In October 2020, Alton Towers Resort submitted a planning application to establish an enhanced and slightly extended ‘Heritage Tour’ through the Towers Ruins. The proposals were made up of two key parts: the alteration (and increased length) of the ‘Heritage Tour’ in the Towers Ruins and gardens, and the regularisation of the theming for three scare mazes that are installed in the building for Scarefest.
As part of the application, the Resort therefore submitted detailed layout plans for The Attic: Terror of the Towers, Altonville Mine Tours: Uncover the Legend of the Skin Snatchers and Sub Species: The End Games, providing a unique insight into these scare mazes.
Telling the story of ‘The Governess’, whose ghost, according to local legend, continues to attempt to avenge the death of her charges by taking the spirits of the living as penance, this scare maze is set across the ground and first floors of the Towers Ruins.
Featuring a section of interior queue-line through the ‘Drawing Room’ and ‘Long Gallery’, the first section of the maze then takes place in the ‘Family Dining Room’ with a pre-show scene that introduces guests to the legend.
Guests then ascend a flight of stairs into the ‘attic’ where the main portion of the maze takes place, venturing through a variety of scenes that have been created in the first floor rooms found above the areas they queued through.
Notable features:
- The plans have a high level of detail on the scenic props that feature throughout – can you identify the different scenes?
- Can you find the room where guests both enter and exit through the same narrow doorway?
- A bed features in the maze which has previously featured in a past scare maze – can you locate that bed, and identify that maze?
A family of inbred hillbillies who have been outcast due to their hideous disfigurements and warped way of life are believed to now live in Altonville Mines, which happen to be located in the basement of the Towers’ West Wing.
The Resort have been effective in their use of scenic, themed flats to create a winding and extensive network of tunnels through all rooms in this area.
Although this part of the Towers had been used for previous mazes, Altonville Mine Tours was the first to see guests enter via a doorway at the back of the building, with a themed entrance feature installed to add to the illusion that guests are entering a mineshaft.
Notable features:
- With this maze utilising helmets featuring Haunted Lantern‘s wirelessly-controllable lamp technology, can you identify all the different sensor beam locations?
- How many ‘actor buttons’ can you find, with these being what the actors use to trigger lighting, sound and other effects in different scenes?
- Given that it was a blindfolded maze it may be tricky, but can you figure out the route taken by The Haunting of Molly Crowe, which was located in many of the same rooms in the Towers?
In this scare maze, guests would descend deep underground (i.e. the lower-ground floor level of the Towers) to a post-apocalyptic sewer system that had been infested by a species from another world.
The Ruins were the perfect location for this scare maze, with a disorientating labyrinth and black-out section created in these rooms, setting the foundation for one of the Resort’s most intense maze experiences.
A temporary scaffold bridge and tunnel was also erected, to continue the maze experience beyond the Towers themselves and into a number of shipping containers on the nearby plaza.
Notable features:
- How many smell pods can you find, with these being what contain the suitably smelly scents from Aroma Prime?
- In its debut year, the maze also incorporated Sub Species: Operation Lockdown, an extreme horror escape room experience – can you locate the two rooms used exclusively for this attraction?
- There are three E-stops shown on the plans – can you find them all?
