Whatton House of Horror: Purgatory - Review
Whatton House of Horror is a new event created by Area 51 - one of the co-creators of last year's Road to Hell. It was originally planned to run alongside Road to Hell this Halloween, but sadly the drive thru had to be cancelled due to licensing issues.
The theme of this debut year's event is Purgatory, an area where guests are stuck in between Heaven and Hell. Based in the incredible gardens of Whatton House, the attraction is a one mile long 40 minute walk through experience, which we would say definitely leans more to the spooky rather than the very scary.
Our night started in a courtyard with catering facilities, and as our time to enter the attraction approached, we made our way to the main queue line. Sadly with large batches - this could mean a longish wait before entering the attraction itself, but we were fairly lucky and got through before the majority of people in our slot!
Along the trail itself, most of the scenes were elaborately lit and really made the most of the incredible location, including the house and grounds. We must shout out to the spooky looking smoky lake/pond, which was beautiful and really effective. Throughout, there also a lot of audio which helped to maintain the a spooky atmosphere. The makeup and costumes were also some of the best we saw all Halloween with the characters alternating between genuinely terrifying and spooky and funny. We loved the audience participation elements (e.g. having to think of and sing a song before we could be judged by Anubis) and the actors all gave strong and convincing character performances.
There definitely were a few good jump scares across our whole group - especially in the early scene with the statues that suddenly came to life and stalked us. A lot of the other scenes utilised quite detailed scripts which were all delivered passionately by the actors involved. Fortunately we had been given a lantern at the start of the walk, which not only was meant to keep groups apart along the trail but worked as a good signpost to the actors that we were coming!
We must just also say that would have liked the finale, as we entered heaven or hell, to have been a little more impactful as it sadly seemed to fizzle out towards the end. Its only a minor niggle, but we would have loved something more powerful to end on our experience on a high.
All in - the event reminded us a lot of the Garden of Ghouls event at Birmingham Botanical Gardens a few years back (which is no co-incidence as some of the same people have been involved.) Although not terrifyingly scary, it was a really immersive, atmospheric and theatrical experience that would be perfect for families, or people that are just too scared to do a full on scare attraction such as the production team's more intense event - Satan's Slammer.
The fact that this design team have been able to create such different experiences across all their sites, bodes really well for the future and we cant wait to see what they come up with for Halloween 2022!
The theme of this debut year's event is Purgatory, an area where guests are stuck in between Heaven and Hell. Based in the incredible gardens of Whatton House, the attraction is a one mile long 40 minute walk through experience, which we would say definitely leans more to the spooky rather than the very scary.
Our night started in a courtyard with catering facilities, and as our time to enter the attraction approached, we made our way to the main queue line. Sadly with large batches - this could mean a longish wait before entering the attraction itself, but we were fairly lucky and got through before the majority of people in our slot!
Along the trail itself, most of the scenes were elaborately lit and really made the most of the incredible location, including the house and grounds. We must shout out to the spooky looking smoky lake/pond, which was beautiful and really effective. Throughout, there also a lot of audio which helped to maintain the a spooky atmosphere. The makeup and costumes were also some of the best we saw all Halloween with the characters alternating between genuinely terrifying and spooky and funny. We loved the audience participation elements (e.g. having to think of and sing a song before we could be judged by Anubis) and the actors all gave strong and convincing character performances.
There definitely were a few good jump scares across our whole group - especially in the early scene with the statues that suddenly came to life and stalked us. A lot of the other scenes utilised quite detailed scripts which were all delivered passionately by the actors involved. Fortunately we had been given a lantern at the start of the walk, which not only was meant to keep groups apart along the trail but worked as a good signpost to the actors that we were coming!
We must just also say that would have liked the finale, as we entered heaven or hell, to have been a little more impactful as it sadly seemed to fizzle out towards the end. Its only a minor niggle, but we would have loved something more powerful to end on our experience on a high.
All in - the event reminded us a lot of the Garden of Ghouls event at Birmingham Botanical Gardens a few years back (which is no co-incidence as some of the same people have been involved.) Although not terrifyingly scary, it was a really immersive, atmospheric and theatrical experience that would be perfect for families, or people that are just too scared to do a full on scare attraction such as the production team's more intense event - Satan's Slammer.
The fact that this design team have been able to create such different experiences across all their sites, bodes really well for the future and we cant wait to see what they come up with for Halloween 2022!
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