We were kindly invited to check out Fear Island at Fantasy Island in Skegness to bring you our honest thoughts on this rather impressive Halloween event.
Fantasy Island has one of the most beautiful indoor theme park spaces in the entire country as the pyramid part of the Fantasy Island theme park is beautifully themed and has everything you could want all under one roof whatever the weather.
There are rides aplenty, golf, food outlets and even some very high-quality bars with one themed around pirates and another being a more modern and typical bar if theming/immersion isn’t your thing and you just want a nice pint.
A stage was set up for child-friendly Halloween shows but theming inside of the pyramid was very playful towards Halloween with inflatable skeletons adorning the facades of the themed buildings inside and the ride Toucan Tours has an indoor dark ride area that has been themed with playful ghosts and spiders.
Nothing too intense in the theming, and it’s very young audience friendly but the great thing about Fear Island is that varies in the age ranges that it targets as this year there are 2 child-friendly experiences in the shape of Spooky Toucan Tours (the aforementioned ride) and Psycho Mansion which is a funhouse scare maze type experience that has been done beautifully.
The three adult mazes Outpost, The Ravenous and Brand New for 2024 9 Circles certainly offer the braver and older audience the chance to experience your stereotypical theme park scare experience.
With Toucan Tours simply being the same ride with a few extra spooky child-friendly additions we’re going to review the other experiences separately but if you want to check out everything Fear Island has to offer I’ll leave our VLOG of the experience near the bottom of this article.
Outpost
It’s been 365 days since the Outpost was overrun…
But it’s time to go back to where everything started, it might be the only salvation for humanity…
Navigate through the halls and corridors of this once safe Outpost, now overrun with the legions of the undead. You might have been here before, but things have certainly changed…
As always with these maze reviews we base our review of the first run-through only as it’s not fair for us to keep going around until it improves, we review based on our first experience and on this occasion Outpost sadly didn’t hit home for me.
Whilst the maze was very claustrophobic and well-designed there weren’t enough actors within the space and despite a very cool lift sequence at the beginning, I felt the actors in Outpost were caught out on multiple occasions.
One broke character as I made him laugh and just before walking into the scenes I could see the actors talking to each other in the scenes about where to stand etc i shouldn’t be hearing that as a guest and I was detached from the story which is a shame because the second they got into character it went back to being creepy and unnerving.
Sadly there weren’t a great deal of actors within this space and for a maze who’s story relies on being overrun by zombies, I expected a hoard of them to reside within the walls of this Outpost.
The maze has potential and whilst it’s for me the weakest themed maze at Fear Island the actors can come into their own and make this the more traditional scare maze jumpy experience as opposed to the more story-led mazes that Fear Island deliver with their other products.
It’s always nice to have variety and Outpost really should be adapted to be your old-school jumpy maze as that would enhance the story told at the beginning and the payoff would be tenfold as you’d be front and centre within this zombie takeover experience.
The finale of the event involving the soldier could also be enhanced with a few smoke effects, gunfire effects and the zombies dropping to the floor as you make a swift exit, a memorable finale would make Outpost one to remember!
Psycho Mansion
A séance gone terribly wrong has banished the former residents and unleashed a family of silly spooks and restless souls of the house’s tragic past, and now they roam the halls, eager for visitors.
One look at Psycho Mansion is more than enough to know that Fear Island genuinely care about the experience they are giving their guests as this old funhouse has been converted into set-builds and an interactive and immersive experience.
Walk the funfair ride halls and encounter characters along the way as it’s such a clever and well-executed experience that’s fun for all the family.
The rooms that the actors reside in are well-themed and even include some mechanics that include one particular scene that traps you inside the room you’re in whilst the scene unfolds, it’s very clever.
Vocals echo from the mansion that is very reminiscent of Haunted Mansion and Phantom Manor at Disney theme parks but with a lovely funfair spin.
I enjoyed this one even if I wasn’t the target demographic. It’s a very immersive experience and we did it in the daytime but the one thing that would make this attraction pop is by opening it (and the entire event for that matter) later than the 6 pm closing time we had.
Closing a horror event at 6 pm when it’s still light outside really dampens the atmosphere of what a horror event is about. I’ve seen photos of Psycho Mansion at night and it truly is beautiful and the animatronics on the outside comes to life at night and looks even more impressive than the ‘wow factor’ it has in the daytime.
A 6 pm close dampens the atmosphere of the event and the potential is there to truly make it something special if they closed Fear Island at 8-9 pm.
The Ravenous
Journey into the depths of a secluded cabin and uncover the dark and disturbing secrets of a family consumed by an insatiable hunger. Escape the clutches of the family as they insist on having you for dinner.
There’s a reason why The Ravenous won best scare experience at Scare Con and for me, it’s because of its ability to drag you into the story it’s telling and that’s a testament to the actors within the maze but mostly for the gentleman at the entrance of the maze.
A hillbilly greeted us at the queue line of the maze, interacted with every single person and put so much energy and craft into his character that waiting outside to get into the maze never felt like a chore.
From playing the banjo to little games he had with the groups who were coming into the maze he set up the experience perfectly and even had a small cameo in the maze itself as his energy, dedication and impeccably delivered character had this really strange endearing quality to it that had you looking forward to what was inside the maze.
The Ravenous is beautifully designed and has a good mix of tight spaces for a jump scare or two along with the theatrical stuff including a dinner table scene where you sit down and interact with everyone in your group whilst meeting the rest of the family.
Some of the sets truly are beautiful and are leaps and bounds above anything you’ll find at a much bigger budget UK theme park, the maze designers have crafted them with such care and attention and The Ravenous delivered such an immersive experience from start to finish that I was completely invested and as I was filming they left me behind for an extra ‘treat’.
Whilst I feel all the actors take their jobs seriously and have a good time you rarely get one maze where you feel that everyone is so in tune with on another and what was even crazier to me was knowing that the entire maze had 4 or 5 actors within it maximum yet still felt busy and exciting as they’d be running around covering ground as they hunted you down every step of the way.
This was a VERY strong maze that whilst it wasn’t heavy on the jump scares fully immersed you in its creepy ways and delivered them with such professionalism. Everyone in that maze should be VERY proud of their performances, especially my newfound hillbilly cousin at the entrance.
9 Circles
Inspired by the deepest pits of the underworld, you’ll brave nine terrifying levels of hell, each more twisted and tormenting than the last. But there’s one thing you must remember—though you walk through the shadows alone, the darkness keeps its own company…
Brand new for 2024 and the park’s only 16+ maze with The Ravenous and Outpost being 12+ 9 Circles was the best-themed maze of the entire bunch, some of the sets were truly beautiful.
Your journey begins as you step into a coffin by a gravedigger and before you know it you’re in hell and you’re about to visit all 9 circles of it.
Drool-worthy sets certainly immerse you in your walkthrough experience but 9 Circles is a show-style scare maze as opposed to a jump scare maze as you encounter characters along the way but there were some clever tricks along the way and some very unique things that I haven’t witnessed in a scare maze to date involving one particular actor.
I certainly didn’t see it coming and our whole group was impressed by the acting delivery and the payoff.
9 Circles was certainly my favourite looking maze out of the bunch as it felt leaps and bounds above the others in terms of set design with much more open planned spaces that were beautifully decorated, But whilst it may be the best looking my favourite was still The Ravenous just because of the sheer dedication of the actors within it.
The great thing about 9 Circles is that it’s a maze that you do entirely on your own as you don’t see your group again until the very end and that’s unnerving in itself.
Fantasy Island have a whole bunch of photo-ops around the park that are impressive, they have a great outdoor space but other than having the event opening at night they could evolve the event they have.
Keep it kid-friendly in the day but after a certain time step it up outside as night falls. Fog machines across the paths, the closed market stall paths now roaming with characters who interact with groups and it gives Fear Island a chance to shine at night as the lighting for the maze exteriors is also going underappreciated with these early closures.
The Pyramid could also have extra theming within it outside of one photo-op we saw in the Pirate bar which was amazing, they could theme it up more inside just in case the weather is terrible like it was during our visit.
Fantasy Island have the theming talent and the know-how to evolve this event. The mazes are head and shoulders above their big theme park counterparts and just simple tweaks could evolve the event tenfold.
Later operating hours, more pyramid theming for Halloween and removing the radio soundtrack blaring around the outdoor Fear Island space and opting for a more spooky soundtrack would certainly add to the atmosphere even in the daytime.
Thanks to Fantasy Island for inviting us down to experience Fear Island and for letting us deliver our honest thoughts about your Halloween offering, I will be visiting again as it’s very clearly a park that cares about its events and I have nothing but respect for parks that genuinely make an effort and go above and beyond.
Three solid mazes, a great funhouse actor experience and even a little sprucing up of Toucan Tours mixed with some stage entertainment make Fear Island a very solid foundation for a scare event but there’s certainly much more to come that could catapult them to, I dare say it, the best UK theme park scare event.
Incorporate the Pyramid in some way towards a more interactive and immersive experience, a creepy magic or illusion show in the pirate bar or a circus of horrors style acts, more themed food and drink (there were a few already but a bigger range would be great) and maybe more of the rides indoors reskinned to a Halloween theme could be a lovely touch.
Indoor waterslide with creepy effects down the slide, Harrington’s could have more theming within the set pieces or a small redressing of the ride trains (it is the old Resident Evil trackless dark ride after all) and other rides could have a little spooky treatment added to them throughout.
Thank you for allowing me to experience your epic event!
For more information on Fear Island please CLICK HERE
