Fear Island at Fantasy Island – Review
By Dominic Picksley, October 2025
I could feel and smell hillbilly Cletus’ stale breath as he got up close and personal, ordering me in his southern American drawl to ‘wipe that smile off my face’ after I had the temerity to laugh at him insulting a fellow guest at Fear Island: The Internal Rising.
We were attending the VIP press preview night at Fantasy Island’s excellent attraction and waiting in the queue to enter the ever-popular The Ravenous, one of four scare mazes at the park, when I became the latest target for banjo-playing madman Cletus, who did his best to accost all those brave enough to line up to enter his family’s weird abode.
Men, women, children, no-one was safe from him and you didn’t know whether to look him in the eye, turn away, smile or frown as he creepily investigated the queue line, sometimes chomping on a cold tin of baked beans, but always with an air of menace, and by god, always ready to pounce on an unsuspecting individual.
“Horror maze”
It was something of a relief to get away from him even if it did mean plunging head first into a horror maze, filled with body parts, psychotic characters and a craziness that filled every room and corridor of this particular attraction that felt like a cross between Deliverance and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is how scare mazes should be done and, just like last year, it proved a cut above the rest at the Ingoldmells-based park.
There’s something rather mystical as you wander around Fantasy Island at night through the Halloween theming, with the illuminated roller coaster tracks of Odyssey and Millennium soaring above your head. But mystical could well turn into hysterical once you enter one of the four mazes, with three returning and one brand maze for us to experience, namely Snap.
“An evening of frightful entertainment”
Fire eaters entertained the throng, before there was an appearance from The Phantom, who ‘welcomed’ us to an evening of frightful entertainment from his position on the highest balcony of Psycho Mansion, before vanishing into the night.
In four separate groups, we were led to the mazes and our journey began at 9 Circles (‘descend into damnation’), a maze I had been wary of previously due to the fact you’re locked in a room with a coffin lid to start off with. An ominous beginning if ever there was one.
Time seemed to drag in this dark, enclosed space, as screams could be heard from within the maze… or were they in my head, as delirium set in from being entombed in this claustrophobic space?
Finally the door was unlocked and I gingerly made my way into the maze, passing a girl locked in a cage, clawing at me as I edged past into a green-tinged atmospheric part of the maze, which actually looked pretty smart.
You start off alone but then eventually catch up with stragglers, walking through various scenes and encountering several horrific characters until you stumble out into the, er… darkness.
“Clown-themed snap”
After a bite to eat and more fire eating performers along with Dr Grimm’s Side Show, the tamest maze of the quartet, Psycho Mansion, was next and it was a pretty routine house of horrors, although the rather deranged girl on the second floor was not one to mess with given her favourite toy seemed to be a rather large axe.
And then it was on to the clown-themed Snap, where you enter through a curtain into what looks like a small circus, each taking a seat as you’re entertained by a rather enthusiastic ringmaster. Not to spoil it too much, but a sinister clown and his crazy chums basically take over the place after a gruesome murder and ushers you through various doorways past scenes of destruction, where you try and keep your wits about you and avoid the various jump scares which come from all angles and every nook and cranny.
You emerge sometime later into a well-themed ‘street’ with plenty of photo opportunities and as luck would have it, you’re a stone’s throw from The Ravenous as has already been mentioned, there the fun really begins.
“You won’t be disappointed”
One popular YouTuber, there on the same night as us, described Fear Island as the best scare attraction in the country, high praise indeed especially with competition fierce around the UK, with so many attractions now springing up across the month of October.
They’ve certainly pulled out all the stops this year and the creation of the new zone location in the park was a great idea as it keeps most of the Halloween entertainment in the same area, plus they’ve gone to town with all the theming.
And was the YouTuber right? Well, head to the Lincolnshire coast to find out and I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.
Dom has worked in journalism for 25 years, specialising in sport, but with a penchant for penning travel features, at home and abroad, and also has a vast knowledge of 60s music, from the popular hitmakers to those bands long since forgotten.
He’s become something of a theme park reviewer now, sparked by his children’s interest, and if there’s an interesting book that appeals, then he’ll review that as well.
