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Showing content with the highest reputation on 10/27/21 in all areas

  1. 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.
    2 points
  2. But the vloggers invited to the Press Night were really impressed with Fright Nights vs. Scarefest, this doesn't make an sense to me No problems with lack of actors that night either, how strange...
    1 point
  3. ⚠️ Apologies, negative post ⚠️ Thought I'd share my thoughts on my 2021 FN visit. I think it was one of the worst theme park visits I've ever had. Really, really disapointing. Without going in to too much detail, here are the basics: Crows was a nice surprise, really well themed and offered something different (for free). It was too busy to be 'scary', but it's more a US style scare zone which I thought was a good addition. Platform 15 wasn't bad. Not worth a tenner, and it's ready to retire now, but I was glad to have a last go and see it off. Some nice lighting and a clearer storyline this time. It's clear how much effort went in to building Trailers, but there were very few actors in my run through, the experience was very rushed and lacklustre. I think if this opened a few years ago as part of the admission price it would have been quite good, but now they are charging I expected more. I would have loved to have tried this when it opened, because it appears to now be in "clear the queue as fast as possible" mode. Creek Freak was an embarrassing waste of time and money, and is a shadow of what it was when it opened. Hardly an actor to be seen. Compared to how this was 2 years ago, this year's version of creek was dreadful. None of the mazes are worth anywhere near £10 a run-through. Thorpe's mazes aren't high enough quality to warrant an upcharge at all. The Swarm's scare zone basically didn't exist. only 3 actors when we were in the area. Didn't have chance to watch Legacy unfortunately. Our couple of night rides were good, as always. Throwback to how TP used to be. Scarefest wiped the floor with Fright Nights this year, and they didn't even hype it up or add anything new. I'd love to see a slight return to FN's roots - ditch the ridiculous upcharge for mazes, introduce more smoke machines and coloured lights around the park and in the ride areas, and I'd love to see the return of the ride overlays they used to do, to make the rides more part of the event. So sorry for the negativity, but I'm really, really disappointed and feel ripped-off by my visit if I'm honest. FN has become too expensive for the experience they're offering in my opinion. I think the team that put the event together did a great job. Trailers is a great idea and a beautiful maze, but the event just doesn’t seem to work smoothly when it gets busy. Operations let it down
    0 points
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