So this month has been one hell of a time experiencing Halloween events up and down the country and this is certainly one of my favourites, here’s our Screamfest Burton review.
Screamfest in Burton was our highlight of 2022 with insanely well designed mazes, wonderful street theatre and live entertainment and an all round spooky atmosphere that I never wanted to end.
The event kindly gave us tickets to visit once again this year which included fast passes as we headed to this Burton Halloween event on a sold out weekend.
A particular time where I’ve never been more appreciative of fast passes before.
During our visit the queues were absolutely huge, I’ve never seen anything like it but with one flash of a wristband we were straight down a separate path and at the front of the line.
I can’t stand queuing, I prefer to be experiencing things as opposed to waiting and watching other people enjoying it. It’s my absolute pet peeve and if I can skip a queue, I’ll try my very best to do so!
If you’re visiting on a weekend, we HIGHLY recommend getting a fast pass for you to be able to do all of the attractions in one evening.
As run-throughs of Creed Farm sent us through a very muddy field (always wear old clothes and shoes to Scarefest) we noticed that a lot more people were in our groups compared to the usual average number.
It was a sold out day when we visited last year but there was a limit to the number of people sent through a maze at any one time whereas this year groups of 30 and even 40 people were going through at once and this led to some issues throughout the evening.
Within some of the mazes we were queuing inside whilst other mazes that had different corridors to explore spread the groups out better.
Queuing in a scare maze is just the worst. It’s bad for the guests and it’s never ideal for the scare event who obviously don’t want this to happen either for a variety of reasons but it was unavoidable because of how people were batched.
Sadly, this was down to the lovely staff members who may have been just a little too nice at times as they let big groups just attach onto the back of already full groups and some weren’t counting heads and just let a LOT of people through at once.
It was an issue that we mentioned to staff multiple times throughout the evening but with how busy it was, I just couldn’t see how they could have changed it without increasing the queue times even more so.
Pressure to get people through on a busy day is understandable but a system has to be adhered to, other events like Tulleys filter a lot more people through and I’ve never been in a queue inside any of their mazes.
A few tweaks are needed to get this sorted for me as Screamfest was definitely not ready for the large crowds that turned up during that particular day.
Hopping onto the back of a tractor and shooting at random people dressed as aliens in a field is so much fun to me and with a set number of guns on the truck there was only a set number of people that could partake at one given time. An attraction where batching was never an issue (we did it multiple times).
It was only Area 52 and the clown maze at Screamfest where we didn’t encounter any issues and fast forward a couple more days and we paid to revisit, we love Screamfest and wanted to support the event financially so we paid to go again on a weekday and compare the two experiences.
During our second visit we skipped to the front of every queue without a fast pass and didn’t encounter a single different group through any of our run-throughs.
We bounced our way through Love Hurts, we had an immersive and actor filled experience inside Insomnia and even went around Area 52 again as taking out your stress by firing a paintball into someones head never gets old.
This is what Screamfest should be, it wasn’t dead, it was manageable and that was the difference between the two experiences. Staff could handle the throughput and batching was adhered to.
We’d advise visiting on a weekday or checking out the mazes within the last 90 minutes of a sold out day as crowds seemed to filter out a little better during this time.
It’s a shame we had some queuing issues inside the mazes but revisiting on a weekday rectified this.
As a review channel we have to bring our honest thoughts of these events (both positive and negative) and the only negative throughout our weekend experience was batching whilst everything else remained at its upmost best.
These are honest thoughts that members of the public were commenting on with us during our visit and as we also felt the same way I felt it necessary to include within our coverage.
We were given free tickets but felt sorry for people stuck in 60 minute+ queues for the mazes to then be stuck inside another queue within the attraction itself. It ruins the experience and it’s something that needs to be addressed.
Screamfest is an incredible event and Area 52 is a great addition on top of the brand new for 2023 circus (which is included in your entry price) and I hope they rectify these busy day teething issues ready for another incredible event that they’ll put on in 2024.
Check out our VLOG of our sold out day experience HERE
