Halloween season has arrived and our first event was Traumatica Horror Nights at Europa Park in Germany! This was our first Halloween event outside of the UK and the start of the 2018 Halloween season for Europa Park!
Traumatica is open for 20 nights during 2018 and hosted in the side section of Europa Park. This uses an external entrance into the event and requires it's own seperate ticket. Tickets can be purchased through the Europa Park website, or via the Traumatica website. A standard ticket being around £30 and a fastrack pass (Shoxterpass pass) being around £65.
The event hosts 5 scare mazes, 4 scares zones, roaming actors, rides and much more. With this being our first european scare event, we had no idea how busy it would be and what to really expect.
When we arrived, we could see the event was going to be super busy and took us around 5-10 minutes to get into the park. We then waited in the holding area for the event to begin. We were surrounded by flags of each of the horror mazes and a bit of themeing on the sides. As the event began, a soundtrack began explaining and introducing each of the mazes with a few smoke effects and lighting, with actors appearing on podiums represented by the flag of the maze. Shortly after this introduction, the holding area was released into the park and the event began.
The scare park is split mainly into two halves, one section which uses a section of Europa Park itself with the Pegasus & Matterhorn Blitz coasters open, alongside the Ice Arena, and two of the Traumatica Mazes & two scare zones, one which is unavoidable! The other half holds the other is in a purpose built area for the event and holds the other 3 mazes, and 2 scare zones.
The Fallen
Our first maze of the evening was The Fallen. This had a derelict wooden facade which looked stunning in the ever darkening skies at the start of the event. Plenty was going on outside the maze and in the queue lines with multiple scare actors engaging with everyone waiting to experience the attraction. As much as the dialogue was in German, we still managed to laugh and be equally terreified with everything going on around us.
Inside the maze, the atmosphere continued and the scares were impressive and big! There were enough actors to keep each room and corridor filled to make every moment as scary as the next. The themeing inside also was very stunning with no corner left unturned. Overall, the maze was definitely strong, immersive and scary for our first european maze.
Scare: 7/10 | Themeing & Storyline: 7 | Actors 7/10 | Overall 21/30
Ghouls
The Ghouls have worked their way up from the pitch-black darkness of their caves. Their thirst for human blood is as strong as ever. Now, they are guided by their queen, and are set on hunting.
The Ghouls was our next maze and built up an impressive queue from the evening, reaching up to a 60 minute wait for this attraction. This is also the same maze as Crypta, which is open during the day at Europa Park, regardless if Traumaticais open. However, this is only on during the Halloween season.
The maze was incredily claustrophobic at times, with the cave themeing really being very tight in places. This really dark corridors and pathways made for some brilliant scares with plenty of hiding places for the actors, which definitely got us a few times. Not being the scariest of the mazes though, the themeing of the maze made up for this, showing how a simple idea can be pulled off pretty well. There was no difference from the day and night time version of the maze besides some differently disguised actors. The queue time was significantly less in the day which mean we were batched with bigger gaps and less people which made for a much better experience than at night.
Scare: 5/10 | Themeing & Storyline: 8/10 | Actors: 6/10 | Overall: 19/30
The Resistance
The Resistance was our favourite maze of the night. We loved it that much, we managed to experience it twice! " Mankind had a good run, That is until, unfortunately, creatures, mutants, and lunatics took over the land. Operation: Reboot has begun: Dead and wounded are sent back into combat as cyborgs and strengthen the Resistance. "
The themeing of this maze was truely incredible with multiple realisitic models and creatures being mistaken as props and vice versa, with the props being mistaken as actors. The rooms were heavily tech'd out with smoke, sounds, animatronics and incredible set pieces filling every room. This wasn't the longest maze however it was worth every second you was in the attraction.
The actors were clever and immersive with them acting robotic and working with the theme and space they had. We seen some pretty unique scaring techniques used in this maze that caught us off guard all the way round. This maze is the highlight of our visit to Traumtica and worth every second queueing up for. The queue line entertainment even had a boxing ring with what seemed like multiple shows being presented to the queues at random intervals.
Scare: 7/10 | Themeing & Storyline: 9/10 | Actors: 10/10 | Overall: 26/30
Shadows
" In legends, they carry many names – for example, demons or bloodsuckers. Human tongues cannot pronounce their name and call them Shadows, as they arise from shadows."
Shadows had a brilliant entrance with the signage and queue line utilising the existing Posiedon ride, which then eventually leads elsewhere for the maze to begin. The themeing was solid and based on each of the demons, leaving the maze feeling very unnerving with not knowing what would be around the next corner and lurking in the shadows. We didn't encounter too many actors in this maze however, they used props and animantronics to their advantage to create some simple but effective scares when you least expect it.
The main highlight from the maze was a flying vampire on a zip wire above our heads, which gave us a fright and made us look in awe! There was also a large static looking statue, which when least expected, provided a great actor attack.
Scare: 6/10 | Themeing & Storyline: 7/10 | Actors: 9/10 | Overall: 22/30
The Pack
Sadly, due to us being caught up in the whole event, we did not have time to visit or experience The Pack. This queue line was in region of 45-60 minutes all night and time caught up with us in the end.
On top of all the amazing scare mazes, we have the pleasure of getting to freely experience the 4 scare zones scattered across the park. These being Battle For Traumtica, Beyond Traumatica, Hot on Wheels & Uprising. Each of these was a great fun going through and some of them being incredibly scary. The main scare zone of the event is the Battle For Traumatica. You have to pass throught his pathway for a few of the rides and other scare mazes. This scare zone was probably our favourite with the amount of actors being inside from all the different factions coming together. Following this, Uprising would be a short second with the actors engaging with us making it a memorable experience. The atmosphere these created around the park along with the effort all the actors put in to engage with the guests was worth walking through them time and time again.
Adding to the above, an extra add on part to the event was Vampire Club, a nightclub created in the Poisden ride station building, which is transformed especially for selected evenings. This was a brilliant way to end the night and had a perfect mixture of a nightclub mixed with Halloween dancers. Drinks were reasonably priced and the atmosphere was incredible from start to finish. We would definitely recommend adding this on to your Traumatica ticket, which can be purchased for an additional 5 euros however, tickets are extremely limited as the station isn't too big!
Overall, Traumatica was an incredible event that Europa Park has put on. The mixture of 5 scare mazes, 4 scare zones, rides, roaming actors and a nightclub, cannot be matched in terms of scale and effort. There is a downside to the event being not enough time available! We were truely rushed to get everything completed in one night and with the queues of some attractions being 45-60 minutes for most of the night, meant this was not possible to complete. We believe we were fortunate to complete everything except 1 scare maze but, we still missed out on the ice show and multiple run throughs of the mazes.
Our recommendation for anybody new looking to go to the event would be to purchase the Shoxterpass. This way, you are able to fastrack each maze once, guaranteeing your entrance into all the mazes. We believe without this, you are unable to complete the full event on most nights.
Our overall rating of the event can be found below. If you are looking to visit Traumatica, please head to the website and purchase your ticket in advance and if you have any questions or queries on the event, feel free to get in touch! Traumatica Webiste
Organisation: 6/10 | Atmosphere: 9/10 | Attractions: 8/10 | Overall: 23/30
