Pleasurewood Chills 2021
Pleasurewood Hills is a small family theme park in Lowerstoft just down the way from Great Yarmouth. For a small family amusement park you wouldn’t expect it to have two scare mazes hidden inside, yet it does.
Pleasurewood Chills is the name for their Halloween event that takes place every half term. It includes a number of family orientated activities as well as two scare mazes for the older kids and adults.
Mazes
Shaft 13: The Legend of Hob
This maze takes you underground deep into a mine shaft. The theming is great and the intro scene looks fantastic. There are a good number of scares in this maze with a fun one where an actor is simply dragging a spade. There was an effect that didn’t feature last year which was quite neat. You get used to seeing swamp effects but this one was at a much higher level that enabled a different approach to scaring. A fun, albeit short maze with game actors.
Hell Express
Reasonably unchanged from last year. While this maze isn’t the most intense it does have a number of fun scares and you have to appreciate the fact that it is based in a number of railway carriages. Another fun, short maze, and again a few game actors.
Summary
Overall this event is a great starter event for younger teens. These mazes are a lot of fun but not so intense that it would terrify a first timer. I feel they are pitched jut right for the family orientated theme park and for only a six pound up charge for both mazes well worth giving a go if you are at the park.
Pleasurewood Chills 2020
This was my first visit to Pleasurewood Hills and have to say that it’s a fun family theme park with a few rollercoasters to boot. Though we’re not here to discuss the rides more so the scare attractions. The Pleasurewood Chills event has two scare mazes this year as well as family Halloween fun across the park including pumpkin carving.
I do have to highlight that on my visit the park was extremely busy. This is likely due to it being the last day of the school holidays but unfortunately this meant that going through the two mazes took three hours out of the day, only allowing time for a couple of rides and from what I saw the queues to the mazes got even longer as the day progressed. Maybe a way around this would be timed entry to the mazes so that rather than queuing, guests can explore the rest of the park.
Onto the mazes themselves, it’s worth highlighting something that I really did appreciate, and that was the batching. Only a single group were in a maze at any one time. This enabled actors to give full attention to the groups and removed any risk of catching up with the group in front. While this made queues longer, I fully support this and hope it’s an approach that can continue.
Shaft 13 The Legend of Hob
The theming in this maze is great, really creating the illusion of a mine shaft. I like that you had an introductory spiel about why you were here and what was about to happen. After the initial introduction the rest of the maze became more traditional with jump scares throughout. I had a fun run but feel it could have benefitted from a stronger finale as after one small scripted scene it just ends leaving guests to find the exit. It’s also worth noting that even though enforced hand sanitiser was at the beginning this maze the maze itself had many touch points that maybe could have been reduced in the current climate.
Hell Express
I’m a sucker for a train so this attraction was right up my street, set in a series of railway carriages you make your journey along the Hell Express meeting a number of creatures in the darkness. This attraction has many narrow corridors enabling actors to hide around most corners. Scares were aplenty with fairly minimal theming, not that this was needed though as I feel old railway carriages have their own charm in themselves.
Summary
A really fun event with mazes that aren’t overly gory so could cater for kids who are feeling brave. The mazes themselves are only a £5 upcharge on the normal park ticket which I feel is very good value for money. If I’m in the area for Halloween next year I will be sure to check out what Pleasurewood Chills do next.
