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I did my usual FN trip with my pops on Friday/Saturday, and while it felt like a fairly decent event this year, it still doesn't give me the same buzz as it did back when stuff like Saw Alive and the face it alone thingies were still around. [Pleasantly impressed] The things that pleasantly surprised us were the nice lighting this year. And we were happy to see Lucifer's Lair return as we thought it was a brilliant addition last year in terms of entertainment. We generally don't watch show stuff, but everything at Lucifer's has been watchable (though it's no Circus of Horrors!) We both liked the Hell's Angels circus-style performers, but our opinion was divided on the dancers. My dad thought they were decent (but he also doesn’t think they're professional dancers, he reckons they're TP staff!) I thought they could have used more practice cos they weren't particularly in sync. The live band was decent. [Dead Beat] As for mazes, I think we maybe got a bad run through Dead Beat as there were a lot of empty rooms devoid of actors It felt very empty in general. Nice theming and stuff, but more like just wandering through a funky set than a scare maze since it lacked scares for most of it. Sadly, we didn't see any of the stuff mentioned above in some of the other posts. And agree that the story was quite lost and confused after the initially impressive pre-show type start. It seemed like a cool concept that fell flat due to the lack of actors for us. [Trailers] Trailers was the same sorta goofy fun we've always found it to be, more comical than creepy, plenty of actors, and the new nods were cool! [Stitches] Stitches was our favourite this year just because it feels like the best value for money. It's pretty long and has plenty to see. It also had plenty of actors both times we went through there (with many of them switching places on our 2nd go). Some of the scares were passive, but we also had some brilliant in-your-face moments from energetic actors that wouldn't stop until they interacted with everyone in the group. 2 completely different actors with different approaches in the room near the end with the body on the table. 1, in particular, made the scene into a pretty epic set piece before terrorising the group. She was just brilliant and really the icing on the cake for us! [Survival Games] We had the free hotel 2nd day maze access, which states 1 single go on each maze, but in reality, it's 4 scans of the barcode. That's how come we did Stitches twice, as we chose to skip Survival Games this year due to neither of being particularly fussed about doing it. We've done it multiple times at previous Fright Nights, and assumed it hadn't changed much, if at all. Don't get me wrong, Survival Games absolutely has its place, and the very first time I did it in a previous year, it did get my heart racing more than any of the other Fright Nights attractions. BUT, I go to 18 rated extreme scare stuff like Scream Camp when I want more hands-on thrills. For me personally, it's a bit of an in between kinda thing. Like the actors are more intense than the other FN attractions, but not really intense enough for me to make up for the lack of theming in the maze. It's a good bridge for anyone wanting a taste of something a bit more adrenaline fuelled, but it does feel a bit like a baby face-it-alone. Personally, I'd rather have an attration that is properly full-contact, 18-rated, requiring a waiver kinda thing. Alongside the other, less intense but more heavily themed attractions. I know that isn't likely to happen though! My dad's reason for skipping Survival Games is somewhat similar. He hasn't done any full-contact scare stuff because he's not into that sort of thing at all. His reason for disliking SG is purely the lack of theming. He said he finds the style and actors of SG "annoying, not scary", haha. He said he likes scare attractions not necessarily for actually being scared (he generally just doesn't get scared by anything), but for the atmosphere. So he's only really impressed by the stuff that is more comparable to a movie set, like Doom Town at Tulleys. But even still, while theming is important to him, atmosphere matters more, so even with a drab set, if the atmosphere is good, he's on board! But he says SG lacks any kind of theming AND atmosphere. Of course, everyone is gonna be completely different, and I get why SG has its fans, it's just not for us. [Overall] We're hoping the maze tickets at Alton Towers work similarly to Thorpe since the Daz thing is included in the multi-attraction ticket this year, but neither of us have any desire to do it whatsoever! Overall though, it was an enjoyable Fright Nights this year, but still not as good as it has been in years long gone by, and increasingly poorer value for money. (not just for mazes, but rides considering we had unlimited hotel FT on Swarm, yet the FT queue was consistently 35 mins each time we tried to use it!)

If anything like last year I would disagree heavily. I liked both events last year but I think The Howl is underated and actually has a more consistent lineup. Mazes like Squealers/Shed are not like the flashiest but have pretty awesome scares and they have a good length. I feel the smaller size of The Howl compared to Fright Nights really helps as the crowds when I went were very mild and we walked into most of the mazes without queues in small groups. I love Thorpe and the rides really make it worthwhile but I do think The Howl does mazes better.

I just have to say, that while I get the point that you're making here, my dad and I personally feel The Howl blows Thorpe outta the water every year, haha. We haven't been to The Howl yet this year, but we've been every other year, and are saving it until last this year for a reason - it's our favourite local scare event! (we actually like it more than Shocktoberfest even though it's the baby brother because actor interactions have always been better at The Howl than at Shocktoberfest where it's understandably busier). I totally agree that the sets of the mazes themselves aren't as fancy as some of what Thorpe has, but they have still always been much better mazes in our eyes at The Howl purely because the atmosphere and the actors have always been superior when we've been there. And at the end of the day, it's the actors that really make the mazes come alive. You can have the fanciest theming in the world, but if the actors aren't there, or their energy is lacking, it's just a casual walk through a cool-looking set. For us, The Howl's actors have always been plentiful and lively every year, with the roamers being absolutely outstanding. Whereas our experience of Thorpe's actors has been very hit or miss over the years. Sure, we've had some incredible interactions from exceptional individuals, some of which I will never forget! BUT, we've had soooo many attraction runs at Thorpe that were devoid of actors it's kind of insane. And roamers are practically non-existent nowadays. The Howl may be much smaller than Thorpe, but as a scare event, we reckon it's easily better than Fright Nights if you take away Thorpe's rides. Overall atmosphere at The Howl has always been electric for us. Whereas there have only been 1 or 2 years where the atmosphere at Thorpe has actually felt like it's supposed to be a Halloween event. This year is not one of them thanks to the soundtrack sounding waaaay too club-like. I get that it's probably supposed to tie into Dead Beat with it being their new maze, but still. It's just not a very atmospheric soundtrack. At least there's some nice lighting back this year though. The fact that Thorpe has the availability of some pretty epic rides in the dark is the only reason we still return to Fright Nights year on year. If the only offering was mazes and the other event-related entertainment, we probably wouldn't bother >.< And it hurts to say that cos there were some fantastic iterations of Fright Nights in the past, just not much to write home about in recent years. Both my dad and I were lamenting past Fright Nights while queuing for Saw, and we both said we can't understand how an event that's so big can have gone from being pretty damn epic to just getting gradually worse over time It should be the other way around! Other places we go to tend to get better year on year, but not Fright Nights, sadly. I know everyone will have differing opinions, of course. That's just our experience. If we were forced one year to choose between going to Thorpe for Fright Nights or to The Howl as opposed to both. We would pick The Howl over Fright Nights in a heartbeat!

I personally think a third train on Hyperia, Inferno, Colossus and The Swarm should be the next big investment.

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

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.

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.

No one could've predicted this! God that's some clickbait influencer nonsense.

Ahh man, we've had so much peace and quiet, but you've ding dong done it

We all know that 2025 is reserved for hyperia updates and theming (perhaps removing the bog). Who knows what’s in store for 2026 perhaps a new rollercoaster or flat ride central at the beach….. Perhaps @Parm Pap could shed some light…..