Journey into the Enchanted Forest (The Enchanted Forest: A Journey Through Space)

Member Name: FraggleFan

Product:	The Enchanted Forest: A Journey Through Space
Date:	26/10/08 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gorgeous sights, well organised.

Disadvantages: The weather!

The Enchanted Forest - A Journey Through Space. Sounds good, doesn't it? Look at the piccie above, looks spectacular! In fact, have a gander at the gallery of pics on their website, http://www.enchantedforest.org.uk/ , bypassing the drawings and looking at the actual pics. I will admit, all of this had me absolutely spellbound, and I happily bought two tickets for me and the other half to go for a wander through the forest of an evening.

The tickets cost £10.75 each for adults, and according to the website, it's £6 for children aged 3-16, and £1.75 for children under 3. There's a booking fee on top of all this, and a delivery charge. I can't for the life of me find my receipt, but I think I paid about £28 in total for two adults. I've also got a sneak suspicion that weekends cost more, because looking at my ticket stub it says £11.50 per ticket. Hmmm....

The tickets were easily bought through the website which is connected to TicketLine, and the tickets arrived 2-3 days after I bought them. The tickets also give you details of exactly when to check in for the shuttle, more on this later.

We went on Friday night, 24th October to be precise. The night of the gale force wind and the pouring rain. I drove from Glasgow to Pitlochry, where the event takes place, with white knuckles as I tried to keep the car on the A9. Pitlochry is a lovely wee sleepy town in Perth and Kinross, but it had definately been attacked by abandoned cars when we arrived. After driving around for a while, we eventually found a parking space, then set of for some dinner before our trip.

Now, I'm not sure if it's just my paranoia, but I think some establishments may be hiking up the prices for all the tourists coming to the Enchanted Forest, as I saw hastily written blackboards advertising high tea for up to £10 a person? Eh? Eventually we nipped into a chippy and got a fish supper for the more reasonable £5 each.

And so to the Enchanted Forest. The theme is 'a journey into space', and this meant that you were to become astronauts visiting a new land by means of your space shuttle. For space shuttle read coach. We went to the pick up point, handed over our tickets, were assigned to a specific coach and were given a bendable glow stick which was to be worn at all times. This easily fitted round your neck, or wherever you wanted to put it, but it had to be visible at all times, for safety reasons in case you got lost in the woods!

We boarded the bus and took off! Well, the bus driver started the coach, switched off the internal lights and started the sounds which was instructions for the new astronauts to keep them safe on their voyage. We arrived at the woods (Faskally Woods) within 5 minutes and got off the coach. There was three coach loads for each showing, so there was about 200 of us trudging off the buses. We were shown to a viewing space in front of the loch, and after a countdown of the 'T minus 3 minutes until departure' variety, the show began.

The trees around the loch were lit up different colours, and various lasers bounced off the trees and merged in the sky, while giant lightbulbs in the trees followed along. The lights followed the music which was playing, from various sci-fi films including ET, but disappointingly no Close Encounters. Some of the sights were mindblowingly beautiful, but I will admit after ten minutes of this, in the pouring rain, I thought to myself there is only so much you can do with some lightbulbs and music. The finale seemed to be the arrival of the alien spaceship, which was a pyramid with strip lighting down the edges slowly rising out of the water. After a couple of minutes, the lights went out and they lowered it back into the water so that it had disappeared when the lights went back on.

After the light show, you got to wander round the forests, sticking to the paths. There were plenty of luminous vested stewards, so at no point did you feel like you would get lost. The forest was lit up alongside the walkways, and again, parts of it were stunning. The weather was not though, and if you paused for any length of time, you could feel yourself sinking into the mud made by the thousands of other feet who had trudged through before you.

Eventually you came to a section which was named the 'Alien Crime Scene'. X-Files music accompanied this part, and inflatable aliens were to be seen strewn through the forest. The little girl behind me got me to chuckle when she exclaimed sarcastically to her dad on seeing a parked car in this area 'oooh, that must be the spaceship, never seen one of them before'.

You were free to wander through the forest, obviously within the specified paths, but our coachloads seemed to make a giant conga line, probably because of the weather and at this point we just wanted to get through the evening. We got back to the coaches, where there were toilets and an ice-cream seller (not doing much business this night!), and got back on the buses. Five minutes later we were back in Pitlochry and heading back to the car. The entire experience took just over an hour, but I would say this is the shortest time it would be as no-one was up for slowly wandering through the forest this night.

So, what did I think of it all. Well, I will say the entire evening was very professionally organised. I was impressed by how well everything slotted together, and the timing of the coaches arriving and departing was like clockwork. The theme of the show was very cheesy, with all of the aliens and the space shuttle, but I think it appealed to the children, and it wasn't too annoying. I think they change the theme each year. The event only runs for about a month each year, and it has been selling very fast this year, so it was packed. No romantic wander through the forest with the other half would have been possible if the weather had allowed.

I left the event feeling ultimately disappointed, but I think this was almost completely down to the weather. Some of the effects such as the mist over the water to reflect the lights just didn't work because the rain just didn't let the mist happen. Also, no matter how enthusiastic for the show, the weather just dampened my spirits too much, and after a while I just wanted to be warm and dry. I could see that it would have been impressive if I could have seen much of it, but wearing specs which were dripping with rain, and not being able to see without them didn't help! Yes, I'm Scottish and I'm used to the rain, but this really depended on it being a good night, and I think I went on one of the worst nights of the year so far.

I've not decided if I'll return next year. I might just satisfy myself with the gorgeous pictures on the website and pretend they were an accurate representation of my evening. They could have been, if not for the weather.

If you do decide to go, wear suitable clothing. I mean wellies or hiking boots, as you just don't know what the weather will be like. Wrap up warm, and bring a torch. Oh, and don't let my experience put you off, it would have been great if not for the rain!

Summary: Unfortunately very dependant on the rain (or lack of)!