The Seance

Brand New Attraction for 2017, The Seance – it is the UK’s First Panic Room Experience. It is a one-of-a-kind Scare Attraction where we challenge YOU to last the full duration without hitting the panic button! Utilising a movie-quality set, live actors, special effects and psychological illusion – to ensure total immersion and realism during your experience… As the spirits start to takeover the house, your bravery will be put to the ultimate test as we rack up the tension and also the fear factor all in an effort to make you hit that panic button.

Hide and Shriek, along with a fantastic name, are fairly new to the scare game, but you wouldnt know as their events are always excellent quality. On arriving to the shopping centre, it was hard to beleive that a scare attraction would be based there. Heading up to the top floor we soon spotted the absolutely fantastic shop front that held The Seance. The attention to detail would not be out of place stateside in the Disney horror night attractions. After we were led through we were again blown away by the full scale house build inside, with a washing line, broken windows and excellent themeing we were impressed before the show even started. We we sat down at the seance table and the show began, now this is where the attraction started to lose us, I think our hopes were so high that it would have been very difficult to continue that level of detail throughout the show.

The lack of a ‘real’ actor did hurt the event, the next 30 minutes were great fun following along with the seance and the practical effects were very well done. We were disappointed that we did not leave the room to explore other parts of the house as that would have ramped up the tension. The ending of the show in our opinion was a total cheap out, of course even the most seasoned horror hunters are going to be startled when someone screams in your face, the subtlety of the event was completely lost. We were then ushered out in the most mundane way possible through ‘the forest’ which was just a corridor. If you are going to try to keep in-world do it properly or not at all!

This was disappointing as the first half of the event was some of the best themeing and production we have even seen in an event of this size. We still highly recommend the event as less seasoned people would be absolutely terrified the entire time.