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Sums up the park completely. Needs a management refresh who takes back control of the park instead of the social team...

Alright, I have now had two visits to this year's Fright Nights, the first on the preview night and the second last Saturday (13th October) and have finally tried almost the entire lineup minus Fanta's Twisted Carnival and the Screamplexx Cinema. I said a few weeks ago I predicted this was going to be the worst Fright Nights ever and 2 weeks later, I still stand by that statement as the entire thing has become a former shadow of itself and quite honestly, a joke. How can an event reach such a low after having some fantastic years and attractions in the past? Everything this year screams "quantity above quality" around every corner now where the mazes themselves were average at the very best, the audio management was incredibly inconsistent, the park lighting looks horrendous and there was virtually no atmosphere at night anywhere across the park. Here are my mini reviews for each of the attractions Fright Nights have this year which I've tried. These are my honest thoughts and I'm not holding back exactly what went through my mind when experiencing each of them. Spoiler tags used not to hide what happens, but to reduce the size of this post as I've got a few things to say about this year other than the mazes: Saw Alive: 4/10 Platform 15: 4/10 Dead Creek Woods: 3/10 Living Nightmare: 3/10 Blair Witch: 3/10 Sanctum Do or Die: 2/10 The Big Top: Showtime: 2/10 Vulcan Peak: 0.00000000001/10 So yeah, as you can see from the above reviews, all of the mazes were awful this year with some being so bad it makes 2010's Dead End Terror Zone look scary. As for other parts of the event, the park lighting this year was absolutely horrendous with bright white lighting everywhere across the park from Inferno, to Old Town, Dead Creek Wood's entrance where you can't read the flipping sign and Stealth. There were temporary lights installed in a few places, but unlike last year's nicely coloured stencil-shaded ones, these were all multi-colour changing LEDs going through all colours of the rainbow, similar to those approaching Swarm's area. It looked horrendous, and the ones used across the bridge were even worse, reminding me of the inside of X. Since when were disco lights associated with Halloween?! As for the audio, I was optimistic about this year after hearing some of the preview clips found online from Nick Hutson as I was hoping we would see each and every ride having their own theme like it used to be when Midnight Syndicate ruled the park. Whilst some rides sounded great, Colossus' station especially which was my favourite, I noticed it was only some the coasters which had theme changes, no other rides across the park had them, so every single flat ride like Rush, Samurai, Vortex etc were playing their regular themes all day and night. As for Amity Cove's playlist across Tidal Wave and Stealth, it sounded identical to the regular one and did not work well at all in my opinion, especially at night. I understand the intentions behind why a FN dedicated playlist was made, but it failed in my view. I could also hear the director voice overs a few times across the park too in a few places. Why is he still being played across a Walking Dead themed Halloween event? I keep on stressing this every year but Thorpe, for goodness sake, can you just bring back the Midnight Syndicate tracks used in 2007-2009 when the whole park used to sound amazing at night? This was what made you stand out from Alton and Chessington years ago during Halloween. Give every ride and area a consistent audio track to play, play themed announcements once again and less manual ones, only use the linked park-wide audio system for opening/closing nothing else and most of all, sort the damn system out. There are so many inconsistencies across the park with the audio this year that it's a joke. Are you all-in with regular audio like in 2010, or all-in with Fright Nights audio like in 2007-2009 Thorpe? Make your mind up. Last comment to make is the park-wide theming. It's nice to see it in some areas like the entrance, Saw and Swarm but again, it is still not at the levels this event once used to be a while ago and likely never will. Just hoping one year we can see park theming being a priority for this park once again, but realise it's never gonna happen. Won't stop me calling them out on it every year though. Last year, I wrote these comments for 2017's Fright Nights: It took a lot for me to attend this year's event as I was adamant about not going after the poor experience I had last time, but decided to give it a try anyway in the vain hope something has improved, but no. Nothing this year is better than last year and has solidified my opinion about this event - I'm done with it. I'm honestly done. I cannot cope with seeing what this event has now become after knowing and experiencing it during a different era in the late 2000's when it used to be a fantastic event. Back then, the event and park used to pride itself as being one of the best, if not the best Halloween attraction in the country, but now it's just a commercialised piece of rubbish where sticking a famous IP on the name with poor marketing saying there are "6 new attractions" and making each and every maze a botch job seems to be enough to please guests these days just to they can get a few cheap scares. What happened to originality, dedication, imagination and effort? It's now become painfully obvious that whilst Merlin and Thorpe are capable of turning out a product for guests at this park, they are not capable of turning out a product that is well done anymore. The fit and finish this event once had is now dead and is just a distant memory for those that remember and indeed experienced it during that time. I've given Thorpe 5 years now ever since the Lionsgate takeover in 2013 to get their act together with this event and whilst during that time a few little gems like Big Top and Cabin in the Woods were made, the rest of the other attractions made ever since that year have frankly sucked and none of them have ever reached the levels of Asylum, Experiment 10, Se7en, Hellgate and even The Curse. The focus of this event between 2013-2017 was all about the IP and the mazes nothing else, so audio, park theming, lighting and other factors started to degrade gradually, but 2018 has shown the park don't seem to give a damn about the quality of their mazes anymore either. It feels as though they believe only putting an IP on their product and having the biggest number of attractions is enough for guests to be happy these days, when in truth, it is not. I've documented problems this event has had over the last few years in posts on this forum and are honestly tired of talking about it now by repeating the same things over and over again constantly, because it seems to be an endless battle I am fighting for here. I genuinely really want this event to be brilliant for all guests, so new ones can experience the delights and thrills of what this park is capable of during Halloween for those of us that remember how amazing this event used to be, but cannot do that right now. People deserve a great product when they are forking out good amounts of money to attend this event and currently, they are not. Understandably, I know I rail on against Merlin and Thorpe an awful lot on this forum and are probably boring many readers with it by now, but want to establish I am not a hater and are not "bitching" for the sake of "bitching". I say these things because I care and believe people deserve a better product from the park, whether they know it or not and I want people to speak up about problems they are seeing or experiencing to let the park know when something isn't right. I commend the reviewers above for voicing their concerns about this year's FN and encourage others thinking similar to do so as well, as this year is an embarrassment on many proportions.

So I went to Fright Nights last Sunday, having been going to Fright Nights every year now since 2012 I must say this is the worst one I have experienced. It's been said loads, but its very clear Thorpe went for quantity over quality and it does really show, and is such a shame as I'm sure most people would agree but would just prefer 4 or 5 high-quality mazes than this. Hopefully, the event is completely revamped next year as it really needs it. First of all I must say, I stayed at the Shark Hotel and was very very good value. Was £110 for 2 of us, bearing in mind I didn't buy an annual pass this year it included park tickets, car parking, containment, breakfast the following morning, and they even gave us unlimited fast track all day for rides and mazes!? The fast track alone is worth £300 (£150pp.) Park atmosphere felt very dead this year, I liked the sound of some of the new audio but it's either just played way too quietly or speakers are broken so in some places it can hardly be heard, some rides not even playing any music at all? Walking dead Do or Die - Yes it was better than last year, and I liked how you went inside the shipping containers this year but it just didn't feel complete? Parts of this was really good and parts of it are just lazy. A shame as this attraction has high potential. Walking dead living nightmare - Pretty much the exact same as last year for me, dislike this maze as although the theming is good its just too short and just lacks scares. Still don't know what's going on with the ending but its awful? Dead creek woods - Don't know why some people have rated this highly? Just a walk through the woods with some old toilets used as themeing, lacks scares as actors have nowhere to hide? Worst out of all of them for me. Oh actually haven't got to Vulcan peak yet ? Vulcan peak - Don't really need to give my opinion on this but worst fright night maze I've experienced to date. Don't know how they get away with calling this a scare attraction, just a walk through IAC with a bag on your head and 1 or 2 Thorpe park staff standing there with a feather to try and scare you. No atmosphere at all as way too light in there and there's annoying music/ announcements the whole time. Saw - Same as every other year, I've never been a fan of Saw but was one of my favourites this year. Blair witch - Not much happened and was way too short. Platform 15 - Although I prefer last years version of Platform, purely because of the storey and the ending, this was my favourite maze of the night. The ending was really poor, should've kept it the same. Apart from that though not a lot has changed since last year (not a bad thing), could have done with some more actors in the tunnel as there seemed to be quite a few more last year. The mid house section is still very good. Big top showtime - Was actually pleasantly surprised by this, yes it wasn't a show but I liked the idea and it worked quite well, was nice to still have clowns at the park. Just sad hearing the big top music and seeing such good actors wasted running around the dome when they could be in the big top maze Terror at Amity High - About 4 actors standing around chatting with each other/security around Stealth. This is not a scare zone. Didn't even try to be scary? It was lovely to speak with some of the management and owners of Tulleys, look forward to experiencing their event this year to see what's changed It's such a shame to see Fright Nights just get worse and worse, and other events like Tulleys and Scarefest get better and better. To think this used to be one of my favourite events and have made such high-quality scare attractions such as Big top, experiment 10, asylum, cabin in the woods its a shame to see the event fall apart.

Yeah to be fair fright night is pretty tragic, after last night saw alive has gone from my least favourite maze in 2013 to my favourite in 2018. Says it all

I haven’t been to FN - and I won’t be visiting - but the quality of attractions does seem to be lacking. Go back to 2013; you’ve got 4 very solid indoor mazes in Cabin, Saw, The Asylum and MBV - not forgetting Blair Witch. This year, 3 of the 4 indoor maze locations are in use: Saw is still Saw - which is surely getting stale. The Asylum is now Vulcan Peak - which is quite possibly the largest downgrade in the history of mazes. Cabin is now Living nightmare - which also must be seen as a downgrade; going from a critically acclaimed conceptually innovative maze to one which feels ‘almost’ there. Elswhere, the park has replaced 1 outdoor maze with... 4? Whyyy? What do each of these mazes do that others don’t? Blair has never worked as well as intended. Platform is still a bit iffy. Sanctum seems as hastily put together as it was last year. So what do Thorpe decide to do? Open another outdoor maze of course, instead of putting all that enthusiasm, energy and money into their existing offering. It seems like the overriding problem with FN at the moment is the lack of variety of actors. Both walking dead mazes use zombies, Platform has dead train people who act like zombies, Dead Creek throws infected people at you, who behave like zombies and Blair’s confused actors end up giving a zombie like performance. If you look at the Villains of Europa Park’s traumatica - you’ll see there’s vampires, werewolfs, ghosts and a whole host of other characters. That what Thorpe needs, for each maze to be distinctly different - with actors acting distinctly different. There’s too many blokes with black paint around their eyes growling at you....

I also feel that they should defiantly keep Asylum. In my opinion it was the best maze last year and every year since its been open. I had a few goes round CITW and I personally think it is rubbish. Not any real scares or really good actors. I may have got a few bad rubs but I really thought CITW could have been a kids walk through at bloody Chessington or Southend

In my opinion Asylum was the best maze last year (although I only managed to do CITW once). I love it because of all the disorientating lights and sirens. I feel that the actors use this to their advantage very well and it scared me a lot. I think that all they need to do is rename it and it will be fine. Also I understand that Thorpe are going for a more family orientated park as of recent and I think that, for fright nights this year, they should have a mildly scary feel around the park, for the families, but they should make the mazes as scary as possible so It doesn't disappoint everyone else. Tbh, as long as the mazes are made as scary as possible, and they have a more immersive park feel, I wont be too bothered.

^ Because it felt hectic. People love to panic and be over-dramatic. I quite liked it, even though there was no story to it whatsoever. It was a good laugh which is what people go to theme parks for!

Personally I found CITW the worst maze at Thorpe Park. Personally I believe the Asylum is the best there and has been since it was first used. CITW didn't have many jumps or scary actors. I found it boring and dull.

I personally didn't like it, it's like to open if that makes sense. Always been my worst maze. Most people enjoyed it and it was a lot of people favorites, still don't understand why.

The campaign that it was painting a bad image for mental health sufferers. Got quite heated so much so that the police were contacted to try and get Thorpe to remove it. This had NO influence on them removing it though. It was decided in the summer that it was to be The Asylum's last Fright Nights. It was just a shame it ended on such a negative campaign. They'll probably replace it with a similar concept anyway so don't see what the problem is (although I'd much rather they move away from it and make something decent that builds suspense because for me Asylum wasn't that great, just a slow procession through some flashing lights and loud noises *waits for the hate*)