I think this is the thing with Trailers - it isn't an overly scary attraction. Obviously, it has scary elements and stuff - because it is a scare attraction - but it is not particularly scary. I think that's fine with the right tone and marketing to set expectations (and if there's enough variety in the rest of the line up). But it's certainly something which needs to be handled with care.
I've had a "clear the queue as fast as possible" run in the past. The pre-shows feel incredibly rushed, in a bad way, as a result, and it leads to an awful amount of bunching in the maze. I think the pre shows for Trailers (and indeed, all the mazes) run a little too long for my liking, but then when the queues are long, they struggle to properly cut it down whilst still sensibly batching the groups.
Creek Freak has been very mixed this year. Regardless of my opinion of it, it's a shame to see that after such a strong opening year.
There should still be 3 chainsaws in the maze (one on the table that replaced the saw scene, one in strobe, one for runout), but the thing with chainsaws is you can be caught in a crossover unfortunately.
But yeah, in any case, it's a concern that it's in this state.
It's good to see this is still being well received, especially after I expressed concern about how it would run. It's a great use of the space too. I think they would serve better in a proper outdoor maze now (the too busy to be scary remark is something I agree with), but with rumours the park want to move away from them, maybe that will never happen.
After seesawing in quality so much over the year, it's good to see Platform is being well received. I think this is the general consensus of it - good enough for what it is, but ready to go and not worthy of the upcharge era.
This is a shame. I think the actors have done a great job with it. It's still not really a scare zone in my eyes, but just an extension to the Swarm story. It needs more props and theming and stuff for it to really become a scare zone. But it means that if you have the chance to interact with the actors, you tend to get really good interactions with them, because they don't have anything else to work with.
I think one of the main problems the park have suffered with lately is low actor numbers. What the cause is is anyone's guess, but whilst the plan is for most actors to only work in one attraction, I've heard of plenty of actors from the scare zones being trained and moved into the mazes because of shortages. The knock on effects that has is obvious.
I still stick with my earlier opinion, in theory: I have nothing against the park upcharging for the mazes for the right price and for the right experience. £10 a maze is WAY too much for the experiences on offer. Something closer to the £5 mark is much more reasonable. But in turn, they should be limiting group numbers, have a stricter limit on time slots and better operations to accompany it.
There should also be a free maze still. An outdoor one which is obviously weaker than the upcharge ones, but gives a taster for the experiences. Something like Blair Witch (or even a modified Platform 15) would work well imo.
The argument for upcharging is clear. I believe the standard group size at the moment is meant to be around 10 people, and batching times should be once every 90 seconds. That's 400pph. Say everyone is paying £9 a maze (on average, to balance out the discount trio tickets), that's £3600 an hour per maze...almost £65,000 a night across the three mazes. Even taking away staff wages and running costs, that still leaves a huge profit. Then if you reinvest even a fraction of that profit back into Fright Nights, you can have budgets to build mazes that look more like Creek Freak and Trailers than, say, Dead Creek Woods.
Even then, the park are earning more given that group sizes are currently exceed 10 people too...wouldn't surprise me if they can make up to £100k from mazes in a night...
Even then, drop the charge to £5 a maze and they're still making a healthy profit, and having a good chunk they can reinvest into future years. It's a no brainer on paper. But they need to make sure the ticket sales don't go over the numbers, and that the operations put their money where their mouth is.