When we recently visited Hylands Estate for their Fear Fest Spooky Trail we all had a great time. However, as the older two kids – Kai and Amelia – are both getting along into teen-hood they both said that they’d be interested in attending the 15+ Fear Fest Extreme event that takes place along the same trail but during the evening spot. As such, a few days later we found ourselves back there, myself, Kai and Amelia, for the spooky walk. Jupiter opted to skip this one, as she is not the biggest fan of fears and is very easily jumpscared.
Now, I should start this off by pointing out that the route isn’t actually the same. The Fear Fest Spooky Trail, leads you through a short (in both height and length) haymaze before putting you out at an activity area, while the Fear Fest Extreme event skips these two areas but feeds people, in groups, through an indoor maze that’s full of actors, scary noises and video projects.
As with our previous visit, we checked in and joined a queue to enter the trail. This time we weren’t just grouped with our family, but with a couple of others who ended up flanking us throughout the walk. Despite essentially moving around as a group of eight there were plenty of scares and the actors shifted how they were targeting the group… I’m unsure if that was deliberate, but it certainly felt it. The grouping up meant that there wasn’t a constant stream of people, which gave actors time to reset and we found it quite funny that we’d hear groups ahead and behind us getting scared by the actors as they emerged from bushes or leapt from doors or benches.
Nighttime’s darkness added an extra layer to the decorations that had littered the walk during the day. Some of these had seemed almost a little cheesy during the daytime, however at night (and having just had an actor jump out at you) they were much more convincing, especially with the clever uses of lighting and sound effects that were mixed in around them.
The real praise has to go to the internal maze, however. Some sort of large inside hall had been filled with props, actors and corrugated-iron style sheets, forcing you to weave yourself through the area. While the kids confidently stated that they weren’t scared, the screaming and banging audio had me trying to peek around corners (while also keeping an eye behind me) as I weaved my way around the separators and through the curtains. The mix of different actors in there, from ones that rushed at you, to ones that simply moved to make you jump, was really impressive.
I don’t think that I’ve ever actually been on a scary trail with actors before, so I don’t really have anything to compare it to… however, all three of us had a lot of fun as we made our way around, and it was really fun that the food stalls and funfair were still there to meet us at the end… offering a couple of extra things to do if you’re not quite ready to head home. It is worth noting if you get a little too scared, you can shout the word PUMPKIN and everyone will let up a bit on the scares.
You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!