Steven and Ashley visited Spooky World on separate occasions so we will compile our views into this one post as our experiences were slightly different. Spooky World is based at Apple Jacks Adventure Farm close to Warrington. It’s a very large site with most of the five mazes dotted around. There’s a small food establishment and a large tent to enjoy your food and drink in. There’s limited theming dotted around the park, mostly your typical Halloween props you can get in many shops. Roaming actors were a little thin on the ground with Ashley experiencing a few fun interactions on arrival and Steven sadly, didn’t experience any.
Spooky World offers two different events on different evenings throughout the Halloween season. Scare at Night events for anyone aged 14+, and Spooky at Night a toned down version for younger kids.
The Mazes
Haunted Mansion
This was a reasonably lengthy maze, but had quite a few dead spots and practically no theming to indicate that you were in a haunted mansion. There were some energetic actors in here who worked well with the space they had. On Ashley’s visit the actors improvised well with some fun improvisations.
Slaughterhouse
This is a seriously long maze and suffers many extended dead spots as you walk through. Steven started off alone and got some decent scares, but whilst the actors were game enough, perhaps they could do with some coaching to improve their repertoire. There was a bit more set design and props, but again it was sparse and reflected the more budget nature of this event. Ashley had a similar experience though found the Sergeant character quite fun.
Field of Screams
This outdoor maze takes place in a linear route through the maize maze. This started off strong with some good actors as we both went through solo. Sadly this was marred as towards the end Steven walked past one actor who didn’t seem to notice him at what was assumed to be a set piece element and the last actor sauntered past with his pig mask up completely out of character. Ashley had some additional interactions to this with the characters giving quite personalised performances.
Haunted Hayride
Some of the elements and scare actors on this were good fun and got the group screaming in terror. Unfortunately for us we found the water element was to much for the October weather. We would recommend waterproofs for this attraction and possibly the use of smoke cannons to get the same effect without the water so really didn’t enjoy this ride overall.
Tunnel of Terror
You enter Tunnel of Terror directly after ending the hayride. This was the lowlight of the evening as we didn’t experience any terror just some stuff in our face and maybe one actor popping out of a hole in the distance.
Evil Carnevil
The last maze was also a highlight. This was a decent clown maze, some good actors and some decent scares and had the best design and set of all the mazes at Spooky World. On Ashley’s run the actors also added some great humorous improvisations which added to the experience.
Final Thoughts
Much like Cursed in Essex, Spooky World is clearly not going to be able to compete with events with much larger budgets. That said whenever we were with a group everyone else was clearly having an enjoyable and scary evening. Most of the mazes had very limited theming and were quite long with perhaps not enough actors in them. Personally we would have preferred shorter mazes so more of the props and actors could scare more effectively rather than having long dead zones. Also the water element near the end of the hayride isn’t perhaps the right element for an event at night in October.
Whilst there were some missteps and a few poor or out of character actors in the mazes, most of the acting team were clearly passionate and energetic and provided some good scares, perhaps a bit of coaching all round to increase their range and repertoire would allow for a much more varied experience.
Spooky World runs every night through 2nd November, with all of them being Scare at Night apart from 2nd November which is Spooky at Night.
