Xtreme Scream Park park info, rides and attractions

Opened	2011
Season	Selected nights in October
Website	www.xtremescreampark.co.uk
Nearby	Abbey Park Fun Fair (15 miles) Wicksteed Park (28 miles) Gulliver's Kingdom (37 miles) Drayton Manor (38 miles) Gulliver's Valley (43 miles)

A corpse bride welcomes visitors to Xtreme Scream

For selected nights every October, the usually family-friendly Twinlakes Theme Park in Melton Mowbray turns into Xtreme Scream, a very scary adult-only Halloween themed horror park.

Xtreme Scream began in 2011 and the event has grown substantially since then, now featuring five huge scare mazes together with roaming actors, live entertainment, street food and access to a couple of Twinlakes' larger rides.

The scare mazes are different in style to those featured at Halloween events like Thorpe Park's Fright Nights or Alton Towers Scarefest. Xtreme Scream's mazes are much longer than those at Merlin Parks, and if groups take their time they can easily take ten or fifteen minutes to get from end-to-end. While they don't by any means feel sparsely populated, the mazes don't feel so packed with actors at Xtreme Scream, although the scare actor talent is easily as good if not better. Animatronics are cleverly used to fill some of the gaps: these aren't old fashioned "ghost train" type props though, and can create genuine jump scares. Upon entering the park, guests are given a card which entitles them to one trip through each maze at their own pace over the course of the night.

The entrance to Ash Hell Penitentiary

Over the event's history, some of Xtreme Scream's best mazes have been Ash Hell Penitentiary, an prison break themed maze; Stilton Hall Hotel and Hell Spa, a maze themed around a health spa resort with visitors exploring dozens of different hotel rooms and encountering some bizarre guests along the way; and The Village, an award winning maze which winds through houses and other buildings in a farmland town populated by mutant scarecrows.

Alongside the scare mazes, visitors can expect to encounter roaming actors around the various park pathways and street performers in a central hub which also hosts a variety of food vans and a bar. Twinlakes' Swing Tower and Jesters Revenge rides are also open for the evening.

Xtreme Scream has won various awards including Best Scream Park at the Scare Awards, and it is easy to understand why. The event organisers clearly have a passion for putting on the highest quality Halloween event they can, building immersive well themed scare mazes populated by enthusastic actors. It's certainly not an event for the timid, but if you enjoy being scared as you make your way around expansive horror mazes then Xtreme Scream is a must-do Halloween trip.