It’s been exactly two years since we were last invited to Pleasure Beach’s Journey to Hell scare event and we left with some very negative thoughts, so negative in fact that we weren’t planning on returning ever again until we saw improvements.
Suddenly an email appeared in our inbox that caught our eye and changes were apparent in how this event was promoted and angled. What’s even more surprising is that the park asked us to return to check out the event completely free of charge to provide our always honest (if a little too honest last time we were there) review.
The new team at Pleasure Beach Resort have really turned the place around, 2025 has been such a good year for the park and with the arrival of the UK’s tallest gyroswing AVIKTAS in 2026, the future is looking bright for the park too.
It was also nice to be invited to the park with limited vloggers / content creators. We never run our pages like this and stay as far away from the drama of that space as humanly possible so coming down with genuine reviews and real media / press is certainly the best option for us to deliver unique content instead of swimming in a sea of GoPros and LED camera lights which ruins just about every scare event we attend on media nights.
Atmosphere is one thing that Journey to Hell excels in and always has done, the park is beautifully lit up at night and already a theme park in the dark has this creepy ambience to it without needing to go out of your way to make it creepier.
We were all gathered around a metal entrance sign (very Halloween Horror Nights) as an opening show began involving smoke and fire effects before the actors entered the crowd and the scares began.
This opening scaremony (so to speak) was a wonderful introduction to the evening and the atmosphere around the main hub was strong all evening with roaming actors who were the stand out stars of the evening.
A ridiculous number of actors were patrolling the park and there was never any dead space, they were absolutely everywhere. The main hub was lit perfectly with its usual set pieces and a stage with a guy playing guitar over a variety of rock backing tracks (mainly Ozzy, RIP).
I still think more could be added to that central hub part of the event such as turning the fountains on but making them blood red or lighting them up blood red or even constructing little pop-up set piece stages for actors to reside in before they go walking around the park.
That hub space is huge so when everyone went off to queue in the mazes there wasn’t anything in the main part of the hub to really stick around for it simply became a walkthrough area so having something added in this space would have been great.
I can’t praise the actors enough at Journey to Hell, they were so interactive with guests and catapulted the event tenfold for me to the point where the mazes (which I already knew hadn’t changed a great deal from our previous visit) took a backseat. They were bloody brilliant, every single one of them!
From exploring the tunnels underneath the Pleasure Beach to walking through the now emptied trough of the River Caves boat ride there were little bits and bobs to do across the park with a few rides open also (Grand National in the dark is an experience that’s for sure!).
I love riding the Ghost Train during every visit to Pleasure Beach but having actors in there popping out at you gives it that edge of excitement and even creepier, you can do it on your own which even without actors is rather eerie and spooky in itself.
Journey to Hell delivers more theatrical experiences as opposed to typical scare mazes, you stop and an actor gives you dialogue then you move on and these are my least favourite kind of scare experiences.
Cabinet of Curiosities (located in the Impossible building) was very much like this and even worse was that the opening dialogue was by the entrance of the ride, right next to a hub playing music so loud you couldn’t even hear him speak. It seemed a bit redundant and when I came out of that short but sweet walkthrough the entire experience felt redundant.
It’s very much a pointless walkthrough, not really themed with any sort of care or consideration (apart from one particular room towards the end) and it just seems quite the waste of all that space.
The Tunnels underneath the Pleasure Beach were certainly a better walkthrough experience with a variety of themed rooms but they weren’t the best in terms of theming, I merely enjoy it because I’m going into areas that the public aren’t usually privy to so that’s a cool experience as it is but in no way was it scary. Actors within the mazes have to work with their surroundings and with it being rather open planned and full of narrow corridors and pillars you can’t really jump out at folks there, it’s just too dangerous so they have to work with what they have and it doesn’t make for a great scare experience if albeit it makes for a great behind the scenes tour.
What stood out to me over the rest was The Abyss, which was a walk through the River Caves that has now had the water emptied ahead of a heavy refurbishment. The ride has been closed for some time but turning it into a scare maze was such a good call as there was space for actors to jump out from, it had atmosphere, it was creepy even without the actors but sadly this was a little too short.
Instead of walking through the ride towards the end (a rainforest scene) or through the Egyptian section where they could have had mummies and all sorts jumping out at you we entered the caves pretty much near the start of the ride, it was short lived but it did work a treat I just wanted it to be a lot longer.
Walking through it was clear that no work had begun on this particular area of the ride, maybe work has taken place further back hence why we had such a short walk through but all the same the section we walked through, nothing had changed.
I can’t imagine this ride being reimagined and reopened with the next couple of years but the new ride for 2026 AVIKTAS was teased heavily before we entered the cave with various symbols on the walls all depicting the snake lore that the ride will be themed around.
The River Caves reimagining looks to also have an AVIKTAS connection, maybe the ride will tell the backstory or similar of the ride but there’s definitely a link between the two attractions and it’ll be interesting to see what they do with it.
Journey to Hell is definitely vastly improved from our previous visit but I still feel that £39 for this event is so bloody steep for what you get, there’s just not enough rides of note on offer or strong enough scare experiences to warrant a cost that high. If it was £15-£20 it would be a no brainer and would be a superb cost point for the evenings festivities but I cannot recommend the £39 charge so if it’s a discounted ticket night or similar then scoop them up immediately but whilst improved, it’s damn expensive for what it is.
Atmosphere aplenty I had a throughly good evening at Journey to Hell, it’s an event slowly going in the right direction but it’ll take a LOT more additions to truly justify that price-tag.
I HOPE they invite me back in the years to come to see the gradual improvements but they’re slowly stepping forwards and that’s all you can ask for as a visitor.
