Beware: This is a review of a past Halloween event. Therefore, do not use it as a basis upon which to preview the same event this year, and please note that the event may not necessarily be taking place this year. Please use our guide for an overview of this years' Halloween attractions. 

Halloween Hocus Pocus, Chessington (2002)

Chessington’s Halloween Hocus Pocus event was absolutely terrifying to the core, just for all the wrong reasons. The event was truly terrible, a simple side-step from previous events as opposed to marked improvement.

Where as in previous years the onus has been placed on the after dark rides and little else, this year saw the introduction of extra gratis ‘spook-tacular’ attractions for the family. Sadly, whenever Chessington uses the ‘f-word’ (‘family’), you can be assured if you’re over the age of ten there will be absolutely nothing of interest what-so-ever.

Whilst the park was nicely decorated in places with spiders, clumsy witches, cobwebs and festive bunting, to the average visitor, Hocus Pocus is a complete embarrassment in every sense of the word.

The attraction that was clearly the most mature when compared against the frankly frightful Hocus Pocus Ball or the Pumpkin Party was Creepy 3D Caves. It doesn’t take the mind of a contemporary genius to work out that this temporarily replaces Creepy Caves as a 3D walk-through attraction.

Put an eye patch on Jack Skeleton from Nightmare Before Christmas and put him in a Lord of the Dance style pose with his arms in the air and you have Pirate  Jack.

Add a whole entourage of cartoon rip-offs, give them Pokemon-style names and you have the merry band of freaks that make up the comic book style adventure that is Creepy 3D Caves, more specifically ‘Pirate Jack – the Legend of Halloween’

This so-called legend of Halloween is basically a blacklit walk-through with what look like enlarged photocopies of a comic on the walls. Problem is, with two walls to follow the story on, the plot becomes completely incomprehensible, that is of course if you’ve dedicated 60% of the day to reading the various speech bubbles full of random and confusing throw-away comments from the main characters.

As soon as you loose the story, you glaze over and loose interest. It goes without saying that the 3D effect is completely undetectable.

Although the artwork is in places great, I cannot believe what a flat, bland and non-descript experience Creepy 3D Caves was. Even for children (who I can only assume this was aimed at) would have been overly confused.  Nobody seemed to be paying attention, almost as if this attraction was the queue leading to a show or something.

Meanwhile in Market Square a bright purple silhouette of a castle forms the epicentre of Halloween merriment in the form of a stage. Pantomime quality acting comes courtesy of a vampire type character with what appears to be a Russian accent. A witch takes over the microphone later on to say ‘trick or treat’ and ‘Coca Cola’ a lot in no particular order, occasionally squeezing in other choice words.

Children have the task of going around the park trying to find doors. Once a door is found, they simply open a letterbox and there is a letter. The ones I  tried had ‘P’ and ‘I’ in for example. By the end of the day, I could have had more letters that I could put into order to make a word. Who knows, I could have had the word TRIPE by the end of the day which would of course be embarrassingly appropriate.

This event beautifully personifies everything that is wrong with Chessington World of Adventures.

Halloween is an event pretty much ignored by most of the British public, overlooking of course children who  think their investment in a pair of flashing devil’s horns and an outstretched hand worthy of award. Chessington, however, feel such an understated event creditable enough to base the biggest event of the year around, and not only this, but also that every visitor over 10-years old will be paying extra (as invariably over tens will be the ones paying) for, well – nothing.

Despite the park being nicely decorated and Chessington being open until the shadows draw long and little longer (7.30 as opposed to the previous 9.30), Halloween Hocus Pocus was a fundamentally diabolical event which even the very thought of sends shivers down my spine.

Trick or treaters rarely make the effort nowadays and still expect to be rewarded. The same can be said of Chessington - if they expect guests to pay £23 for their idea of a Halloween celebration, I would rather stay at home and ignore the doorbell. Chessington don't seem too bothered about anyone over the age of 10, so in return I'm not too bothered about them.

MS 31 October 2002

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