Having experienced many scare mazes and attractions around the UK and Europe, I have always expected to see the same thing, as most of these attractions are of a muchness these days.
For example:- Chainsaws don't bother me anymore.
But something seemed different about this particular attraction run by Gary Crompton from GNG Productions of Barnsley. Something I couldn't put my finger on but I knew this would be more of a traditional scare maze especially when images like this below started appearing on their official Facebook page.
So off we went, up the M1 2hrs travelling to Sheffield, Hillsborough to be precise to the address given at the time of booking, we arrived to find the place but nobody seemed to be around? - no signs of life or no signs advertising the event - had we been conned? A quick call to Scare Consultant Michael Bolton (no not that one) and we found the entrance into what looked like the entrance to an office complex.
We was handed our contracts to read through and taken upstairs into the bar, which I might add was reasonable! £2.90 for bottle of Bulmers for us southerners is good!
I was last through the show, and obviously the actors hadn't been told and I walked into a room with all the lights on with actors stood around not realising I was last, I was ushered back to the start whilst the show was reset.
Next thing, lights go off and I was asked to commence walking around a blind corner, as soon as I did, I was hooded in a black soaking wet hood and told to "Fuc*ing get in there" and pushed very hard into a room. I was then sat on a stool whilst I was drenched with water and had a wet sponge shoved up inside my hood and down my throat. This was my point of bailing out my heart was pumping and I could hardly breathe. But I had to go on.. my wife had been through and I couldnt bail out.
I was then ordered with the most foul language (F's, C's the lot) and pushed hard around a room, into walls and doors. Next thing I was pushed into a room and had my hood removed inside the room was a little girl the room was covered in toys, prams and a baby chair the girl went on to tell me her uncle sexually abused her on a regular basis and that I should join in with the games, this went on for a while and made me feel slightly uncomfortable to say the least. She then leaves the room after squirting cream onto my face and tells her uncle I am in her room.
Next thing, her uncle turns up with a leather gimp mask, leather pants and a whip and starts telling her he will be back for her later to "Give her some of his squirty cream" I am then ushered into the finale room and in here is various scenes of varying degrees of punishments.
Again hooded, you are pushed around into scenes, firstly being a huge black guy with a gun who really hurt my by grabbing me whilst holding a gun to my head, in front of me lines of cocaine which I am told to take. The hood comes back on and I am took into a room with a bed on the bed is a girl who straddles me and asks me what I would like to do to her. Door swings open and her fella comes in with a baseball bat who then starts to beat her up in front of me and hitting the bed hard with the bat right by my legs.
I am then pulled up and bag comes back on the head to the next scene, I am sat on a chair when the hood comes off there is a strobe light right in front of my face flashing, and a guy in a white mimes mask telling me all sorts of wrongness in my ears. I am then pulled up again into the last scene where I am tied up with ropes made to kneel on the floor and wrapped in a blanket, whilst all this is happening I am being called a C*nt , a Fat F*ck and everything else imaginable. You are then freed by what I think was the police and then pushed out the door into the bar where everyone is waiting.
I might have missed some bits out as I was generally petrified. This is a scare maze/attraction like no other, it pushes the boundaries, crosses the limits and puts an enormous amount of stress on you. Totally worth the £10 ticket and no doubt a strong contender for a screamie award.
It just goes to show, big budgets and highly themed areas are not needed to make something quite awful. And that gore isn't the answer all the time. This might now set a predident to the future of scare attractions.
Awesome effort, the attraction runs till 24th June 2012.
www.projectfear.co.uk
