The Nightmare Circus 2013 Review

The Nightmare Circus at Doncaster Racecourse was a temporary scare attraction for the 2013 Halloween season, running from 27th October to 1st November, and created by GNG Entertainment Ltd. It featured rides and attractions, plus two live scare mazes for guests to enjoy. But were they actually scary? We ventured in to find out…

I was hoping for a little circus music in the queue line, just to get us in the mood. Or some signs at the entrance which matched the event images I’d seen on the website, to re trigger the excitement I’d felt from reading about the event online and bring back those feelings of anticipation.

There were, however, some clowns in the queue line. They entertained us and gave us a few warm-up scares. They didn’t stay in character the whole time which was a shame, but their make-up was good, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them literally chase a guest around. Other than that, there was no build-up prior to entry, which was a shame.

The two scare mazes ran one after the other, so there was only one entrance for the maze experience. The first maze was Pogo’s Fun House.

Pogo’s Fun House

This maze was, for me, a good example of how you don’t need to throw a tonne of money at an attraction to make it entertaining. There was a back-story which was explained to us by the first actor, who did a great job of setting the tone and made us feel engaged.

The scenes within the maze were simple but made effective by the actors, who were all brilliant. The rooms we walked through featured demented clowns, balloons strewn around and writing scrawled on the walls. Details like these all go a long way towards creating the right mood, which this attraction did very well.

  One or two of the scenes could certainly have been improved by changing the positioning of certain props. For example, there was a great little scene involving a séance. We were all told to place our hands on a table (I liked this interactive element). As we stood there, a cloaked man entered the room and pounced on one of the girls who had his back to him. Unfortunately, half of us were unable to benefit from this scare, as we saw him coming. If the actor had positioned us with our backs to the door then we would have all jumped. There was also a coffin in the room; had this been placed opposite the door, and the group told to focus on it, then this misdirection would have certainly intensified the scare.

I wouldn’t say this maze scared me at any point, so in that respect I’ll admit it didn’t quite work, but it was fun to walk through. For a small scale attraction it was able to achieve a lot, but it could have achieved more with a little more build-up (maybe if the staff outside of the attraction had been in character) and changes to the layout. But there was a great atmosphere and the actors were faultless; they did a good job of intimidating our group.

Freakshow Live

The end of the maze brought us to the entrance of Freakshow Live, the second part of our maze experience. We were greeted by an actor who sang to us- we were all a little baffled by this and unfortunately it took me out of the experience completely.

This maze had a simple layout and utilised strobe lighting throughout. This succeeded in making us feel severely disorientated (I almost fell over at one point!) which made it easy for the actors to pounce on us. However, I was disappointed to discover that nothing else was going to happen. It was just strobe and actors wearing what looked a bit like ninja suits. I was looking for the ‘Freakshow’ element but I couldn’t really identify it.

It crossed my mind that one way to enhance this experience could have been for the singing actor to warn us that the freaks dwelling within this maze were so horrendously disfigured that they had to keep their faces covered. This would have explained their peculiar costumes and also given us an added element of anxiety: the fear that one freak may remove their mask and we would be confronted with the horror beneath. This didn’t need to actually happen; just the threat would have given this another dimension.

This maze did give me a couple of scares; the actors utilised the space effectively so they were able to make me jump a few times. But impact scares alone aren’t enough. The group quickly adjusted to the nature of this experience, which lessened the overall effectiveness of the maze, and left me wanting a lot more.