27 January 2024
Drayton Manor presents The Haunted Manor, the 2023 event to celebrate all things Halloween. Expanding from 2022s event, Drayton Manor has an action packed lineup of daytime activities for the families and then things get a little more haunted as the sky becomes darker, with scare zones, mazes and even fireworks. This on top of the rest of the resort in full operations and the final goodbyes to be said to the stand up version of Shockwave, there is a lot to be enjoyed this October at Drayton Manor!
The event of The Haunted Manor ran between the 28th – 31st October for 4 days, with the park open from 10am through to 8pm. You can of course buy a day ticket to enjoy the resort during the day before things got spooky by night, or you could buy an evening ticket from 4pm onwards at a reduced rate. This would allow you to get some rides in the dark on top of the Halloween additions.
For this years event, we would see a few shows such as The Firework Finale & Rory’s Big Boo Bash, an up charge scare maze called Castle of Shadows, the return of the The Haunted Express train ride, then the new scare zones called Viking Ragnarok & Chaos Cove. You can also find a DJ party, The Haunting ride becoming The Haunting Reclaimed plus lots of frightful food & drink options being added.
After kindly being invited by Drayton Manor on October 28th to check out the new & improved event, we check out some of the offerings they had to offer.
Drayton Manor during the day
Before we going into all the fun Halloween extras, we were able to explore Drayton Manor during the day like normal. As the event didn’t really take full swing until the late afternoon, you can explore as usual and enjoy some of your favourite rides. If you haven’t been to Drayton Manor before, you can explore a range of fun & thrilling rides which is fun for the whole family. We took rides on Accelerator, the boomerang coaster at the park, Thor in the new Viking area of the park and even Maelstrom, a large swing ride which is our personal favourite.
With Drayton Manor having some big expansions in the pipework, we could see construction starting for a new family coaster opening in 2024 starting groundwork. With the new Vikings area showing how well a new area can be done, we can only expect Drayton Manor to have big things planned moving forward.
For more details on how Drayton Manor was during the 2023 season, check out our review from our visit at the start of the season by clicking here!
Scare Zones
For 2023, The Haunted Manor brought two new scare zones to the event and this was one of the first times we have seen the park do this. They added Chaos Cove, which could be found in Adventure Cove area of the park where clowns have been let loose since the circus was cancelled! You also had Vikings Ragnarok, found in the new Vikings area as the gods become very angry and unleash skeleton like creatures upon the park.
Starting with Chaos Cove, they dedicated a small pathway area to this zone and the reason behind this was to allow guests who did not want the frightful additions to skip & avoid if they so wished. It included a few actors in a designed area of the park with some clown props. They were great to stop and getting pictures with however, they were not really scary at all and it was quite quiet when we walked through & past during the night. We believe this was due to some technical issues.
Vikings Ragnarok was in a small corner to the entrance to the area with 2 pretty scary characters roaming with some special effects such as lights & smoke. During the daylight, they were pretty tame and were happy to take images with everyone but as it got dark, it took better effect with some more scares and atmosphere being produced.
While neither scare zone were up to our standards, we believe they developed these from our visit and are looking to grow these as the event expands. With more actors, effects and scares, we think these themes would be fantastic for Drayton Manor.
Other Halloween Additions
On top of the scare zones, there was plenty more to enjoy however, we didn’t get to do so due to these attractions being so busy! These were Castle of Shadows, this was the only scare maze at the park and took on a haunted castle with witches & demons inside the academy school within. We heard mixed feedback but believe it has taken a more positive take from last years addition of a maze. They also had The Haunted Express which returned from 2022, where you take a ride on the train that goes around the park with headphones. With surprises along the route, the concept sounds great for families and hope to enjoy this in a future visit for sure. Both these attractions were up charge and The Haunted Express sold out before our visit so we would recommend booking these in advance of your visit and to visit these at opening to prevent long queues.
We checked out the new Halloween Rory show which was hosted in the 4d cinema theatre. It was incredibly popular with the kids as they created an interactive show filled with comedy, songs and dancing. We checked out the DJ also which was playing popular Halloween songs which created a great crowd, which was needed during the wet weather on our visit. Then as a finale to end the day, we got to see a fun firework display across the lake to celebrate the end of our 10 hour day at Drayton Manor!
Therefore, our visit to The Haunted Manor was a mixed one. There was so much Halloween fun to be had but it was just a little busier than we expected and with certain experiences selling out and queues overflowing, we did feel it was a little too busy. Whilst the experiences seemed to have stepped up from the 2022 event, there is still developments needed to make it a true theme park Halloween event which would make it perfect for the whole family. We believe they have the framework and a massively dedicated team to make this all possible and are very excited to see how they expand it for 2024 for sure.
Drayton Manor in our opinion has had such a strong 2023 season with the year of events at the park and we love to see the most popular ones returned, with more additions and it expanding on the positives for sure. We don’t usually attend Drayton Manor more than once in a few years however, we can see us returning more & more as they keep developing as it becomes a great fun thrilling day out.
A huge thank you to the team at Drayton Manor for inviting us to this event. They provided us 2 free tickets to the park in return for our review.
For more details on the 2024 season, we recommend you keep an eye out on their socials as they release more information soon!
Attractions 30%
Entertainment 60%
Atmosphere 60%
value for money 80%
uniqueness 50%
@thrillnation The Haunted Manor was this year's Halloween event at @Drayton Manor... with the theme park, spooky attractions and a fireworks finale! #thehauntedmanor #draytonmanor #themepark #halloween #tamworth #birmingham #england #uk ♬ HAUNTED - Isabel LaRosa
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