rides were a great backrow ride on Rita and a mid-train on Th13teen. I was looking forward to Th13teen so much after last years ride, but it was somewhat ruined this year by the addition of lighting out in the forest.
Last year, as the train went over the initial lift hill, it was pitch black, then you were blinded by the camera flash and it made the ride a worth while dark ride, but with the additional lighting provided, it took away that element and somewhat dampened the experience.
Day 2 – Scarefest
Day two started with quite bad weather which worked out in our favour as we could do all the Scarefest things and stay dry with our umbrellas and not worry about getting stuck in queues.
The first thing we saw was an impromptu performance from the Alton Ancestors, a group of dancers dresses to look like ghosts of the residents of Alton Towers, very vintage in design and completely monochrome in colour. These were very good, and throughout the day, you’d catch them performing in different areas of the park, no matter how wet it got, true dedication to the job!
Our next Scarefest activity was trying out The Invitation. Similar in concept to Thorpe Parks Terminal but executed a bit better.
The concept here is that you’ve been invited to visit a burial chamber and unbeknownst to you, it’ll be your final resting place. The chamber has incarcerated vampires living in the vault that are separated from the world of the living by a cage and they come out to visit you during your stay.
The audio lets you know that you’re not alone here and has the voices of the other guests played out to make it seem like you’re still a group. The vampire then talks to different members of the group, tasting their blood, insulting bad blood and trying to persuade you to open the cage.
As the story progresses tensions rise as the vampire gets more and more persuasive until someone does eventually let them out! The scene comes to an end when he comes close to you and supposedly bites you, causing so much blood to spurt out that you and others around you get sprayed, and you do actually get sprayed with water by the operators, which was a nice touch.
The audio quality is excellent and the voice actor for the vampire did a phenomenal job with his part!
There are a couple of issues though. Firstly it ends so abruptly, the vampires depart in bat form very quickly and there’s no really jump scare at the end. I was bracing myself for the lights to flick on and there to actually be someone in the room with you, but it never came to be.
Secondly, and this might not affect everyone, but I was in the second pod from the end by the exit door, I knew this as I’d seen where I was sat in relation to Tracy who was first in. Now when the vampire escapes the cage, he walks around and you can pin point exactly where he is in relation to you and multiple times did he seem to be talking to someone I knew didn’t exist.
He’d be facing directly opposite you, then to the left, then to the right, and then further right again. If I’m the second in line, that means he’s visited the person directly across from me, the one to the left and one to the right of them, so there isn’t anyone else left to visit to the right of the person across from me, yet he did.
It might only be a daft thing but it broke the immersion for me in quite a big way and it’s a shame as the sound effects and voice acting were top notch, just let down by my positioning in the room I guess!
I don’t know how they could fix that apart from making it so certain seats hear slightly different audio to others that lines up with the room layout.
This was much better than terminal though as the physical effects were much better and the audio of better quality. Both are a great start to the idea of having an actor less Scare maze which I like the idea of as I’m still not quite sure how to react when I’m in a Scare maze!
There’s still a lot of room for improvement for these audio based experiences, but for a first time outing, I enjoyed them and I hope they elaborate next year.
Once we’d finished on the Invitation, we moved onto a scare maze I was really looking forward to, Darkest Depths.
When we came on 2020, it was billed as a Scare maze for kids, so we skipped it, but if nothing has changed since the 2020 version, then I wish we’d done it sooner!
This is a very detailed and well crafted story about a band of pirates that set off to find treasure but were attacked on their way by a monstrous kraken that pulled the ship down to the darkest depths of the sea.
Apart from the initial bar scene, the experience plays out in the same fashion as the kraken attack scene from Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest where the Black Pearl is taken to Davy Jones Locker.
That’s all I’ll say if you haven’t experienced it, I don’t want to ruin too much as I thought it was well worth experiencing it before knowing what was going on beforehand.
Once we’d finished in Darkest Depths, we headed back to the lawns to sit and watch the entertainment on the stage. We watched The Ancestors again (which was pretty much the same show as they perform out and about in the park), Sin Bin ImmortHELL, Phil’s Halloween Dance Party and A Vintage Halloween.
The stage shows were good, though a lot were repeated from what we saw of the 2020 version, but they were still entertaining nonetheless. Sin Bin didn’t always hit the mark as some of the performers weren’t the best at singing, but it was made up for by others in the group.
A Vintage Halloween and Phil’s Halloween Dance Party were very similar, but I didn’t mind it so much as the music was decent enough, but there was a lack of atmosphere as there was only a handful of people around us watching. That’s unfortunately the price you pay by going midweek to one of these events, you’ll get smaller queues for the rides, but also less people to enjoy the event with too.
Scarefest was good, but not great this time around. The event was advertised as the 15th anniversary of Scarefest and besides the logo and pin badges showing this, there wasn’t anything that would suggest otherwise!
When Thorpe Parks Fright Nights turned 20, they introduced Legacy, a way to show the rich history of the different events that have been run throughout the years and the whole event seemed so lively and like a celebration of 20 years. There was a lack of this at Scarefest for me.
I didn’t really see many roaming actors, and the line-up of scare mazes was nearly the same as 2020 and 2021 which is a missed opportunity as I’d have loved to see The Sanctuary come back, or even Nemesis Sub Terra! Both of these are something I’ve missed out on and would love to experience them during a 1 off celebration of the events history!
Overall we enjoyed Scarefest, but it wasn’t as good as it should have been in my opinion! The Invitation was good and Darkest Depths was great, but much like the stage shows, it was a lot of things we’ve already seen or had access to. Hopefully next year will see the audio based scare experiences improved and possibly a brand new maze and the return of scare zones?
Our final stop is Fantasy Island for their Fear Island event!
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