Wickscream Park
This year see's the first year of Wickscream Park which is based at Wicksteed Park in Kettering. The park was founded by Charles Wicksteed and is responsible for a wide variety of playground equipment across the UK and further afield, the park also offers a selection of rides with the biggest being a Pinfari coaster and a pirate ship, as well as a rather relaxing train ride.
So what could we expect from Wicksteed Halloween? Designed by AtmosFEAR Entertainment, the company behind Scare Kingdom Scream Park and Psychomanteum - the event offered 2 Halloween attractions "Panic Station" and "Cirque Savage" as well as a selection of night time rides. The mazes themselves were priced at £13.50 for both.
Panic Station
Located on the park's railway line "Panic Station" was our first stop. Upon arriving at the train station, the initial impressions were good with a custom soundtrack, projections, fog and atmospheric lighting creating a great atmosphere Several minutes later a professor begins to tell us a story about ghosts and about how he was trying to locate them at a stop he knew of as the "Panic Station" but had no clue if it really existed. As we board the train, this excited character continued to interact as he asked us to report our findings. It's an interesting start to our adventure and leaves everyone on the train excited about what will come next.
After a quite uneventful journey through the darkness we entered a tunnel where we met our first "ghosts" . These actors then proceeded to tell us about their unfortunate demise and to give us more clues towards the location of the aforementioned Panic Station. As you can imagine - it's not long before the train heads off to this elusive station, and at probably the darkest and remotest part of the park, the train stops and we were asked to dismount. Park staff helped us off the train and as we crossed over the main tracks on foot we started to really worry about what was ahead...
The remainder of the experience involved lots of dialogue as we wandered through the woodland encountering different characters along the way. We felt that we needed more scares as opposed to more speeches from the actors and apart from the incredible bride character who was clearly interacting with the guests, the rest seemed to be just reading a script that they had learned the night before.
It was obvious the attraction was aimed at a younger audience, however the level of shouting from actors would most likely scare them. It would probably have been better to aim for either family friendly or scary, as we think most small children would be too scared, but most older teenagers and adults wouldn't be scared enough.
Cirque Savage
The park's other attraction "Cirque Savage" was clearly aimed more towards the older market. Located in the parks old laser arena, and following a very dragged out safety brief, this attraction very much reminded us of many other carnival mazes in the past.
The show started quite slowly with us being made to "perform" a variety of tricks which left us slightly bewildered. The first half of the maze then reminded us a lot of AtmosFEAR's other circus themed maze from Blackpool, but had some fun moments - if not overly scary. As we progressed, the scares ramped up quite a bit and by the time we escaped, we been genuinely scared a number of times by different characters. The finale of this maze, used a classic strobe and security fencing combination, which was extremely effective due to the number of lively actors involved throughout. We had several good jump moments in this scene including a very sudden (and loud!) surprise that left us running towards the exit!
Combined with the rides on offer and the roaming actor around, the event is off to a solid start and could grow quite well in the future. The two main attractions could really benefit from less scripting throughout the scenes and more of a "natural" flow to the action. As it is - it's a great starting event for younger guests looking to explore the whole scare attraction concept. We look forward to seeing what Wickscream does next!
So what could we expect from Wicksteed Halloween? Designed by AtmosFEAR Entertainment, the company behind Scare Kingdom Scream Park and Psychomanteum - the event offered 2 Halloween attractions "Panic Station" and "Cirque Savage" as well as a selection of night time rides. The mazes themselves were priced at £13.50 for both.
Panic Station
Located on the park's railway line "Panic Station" was our first stop. Upon arriving at the train station, the initial impressions were good with a custom soundtrack, projections, fog and atmospheric lighting creating a great atmosphere Several minutes later a professor begins to tell us a story about ghosts and about how he was trying to locate them at a stop he knew of as the "Panic Station" but had no clue if it really existed. As we board the train, this excited character continued to interact as he asked us to report our findings. It's an interesting start to our adventure and leaves everyone on the train excited about what will come next.
After a quite uneventful journey through the darkness we entered a tunnel where we met our first "ghosts" . These actors then proceeded to tell us about their unfortunate demise and to give us more clues towards the location of the aforementioned Panic Station. As you can imagine - it's not long before the train heads off to this elusive station, and at probably the darkest and remotest part of the park, the train stops and we were asked to dismount. Park staff helped us off the train and as we crossed over the main tracks on foot we started to really worry about what was ahead...
The remainder of the experience involved lots of dialogue as we wandered through the woodland encountering different characters along the way. We felt that we needed more scares as opposed to more speeches from the actors and apart from the incredible bride character who was clearly interacting with the guests, the rest seemed to be just reading a script that they had learned the night before.
It was obvious the attraction was aimed at a younger audience, however the level of shouting from actors would most likely scare them. It would probably have been better to aim for either family friendly or scary, as we think most small children would be too scared, but most older teenagers and adults wouldn't be scared enough.
Cirque Savage
The park's other attraction "Cirque Savage" was clearly aimed more towards the older market. Located in the parks old laser arena, and following a very dragged out safety brief, this attraction very much reminded us of many other carnival mazes in the past.
The show started quite slowly with us being made to "perform" a variety of tricks which left us slightly bewildered. The first half of the maze then reminded us a lot of AtmosFEAR's other circus themed maze from Blackpool, but had some fun moments - if not overly scary. As we progressed, the scares ramped up quite a bit and by the time we escaped, we been genuinely scared a number of times by different characters. The finale of this maze, used a classic strobe and security fencing combination, which was extremely effective due to the number of lively actors involved throughout. We had several good jump moments in this scene including a very sudden (and loud!) surprise that left us running towards the exit!
Combined with the rides on offer and the roaming actor around, the event is off to a solid start and could grow quite well in the future. The two main attractions could really benefit from less scripting throughout the scenes and more of a "natural" flow to the action. As it is - it's a great starting event for younger guests looking to explore the whole scare attraction concept. We look forward to seeing what Wickscream does next!
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