Fort Amherst Halloween Horrors Review 2025
Overview
Returning for its 41st year of scares, the UK’s longest running halloween scare event, Fort Amherst Halloween Horrors based in Chatham, Kent is an event that we haven’t been able to return to for a few years. When we did originally attend we had mixed feelings as the many positives of the event were sadly outweighed by some poor guest experiences and batching. We were keen to see what had changed in the last few years and if any of these issues had been ironed out.
Atmosphere and Setting
It’s a fantastic venue for it, especially the Underground Wonky City maze which takes place in the tunnels and caves underneath the fort. The main hub was serviceable with some food and drink options, a stage and some merch stalls and a photo op. Off the hub you have the queue lines for the two mazes, Conjurance and the aforementioned Underground Wonky City. You can do them in either order so it has changed from the linear event we originally experienced as well as the entrance being lower down the hill and not near the cafe. The tunnel based maze was also reversed starting lower down and then climbing up inside the hill towards the end.
Scare Factor
Sadly it was a bit inconsistent. Most of the actors did an amazing job, but they were hampered by either a poor design of the maze in Conjurance’s case or in the tunnels of Underground Wonky City by large batches bunching together turning the experience into a conga line. The concept of Conjurance was solid, in getting groups to split up and making it partially free roaming, but there were large open areas which reduced any potential scare impact. The tunnels are naturally more claustrophobic and dark which led to the inevitable bunching. It’s worth noting that this is a much more hands on event than most in the UK, which during our run was used well in a few different ways and places. Most others we saw found this terrifying.
Theming and Design
Again a game of two halves. Conjurance was very basic, and the large open spaces had some set dressing. The tunnels are naturally incredible, and some of the sections had some nice touches and some wonderful larger set pieces.
Actors and Performance
As mentioned above, the actors for the most part really gave it their all and there were several that were absolutely brilliant. Where they didn’t hit as hard was more due to the issues with the maze design and the batching and bunching issues rather than a fault of the actors.
Variety and Line-up
There’s just the two mazes, with Underground Wonky City again winning through as there are a variety of themes in the one maze as you progress through an entire underground settlement. A particular highlight was the flappy asylum themed section which was utilised to great effect by the actors.
Operations and Queue Experience
We arrived for the earliest slot, but even by the time we left we could see the queues building up. If you have a later slot it might be worthwhile buying fast passes for the mazes. Batching for Conjurance was fine for us and due to a fun opening theatrical scene made it that when you did run into other groups it was largely fine due to the nature of the maze design principles. We felt that the groups for Underground Wonky City were too large for the small queues that were in place.
Value for Money
Standard tickets start at just under £30 which for two mazes of differing quality, but with plenty of actors seems reasonable value, but you could probably get a little more bang for your buck elsewhere. Fast track for the mazes are £5 each and there is an Unlimited Maze plan available starting at £40.
Final Thoughts
It was good to see some improvements here and also to see that all the positive elements that we have enjoyed in the past have remained. If you’re local it’s definitely worth checking out, but maybe try and get the earliest time slot available. Fort Amherst Halloween Horrors is running from 30th October through to 1st November
Fort Amherst Halloween Horrors Review 2021
It was the Night before Halloween and our final event of the day was the longest running scare event in the UK, Fort Amherst Halloween Horrors. This event has been running since 1983 so we arrived with fairly high expectations.
I think we have to be fair to the event and get a few negatives out of the way first before we go into the details of the event itself. Firstly the size of the groups. The groups ended up being fairly large (20 to 30) this unfortunately had a number of knock on effects. The first was that in many of the scenes it was tough to see what was going on due to the sheer size of the group. Secondly the actor interactions took a long time to get through so while credit has to be given to the actors for giving everyone attention, you spent a lot of the time in a scene waiting while just watching others experience the interactions. This was okay at first but became quite repetitive and tiresome towards the end. Another aspect that a few events have is that whilst you have timed tickets, this time is purely to enter a queue, so the time stated on your ticket is not necessarily the time you enter the event, and you may have a substantial extra wait at busier times.
We were very unfortunate during our visit to have a few troublesome people in our group. They were being rude to the actors and at one point security had to be called but due to security being outnumbered by the rude visitors they were unable to do anything. This really left a bad taste in our mouth fairly early on.
The event itself is set in an absolutely fantastic location. Taking place in the various tunnels underneath the fort this setting works really well for the type of scares the event uses.
The scares are scene based rather than a constant walk. The start stop nature would work better if the groups were smaller as they ended up taking a long time with the scares becoming less impactful as they hit other members of the group.
The scenes themselves covered all the classic horror themes with a number of standout scenes. The scenes that really stood out were the vampires which used a really cool coffin effect, a prison scene with a fantastic soundtrack that buIlt to a crescendo where the inmates escaped and a really fun clown section. One actor in particular did a stellar job playing the part of a bad actor causing people to comment but later in the run through he returned with a callback to the comments people had given.
The event isn’t afraid to get up close and touch visitors. While we are generally fans of this engagement the size of the groups plus the repetitive nature of this reduced the impact. With a few small changes to the way the actors interacted this could be made an intense rather than repetitive experience.
Overall this isn’t a bad event, has some game actors, with fun scenes in a superb venue, but was seriously let down by the aforementioned experiences. This event has so much potential to be outstanding and to be honest with a few small changes would easily get there. Reducing the group sizes to 10 or so would enable shorter scenes so you could get the same throughout. This would overall make the experience so much better. The actors would also be able to engage and improvise so much better if they had less people to work with.
We will definitely visit again and I really hope that things can change for a future visit.
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