Terror Island 2022
We had been wanting to visit Terror Island for a number of years, hearing good things about the leading Halloween event on the Isle of Wight. This year we took the plunge and booked the ferry across to the Island. Was it worth the trip? You’ll have to keep on reading to find out.
Terror Island takes place within the Blackgang Chine theme park. The oldest in the UK. A short drive from the ferry terminals.
The atmosphere on arrival was electric with a fantastic facade, ambient lighting and audio. This was before we even got to the ticket booth. After a friendly introduction from the staff we ventured through the creepily themed walkway to the central hub.
The central hub had a fantastic atmosphere with pumping music, roaming actors, merchandise shop as well as a bar and food available. The roaming characters were a great addition and at one time we even found them hopping around the dance floor on their stilts. We also encountered an actor who was seemingly moving from an attraction working with the crowd and staying in character which is nice to see.
The food offering was pretty tasty and we sampled the Pulled Pork and Stuffing Roll as well as the BBQ Pork Fries, both delicious. The special Halloween Ice Cream was also pretty good.
Now onto the mazes where we had quite a varied experience.
Blind Alley
This was a hooded attraction. Not something we are generally fans of. There were moments within the experience where the lack of sight worked well, like the first experience with the doctor or the clever effect towards the end but generally I feel that it would be better to have themed rooms with more traditional scares than hoods. Though saying this if you’ve never done a hooded attraction before the sheer thought of removing a sense can be terrifying.
The Blood Shed
Probably one of the top mazes of the night when we experienced it as a smaller group. On this run we encountered some solid scares inside a well themed maze. It has to be noted that the introductory actor here really put the effort in and was great, lots of energy and movement creating uncomfortable situations that startled us on numerous occasions.
Hexcavation Demon Keeper
The best maze of the night with strong theming and good scares. This maze also felt longer than others with tight corners and enclosed spaces all adding to the experience. Actors used levels well and managed to land scares from places you don’t normally expect. It’s a shame we only managed to experience this one once as it attracted fairly long queues all night.
Amphibious Darklight
This maze started with a great introduction from the initial actor setting the scene and building suspense. The transition into the dark light section was great and the effect really made the costume and makeup pop. It was from here we expected the tension to build to what we would expect to be a finale but sadly the maze just seemed to fizzle out with no real scares or ending. This maze really suffered from front heavy scares. Also you could see that a clever effect of wading through water was meant to be in place but due to minimal levels of smoke it didn’t quite work and on our first run completely missed it.
I feel there were a few general points that need to be mentioned. The group sizes were too big, this unfortunately meant that scares were very front focussed meaning that at many times the middle or the back missed scares and on some occasions we would go through the whole maze without a single scare. This can easily be fixed with further actor direction and it would be nice to see scares mixed up a bit so that everyone leaves feeling some landed. Smaller groups would also help in this area. Another issue we found was enforcement of hands on shoulders, while a number of years ago this was the norm, these days it just feels unnecessary and actually detracts from the immersion and impact of scares as you don’t feel so exposed. These points could easily be rectified and I hope they can be tweaked for future years.
It’s a shame that due to the points above the event was a bit of a mixed bag. The theming was great and the scripted parts worked well with actors really getting into the roles. The setup of the site works well with the mazes nicely spread out and the overall event seems well put together. We just feel that with a few tweaks here and there the event could go from being ok to excellent.
I think if you live on the Isle of Wight it’s worth the visit as you will have a good time. Also if you are quite new to scares this would be a good event to start with. Sadly having visited many events over the years it feels this year Terror Island didn’t quite deliver. I hold out hope for future years and will likely visit again to see if things change.
If you want to experience Terror Island for yourself it is running on select nights through to Halloween. Tickets are available from their website.
