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Surely this is something that should be commended, not ridiculed? With less than a month to go, it would be easier for them to cut their losses and not bother with it than to actually reopen it. Of course, the fact it's taken so long to end up open (bar the couple of hours in summer before it died) is a concern, but the fact they've opened it now is something.

Halloween stuff then. Decent attempt, nice use of the pre existing hedge maze to have both a day time and night time maze variant. Was also weirdly the best run queue of the evening. Very much a focus on the look of the actors, some good interaction with guests in the scare zones. Queues weren't great though (2 took over an hour) and the general quality was apparently not great. Think they are torn between the family audience and being full in scary. Minimal theming beyond the zones (which weren't that well themed in cases). The circus area being the best looking but those are a dime a dozen really. Avalon and Port Laguna are gorgeous areas. Fenix is decent but still not as good as Raptor. Slightly better than Swarm purely because of the cool dragon animatronic. Think Avalon is slightly barren a little bit though as there's not much between the two rides and the restaurant. Wouldn't be surprised to see a few flats spring up over the year or two. I was wrong about Troy, it ran like mad at night. Plus the lighting and effects package were spot on. Shout out to the Ollivanders rip off too. Was cute. Toverland are in a good spot for the future I think. Doubt they'll go bigger than Fenix as a ride but that's not their remit. Marked improvement in their infrastructure and hopefully they will continue bringing rides and areas up to scratch in between the next big thing.

A very strong performance from Scarefest this past Sunday!! All five of the mazes performed absolutely brilliantly on my goes through them. They all excel in their own ways, all have some brilliant set designs and all had magnificent actors in all of them. I couldn’t call a single one of them weak. No wonder M£rlin have since told the team to help Thorpe with mazes in the form of Creek Freak Massacre. Altonville mine tour was very physical this year, Sub Species had its intensity back, Project 42 was much improved from last year, Darkest Depths had some of the best looking sets I have ever seen in a maze and The Attic was absolutely incredible and in my opinion the best incarnation of the legendary Terror of the Towers. Queue management for all of these was on top form and not one maze had a longer wait than 5 minutes from having the tickets scanned to entering the maze. Sometimes Alton Towers can still find mazes having long queues despite the paid for timed slots but this was not the case Sunday. Massive thumbs up to the mazes all around. On a more negative note, there has been a decrease in park wide decoration in comparison to recent years. However, Towers Street still looks brilliant and the little features such as the ghosts near mutiny bay and the skeleton projections in the banqueting hall window of the towers add to a very solid atmosphere. This was also helped by the children’s mascots and indeed the brilliant Alton ancestors who really added to the feel of the event. Another solid year for Scarefest and once again it absolutely blows Fright Nights out of the water in every single department. As far as the “Oh Thorpe Park you get mazes for free!!” argument goes, I personally would much rather pay for something that has quality in it than I would queue for an excessively long time to do the likes of Do or Die or Platform 15 for free. Alton Towers and every one involved with Scarefest this year can take massive pride in this year’s event!!

Along with the snapchats of practically every single attention-seeking teenager in the country which...yeah...NO ONE asked for.

And we have some plans... Source So, we have a 34m tall, two launch, 4-5 inversion Mack spinning coaster coming to a park which is like a 45min drive from Calais. Awesome! It's located next to the park's Mack Supersplash and is partially over water. The lake is used for pedal boats at the moment so I assume this is the end of them. As much as I'm looking forward to this, given it's in such a prominent location, I hope it doesn't ruin the vibe of the park.

This was supposed to be top secret!

To be honest the preshow barely connects to the rest if the ride at all. Frankly, everything before you enter the carriage is essentially unrelated to the preshow and hanging train. Derren in the preshow: "And after it's all over talk to your friends you may find they perceived things diffferently" (something to that effect). How? The film on the VR is pretty much identical... For a ride supposed to have: A. Ghosts B. Illusions C. Trains It has literally only 2 of A and only 1 of B (the hanging carriage is an illusion, the rest is just a video on some goggles). Apart from the name and preshow it has sweet nothing to do with Derren or illusions at a basic level. It succeeds only in having trains, I'll give it that. I actually prefer the Dungeons.

*Blows dust away* 2013 fright nights (and as a year in general) was an incredible year, the park needs to bring fright nights back to how it was around this time. Every maze was good rather than 1 great maze and the rest mediocre.

Sometimes being in any way associated with the enthusiast community I want to cringe myself to death. This is one of those times.