Marc

Having now done a few visits to Fright Nights this year, I thought I'd share my thoughts.

I decided not to bother with any of the mazes last year, mainly because they were all the same as previous years, so this was actually my first time doing them in a couple of years.
After seeing quite a lot of negativity following the press nights, I went in with fairly low expectations. However, I was actually pleasantly surprised and enjoyed the mazes. Certainly not the strongest year for Fright Nights, but still an enjoyable one.

Overall thoughts / Park atmosphere
For me, one of the biggest highlights this year has actually been the general atmosphere around the park. The lighting is honestly looking the best I've ever seen it, and they've added quite a few extra smoke effects around the park which make such a difference.

Nemesis Inferno now has two smoke machines in the station which go off on dispatch, Samurai has two smoke machines coming out of the floor multiple times throughout the cycle, Detonator has one, Colossus has its smoke back, Stealth smoke is back, and there are a few additional smoke machines dotted around the pathways too. Really good to see and it makes such a difference to the atmosphere, especially after dark.

Another thing which has been disappointing the last few years was lack of ride music being changed, so it's great to see they've finally done this from the start of the event this year. It makes such a difference. Admittedly, I do find them all a bit samey and preferred it years ago when each ride had something quite different, but overall I'm just glad they're back.

The general park wide music also seemed to have a bit more variety this year? Not sure if that's just me, but I thought it was decent. Still really not a fan of the music change from around 9:15pm though. Some of the songs they blast out are questionable, and I really don't understand what relevance they have to Fright Nights.

But overall, the atmosphere around the park at night has been fantastic. Walking around with all the lighting, smoke, music blasting and rides going really does make the place feel completely different. Definitely one of the strongest aspects of the event this year in my opinion.

The Mazes
Below is my ranking for the mazes:

1. Stitches
Really strong maze this year and easily my favourite of the night.

Had some really good scares throughout and a decent number of actors who seemed to be putting a lot of effort in. The actor on the swing/bungee seems to be missing this year, which is a shame, but apart from that I didn't really notice any major changes from previous years.

2. Survival Games
This was previously my favourite maze at Fright Nights, so I was interested to see how it would compare now it's been changed to a single route.

Unfortunately, I'm really not a fan of some of the changes they've made.

For me, one of the best parts of Survival Games was always that intense opening where you'd get split up, put into cages and dragged out. Even watching people being dragged in from outside the maze was great entertainment and really set the tone before you'd even entered the maze.

Removing all of that is such a shame. It was something different from the other mazes and gave Survival Games its own identity.

The same goes for the multiple routes. What made Survival Games so good was that it actually felt like a maze, with different routes and not knowing where you were going to end up. Now it's just another maze where everyone follows the same route.

That being said, I did still enjoy it. There were some decent scares, a good number of actors and it's still a decent length. It's just frustrating because I think they've taken away the two things that made this maze stand out from the others. Still strong, but nowhere near as good as it used to be in my opinion.

3. Tenement
This one was just okay for me, although I do think I got quite unlucky with my run through. I was at the back of the group so had a torch.

I'm not entirely sure what was supposed to happen at the ending? By the time I entered the final room, everyone else was already there and we pretty much just walked straight out.

Overall it felt pretty weak, although I can imagine it working much better in a smaller group but that is never going to happen unfortunately.

Would like to do it again but I wasn't willing to spend another £12 to give it another go.

It seems to be getting very mixed reviews so I think they need to find a way to make it more consistent.

4. Trailers
Trailers is a maze I've never particularly enjoyed, if I'm honest.

It was alright this year and there seemed to be a decent number of actors, so I wouldn't say it was a bad run through.

However, it just felt quite low energy to me and I didn't really get any scares.

I think I'm just done with Trailers now. It's been around for long enough and I'd really like to see something fresh in this space.

5. DeadBeat
This was my biggest disappointment of the mazes.

I was a big fan of DeadBeat previously and thought it was a really strong addition when it first opened, but this year it felt quite weak.

One of my favourite parts previously was the actor flying over your head. The first time I experienced that it really got me, and I thought it was such a good effect.

Unfortunately, that seems to have disappeared completely which is a massive shame.

The rest of the maze just didn't really deliver for me either. Not particularly intense and very few scares. This one seemed light on actors.

Unfortunately, the weakest maze of the night for me, which is a shame as I know how good it can be.

The Rest / Scare Zones
This is where my opinion of Fright Nights this year becomes quite a bit more negative, and where I think some of the cuts are really noticeable.

Creature Campus
Not a bit of me personally, but I do understand having something a bit different at the event.

It clearly seems to have an audience and people enjoy it, so fair enough. Not everything needs to appeal to everyone.

Lucifer's Lair
A shadow of its former self.

This area used to have a really good atmosphere, but now it just feels completely lifeless.

There didn't seem to be much music or anything really going on. Just groups of people awkwardly standing around with very little atmosphere.

Really disappointing considering what this area used to be like.

The Crows
I actually think bringing the crows back was a mistake if they weren't able to do so properly.

Nothing like its former self and is over far too quickly.

I appreciate it's a free scare zone, so can't complain too much, but it really is far too short and feels like a very watered down version of what it used to be.

Purgatory Town
Pathetic excuse for a scare zone in my opinion.

Every time I've walked through, there seems to be very little happening, and the majority of the time I've barely noticed any actors there at all.

Most of the time you could walk through and not even realise you’re in a scare zone.

To me, this is the sort of thing I'd expect to see at Chessington rather than Fright Nights. Really weak.

Rebel Ball
I didn't spend a huge amount of time here, partly because I do think it's a little out of the way, and partly because its just not a bit of me.

But from what I did see, I really don't understand how this fits into Fright Nights.

Again, it just looks like something that belongs at Chessington rather than Fright Nights.

Really disappointing, and I don't think Fright Nights needed another dance show.

Scare Zones overall
For me, all of the above is easily the weakest part of Fright Nights this year.

A couple times now I’ve seen creature campus lot walking around with a portable speaker, heading over to Lucifer's Lair and having some sort of dance off. Why? This is Fright Nights?

I appreciate some people might enjoy that sort of thing, but personally I just don't understand what it's supposed to add to a Halloween event.

I'd much rather see actors running around with chainsaws, chasing people through the pathways and generally creating that unpredictable atmosphere seen at other Halloween events.

I'd honestly rather they scrapped most of the current offerings and just focused on having two genuinely strong scare zones instead. Quality over quantity.

Give us two proper scare zones with plenty of actors, decent theming and some actual scares. I really think that would make a massive difference to the event.

Overall
So overall, despite quite a few criticisms, I have enjoyed my visits to Fright Nights this year.

It's certainly not my favourite year and I don't think there's anything particularly special about the lineup. Some of the mazes are still really enjoyable, but there's also quite a lot that feels watered down compared to previous years.

I honestly can't praise the lighting enough this year. The whole park looks fantastic after dark and all the additional smoke effects, ride music and lighting have made such a difference. Love the addition of Hyperia changing to purple now too, think it looks even better than red!

There's something about walking around Thorpe Park at night with everything lit up, the music blasting and rides flying around that I love. The park just feels electric, and that's been the biggest highlight of Fright Nights this year.

Having also done Scarefest and the mazes at Alton Towers this year, I do think Towers has the stronger Halloween event overall. Four mazes and two strong scare zones feels like a much better balance.

I really hope the scare zones are the next big focus for Thorpe, because for me that's where Fright Nights is seriously lacking at the moment.

Still an enjoyable Fright Nights, and I'll always love Thorpe at Halloween, but I do think there's a lot of room for improvement.














Best flat at the park still looking good even though its closed :(

Same as above really enjoyed the event - nice to see the park celebrate the ride with its model becoming more and more rare I do hope they do everything they can to keep it going as long as possible.


Also bought some of the cable - it’s a lot for what it is but it’s presented really nicely and the little extras were a nice surprise too!

Same as above really enjoyed the event - nice to see the park celebrate the ride with its model becoming more and more rare I do hope they do everything they can to keep it going as long as possible.


Also bought some of the cable - it’s a lot for what it is but it’s presented really nicely and the little extras were a nice surprise too!

I really wish they could drop the “place your heads back and brace your selves” from the inferno dispatch announcement and have it back to how it was with the thuds as they pressed dispatch before it went into the music, I know a few years ago they went through and added pre dispatch safety announcements to all rides but since then Hyperia has opened and didn’t seem to need one so would be nice if Inferno could have the same!

An absolutely crazy day
TP has been closed on some recent Wednesdays, but I noticed it was available today and with the weather looking the better option, I went.
A staff member who knows me told me that there were maybe only a couple of thousand people attending. oddly enough, I wanted to ride Stealth, and as there were hardly any guests on the ride or platforms, the gate was kept open so that people could re-ride, and that continued to beyond the lunch hour, with so many guests telling me that every ride was walk-on. During the time, some people wlo lived within a few miles had also then attended due to seeing online the short queues. 
As much as it pained me, I left Stealth and had two walk-on rides each on Nemesis Inferno, Hyperia, Saw, Colossus and Swarm before dragging myself back to Stealth, where the re-ride gate was open and announcements of "re-ride just get on", several were running to get on again, and there were loads of conversations between people and staff, many discussing their crazy ride totals for the day.
There really were few guests and no waiting for rides one wanted.
Staff were really upbeat and helpful. It really was a crazy day..

For me, my TP season ended yesterday having jumped in for an extra day due to the changing weather forecast, a great day for me. It could not have happened without the Staff and it would, like life, be easy to thank those who helped me directly. There are many staff whose contributions to that, and all my TP days, are normally not acknowledged. I do thank everybody from the cleaning, washroom, maintenance, management, security, gardeners and ride team, a lot of people.
Just like the bus on which I ride to the Park, so seldom do I hear a "thank you".
We, as visitors, don't get the chance to wish those well in their futures who, within a few days, won't have a job.
Just my thoughts.

Pretty sure it still has its cable - can see it’s 2 cables going into the launch shed here and the one cut up on the floor will be the old one. It’s not completely unusual for it to be a bit temperamental right after a cable - just a shame it had to be done at fright nights!

Pretty sure it still has its cable - can see it’s 2 cables going into the launch shed here and the one cut up on the floor will be the old one. It’s not completely unusual for it to be a bit temperamental right after a cable - just a shame it had to be done at fright nights!

At TP today, as the weatherforecast was so good. Luckily got to ride Stealth and thought it was a little slow going over the top, so (as I am familiar with the them) I mentioned it to the team. I observed the next twelve launches, thought that the transitions over the top were getting even slower, and again expressed my concern. The team offered me a ride and I informed them that I would not, as I believed the next launch would rollback. They launched, and it rolled back, I went for lunch.

👋

As you’ve no doubt noticed we have updated the forum software to the latest version which does have a number of visual differences.

You’ll notice it also finally supports dark mode and will be based on your phones / computers setting - something I know a few people have asked for!

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One change you will notice is you can no longer login with your username and must login with your registered email - if you have any issues with logging in please feel free to reach out over social media or you can email contact@thorpeparkmania.co.uk

Let us know any feedback here also!

Id argue it’s virtually impossible to never send empty trains, they were doing their best not to when it was colder a couple of weekends back but you still will have a point where you need to - for example last trains of the day.
 
I really hope Mack really can come up with a proper solution for this, I know it has new wheels but it seems it’s going to need some more drastic changes to ensure it can reliably run in the future.

Considering there are brackets for trims which would end up with the train going even slower through that element it does seem that something was massively miscalculated 

Rest in Pieces. 
 
 

I’m very glad to have got on it this year - even 19 years on the speed and height of this thing was still incredible and very grateful to have got on one of the 2 most iconic hydraulic launch coasters.
 
I do think the way they’ve handled this is a complete joke, as mentioned already this is a iconic ride known all across the world, to just close with no warning is pretty shocking, had it been opening next year for a “final year send off” I’d have renewed my pass, made the trip over. In some ways I can almost understand the other rides closing which were less well known to close, but to close a ride of this stature with a little press release a few days after it closed just seems wrong to me.

I know lighting wasn’t really made a big deal of from the park during the sparkle project but now it’s fright nights it’s the first real chance to see all the lighting installed and it’s really pretty impressive.
 
To start with it simply for the most part looks really good - most of the rides have color coordinated lights, what’s also nice is the new lighting seems to be able to do various effects such as around inferno the lights do some sort of flame effects shining onto the ride. On that point I believe this is one of the first times the parks actually lit up the rides too, of course Stealth and colossus have had lighting before but other than that most of the lighting was more there to light up just the paths, now themed lighting is directing up to the ride structures them selves which look great.
 
Finally not only looks good but there’s been some decent thought into how they work too - Vortex for example the lights are all white to start when loading, then when the ride cycle starts the lights all change to their “themed” status, also noticed when leaving at around 10:30 all the lights around the park lighting up the paths had changed to a standard white light, small things but nice to see some real thought has gone into how it all works, it’s clearly been a big investment and does make a difference!

I know lighting wasn’t really made a big deal of from the park during the sparkle project but now it’s fright nights it’s the first real chance to see all the lighting installed and it’s really pretty impressive.
 
To start with it simply for the most part looks really good - most of the rides have color coordinated lights, what’s also nice is the new lighting seems to be able to do various effects such as around inferno the lights do some sort of flame effects shining onto the ride. On that point I believe this is one of the first times the parks actually lit up the rides too, of course Stealth and colossus have had lighting before but other than that most of the lighting was more there to light up just the paths, now themed lighting is directing up to the ride structures them selves which look great.
 
Finally not only looks good but there’s been some decent thought into how they work too - Vortex for example the lights are all white to start when loading, then when the ride cycle starts the lights all change to their “themed” status, also noticed when leaving at around 10:30 all the lights around the park lighting up the paths had changed to a standard white light, small things but nice to see some real thought has gone into how it all works, it’s clearly been a big investment and does make a difference!

I know lighting wasn’t really made a big deal of from the park during the sparkle project but now it’s fright nights it’s the first real chance to see all the lighting installed and it’s really pretty impressive.
 
To start with it simply for the most part looks really good - most of the rides have color coordinated lights, what’s also nice is the new lighting seems to be able to do various effects such as around inferno the lights do some sort of flame effects shining onto the ride. On that point I believe this is one of the first times the parks actually lit up the rides too, of course Stealth and colossus have had lighting before but other than that most of the lighting was more there to light up just the paths, now themed lighting is directing up to the ride structures them selves which look great.
 
Finally not only looks good but there’s been some decent thought into how they work too - Vortex for example the lights are all white to start when loading, then when the ride cycle starts the lights all change to their “themed” status, also noticed when leaving at around 10:30 all the lights around the park lighting up the paths had changed to a standard white light, small things but nice to see some real thought has gone into how it all works, it’s clearly been a big investment and does make a difference!

I know lighting wasn’t really made a big deal of from the park during the sparkle project but now it’s fright nights it’s the first real chance to see all the lighting installed and it’s really pretty impressive.
 
To start with it simply for the most part looks really good - most of the rides have color coordinated lights, what’s also nice is the new lighting seems to be able to do various effects such as around inferno the lights do some sort of flame effects shining onto the ride. On that point I believe this is one of the first times the parks actually lit up the rides too, of course Stealth and colossus have had lighting before but other than that most of the lighting was more there to light up just the paths, now themed lighting is directing up to the ride structures them selves which look great.
 
Finally not only looks good but there’s been some decent thought into how they work too - Vortex for example the lights are all white to start when loading, then when the ride cycle starts the lights all change to their “themed” status, also noticed when leaving at around 10:30 all the lights around the park lighting up the paths had changed to a standard white light, small things but nice to see some real thought has gone into how it all works, it’s clearly been a big investment and does make a difference!

I know lighting wasn’t really made a big deal of from the park during the sparkle project but now it’s fright nights it’s the first real chance to see all the lighting installed and it’s really pretty impressive.
 
To start with it simply for the most part looks really good - most of the rides have color coordinated lights, what’s also nice is the new lighting seems to be able to do various effects such as around inferno the lights do some sort of flame effects shining onto the ride. On that point I believe this is one of the first times the parks actually lit up the rides too, of course Stealth and colossus have had lighting before but other than that most of the lighting was more there to light up just the paths, now themed lighting is directing up to the ride structures them selves which look great.
 
Finally not only looks good but there’s been some decent thought into how they work too - Vortex for example the lights are all white to start when loading, then when the ride cycle starts the lights all change to their “themed” status, also noticed when leaving at around 10:30 all the lights around the park lighting up the paths had changed to a standard white light, small things but nice to see some real thought has gone into how it all works, it’s clearly been a big investment and does make a difference!

I find the 3rd train debate quite interesting, I remember back in the day Stealth would indeed have 3 trains serviceable, but it would still have technical issues causing it spend time on one train - I guess it shows that sometimes rides are on one train for a more complex reason than the other one is simply broke. As Benin says now a days they use the 3rd train to have a continuous cycle of “winter” refurbishment on the other, whilst it may result in the odd day where a train has a genuine fault it won’t be able to run full capacity it’s probably very very rare.
 
In my opinion Thorpe / Merlin shouldn’t have to buy more trains than the ride can run to ensure 2 trains are always available, trains shouldn’t frequently be having to be craned off the ride and rebuilt.
 
I have a feeling in an alternate world if Mack hadn’t built Hyperia and it faced similar issues the manufacturer would be taking abit more of the slack here..
 
As for the fastrack debate I see both sides to it, I’ll admit I bought fastrack for it on Sunday, if fastrack wasn’t available the person I was with wouldn’t have rode Hyperia. The first time we rode it the fastrack queue was empty and the 2nd maybe 20 or so people in front of us, so it don’t seem like it’s being sold excessively. It seemed a bigger issue when the queue had to be evacuated on the Friday and everyone had priority passes for it, again it’s a tough one and I can see why the park do give out priority passes in this instance. It’s worth noting after it shutdown and priority passes were issued you could not buy any fastrack for it.

It is worth noting the time Hyperia had a 1 hour plus fastrack queue (what I’m aware of) was on the Friday where earlier that day the queue was evacuated and priority passes handed out.
 
I checked on the app and you couldn’t buy fastrack when it reopened.

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

As are the park - the last car was lifted off the track at around 4pm this afternoon - unfortunately not giving enough time to open for the day guests but I’ve no doubt if it had been a 6 or later close it would have opened!
 

The stalled train isn’t in the maintenance shed as of around 10pm tonight, I would guess they would hopefully be able to get it over there tomorrow and work on building it up tomorrow, I guess as you say the issue is when they can test it before the weekend!
 

Im not sure why it would be closed, assuming there’s no issues with it testing tomorrow I’m certain it will be open!

It’s not open yet - sounds like a couple of the cars have been removed, I suspect if they can get them removed they will aim to open it today with the other train.
 
I do find it strange Mack even installed brackets for trim brakes before this element, I can only assumed worried it would be taking it too fast when it seems to be the complete opposite.
 
Im not really sure I think its stalling is weather related as such, it did the same in what June or July? I know it’s colder now but it’s no where near the weather conditions Mack say it can operate in. What is strange is how the ride can be running all day, shutdown and empty trains look like they are close to stalling.

I can see it being back up and running very quickly - last time they had to build a concrete base for the crane to sit on, with that already done plus the experience how to get it off the track I wouldn’t be surprised to see it open tomorrow or Friday. Seems like a crane is already on site too.
 
I do wonder where they go from here though, it was hardly cold today with minimal winds, plus the train had 3 rows of water dummies. I expect in future it will have to test with more rows of these which will make it take longer to get ready each morning.
 
Hopefully Mack have a solution ready to implement over winter.