Tulleys Farm’s Shocktober Fest is a largely visited Halloween attraction in Crawley, with over 80,000 guests attending every year. As well as being Europe’s largest Scream Park, Tulleys Farm Shocktober Fest has also won the title for the UK’s best Scream Park since 2008. However, with the Xscream tickets, which allow you to access each of the 10 attractions once, costing £42.00, is the experience really worth it?

On Friday the 25th of October 2019, a group of my friends and I visited Tulleys Farm. Having attended last year, my expectations were high - especially with the addition of 2 new attractions: The Wreckoning and The Wastelands Penitentiary. The attractions mainly consist of a carefully constructed, themed set that you walk through, with smoke machines and strobe lighting enhancing the spooky effect, whilst actors in gory costumes jump out at you, chase after you, talk to you and generally scare you. However, with all of this being obviously fake, how scary can it really be?

The answer is, terrifying. With the lighting and costumes and smoke machines - the jump scares can cause many screams. However, even if you are resilient enough not to be scared by the actors, with a group of friends, the whole experience can still be worth it and can even become funny. With attractions such as the Circus Of Horrors, even those who can’t be scared can still be entertained. Furthermore, there is a large range of different foods and drinks available to purchase, such as crêpes and burgers, as well as many amazing street performers ready to chase after you or even pose for a picture with you.

However, the major downside to Shocktober is the queuing. Whilst at the very beginning of the evening the queues were minimal, they quickly became horrific, lasting from 30 minutes to an hour. We ended up queuing for Chop Shop (where actors run after you with chainsaws) for over an hour, for the attraction to last only 5 minutes. Of course, there is always the option to buy the fast-track passes that allow you to jump the queues, but these are significantly more expensive, costing £62.00.

With the gates opening at 6:00pm and queue lines closing at 11:30pm (and sometimes earlier if the lines are long) this left us with only 5 ½ hours to complete all 10 attractions, meaning that unfortunately we were unable to do the Circus Of Horrors and, as the Haunted Hayride queue closed slightly early, we were also unable to do that. However, because we missed the Haunted Hayride, they allowed us to redo The Village Coven Of 13 again, and after we emailed them about our disappointment at not getting to do the Haunted Hayride, they have kindly offered for us to come back and do it.

Overall, despite the potentially long queues, I believe that the experience really is worth it as especially for teenagers and adults who may not have much else to do to celebrate Halloween, it can be an amazing night with friends or family, filled with a fantastic, eerie atmosphere.