Storefront City

WHAT: Face Your Fears
WHEN: 11 October – 3 November, 2019
WHERE: Yorkshire Scare Grounds Scream Park (Hell Lane, Heath, Wakefield, WF1 5SG)
PRICE: £17-21

OUR RATING: Chance It!

Our Overall Scare Factor: 7
Overall Atmosphere Rating: 6

Welcome to Yorkshire Scare Grounds Scream Park, a 24-acre estate where visitors travel through the dark woods of Yorkshire to come across five different mazes as they try to make their way to safe harbour. We had no idea that we would be gallivanting in the woods as part of the experience to get from one maze to another, with the concept being one complete journey through contrasting terrors rather than just going to disparate haunts – definitely a refreshing concept after all the mazes we’ve been to this year. Because of the nature of this haunt, we’ve given the attraction as a whole a scare factor and atmosphere rating rather than each individual maze, although some mazes were without doubt better and scarier than others, as we’ll highlight below.

We started our creepy trek through the woods, navigating our way through the dark trails of trees, never sure when or where anything would jump out at us. This was hands down the scariest factor of the haunt. Since there were no seen boundaries to the woods, the opportunities for things to come at us from any which way seemed endless, and we found ourselves checking for things behind us constantly, and when things did come at us, the jump and scare factor were quite high!

We came across the first maze, A.I., where we met a variety of cyborgs. Truth be told, this maze was not a great start. We’ll hand it to the actors, they were trying very hard, as was seen in all of the mazes here, but they just didn’t quite pull it off. It really felt like a school group was trying to put on their end of term scary theatre project without much being put into it. There was definitely an attempt at scenic elements and a nice interplay between real and fake cyborgs, but it was ultimately underwhelming and had us worried about the quality of the mazes that lay ahead of us.

We next came upon The Sewer – Mutation, which had much more outdoor elements than the previous maze. The mutants were…interesting. Not much set design to go along with this one, but its outdoor nature made it a bit creepier, and even when we thought the maze was over and we were back “safe” in the woods, we found the mutant creatures had still not had their fill of us.

Witchcraft – Bloody Mary is definitely where the attraction started heating up. This maze was quite extensive and took us through a very old and dilapidated village, encountering various characters warning us not to say Mary’s name and then later the witches themselves. Some of the small huts we had to navigate through were admittedly way too dark – this made walking a bit difficult, but it also added an obvious terror element as we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. There was also a really terrifying scene with two Mary’s, one which we assumed couldn’t be real until she moved toward us – certainly a great jump scare. We genuinely liked the set elements and characters in this one, and it surely didn’t hurt that we both are actually surprisingly superstitious of saying Bloody Mary three times – which both of us refused to do despite the characters hinting we should. That’s just one step too far for these horror fans!

Next on our journey, we checked into Hotel Hell – Undead Vacation. But this wasn’t your typical weekend away, for as soon as we stepped into the faulty lift and were plunged into blackness we knew our stay would be far from welcoming. With numbered hotel room doors and highly themed interiors full of scare actors waiting to terrify you, this was definitely one of the scariest haunts of the night. We’re pretty sure that it’ll be you served for room service!

Insane clowns – we love the idea! Clown Asylum mixes these two concepts effortlessly to give you a twisted and winding series of corridors where heavily made-up jesters might just snatch you away to join them. Many of the actors were cleverly placed in this maze and gave us some shocks, especially in the pitch black areas that left you wondering which way to turn.

At the end of this maze we were finally spat out into safer territory – at least after surviving one last chainsaw attack – to a hub of food at the end with a nice little Halloween shop to go along with it. We didn’t really stick around, but the characters roaming about seemed to be having a good time, and it gave us particularly great delight than one seemed to be dressed as Hoggle from Labyrinth.

Final Thoughts: While a bit underdone than we were hoping for, all in all we definitely think the walk through the woods concept of this attraction is one to experience, with a few good mazes along the way to make it more than worthwhile and a wonderful interaction between actors and a ton of animatronics. This park is also really great in that it is open more nights than any other attraction we’ve been to, even several Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and even Sundays, and quite lengthy as well, taking an average of 40-minutes to get through. If you’re in the Yorkshire area this is for sure a fun night out.

P.S.: On your way to Yorkshire, you’ve got to check out Dr. Fright’s Halloween Nights for some more scares.