We returned to Fear Island at Fantasy Island, located in Ingoldmells, a coastal village just a short trip away from Skegness in Lincolnshire. Fantasy Island is an expansive amusement park featuring a variety of indoor and outdoor rides, bars, and food options.
During the Halloween season, they add additional exciting attractions, including four scare mazes, a thrilling circus, and spooky overlays on a ride or two.
Circus of Screams
We arrived early, giving us the perfect opportunity to catch the 12:30 show at the circus. The performance featured a captivating blend of acrobatics, contortionism, juggling, and escapology, all set to a haunting Halloween soundtrack. The circus acts were not only entertaining but skillful. A delightful bonus included in the ticket price.
Psycho Mansion
Right outside the circus, you’ll find Psycho Mansion, boasting a remarkable animatronic facade that must be seen to be believed. The mansion itself speaks, and there’s even an animated tree – truly a spectacular sight. However, the interior didn’t quite match up to the facade. While the acted scenes were decent, they lacked engagement and felt disjointed when mixed with the outdated animatronics. Nevertheless, the maze built up to a fantastic finale scene, featuring a moving floor, which was a clever way to conclude the experience.
Ghostly Tales in the Crypt
Next, we explored the family-friendly maze beneath Fear Island, a journey through a church and its crypt. The actors here were exceptional, even managing to engage with our unfortunately rather unruly group. They skillfully maintained the storyline while interacting with the guests. I can see this being a hit with younger audiences as well. However, one setback was the group size, causing scenes to start before everyone entered and making it difficult to hear the actors. Reducing group sizes and lowering background audio volume would greatly enhance this family adventure. Despite these minor issues, we still enjoyed it, though it could be even more delightful with a few adjustments.
The Ravenous
From start to finish, The Ravenous was an absolute standout. The actors interacted brilliantly with the group, paying attention to all members, despite the group size being slightly too large. The maze featured impressive set pieces, appropriately disgusting smells, and a well-balanced mix of scares and theatrical scenes, providing an engaging and immersive experience from start to end.
The Outpost
Entering a military medical building infested with zombies, the theming was impeccable. The storyline integrated seamlessly with the theme and flowed smoothly. However, a few of the scares missed the front of the group, possibly due to the group size. This maze, while fun, could benefit from more intense scares or a further ramping up of the theme.
Overall, at just £20, this experience offers excellent value for money. There are some creative concepts here with room for improvement. The actors in The Ravenous and Ghostly Tales in the Crypt were exceptional. While The Outpost and Psycho Mansion could deliver stronger scares, we had a great day exploring these fun mazes and left thoroughly entertained.
If you happen to be in the area around Halloween, it’s definitely worth checking out what’s new at Fear Island.
Fear Island at Fantasy Island 2021
We returned to Fear Island at Fantasy Island Resort at Ingoldmells near Skegness to see what they had to offer in 2021. We last visited in 2020 when full COVID precautions were in place so were keen to see what it was like now that most restrictions had been lifted. We went primarily for the scare mazes, but obviously as a seaside amusement park there are the usual array of rides and attractions on offer. Sadly, it was very windy when we arrived so Millennium and Odyssey weren’t running and the new for 2021 Spinning Racer, and older Star Flyer have disappeared, so the ride options on offer were limited, but still fun for families with younger children.
Mazes
The Haunting 2
First up for us was ‘The Haunting 2’ which is in the central pyramid section of Fantasy Island. This is predominantly, a theatrically based maze with some nice theming and game actors. Definitely a suitable introductory offering to the younger guests.
Psycho Vault: Death Game
We then tried ‘Psycho Vault: Death Game’, this was in a new area for us and exiting through the gift shop / indoor market. As you’d expect with an AtmosFEAR! maze there is more of a focus on theatrical moments rather than out and out scares. The maze had a few interesting elements, but in places theming and production seemed a bit sparser. Again, another maze that may appeal to a younger audience.
Hellhole
Next up was “Hellhole’ which is now in the site of the former takeaway restaurant over by the go-karts. This was our strongest maze in terms of an adult traditional maze where we were kindly allowed to go round individually with a glow stick. For us the glow stick felt a bit unnecessary, but can appreciate the value of having it, especially with younger guests. We got a couple of decent scares and felt truly lost on more than one occasion.
Killer Villa
We had to wait a while for our final maze ‘Killer Villa’ to open, potentially waiting for another maze to close beforehand. Purely conjecture, but we have noticed a scarcity of actors in many events this season. This staggering of opening looks like a good way of getting round that. Whilst the name of the maze has changed, ‘Killer Villa’ keeps the cool theming of last year and whilst it was short, provided plenty of fun from the actors.
Summary
Closing of rides due to weather is completely understandable, it was disappointing to see that Fantasy Island’s new ride has disappeared. Rides aside, we had fun at Fear Island and in the mazes. None of them are going to shock or scare the more adult guest, what they accomplish really well is by providing a fun and enjoyable introductory scare event to younger audiences. Older guests will still enjoy elements, but it’s unlikely to provide the same level of intensity of events that are aimed at slightly more mature audiences.
Fear Island runs until the end of October and is well worth visiting for anyone local with younger children to experience their first non-Merlin scare event.
Fear Island at Fantasy Island Halloween 2020
2020 marks the fourth year that Fear Island has descended on Fantasy Island near Skegness, and was an event that we hadn’t been able to visit before, so we decided to rectify that on opening day. You can buy a Fear Island wristband which gives you unlimited rides at Fantasy Island and one entry to each of the three scare mazes, plus a family friendly stage show, Ghoul School. For an additional charge there is also Circus of Screams. If you don’t fancy the wristband, you can just buy entry to each of the mazes for 5 quid each.
Throughout the park and inside the pyramid there were a number of cool displays for Halloween and for the mazes themselves. We also saw a small group of roamers for the Ghoul School stage show, but no traditional scary roamers. Theming throughout was good and the Fear Island vibe also made it to some of the rides as the operators got in to spirit of things.
Scare Mazes
Disturbiam: Lockdown
Disturbiam returns for its second year, this time with the somewhat timely tagline, Lockdown. Disturbiam is the usual freaky hospital theme with strange experiments committed on the poor patients and what they later become. This takes place in an old drive through restaurant, but you wouldn’t be able tell with the impressive theming throughout.
The maze starts with a fun theatrical intro scene and lasts about 5 minutes or so. We got some good jumps in this maze and the actors did a great job throughout. It wasn’t a busy day when we went, probably due to the poor weather, so batching was superb. We waited about ten minutes and just went through in our bubble, and our bubble was the only one in the maze throughout.
Enhancing the usual COVID precautions we noted that after our run they were stopping the maze in order to complete a more thorough clean, it was good to see them taking regular cleaning breaks.
Voodoo Bay: Cursed
Another returning maze, but this time without the hoods was Voodoo Bay: Cursed. Theming was great throughout and utilised different floor surfaces well and had a fun swamp section. The maze had a couple more theatrical elements along with some solid scares and a particularly impactful final effect.
COVID precautions again were great. The small queues and shorter mazes allowed them to only have one bubble in the maze at a time, so you got the full attention of all the actors throughout the maze.
The Haunting
Last up was a trip inside the Pyramid for the new for this year The Haunting which replaces Torchure. As with all the mazes it has a fun theatrical intro scene to set the ball rolling. This time the story was another familiar one of an executed witch that now haunts the venue. Actors in this one were on great form, eliciting a number of good scares throughout utiliising the space well. Again, we were really impressed with the level of theming, costumes and make up throughout and the use of hay on the ground was a nice touch.
The ending of this one uses another very familiar technique, especially if you are a frequent visitor to the Dungeons, but still works well. As with the others we were the only group in the maze at the time so got full attention throughout and later on we saw another temporary stop for a deeper clean.
Circus of Screams
This was a fun addition for a small upcharge. The show lasts 45 minutes with a short interval but packs in a nuber of acts including rope acrobatics, unicycle skills, juggling and knife throwing. If you enjoy circus shows then you will enjoy this display of circus skills. While not scary it’s an enjoyable break from the rides and scares.
Summary
We had a really great day at Fear Island, the decorations throughout the park were really nice. The mazes were all fun, with good actors, great theming and effects with superb COVID precautions throughout. We also had a number of genuinely good scares on our run-throughs. We’d definitely recommend making a trip to Fear Island for some much needed Halloween scares if you’re in the area.
