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I deeply regret this throw away comment 😂 For what it’s worth, as someone who can barely run a bath, let alone a theme park, I think Thorpe are handling this really well and they’ve been smashing it this season, and nothing I would do would be any better. However, why they can’t just dust off that spare XNWO train and get it on Hyperia as train 3 is beyond me

I visited Thorpe on Friday and Sunday. I did the mazes again on Sunday. Friday was an interesting one: park was surprisingly quiet, as were maze queues. Not sure why, but just one of those things. Sunday was...less good. Bought the Fearsome Four package for 3-7pm. The park wasn't that busy, but it took us the full 4 hours to do 4 mazes. -Survival Games was walk on at 3pm. I was a bit disappointed that they double batched the cages. At that point, it's completely unnecessary. I'd rather wait a few extra minutes and get a smaller, more personal experience (and that's for any maze). Maze was more hands-ony that on Thursday though. -Trailers was next. Advertised as 60mins, took almost 2 hours. There were 2 shutdowns, although you wouldn't know that as they didn't do any announcements or update the app. I could tell from seeing staff going in and out of maze and not hearing anyone leave. But to someone less aware of FN operations, you'd have no clue why it wasn't moving. There's also a hidden queue line behind the building for it now, to stop the queue spilling out. Seems like a very poor design, and rushed, as there's no lighting, audio or cameras there. Maze was just as good as Thursday, though a couple less actors. -DeadBeat was a 15 minute wait. Same again as on Thursday. -Stitches was another long wait. Always seems to be, but can't figure out why. The park need to re-think the queue for this. There were multiple instances of people ducking under barriers and getting into the queue. That meant that people were getting in without paying and were queue jumping. Worse, when reported to security (as these people were being rude to other guests too), nothing was done. Maze itself was fine, again little difference compared to Thursday. Crows had improved compared to Thursday, and Lucifer's Lair was as fun as ever. There were a few operational issues too. Some of this is teething issues, some of this is staff frankly not being trained properly, of which I reported / complained at Guest Services. Needs sorting out. There were a few shutdowns too, which doesn't help when you've got the main coaster on one train. So yeah, not my greatest Fright Nights visit. FN attraction quality good, but outside of that, somewhat burdenous. I haven't watched the above vlog, because frankly I don't care to spend 20 minutes of life watching some randos talk about their day at a theme park. Especially if they wrote it all down and I could read it in 5 minutes. But there will be different opinions and all that. But honestly? I don't think the maze quality was that different between Thursday and Sunday. The bigger issue is that the park has struggled operationally. Not great security choices. Bad batching intervals. Dodgy operations and communication. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and right now Fright Nights' weakest link is not the attraction quality. The good thing is it means they can resolve that quickly, if they take action. On a tangential note, I went to The Howl (the little brother of Tulleys this weekend). I paid £30 for 6 mazes, as opposed to the £27.20 for the 4 at Thorpe (with discount). The mazes at Thorpe are vastly superior in terms of theming, scare and overall quality. The Howl is the second-closest Halloween scare event to Thorpe (after Tulleys), and it showed to me how far ahead Thorpe are on that front. In terms of UK theme parks, Thorpe's only potential competition is Towers, which has been a mixed bag for a while. Yes, there's much better events than The Howl out there, but Thorpe can only compete with what they're up against, but Thorpe are leagues ahead. I think it's easy to forget that sometimes.

The point; to prevent, or vastly reduce the frequency of, a situation where the most popular coaster in the park is running one train during one of the busiest periods of the year. Having a 4 hour main queue and 60 min Fastrack queue on one train is ridiculous. With the maintenance team being stretched; this is also a Merlin/industry issue, which the company needs to resolve through better terms to attract more employees. I don’t think we should accept bare minimum because of another problem that is within the company's power to resolve - they are just choosing not to.

Nope same price, £8 for afternoon slots and £10 for evening slots. I've noticed lower queues for mazes this year too. Friday in particular, none of the mazes seemed to have a queue all evening and the park wasn't dead. Whether this is because a 4th maze has relived a bit of pressure on queues or people just aren't as willing to pay for them anymore? Not sure. Time will tell I guess.

So weird that people are going on about "should've bought 3 trains" when it is not a regular thing for any park in the world to do. Parks 99% of the time will only buy enough to fit on the respective block brakes. Why stop at 3? Get 4 trains on it, spend more money on a larger maintenance shed area instead. Problem solved.

To be fair I can understand why they would go with 2 trains - as good as 3 would have been, I can’t think of many companies that would spend more money on something than they absolutely have to. This situation is also totally out of their control really, so one train for a short period of time isn’t too bad realistically. it sucks, but it’s understandable. What annoys me is that Fastrack is still being sold during this time… on the busiest days of the season, with one train on the new coaster….. come on. There should be a total stop to fastrack sales for Hyperia until it’s back on 2 trains. When things happen outside of your control, fine. but they can control Fastrack sales, and have chosen not to bother. That’s poor.

Thorpe really should have bought three trains to ensure that when one is unavailable, they still have two serviceable ones. They cheaped out and guest experience has taken a massive hit during one of their busiest periods; but it's okay, because they've used it as an opportunity to sell more Fastrack. And so continues the mediocrity.

Selling Fasttrack when the queue is 240 minutes is just turning a problem into an even bigger problem.

Shambhala was on one train operation last weekend with the other two sat dormant in the maintenance area. Three hour queue. It goes to show even if you have three it doesn't mean they will be used, even on peak days.