James WitherspoonWalking through the imposing, flame-spewing gates of Tulleys Farm on a windy night is like stepping through some sort of portal. In the middle of the Sussex countryside, at the end of the Thameslink, they’ve created a place to rival even the biggest budget US events: a gigantic ‘scream park’ dedicated to thrills, chills, and having a damn great time.
The first thing you notice about Shocktoberfest is its immense scale. It’s an 8-maze attraction, spread out over two large sections of farmland connected via a tunnel, and featuring, among other things, three food courts, two bars, two live music stages, a 3D Cinema, and a funfair. The second thing you notice are the actors – elaborately costumed and roaming the park, taunting the guests. Whilst we were having a bite to eat, various groups of characters – rotting clowns, demonic policemen – came and sat with us, hilariously commenting on the fast food before shambling away to go harass someone else. With our stomachs satisfied, we decided to check out the mazes:
Creepy Cottage
Tucked away at the back of the park, Creepy Cottage is one of the older mazes in the park, and is marketed for first-time attendees or people who are easily scared. That said, we found it to be a surprisingly effective haunt – taking place in an actual cottage, with tightly constructed hallways and plenty of locations for actors to jump out (even though there were only 3 or 4 people doing so). The attraction stays in place during off-season as well, meaning that it has a permanent, glossy feel with some excellent animatronics and authentic-looking dilapidated theming. In the general scheme of things, it’s quite forgettable– but as the start to the evening, it’s a perfect way to break in Shocktoberfest, and a lot of fun.
5/10
Twisted Clowns 3D
Housed inside an impressive multi-storey façade, this clown maze involves visitors being asked to don 3D glasses and stumble through a day-glow nightmare of shrinking hallways, trippy makeup, and blacklighting. Although the maze looks absolutely stunning, there were some issues that devalued the experience. The batching of guests seemed to be a problem on the night we were there, with groups of 15 or more being sent into the attraction at the same time. Because the actors are very interactive, and like to hold people back and intimidate them, these large groups became jammed up into a long queue that slowly wound around the scenery – meaning that we could literally have a conversation whilst waiting to enter the next room.
It was also the case that the maze was very bright to facilitate the 3D effect. Unless you’re a sufferer of coulrophobia, therefore, Twisted Clowns 3D doesn’t really offer opportunities to be taken by surprise – leaving it gleefully sinister, but not really ‘scary’. That said, it’s a beautiful, retro, funfair-style cacophony of brain-melting visuals and bouncy carnival music. Just don’t expect to be particularly traumatised.
5/10
VIXI
This was one of the most interesting attractions of the night. On a mock gallows, guests are hooded and asked to proceed into a dark warren of tunnels with only a rope to guide them. Once inside, a variety of brash sensory stimuli – changing angles and terrains, sudden altering of light levels, fire, water, and roaring wind – all disorientate and confuse. Meanwhile, actors wait in the darkness, pouncing on unsuspecting visitors who can’t see them coming (the bags let in a little light, to allow you to make out the demons pursuing you through the dark).
Because you can’t really see, and because your only tether to reality is the rope by your left hand, the group has a tendency to get very split up – we felt completely isolated and alone, unable to hear the screams of those in front or behind us, and preyed on by actors from all sides. A one-time maze, perhaps, but very effective.
8/10
The Coven of 13
With an unassuming façade of splintered wooden posts, we weren’t exactly sure what to expect with The Coven of 13, but it delivered on so many levels. Themed around a coven of witches, guests are invited to traverse through the woods to reach their lair, then make it through to the other side.
Firstly, it’s seriously long: at least 10 minutes in duration, making it worth a long queue. But secondly, and most importantly, the theming is insanely good – the best of the night. Take the first room, for example. Chest-high inflatables on either side make it feel like we’re wading through a swamp, and a green laser light projected through smoke looks like a water level: as we wave our hands, the mist undulates and ripples as if we’re swimming through some ethereal, fetid pool. Meanwhile, witches jump from either side seemingly at random – and we’re powerless to do anything about it, trapped by the pathway. It’s a superb introduction to a superb maze that involves outdoor firepits (yes, there’s a lot of real fire), mad dashes through houses and fireplaces, and woodland walks.
The only thing that let it down was the lack of an impactful finale, and a lower level of actors than expected in such a large attraction. However, we really enjoyed marvelling at the stunning scenery and attention to world-building that was put into creating the maze, and were constantly in awe of the creepy, misty atmosphere it exuded.
8/10
Horrorwood Hayride
This is, supposedly, the Shocktoberfest classic, and it’s not hard to see why. Guests are taken through a winding track on the back of a tractor, encountering various scenes from horror iconography including, amongst other things, a haunted cinema, Alice’s rabbit hole, a western town populated by chainsaw-wielding maniacs, and a nun-themed strip club (?!).
Along the way, a plethora of characters board the trailer and interact with the audience – not exactly scaring them, but intimidating them nonetheless. Although the attraction lacks any fear factor whatsoever (except the anxiety of getting close to the realistic chainsaw props) the theming is insane – feeling as if it should belong in a mega-budget US attraction. Fireballs, falling billboards, and impressive sets all added to the atmosphere of excess that make the Hayride the blockbuster attraction at Tulleys.
8/10
The Cellar
Tight, claustrophobic, and disorientating, The Cellar was the maze in the park that properly scared our pants off.
After walking downstairs, we enter a damp, slightly mouldy mess of incredibly tight spaces and corridors themed around a basement. There were an absolute ton of actors waiting for us in the shadows, unafraid to pounce upon us and chase us through the lengthy environment. The pacing of scares encourages groups to split up, meaning that we ended up on our own for most of the maze – creeping around the eerily quiet corners awaiting scares at any moment.
They often came at the most unexpected points: hands shooting out of fireplaces, or, in one spectacular scene, a giant snake animatronic appearing from nowhere and trying to bite our heads off! The actors in here seemed to be a lot more intense than in the other mazes – properly sprinting and getting up close And, when the scares didn’t come, we were constantly in fear of the appearance of actors – meaning that we travelled through The Cellar in constant apprehension of being attacked.
9/10
The Colony
By far the longest maze of the night, clocking in between 15 and 20 minutes, The Colony is a winding maze of indoor and outdoor elements, playing with light and dark. Set in a post-apocalyptic survivor settlement, the actors speak an unusual tongue that appears to be created for the purpose of the haunt – a little detail that just made the whole experience more cohesive.
The use of different environments was absolutely perfect, with actors occupying places on multiple floors of scenery as we walked underneath. At times, we had to crawl through tight passages, and at others we were immersed in complete pitch darkness with no ability to tell where the actors were, which made it incredibly unnerving. It was also the maze to feature the best ending, with a chainsaw-wielding maniac who was eager to attack us from all sides!
If there was one thing I had to fault, it’d be the lack of actors in parts of the experience – it’s a 20-minute attraction, so filling it with people was always going to be difficult, but there were long stretches with only one (or even no) actors present.
9/10
The Chop Shop
The shortest maze of the night, yet supposedly the scariest, failed to terrorise us as much as we’d hoped. It’s an attraction of two halves – in the first, audience members wander around a garage, as hillbilly characters gleefully inform them of how they’re about to die. In the second, they run through an angular, seemingly never-ending path of white walls splattered with blood, as characters wielding chainsaws jump from crevices and doors to the sound of American hard rock, smashing their props against the walls right beside them as strobe lights blink aggressively.
The second part of the maze is chaos, but we didn’t see many actors on our run-through, which was responsible for a generally lacklustre atmosphere in the haunt. The maze is also dependent on the audience being afraid of chainsaw props, which I usually am, but for some reason wasn’t here. Maybe it had something to do with us being at the front of our group, so that the actors would always wait for us to pass before pouncing. It also happens to be one of the shortest mazes we did on the night, feeling undercooked compare to the 20-minute behemoths next door.
Nevertheless, it’s the most fully fleshed-out of the park. It has a coherent storyline, and the most convincing sets – the garage scenes in the initial half of the maze ooze an oily authenticity – as well as the chainsaw section being the ‘craziest’ segment in Shocktoberfest.
6/10
This was, perhaps, my favourite London event of the year. The atmosphere was perfect: sinister, fun, and party-like; the mazes were beautiful: big-budget, well thought-out, and super long; there were almost more roaming actors than guests at points; and everyone just seemed to be having a great time. Whether listening to music, having a bite to eat and a drink, or running away from a decomposing pig-person wielding a chainsaw, Tulleys Shocktoberfest was an absolute blast.
Sanjana Varghese
Add comment