Manchester Scare Factory is a new event for 2024 located in central Manchester at Diecast a converted warehouse now used for a multitude of events. We arrived early and as soon as the doors opened made our way inside. You get a ticket to each maze on entry as you enter. On entry you are greeted with brilliant signage and a central hub that has a good atmosphere. You have a bar as well as some food plus a good amount of seating.
Time to Die
Mazes actually opened early so we headed straight for Time to Die where we were met by a very sinister character. This character played the part really well building up tension and scaring the group. Sadly this brilliant start soon faded into what became a rather frustrating experience. Each scene was difficult to hear due to the surrounding background noise so you couldn’t follow the story. Each scene was more theatrical so not hearing much really didn’t help. Between the scenes was a lot of dark dead space with simply no scares. This culminated in a finale that didn’t make much sense partially due to the earlier scenes being so difficult to hear. I think this is the biggest fault with the maze as the actors in the theatrical scenes were great with outstanding makeup and costumes just sadly no scares.
Toymaker
Next up was Toymaker a fun concept telling the story of the toymaker’s creations. Again this maze had almost zero scares. The theatrical bits were decent and similar to the previous maze the makeup and costumes fantastic but it was all quite a bit bland without much action or excitement. The finale is a great effect we had experienced at a previous event but I felt it was slightly lost on our group.
Summary
Overall we found Manchester Scare Factory quite disappointing. For the price that you pay for a ticket you really don’t get value for money. While the mazes aren’t short they don’t really offer much in the way of scares. We would be very happy if the theatrical route was explored further but the audio does need adjusting so that it can be heard. It was also quite frustrating that the use of phones and cameras is almost actively encouraged in the briefing. This really distracts from the experience and I would recommend not allowing them in the future.
If after reading you are still interested in checking out the event you can still get tickets through until the 2nd November.
