Fear at Avon Valley Scream Park near Bristol won this years SCAR award for Best Scream Park at Scare Con, so clearly a quality event and I was really looking forward to experiencing it for the first time. There’s a massive central hub area with a few nice food options, merchandise and ticket booth, a massive stage, some fairground rides, axe throwing, a 2-minute escape game, a covered bar in a big top with a special VIP area that you can get access to with the higher priced ticket options. Oh, and there are five mazes plus a separate live actor zombie paintball shooting attraction. Plenty to see and enjoy in the festival type atmosphere you get in the park.
Street Theatre
Frank and his circus troupe of roaming actors were good fun, I had a fair few nice interactions with them and it was great to see them terrorising other people around the park.
Every hour on the hour there’s a fire show that it is really cool, and hot obviously. Definitely worth checking out.
There’s also an audience participation stage show that sadly I didn’t get the opportunity to watch as I was busy with the brilliant mazes.
The Attractions
All were great quality with some brilliant actors, nice sets and design and some cool varied elements and surprises throughout, with some truly discombobulating effects. I was lucky to complete multiple runs throughout with my Trixxie pass and apart from a couple where there was some bunching with other groups and one necessary stop, all were consistently excellent. I enjoyed all of them. Some were much more intense and you’re likely to be touched, pushed and moved around in several.
Vita Nova
Vita Nova is Fear’s latest maze, and was my first of the evening. The story is set in a future world where the Republic of England ensures conformity through mandatory Vita Nova treatment. There’s a nice effect in the queue line and when it’s finally time to go in you’re held by a gruff actor wearing scrubs who then selects people from the group to individually enter the maze.
I loved this maze, it provided excellent scares for me and genuinely had me swearing and cursing a lot, occasionally, even though there wasn’t an actor around. It also had some really cool effects one of which I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined at first. If you’re in a group, you will get separated right from the start and potentially again through the maze.
X4
Just across the way from Vita Nova is X4, which tells the story of a mysterious new life-form being found at a secret site. You’re here to safely observe, but unsurprisingly everything doesn’t go as planned and you’re quickly running for your life. This was again a really strong intense maze with plenty of varied scares and great effects.
The start is really immersive and one particular highlight was on one of my repeat visits, one of the opening actors recognised me from earlier and decided that he didn’t like the look of me and I wasn’t to be trusted, so I was separated from the group to be verbally interrogated. A brilliant bit of improvisation from the actor.
Anarchy: Live
Another really strong and intense maze. Anarchy: Live has you running for your lives as a contestant of a brutal game show. Some awesome effects in this one and as with the others great actors performing some varied and intense scares. One particular effect got me time and time again. This is another one where you will probably be separated from your group and there are lots of strobes.
The finale of this one always got me despite how familiar I am with this type of ending. Always intense.
Phobia Rebirth
I was lucky to get the final run through of the night of this maze on my own which was awesome and had me walking very nervously around. From a good, scary, and disorienting start you first need to die in order to overcome your fear of death, and the start really does a great job. After the start I got lost going in circles in the almost pitch black for ages.
As always great actors that provide a mixture of scares and cool theming and effects. It’s also another one where you will be separated from the start.
House of Clowns
Last up for me was House of Clowns, so no surprises what the theme of this maze was. Again great solid maze, but probably my least favourite of the evening. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, and I still had some entertaining jump scares.
The flappy red and white section was very confusing and I got lost a few times and even managed to scare other people as they bumped in to me, but another time I got through quickly without bumping in to anyone, public or actor. Whilst you may get separated it’s likely to be temporary
Killzone
Not everyone is happy with the new Republic of England and Killzone offers your chance to be recruited and trained by the Republic of England Rebels. This isn’t a maze, but has some fun theatrical elements followed by a live actor zombie shooting gallery, which was good fun, but I’d have liked a bit longer, though I doubt the zombies felt the same way. This is an up-charge attraction with standard tickets available for a small fee.
Final thoughts
I had a fantastic night at Fear at Avon Valley, had some genuinely great scares and it definitely got the adrenaline and dopamine levels up. This is a brilliantly run and organised event with a very passionate team behind it plus great actors in all the fun mazes. Highly recommended.
