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Scarefest 2019

Saving the combo ticket mazes for the meet next week, so just The Attic and Darkest Depths for me this weekend. Spoiler free for the moment:

The Attic
An excellent 'pre show' to set the scene, which is much better than the movie from ToT. They've clearly put a LOT of effort into this maze, and it truly feels like an attic, including the long ass walk up the stairs! It's a nice premise but needs some tweaks on scares. Like Laura I missed some of the show scenes despite us being in a small group, and like Dan I'd agree the maze itself doesn't seem to flow to well at the moment. It seems quite short in comparison to ToT, and the finale was weaker than I'd like. That said, I hope they manage to tweak some things over the course of the week, and look forward to seeing how it is on a second run next weekend.

Darkest Depths
Wow. I had low expectations for this if I'm honest so I'm glad to have been proved very wrong! Looking at the maze being constructed over recent months, it looked extremely small compared to The Welcoming. Top that off with it being the 'family' maze, I wasn't expecting a great deal. But, this is probably Alton's best themed maze to date. From the word go, I had no idea whether I was inside or outside one of the shipping containers or indeed where the hell I was within the courtyard. From start to finish, it looks genuinely stunning, there's no other words for it. We went through with a couple of families, and gut feeling is that the actors are tailoring their scares and scripts to each age group . If they're not, this certainly didn't feel like a family maze! Like The Attic, the finale felt a little weak compared to The Welcoming (when it ran well), but I wasn't expecting genuine terror for a family maze. Like I mentioned in next week's meet topic, if you're avoiding this on the basis of being a tamer maze, change your mind and get it booked - it's worth it for the theming alone!

General atmosphere
I love the new pumpkins on Towers Street! Although we missed them thanks to a longer than expected queue for Wicker Man last night, the additions of projections by the TS skyride station look great too. Lighting is better, albeit by no means perfect thanks to the gels on most of the floodlighting. There's clearly still some tweaks and additions to do on that front, as we saw staff making changes throughout the day. Bunting and audio in fountain square is nice, although a shame there's nothing else in that area now. Dungeons looked great lit up too, and hideously busy throughout the day!

Wicker Man's bright white LED queue-line lighting is SO bright at the moment, I hope they tweak that once the themed lighting hopefully goes in for next weekend. The hotels looked decent too, and nice to see Coffee Shack open for the first time in three years, and serving pie and mash - now we just need to get that on park as well!
 
I'm planning on going to scarefest monday 28th. I'm going on x52 from derby and won't get there until 1. So is it worth going for 1-9? I'm only going for rides and not mazes so how many rides do you reckon I'll get?
 
Ethan said:
I'm planning on going to scarefest monday 28th. I'm going on x52 from derby and won't get there until 1. So is it worth going for 1-9? I'm only going for rides and not mazes so how many rides do you reckon I'll get?
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Well it's half term so expect it to be packed and for queues to be very long.
 
I’m visiting scarefest for the first time this year in half term on the Friday (not my choice of date, Ik how bad of a decision that is).

I’ve always wanted to go in the mazes at Alton Towers for ages however I get scared and panicked so easily.

Do you think it is worth even trying the mazes? I was considering just starting this year with The Attic only and seeing for future years if I could build up.

what do you’s think I should do?
 
Ethan said:
I'm planning on going to scarefest monday 28th. I'm going on x52 from derby and won't get there until 1. So is it worth going for 1-9? I'm only going for rides and not mazes so how many rides do you reckon I'll get?
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There’s every chance they could be full by 1.
 
Jammy said:
I’m visiting scarefest for the first time this year in half term on the Friday (not my choice of date, Ik how bad of a decision that is).

I’ve always wanted to go in the mazes at Alton Towers for ages however I get scared and panicked so easily.

Do you think it is worth even trying the mazes? I was considering just starting this year with The Attic only and seeing for future years if I could build up.

what do you’s think I should do?
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It's impossible to say for definite as only you know how you'll react. If you really want to try a maze, maybe try one of the one of the tamer mazes first (say Darkest Depths?) and see how you feel afterwards before forking out for the rest?
 
Craig said:
It's impossible to say for definite as only you know how you'll react. If you really want to try a maze, maybe try one of the one of the tamer mazes first (say Darkest Depths?) and see how you feel afterwards before forking out for the rest?
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Thank you for the advice, although I’m really not sure as this “family maze” has been made proven more intense than advertised according to reviews ahahha

I’m definitely avoiding Sub Species as being dragged and separated isn’t my thing
 
Jammy said:
Thank you for the advice, although I’m really not sure as this “family maze” has been made proven more intense than advertised according to reviews ahahha

I’m definitely avoiding Sub Species as being dragged and separated isn’t my thing
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More intense yes but between that and the likes of Sub Terra, that's your tamest option!
 
AT86 said:
To my knowledge the park has never hit capacity during Scarefest, I would be very surprised if that was to happen.
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We were in priority parking yesterday. The wife nipped back to the car at 3 and her hand was stamped. When trying to get back in, she scanned her pass and the reader wouldn’t let her in saying the park was full.

Thankfully, she had the hand stamp (and a chap on the gate recognised she’d just left) and she got back in.
 
The park was nowhere near full yesterday. This is a case of someone misinforming your wife rather than the park reaching capacity. You can't scan a pass a second time for entry, so that's probably where the confusion came from.
 
It’s a PMAP.

The reader wouldn’t let her in and said the park was full. The guy on the gate then said the same thing.

But I agree, it didn’t seem that full yesterday.
 
AGL said:
It’s a PMAP.

The reader wouldn’t let her in and said the park was full. The guy on the gate then said the same thing.

But I agree, it didn’t seem that full yesterday.
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That sounds more like staff member error, and the reader returning the wrong error based on the PMAP being scanned earlier in the day, which would have prevented a second entry. The park has never reached capacity away from Fireworks events in a long long time, and in fact we had someone turn up late during the afternoon yesterday (after 3pm) who got in fine at the turnstiles. Even for Fireworks, there's a conscious decision to close at lower than the actual capacity of the park for guest comfort. Turning up at 1pm for Scarefest will be fine.

To answer your question @Ethan, as @skyscraper said, going by the fact it's half term and Scarefest the park will be busy. You'll still get on rides but expect hefty queues for them, but the likes of Nemesis will be fine. Wicker Man and Smiler will be especially busy, particularly as darkness falls. Time your queuing right to ensure you grab your bus back!
 
Anyone know the average group sizes for each of the mazes?
And queue times (assuming I'd go in earlier at 2pm ish)
 
Craig said:
To answer your question @Ethan, as @skyscraper said, going by the fact it's half term and Scarefest the park will be busy. You'll still get on rides but expect hefty queues for them, but the likes of Nemesis will be fine. Wicker Man and Smiler will be especially busy, particularly as darkness falls. Time your queuing right to ensure you grab your bus back!
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Me and my mates have used the SRQ on smiler every time this season and just split, it saves a lot of time. The main queue was 100 once an I only waited 20 in SRQ
 
Going to give the Dungeons a go during Scarefest. When booking tickets at the box office do you choose a time or do they just allocate one?
 
skyscraper said:
Going to give the Dungeons a go during Scarefest. When booking tickets at the box office do you choose a time or do they just allocate one?
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You choose a time if it’s not available they offer you the closest to.
Did it today and still no different to any other time I’ve done it in the year.
 
Is this coming Sunday (i.e. a week today) the "Family Friendly" Scarefest day? (I lose track...!)

It should really be called the "Family Unfriendly" day as the atmosphere on-park will certainly be scary once it starts to get dark, if not before!
 
My two cents:

Sub Species: Same old, pretty much. Still very intense but a lot is taken away from this once you know the layout. They seemed to have a habit of sending people round in circles for much too long until they were confused rather than scared, too. Still, pretty scary for a first timer. Good. 7/10

Darkest Depths: A really pleasant surprise. Certainly a family maze in the sense that the actors don't touch you (very prominent in the other four this year) but a proper scare maze, with really high quality (original?) theming and some really unique sets. Certainly the best new maze of the season. Save it for after dark though, there are quite a few scenes where a *lot* of light is leaking in, despite the maze being all 'indoors'. 7/10

Altonville Mine Tours: A technically brilliant maze and it was excellently executed this time around. I think it goes from strength to strength with each passing year and it's by far the best experience overall. This is the only maze which makes proper use of having the actors being able to touch you as well, bringing you into the story rather than just the usual random grabs. It does peter out towards the end though and the finale doesn't quite work for the whole group. 8/10

Project 42: A huge improvement on last year (when it was a disaster), theming has been improved ten fold. I don't want to big up the experience too much because we were sent in as a group of two which was brilliant but it was really, really intense and there were definitely more actors in there than last year (I think there were four in one scene, more than I saw in the whole maze last year). It no longer feels like a behind the scenes of Sub Terra, anyway. The pre-show is painfully cheesy though, so the atmosphere around this one is a bit weaker. 8/10

TotT: Oh dear. This isn't what I expected at all and was deeply disappointing. First of all, having the way in be literally the same as the way out does not work at all. That said, the entrance corridor is ok and the introduction is brilliant, the best we have seen since The Sanctuary. But once you trek up into the 'attic' I think the maze gets a bit lost. That's no cohesion between scenes (which are good taken in isolation), there's no build up of suspense really... and it's *so* short with no real finale. I literally walked down the stairs at the end half-expecting there to be more. This feels like it should be a good maze, and I bit it will return next year as a great one with a few tweaks... but how disappointing. 5/10
 
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