Alton Towers Scarefest 2025 Review
So Scarefest is here, I always enjoy the foggy, spooky nighttime atmosphere of Alton Towers and make it a yearly visit. First lets talk about prices, with an annual pass discount 3 scare mazes are over £30 and your looking at another £15 for the 2 family mazes…. The park have really outpriced themselves and you can tell as there were no queues for the mazes at all (there always used to be).
Because of cost I chose not to do the 2 family attractions located in the old Dungeons building (Trick or treat town and Amigos in the afterlife), my friends did Amigos and said it was good fun but it will not be reviewed here. Please note there will be spoilers in my maze summaries!
We were staying in the splash landings hotel, but for some reason the staff were saying all the parking was taken (even though the fields were empty), Id like to assume that if you were staying in the hotels you are guaranteed a hotel parking spot so you don’t have to lug your bags too far. The hotels were decorated for scarefest and the hotel reception staff were lovely as always! We used the Galactica entrance and got all the rides in forbidden valley done quickly.
We headed down to watch the Alton Ancestors on towers street, always a highlight for me especially how beautiful towers street is decorated (though they need to replace a few of the speakers used as they sound like they had blown). The best part of Scarefest 2025 is that more models and decorations have been put around the park so it feels like a parkwide event again instead of specific areas!!!!
The mazes open at 1, and you can purchase either afternoon or evening tickets, afternoon tickets are cheaper (and you cannot get annual pass discount on evening tickets). My top tip is do the afternoon 1-5 maze slots as all the mazes are indoors and dark anyway, which means you have time for night rides and the scarezones later on! I will point out we noticed you cannot find the annual pass rate for scaremazes on the app, so we had to go onto the alton towers website and go through 3 or 4 pages to eventually find them… a bit of a pain.
We started off with “Altonville Mine Tours”, it was full of actors, a lot darker than I remember and some good jump scares. Although this maze is 10 years old I still really enjoy it (however do miss the haunted lantern helmets, they were really cool). I would give Altonville Mine Tours a 8/10
Our 2nd maze of the night was the brand new “Edge of the woods”. The queue can be deceptively long as it winds through the woodlands. Unfortunately even though there is a door façade, you can see back of house containers and lots of the show building, could be improved. The concept and theming of this maze is brilliant, going through the rooms as the woods take over and over. Unfortunately on our run we got lost, went through some flaps and into an actors run, before going back against the flow of our group and this ruined the ending for us (we were also told be friends that we missed a scene), I feel the actors in this maze needed a bit more time to learn their space for effective scares. Edge of the Woods gets a 4/10 (note I did go to Guest services to ask about another run through due to the issues, they said they do not offer any maze comps and I wasn’t willing to pay another £16, customer service let this down too).
Final maze of the evening was “Compound”, which opened in 2024 and themed to the Nemesis story Line. WOW just WOW< even better than 2024 with intense scares, lots of routes and splitting up, this is a incredibly strong scare maze and if you had to pick only one maze to got through, id pick this! All of my group had different experiences and different routes so this made is certainly repeatable as you’ll see something new each time. Compound gets a 9/10
A strange addition is for £5 extra per maze, you can fastrack the maze, even though you have already paid £30 plus for the mazes, there was a sense of trying to make as much money as possible during this years event.
The New Scarezone Dark Hollow runs along side the gardens and exits into Dark Forest (the names do get a bit confusing). It has lots of props/theming and utilises the space well, whether you go through day or night. Its great to see free scarezones back, however we did wait 15 minutes as these new style scarezones are on thinner pathways. This makes the experience more like an outdoor maze, but I do wish they didnt have “queues”. Dark Hollow gets a 8/10
Burial Grounds returns and takes the route along side Wickerman. The actors in this were much better for 2025 and i thoroughly enjoyed it. However there is always a bottle neck before the indoor section which can kill the mood and pacing of the experience. Burial Grounds gets a 7/10
Overall Scarefest 2025 is a big improvement over the past 2 or 3 years. It is a shame not to have any mazes in the main section of the towers, as the atmosphere queueing in her ladyship gardens was always amazing. I would also like to see the return of 1 free maze, you can offer fastrack for this maze if people want, but it helps just get a better feel for money, as you can tell from prices across the event – it is a more premium product now and I get the sense the park are trying to make more money. Please check out our vlog and maze walkthroughs below and give us a subscribe!
Thanks again for reading and the next review will be Tulleys Shocktoberfest!