Hallowscream 2026 Review

Our Slasher Post

Hallowscream near York had a disappointing 2026 event despite its impressive set designs and well-organised layout. The mazes look fantastic, particularly Necropolis, but poor group batching meant constant bumping into other visitors, while the scares felt weak and relied too heavily on loud noises rather than effective actor interactions.

The new paid attraction, Corntagion, offered a different, story-driven experience with some humour, but large groups, limited visibility and a lack of genuine scares let it down. Other issues included staff failing to enforce rules against filming and vaping, while standard ticket holders may struggle to experience everything without paying extra for fast-track access.

Overall, Hallowscream remains a great introduction to scare events, but experienced horror fans may find it underwhelming. Despite having enjoyed previous years, I felt this year’s event lacked the scares and excitement that make a great Halloween experience.

Our Stalker Review

Located outside York is Hallowscream and we popped along to experience this years event and to find out what their new attraction was all about.

Check in to the event was quick and easy as we had fastrack tickets but I imagine if you got there at opening time without fastrack you would be queueing to get in for a little while as it was busy. The event is essentially split into two areas. There are the mazes on one side and the food and fairground rides on the other with a bar, toilets and the entrance and exit to the event in the middle. It’s a good layout and we headed straight to the mazes. There are roaming characters terrorising everyone they see. As we walk in to the maze hub area you are greeted by their huge stage which has various performances throughout the night with dancers and the iconic Lil Dribble. We headed for our first attraction of the night.

Usually this would be where I would talk about each maze in detail but I’m not. All the attractions are essentially the same just with different ‘overlays’ and my experience of the main 5 attractions included in your ticket were identical so I’m going to break it down.

Let’s start with set design. Stunning! The attention to detail in the sets, especially Necropolis, is absolutely phenomenal. You are fully immersed into each maze and the sets are really what make these attractions. They also provide great spaces for the actors to use too.

Next I want to talk about batching. It wasn’t that great. Groups of 10+ being batched every 60 seconds was not fun. Every time we bumped into the group ahead or the group behind bumped into us. It was borderline a continuous conga line through the mazes and it took away from the experience.

I can’t fault the actors for trying and for people who get scared easily or have never visited a scare maze before, the style of acting may work really well for them. However for someone experienced in scare events or isn’t easily scared by a flailing hand, the scares are very dull and almost non existent. I found myself wandering around hoping for just one scare that never came. It was disappointing. The mazes seem to rely heavily on loud sound triggers cranked up sound tracks and less so on the actor scares, which was again very disappointing.

Corntagion is their new attraction for 2026 and it was a paid for extra (not included in your main event ticket) trailer ride experience. It’s very story driven and feels different to the other attractions. It’s very left sided so if you sit on the right, which we were, you don’t really see much. The acting is very sweary and sarcastic and did provide a few laughs but when you’re dealing with groups that big (I’m talking at least 30+ people) I guess you kind of have to be a bit like that. You have to eventually get off the trailer and walk through a small corn maze and short indoor scare maze. They say the zombies will get close to you but I found that they only got within about 2 metres which isn’t close. It was fun, but again lacked scares.

The biggest negative is that the event has rules that they themselves don’t enforce. They tell people to not film in the mazes, yet every run we had there was at least one person in the group filming and nothing was done about it. They also have no vaping in their inside areas yet people were vaping and nothing was done about it. I also believe if you don’t pay extra for the fast track ticket you will not have enough time on the standard ticket to experience all the mazes, let alone the entertainment, rides or refreshments.

Hallowscream is one of the UKs most popular events and we have had some really fantastic nights in previous years but our visit this year was very disappointing. It was giving Hallowtween with actors. It’s the perfect first time scare event and it’s one of those events you have to experience once but for seasoned scare fans it might be a little underwhelming.