Creepy Caves: Elimination

The award winning Creepy Caves has earned a well deserved reputation over the last few years as one of Chessington World of Adventures' most intense Howl'o'ween event attractions.

For this, in what Chessington have said will be the final year of the maze, the story set up by the original Creepy Caves Unearthed and continued with Creepy Caves: Resurgence is brought to a conclusion in the maze's Creepy Caves: Elimination incarnation.

The entrance to Creepy Caves: Elimination is off the main pathway next to Adventure Point, with the maze's route reverting back to the original route down the emergency spiral staircase and through the park's old reptile house in a reverse of the Resurgence path.

After the standard safety briefing, guests are collected and led down the staircase by a character that turns out to be the daughter of the original scientist who guests met in Creepy Caves Unearthed. She tells the party about how he had been betrayed - a betrayal which led to the release of the man-eating Angel Fire Plant. We learn that the rebels who had taken control of the Caves in last year's Resurgence have made the problem hugely worse: their attempts at setting fire to the caves only succeeding feeding the Angel Fire Plant with the flames and causing it to grow to a hundred times the original size ("the clue's in the name Fire Plant", she says).

We are sent deep into the caves one final time, our new mission to detonate explosives and blow up the caves and blast the Angel Fire Plant to smitherines. Along the way, we are warned we are likely to encounter people who have been trapped by the plant in the darkness for the last five years.

The atmosphere within the maze is very different from the noisy frantic drumming of the masked rebels in Resurgence. Instead the whole place is covered with massive leaves and branches from the now overgrown fire plant, the former reptile cages almost impossible to see through the foliage. Mutated actors fill the maze, grunting and getting in the faces of guests as they make their way through, following behind to make sure they are just as intimidating for those at the back of the group.

As you could well guess, the maze's set piece finale has one of the group hitting a large button to set off the explosives. This is nicely done, with plenty of special effects and loud noises before everyone is rushed out of the door, exiting the maze as the caves are enveloped in huge clouds of smoke behind them.

Creepy Caves - originally a surprise hit for Chessington's Howl'o'ween event, not least because of its much more mature target audience than the park's traditional family friendly spooky-but-cute halloween attractions - deserved a spectacular final send off to celebrate its astounding success, and that is what Creepy Caves: Elimination successfully achieves.

While the original story-led experience of Creepy Caves Unearthed remains the best of the three versions of the maze, Elimination is a great successor that manages to mix some of the storytelling of Unearthed with the intensity and jump scares of Resurgence. The maze triology has set the standard at Chessington for more mature halloween scare mazes, and I can only hope that the park can remain on course with a future replacement that hits the spot just as well.

Creepy Caves Elimination opens at midday on Howl'o'ween 2022 event days. Between 12 and 3pm the scares are slightly muted, making run throughs suitable for children over 8 years old (at £5 for a maze ticket). From 3pm until close, everything is cranked up a notch both in recommended age range (over 10 years) and price (rising to £8 per person).

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