*Journey To Hell Freak Nights - Full Review Containing Spoilers!*
Last weekend we experienced Freak Nights at Blackpool Pleasure Beach twice, once during the staff preview night on Friday and last night (Sunday 27th). Tonight we are going to give our full review which will contain spoilers.
Highlights
We found each of the scare mazes/zones to be well executed, a particular highlight was the use of the underground tunnels which were creepy and had a couple of different scenes going on, the 'bar scene' was well done with very good acting but all of it was well executed and immersed you into the event with it suddenly feeling like you were nowhere near the Pleasure Beach. We really like the creativity behind this idea, the use of them is fantastic and well thought out.
The audio throughout the park set the tone for the event perfectly, it was dark and mysterious making you wonder what would come next.
All of the actors played their roles exceptionally well, without knowing the background of the actors in terms of, is it their first time as scare actors or not?, they all did an exceptional job in their roles. We really enjoyed the way the soldiers in our group played their roles.
The use of the Chinese Puzzle Maze for the Clown maze was excellent, also the use of Planet Rock was very good with excellent acting throughout this section!
Lowlights
There's two particular things that stick with us which we felt impacted on the experience over both nights we did it, and we'll go into those first. The first one is the story, whilst the actors play their roles to a story line, it's never really made clear what the story line is other than it is a Journey to or through Hell. Spoilers are coming now; the event starts with the safety briefing which is well done but doesn't give you much insight into what is happening, following on from this is where you meet a solider at the Safe Zone which it isn't really explained where we've come from or what we are escaping from, you plunge straight into this new world without knowing why or how you find yourself in this place. The above is followed by the Major addressing you and all of the other groups on the same slot as you, even though you have already been assigned separate groups at this point you end up back with everyone on the same slot as you, then some things happen (no spoilers here) and then everyone is separated back into their designated groups again which is where each group is taken off on a different route (but all experience the same chain of events at different points). You go between each scene without really having much of a story in between, there's no clear link between the chain of events.
The biggest complaint we heard is the standing around waiting between each activity within the chain of events, we felt this was dealt with really well on Friday as our group had 'two soldiers' with us at all times so when one of them was checking up on the rest of the group to see if they were nearly done and ready to move on, the other solider would continue in his role keeping the groups minds focused on what was going on, sadly on Sunday our group only had one solider/guide which meant the waiting around was quite frustrating and didn't allow for you to be fully immersed into the experience. The Solider actors here did their best, but sadly the long waiting between the chain of events took away the immersion.
Summary
Journey to Hell, Freak Nights at Blackpool Pleasure Beach has HUGE potential to be one of the UK's best theme park Halloween events, if not the best, and for a first time event they have nailed some parts of this experience. We encouraged people to do it on the back of our experiences on Friday, and we still encourage people to try it especially if they have purchased tickets already!
In our opinion, Halloween has a place at the Pleasure Beach but could perhaps be implemented into the park's opening hours, use the Puzzle Maze as a Clown Maze again but with a dedicated queuing area (empty space outside Pizza Kitchen) with sensible batching, same for the Tunnel maze but again with separate queuing within the area to incorporate these experiences into a full park Halloween offering. On top of this, roaming actors would work a treat as they already do (Werewolf), coaster train lights given the spooky green LEDs we saw at Vampire Beach and maybe a whole scare zone outside of the Ghost Train to fit in with that area of the park.
Have you been to Journey To Hell, Freak Nights at Blackpool Pleasure Beach?! If so, what did you think of it?
We'd love to hear your thoughts on our review from the event, and how you think Halloween can work at BPB!
but other than that. I thought they dealt with it very well.
