27 October 2023
A world of nightmares under one roof, Dr Frights is back once again but with a new concept, theme & experience to provide more screams than ever before. Dr Frights has been around for some time now and is an award winning scream park which hosted a number of different themed haunts in a scream park setting. With a hub of entertainment, bar, food & drink and more, they provided many scary nights for all that visited.
For 2023, Dr Frights has taken a new route to how they operate the seasonal attraction, with the new theme tag of Route 666. Route 666 is now a linear experience, meaning you will queue up at the start of the night and enter each attraction back to back. This is very different to what they have previously done but allows groups to experience all of the haunts before settling down and enjoying the entertainment later on.
Route 666 has 7 tales of blood curling horror to immersive you in. Creatures such as killers, the possessed, zombies and well known movie characters will haunt you across the 7 zones and provide an evening of true fear. Each maze has its own story and theme, which will become more apparent as you enter the venue and before you step foot into that individual attraction.
Tickets for Dr Frights range from £19 up to £37 per person, but this depends on if you go for a standard or fastrack ticket. Each ticket allows you through the linear experience once and only once completed, you can enter the safe zone to have some food, drink and other entertainment. The fastrack ticket allows you to skip each of the lines for each maze as you may be expected to have a short wait between the attractions due to this new concept, like how other linear experiences work.
Our Thoughts from this event…
Our evening started by arriving at the event and we were very interested to see how this year would work compared to all the other years we have experienced Dr Frights. We always love how the event puts on a new main story, such as World Tour, where the mazes all linked to a country. This year was Route 666, meaning we knew it would have a much darker story than ever before.
When arrived, we joined an outside queue for security, which if you had a fastrack ticket for you could speed this up also. Before collecting your tickets at the booth outside. You then made your way inside the marquee, under the glowing lights of the Dr Frights Route 666 sign and joined the queue to enter the attraction. Whilst we thought this may be the most boring part of our time at the event, they had music blasting and themed voiceovers playing whilst you waited. They had some lights which kept the tent like a party atmosphere and the wait time went surprisingly quickly thanks to the help of these simple additions.
Before we entered the attraction, we had a short safety brief and were told we would enter in our own group, meaning our group of 2 would enter alone, which is great to see Dr Frights being able to do this still with how busy they can get. Whilst the gaps are quite small between the groups, it keeps everyone at a good pace and if you do catch up with others, it only ever creates a small group compared to a conga line that other events can cause.
Below is our thoughts of the mazes. We have split it between the first & second half and shown our ratings of each attraction.
To know more on ratings, please check out this article here!
As we enter into the first attraction, this was Deadwood Forest, a woodland which simply had dead people lurking about. With lots of foliage and simple theming, it provided a great replica of walking in a dark forest with creatures jumping out, whilst all inside the marquee. The attraction wasn’t the strongest across the 7 however, it provided a nice warm up as our first maze, with the creatures having multiple vantage points to jump out of us on.
Next up straight away was Downtown HELL.A, which is more of a purge style theme with masked criminals roaming the street looking for their next pray. With a destroyed town theme and a number of masked killers, it followed on nicely from the forest to continue the warmup.
Before the next two attractions, there was another short queue but thankfully there was no wait at the start of the night, so we entered straight into The Grindhouse. This had a hillbilly theme with the family wanting to meat & eat you. The intensity really started to pick up from this point was us screaming and running through a lot quicker than the first 2 mazes. The theming & storyline were also very detailed plus the cast created some real funny moments.
Last up and going back to back with The Grindhouse was The Bunker, a theme of zombies which are ready to attack. Around every corner zombies would be ready to get you and they came thick & fast. The scares were still strong and the team provided a very realistic experience.
We then entered out into the half way rest zone to catch our breath…
The second half of our journey was so much more fierce & powerful. Starting with Devilsgate Cinema, where you will step into the screen and come face to face with some of the most known horror icons in the world. The starting scene was terrifying enough as we were faced with over 50 scream mask characters, with us not knowing how many of them and which ones would be real. Meeting Freddy Krueger & Michael Myers as just some of the scenes & characters we met, you can see why this cinema was one of the most haunting things we experienced at the event.
Following up was Bloody Mary’s Maze of Mirrors, which continued the concept of hiding real people amongst fake props. This style is one of the most scariest effects for us and how they executed it in this maze was still as haunting as the previous maze. They had some very clever scares in here too, with a mirror maze that came to life and hidden spots for the disturbed creatures to come out and get you.
The finale maze was Klownfest and before you entered, there was one final queue. We had a short wait but it had a fun facade, with it looking like a festival setup. As the theme suggests, it is a clown themed attraction which is mixed with a festival, so you go through music stages, behind the scenes and toilet blocks. The concept of this attraction is super unique but keeps with the classic clowns which many are terrified from. It was fun yet petrifying, with the clowns not scared to get up and close. We love the party festival music playing in the background pretty loud, which you would think would lower the intensity but, you would be wrong. A great final attraction for the experience.
Some points to highlight that we haven’t yet covered in our review. When you come out of Klownfest, you will enter into the main hub space where you can now relax. They had a bar with plenty of drinks on offer, a live scare cam which had live footage of all the other guests going through and getting scared. They had some food & drink, which we enjoyed with a hot dog. All the food & drink was affordable, tasty and came out very quick.
You can also get some merchandise in this area, they had t-shirts, caps, fridge magnets etc. They also had an area to collect your photo, which was taken before you entered Route 666 at the start of your experience.
There are also some refreshments available half way round Route 666, which is after the first 4 mazes and just before Devilsgate Cinema. Here you can find some toilets, a coffee and snack point and some benches to have a rest. This is of course an option as you can continue straight through to the end.
Ultimately, Dr Frights Route 666 surprised us and as a linear attraction, it still works and creates a terrifying concoction of scares & laughs. With Devilsgate Cinema & Klownfest being our clear favourites of the night, just the overall theme of Dr Frights with their cartoon feel and uniqueness is just something you won’t see at other events across the UK.
A huge thank you to the team at Dr Frights for allowing us to visit and gifting us two free standard tickets. Sadly we couldn’t film or video inside the mazes this year due to the team wanting to keep what is inside a secret. Tickets are best purchased online and we highly recommend you visit them!
Attractions 100%
Entertainment 75%
Atmosphere 90%
value for money 70%
uniqueness 90%
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