In the ever-evolving world of scares, hooded scare mazes have become an increasingly outdated method of delivering scares. These attractions, where participants navigate dark mazes with hoods obscuring their vision, rely heavily on sensory deprivation to create a heightened sense of fear. While initially novel and terrifying, the time has come to reconsider their place in the world of horror entertainment. But do hooded scare mazes need to be phased out?
Hooded scare mazes can be done in creative ways, just look at The Brotherhood at Screamland Margate in 2019. It effortlessly entwined both hooded and non hooded sections whilst continuing the story flawlessly between the two. Add to that the types of scares provided to the story telling in the hooded section as well as it not lasting too long, it just balanced out and created quite a beautiful yet eerie maze.
But with the positive comes the negative and i'm going to use Hellements at Tulleys Shocktoberfest for this. If an attraction is going to rely on the hooded aspect for the vast majority of it, Hellements is not how you do it. The scares don't feel that they make sense, there's no real story to explain and build on why you are wearing hood (except for a small intro during the safety briefing) and, honestly, it just feels like it goes on and on and on l.
Another issue that hooded attractions have is that people tend to move at a slower pace because their senses are impaired, uneven flooring which is supposed to create different feelings, it all adds together creating periods of people from different batches meeting and causing a tailback. Throw in loosing the guide rope from your grip and your maze comes to a full stand still for a good five minutes, which for those experiencing the attraction isn’t a great feeling.
Impairing a sense in a maze is a really clever way of creating scares but I feel it is time for events to phase out the hood. Scare events have shown that there are creative ways to impair vision without throwing a hood over people by turning the lights of completely or by using a smoke machine and extremely bright light. Attractions are fully embracing immersion with impressive set designs so you really don’t need a cheap gimmick for the sake of an extra attraction with little work needed. And if you need a reminder of how bad hooded mazes can be I have two words for you: Vulcan Peak!
What are your thoughts on hooded mazes?
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