Thanks to Xtreme Scream for gifting us free tickets on Halloween Night to bring you these reviews.
After missing the event last year, we were even more gutted to spot that their latest maze for 2024, Blutlust, won an award for the best scare maze in Europe. After visiting the maze in 2025 and experiencing it for the first time, is it really all that?
I’m not sure.
So Blutlust is set in 1995 Berlin, and within a water treatment facility, lies Blutlust, a nightmare disguised as a sanctuary of nightlife.
Alongside a local kebab shop owner, guests are lured into this once-in-a-lifetime VIP experience where, unbeknownst to guests lie vampires ready to siphon your very essence.
Now Blutlust does a wonderful job of introducing you to the kebab shop, the facade is beautiful, the interior is beautiful and the little pre-show / introduction is wonderful before you step onto a beautiful German street ready to enter Blutlust.
It is absolutely stunning and for aesthetic alone, in these two areas alone, it really is up there with the best in Europe, but it’s when you enter Blutlust the story (and the maze) becomes a little more confusing.
As you’re split up from your group, you weave in and out of a variety of scenes, but not many of them seem to tie in with the story the maze is trying to weave. There’s no narrative of note as you navigate the maze and the story almost dies as it takes quite some time before you actually reach the Blutlust nightclub club which is quite near the end.
You see the underground goings on and the rough journey before you arrive at the club, but the navigation of these 1990s Berlin backstreets disappears; there’s no adventure; you’re just met with random vampires as you go through, and it’s all a bit all over the place in terms of narrative.
Many guests navigating the maze want to be scared, but with the case of Blutlust and on Halloween Night, the event scares were few and far between as there weren’t enough actors in the maze.
Guests are walking through a maze that takes around 10 minutes (if not longer) to navigate and I came across around 12-13 actors throughout my entire walkthrough with many rooms just simply being beautifully themed with nothing going on within them, I can understand if it’s one or two rooms but there was a solid double digit number of rooms where absolutely nothing was happening.
When you get to the Blutlust nightclub, which is the sole premise of the maze, it’s very basic in set design, which is a stark contrast from everything else you’ve witnessed, so seeing this rather basic club with metal bars across the place and not particularly themed to any nightclub I’ve ever seen before was a shame.
World-class theming which has been building up an entire story around a vampire-infested nightclub and the nightclub looked crap! Not to mention that there was only one vampire in the entire club… surely if that’s your grand showcase, then fill the room with vampires (I’m thinking nightclub scene in Blade 2 vibes) and get a strobe light in there as vampires lunge at you in their numbers.
Nope. Sadly, not on this occasion.
It’s a real shame that the whole premise of the maze dies the further you go into it, but there’s no denying that this maze has potential; it just needs the staffing and execution in its narrative moments to truly shine on a world stage.
Europe’s best… debatable.
UK’s best? It’s certainly up there!
Batching is ALWAYS an issue at Xtreme Scream so you’ll certainly catch up to other groups or experience an in-maze conga line on the busiest days but to get the most out of your experience, I highly recommend investing in an Xtreme Scream Fast Pass so you can make the most of your evening and smash out all of the mazes on a busy evening.
