The London Bridge Experience and London Tombs kindly invited Scare Directory to their VIP and press night event for their annual Phobophobia Halloween event celebrating its 13th year.
For it’s 13th anniversary, Phobophobia decided to celebrate by bringing back 13 of its favourite attractions this Halloween so it you have a specific fear of anything then it should easily be catered for in this event. Ghosts, Hillbillies, Clowns, Spiders, Chainsaws, etc..
For the event itself The London Bridge Experience has converted parts of its year round attraction in to one long scare maze with each section covering one of each of the different themes. We went in as a group of 10 and were initially shown a very different and certainly non-PG safety video before starting the maze proper.
The individual sections are broken up nicely and the sets and sounds were great. As mentioned each section has a different theme and they vary in the types of scares, with most relying on traditional impact scares and a couple with animatronics, and a few more theatrical sections which were either scary or downright fun, the shotgun wedding being an hilarious highlight for me.
The actors were good and helped to ensure the scares varied through the group so it wasn’t all front loaded and in the downstairs section we were warned that the intensity would be ramped up as they may touch you. Unfortunately, apart from the finale I didn’t get to experience any of this added intensity.
The whole run through lasted about 20 – 30 minutes, and from my perspective it could have done with a few more actors to vary the scares a little more. That said I can imagine it would be tricky to up the numbers given the venue.
All in all, a fun maze with some nice scares, great sets, effects and some game actors. Compared to bigger standalone events that offer many mazes, perhaps this doesn’t match them for value, but for a Halloween event in central London you can’t go wrong. If you’re in London and would like to get your fix of a Halloween scare maze, then Phobophobia is worth having a look.
Phobophobia runs on select nights at the end of October and beginning of November.
