Attraction Review: Road to Hell

Of the shit sandwich served up to spooky season this year due to COVID, the undoubted silver lining has been that the amazing teams behind our favourite terrifying attractions have been forced to think outside the box a little to be able to deliver scares in a COVID safe way. This has led to many changes across scare attractions all over the country, from an increase in scare zones at our beloved theme park Halloween attractions, to horrific masks instead of make-up to keep actors safe, there hasn't been a scare attraction operating in 2020 that hasn't seen some sort of adaptation or amend to the product and honestly despite it obviously being far from ideal, it's nice to see something huge like this encourage a bit of a shake up in the industry as it means we get to experience things we otherwise might never have seen, Which brings me nicely to Road to Hell. 

A great idea we saw spring out of many a scare attraction creative's arsenal was the idea of a drive-through scare attraction. Essentially operating like a drive through safari but with ghouls instead of giraffes, the drive-through scare offers the perfect solution to keeping both punters and actors safe whilst delivering a simultaneously terrifying and brand new offering to the UK scarescape. Although we unfortunately did not see all of those drive-through scare attractions announced this year through to actual operation, one that did press on was Road to Hell located in the grounds of the Heart of England conference centre in Coventry. 

Presented by AREA 51 and Scare-Projects, Road to Hell is a 20 minute, 1.5 mile long trail that takes fearseekers through a series of terrifyingly entertaining scenes from the safety of their own vehicles. It's something I've personally never experienced before but something I knew I had to try once they started popping up all over the UK so I was so excited to manage to snap up a ticket for last Thursday evening to see for myself just how terrifying a drive-through horror experience could be. 

I won't talk you through scene by scene in the interest of not getting repetitive, but I will say this - it was absolutely terrifying! If you've ever driven down a long, dark creepy road at night you'll know the sense of unease, and Road to Hell take this and turn it up to eleven. We discussed afterwards why this was so terrifying and we came to the conclusion that our cars, in our heads at least, are a safe space. They're kind of an extension of our homes where we feel comforted and like no harm can come to us, so for this safe haven to suddenly be transferred into the danger zone is wholly uncanny and uncomfortable, and therefore the sense of terror is heightened. 

Each scene had its own different theme, from demonic priests to killer clowns to my ever-favourite chainsaw-wielding maniacs, it was all typical scare attraction stuff but experienced slightly differently from behind the 'safe' doors of a car. The way the actors played with our sense of space and sightl ines was great - tons of misdirection only for the actors to sneak up from the other side of the car to make us jump out of our skins. Vehicles flying towards our car at seemingly high speeds before swerving away last minute, ghouls chaotically tugging at the car door handle trying to get into the car. It was like nothing I've ever seen before and my heart was racing through each scene as I had no idea what was coming next which I absolutely adored. 

And don't worry about your car getting dirty from all of these hideous beasts smearing their filthy mitts over the windows - the final scene is a spooky twist on a car wash where your vehicle will be hosed down and your windows squee-geed to remove any excess filth. It was also a great way to end the horrific 20 minutes on a slightly lighter note to calm our nerves before driving home.

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Overall I was extremely impressed with Road to Hell. I have no idea what I expected from this but I certainly didn't think it was get my heart-racing quite as quickly as it did. There is just so much potential for a setup like this and I really hope that we see more of these pop up and develop in the years to come as I'd love to see how Heart of England update it moving forwards and how other scare operators would do things differently. 

Did you manage to try out a drive-through scare attraction this year? Was it what you expected it would be? Let me know in the comments, I'd love to have a chat!

Talk later xoxo,

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