JoshC.

Following the recent-ish announcement of The Walking Dead coming to Thorpe, I thought I'd share a review of TWD: Breakout, Movie Park Germany's 5 Euro upcharge scare attraction. And also share some expectations I have for Living Nightmare and Sanctum as a result.. I have to say, I was really looking forward to this. Movie Park are well known for this Halloween event, and they continually bring in big name IPs as well as original concepts (this year, they've got an 18+ maze themed to the Hostel series which looks to be at least partially an alone experience for example), so that sets a certain bar. The maze itself was really pushed hard, on the website, on leaflets, on the park map and on park too - it was almost like it was a crowning success for the park; their gem along with their big new ride. They advertised "the latest technologies" which helped achieve special effects, along with the standard 'intense, scary' jargon that most mazes get. And even though I haven't watched the TV show (and still haven't yet), I knew how much scope the franchise has. Breakout Review Warning - spoilers After doing some queueing in some shipping containers, you reach the entrance of the maze, which is themed around the Harrison Memorial Hospital (apparently from the first series). You could hear lots of banging to the right of the wall, which I thought was a bit of a spoiler, since an actor was bound to appear. You get batched in in groups of about 8, and encouraged to stay together, but it's not a conga line maze. The first scene just ends up being a standard safety scene (delivered on TVs in multiple languages), and then an actor appears from a hidden route to your left (despite the loud noises you hear outside coming from what should be your right). It was a clever bit of misdirection, and though not scary, showed some promise. The actor then chases away to go down the corridor on your right, banging the walls to encourage you to leave.. Unfortunately from here, things go downhill. You walk past the famous 'Don't Open, Dead Inside' doors, with no sort of effects or actor or special lighting or anything; a particularly disappointing thing since that was so widely pushed in advertised. An actor appeared, shouting 'Boo', and doing some general arm waving to try and invade our personal space. No context to the scenes, and I realised that it was actually the same actor as from the first scene, which begun to ring alarm bells as to the number of actors. You continue through more scenes, which are very well themed, but had little sound effects and no special effects. Occasionally an actor appeared, but they all did the same thing - shout 'boo' and walk like a zombie who'd an accident in their underwear... Though the theming was nice, you weren't given any chance to really interact with it - you were always well away from anything of note, and given tonnes of space with nothing filling it. It was the worst thing a scare maze can be - boring. The ending was cliche to say the least... Large open space, couple of barrels and a door at the end of the room. Oh, except a big burly man with a chainsaw appears out of nowhere by the door. Been there, done that. However, a tiny ray in the ending was the fact that the actor kicked down a barrel onto the floor, creating a huge, echoing thud - easily the biggest scare in the maze, and shows that there was at least a glimmer of thought put into 'how can we actually scare people' when designing the maze. So yeah, TWD: Breakout was a very poor maze. Few actors, little-to-no use of standard scare tactics introduced and nothing exciting or interesting to go with it. Maybe having done a few good mazes over the years has hardened me up a bit too much, but there was just nothing of note. Thorpe Expectations Something which still sticks in my mind about Breakout is how well themed the maze was, and how well designed the sets were. Looking at photos of the maze and looking at images from the show, they are very similar down to the small details. So I expect that AMC / Fox have quite high expectations and demands about the theming of the maze that have to be met. Given the Paragon Creative have been spotted on park (the company who also did a great job when making Saw Alive!), I expect that those expectations will be met, especially with Living Nightmare. From the brief description that Thorpe have released, it sounds like Living Nightmare will be in a similar vain to Breakout in that there are a variety of scenes from the show in the maze that you go through, except that they are including Season 7 in there. Also, as we're told that we can "choose your path and decide your fate", there might be the possibility of multiple routes akin to Cabin - a nice touch which works nicely with the 'assorted scene' vibe. I must admit I'm concerned about what sort of scares we're in for. Thorpe have gotten a reputation that their style of scare is 'growl in people's face, brush against their arm and slam against a wall' and move on. Though I don't strictly agree with this (and we've seen them move away from that with the likes of Big Top, Blair Witch and Platform 15 in my opinion), I certainly see where people are coming from. And it feels almost inevitable that we could be in for that treatment here. I'd really love to see some effects that play on the senses more here - smells are something which are particularly under-used by Thorpe. And I feel like having a hospital scene, for example, which is literally 'cold' would work well. Couple in some other effects here and there, and it would work really well. But I'm just not sure we're in for that. As for Sanctum, given it's said to be an outdoor maze, and from the little we've seen of it, I get a feeling like it will be a bigger, better, more-coherently themed version of Dead End. The general story seems to be 'death and destruction wasteland, you enter a safe bit, but oh wait, it's not safe' - something that Thorpe can do well. The containers could act as means to create a long route to walk around, and be used for impact scares. Chuck in a couple of set pieces and bits and bobs and it'll be a fun little maze. I'm not expecting anything groundbreaking, but it has the potential to be a perfect filler maze, as well as helping spread the crowds around. tl;dr - Germany's Walking Dead maze is on the whole, naff, but the theming is good. I expect good theming at Thorpe and hope they can produce something different in terms of scares.

A "double storey" scene doesn't necessarily mean you'll go upstairs.. In fact, given how the prison scene looks in the show, I'd be very surprised if you do go upstairs. It'd just be a very narrow walkway, which would require unsightly enhancements to make safe: Entirely possible an actor might be on the second storey or something, but I'd be very surprised if you did go up.

Totally agree. The changes are too overbearing right now. But the argument of 'something was fine in the past, why isn't fine now' doesn't always hold up. These changes are there for a reason, and I'm sure we'd all agree that if it helps stop an incident akin to Smiler happening again that's a good thing. But at the same time, I hope they know things are a bit too extreme at the moment and they can find the happy medium between being safe and being sensible (and quickly!).

Though rollbacks are safe, it's not exactly ideal to have it operate in wind which can cause it to rollback. Imagine if Stealth was open but 1 in every 15 rides was a rollback - it'll be a huge pain for staff to be continually resetting it, it won't be reassuring to guests who don't know it's a safe and natural thing, and it'll annoy people in the queue having it regularly rollback. Sure, it's not closed all the time, but it's not worth having it open enough. I agree about the fact the park have operated fine in the past, but we do have to remember that sometimes changes are for the better. I'd much rather see these changes if it prevents an accident. It does feel like they've gone a bit overboard though, yes.

I didn't watch it (18+ only), but I seem to remember that actors and special effects were advertised, but they never actually appeared. It ended up just being some clips from the first 5 films (of gory traps) and the trailer for the new film (Saw VI I think?). Quite disappointing. If memory serves me correctly, there was an 'Ultimate Horror Movie Bites' show in 2002 and 2003, which showed assorted horror film clips and the finale was Texas Chainsaw Massacre with an actor with a chainsaw appearing. Not too sure on that though. Wasn't that popular and replaced with Circus of Horrors.

Last year's event was very reasonable - don't remember queueing much more than 10-15 minutes for any maze or ride really! Pretty certain got a few re-rides too. Other events are harder to compare to since they were either shared with media night (making them a bit busier) or very limited. However the atmosphere is usually very relaxed in the sense that it's easy enough to get everything of note done without rushing.

Phantasialand have done an awesome blog post detailing how Mystery Castle essentially works and clarifies the settings it has... https://phantasialandblog.de/funktion-mystery-castle/ So basically, it had 3 settings: 1) Short 2) Longer 3) A little bit longer They use setting 2 up until 2pm, then use setting 3. Depending on the exact weight of a row can change how forceful the ride feels (understandable really). Great to see awesome posts like this! And it's nice to have some clarity over the ride. Just a shame that I find both settings very meh.

Oh great, you'll end up breaking it and we'll have ANOTHER ride closed all of Fright Nights...

I'm not trying to sugarcoat things really. It's easy (and true) to look at Thorpe and go 'so many rides are closed, this isn't good enough, what on earth is going on??'. But there is a more balanced viewpoint to things rather than just going 'Thorpe have got loads of closed rides, they're doing everything wrong, everything will be terrible'. But in fairness, Loggers is now all but a memory and Slammer is an ornament. It doesn't look good on the park - especially when so many ask about Loggers and many will question Slammer when Fright Nights comes - but there's only so many times their closures can be bought up at every point before you tire of it a bit. They're gone, and it's time to accept that and move on. I'm a Celeb is something that will never open at Fright Nights. Staffing the Fright Nights mazes is tricky, adding in a non-scare attraction to the mix makes things harder. There's also been a large worry that people will expect it to be 'Fright Night-afied' and be scary. And no matter how hard you try to tell the masses 'We have loads of scary mazes around, but this isn't a scary maze, it's a family fun maze', the masses will not listen. Which then leads to disappoint, etc. There is the question about whether it closes too early, but all the actors / staff associated with it pretty much straight away focus on Fright Nights (set up, rehearsals, etc), so the manpower is put to use. So effectively we have lost 2 rides for this Fright Nights (okay, you can argue 3 compared to last FN, but 2 rides compared to standard operating this season). It simply isn't good enough. But Rush is clearly down for essential maintenance and something outside of Thorpe's control (something which doesn't make a blind bit of difference to the average guest, granted, but something that enthusiasts should at least be understanding of), and Rumba is a mystery (the official word they're saying on their Twitter at the mo is that it's a "seasonal attraction this year", but if we're being realistic it's likely down to budget...but more on that later). I understand where you're coming from at the moment as it can seem that way, but it really isn't. I think maybe you're over-stating Rumba's place in the line up, as despite the general consensus here, Rumba is completely overshadowed by Storm Surge. Not saying it doesn't have a place, but I think over the coming months, it won't be as missed by the public as you think. That's not to say that that makes it a good decision or anything; simply saying it's not AS bad as you think it'll be. Whilst true it did stay open until 10pm in the past, that did change to 'close at dusk', and in a time where Merlin are so over-zealous on H&S, it's not something I could have seen changing back. But with Platform existing, it basically makes the argument null and void since Loggers would have closed when Platform opened. My point was more that the attraction line up hasn't reduced in number. Loggers left, DBGT came. So the line up hasn't been reduced. And during Fright Nights, people are going to be more interested by Ghost Train than Loggers. I haven't forgotten that at all - but you were the one who mentioned that FN days were going to be hell, so that's why the conversation is geared to FN. Honestly, I think it's ludicrous that there hasn't been even a couple of quid knocked off ticket prices given that there's 2 rides which are closed which shouldn't be (3 if you include I'm a Celeb, but I won't since they've been upfront from the get-go this year it wouldn't be open in September). They can dress it up all they like with 'closed for planned maintenance', 'this is a seasonal attraction', 'rides are subject to availability', but it's not good enough, and a small gesture like that would probably go a longer way than they think. Certainly was only recently that they said they would close it early and actually did (I think it was only last season?), but they have said since about 2012 they'd close it early (just rarely followed through with it). But in all honesty, following the Drayton incident and once again Merlin's current over-zealous H&S approach, I couldn't see them wanting to keep it open in the dark now. Again though, I think you're making a bigger deal out of a rapids ride not being open. During Fright Nights in particular, there will be very few people who go saying "The rapids ride is one I must do". And there won't be a large number of people who stick it on their list to do anyway. It will be a 'we'll do it if we get time' or a 'we'll do it after lunch' ride. With it closed, the majority of people will just move on with their day (and probably gravitate towards Storm Surge). Again, I'm not saying it isn't an issue - if a park has a ride to offer, they should offer it! If they don't, it will cause disappointment, even if it's slight, to some guests, which is something they shouldn't do. But I don't think it's as big an issue as people on here think. One thing to note is that the "lifeguards" on Rumba aren't lifeguards; they are just normal rides hosts in certain positions. Their job is to tell people to remain seat, sit back down if they do stand back up, and act as another set of eyes to keep track of guests in case of an incident (so that the ride can be e-stopped as quickly as possible). They won't do 'lifeguard duties' of jumping in the water to save people if someone falls in; something which loads of people actually think they will do! However, it is true that the staffing costs have risen considerably. Following the Drayton incident, extra staff were dotted around the course and a second operator was introduced. Storm Surge and Tidal Wave also received extra staff to watch guests in case they tried to jump out of the boats (something which was very common on Storm Surge in particular). Slowly the staff numbers were reduced, by Rumba in particular still has many more staff than it was budgeted for at the start of season. From what I've been made aware, because Thorpe were overspending so much on these extra staff for H&S, they did try to get the extra budget to fund it, but ultimately it was rejected. Thus leaving Thorpe with the conundrum of whether to cut back to the original staffing levels (which staff and management didn't feel comfortable with), or continue overspending until money dried up. Given the number of extra staff required over the season, it'd make sense that it's around now that they simply don't have the money. So that would at least explain the situation Rumba is currently in. Of course not excusable to your average guest who will be disappointed to see rumba closed, but at least in some way understandable that Thorpe tried and were doing things for the right reason.

Saw's system is set up so that it physically cannot run less than 5 cars, though I'm fairly certain it hasn't run with 5 cars (though maybe a little bit in 2009, I can't quite remember). It almost always runs 7 or 8 though, as there's no advantage at running it with less unless the cars have an actual issue. But yeah, coaster queues were quite long today. I was only interested in Swarm and X today; managed to get on Swarm in about 15 minutes and X was walk on. Ghost Train has 3 trains and loads 2 on quieter days. It's quite painful and jagged to queue for; 2 groups go in in reasonably quick succession, and then there's a long wait in between. Having all 3 trains would just be brilliant. It's a shame that 1 train op has returned now. Earlier in the season they were able to get full capacity on most things on quiet days, and apparently they were planning to do that for the rest of the season (unless there was an issue with a train a la Colossus). Wonder what's changed...

I'm fairly certain I saw it advertised there this morning, so a very recent change. Though I'm still under the impression that the cinema is being used for Walking Dead clips and the like, so maybe it's just been replaced on the website to advertise the RIP lounge. Hopefully it still happens and it's always nice to see it used, and similar things worked well enough in the past. Bring back the days of Barry and Stuart performing in there!

Suggests to me that VIXI was always meant to just be a retheme of Hellements, but the name change is there to manage expectations.

I see where you're coming from, totally. And I don't disagree with you that one major ride closure (or even an extended maze closure) one day will definitely cause more noticeable issues. However, there's only 1 ride of note that is going to be closed for the whole of Fright Nights. And that isn't acceptable. But, in itself is not the end of the world and is, for lack of a better word, manageable for guests and the park to overcome. I genuinely don't think that on a daily basis it will make things more hellish or significantly worse.

Not going to lie, I'm tiring of people using the 'Loggers is closed' argument when talking about availability, especially at Fright Nights. It's been closed the best part of TWO YEARS, it's not a listed ride and it's not confirmed to be returning. There wasn't a net loss to the number of attractions on park, as Ghost Train opened when it closed (a common theme when Thorpe open new major rides unfortunately). Plus there's the fact Loggers always closed at 5 (well it'd be 3 now what with Platform). It's not a part of the line up, it made little impact at Fright Nights. Slammer will be missed during Fright Nights, even more so since it's right next to the headline maze. However, let's not try and kid ourselves into saying it was popular or soaked up guests. When a ride that never got above 400pph never got a queue above an hour, and shutdown often, it's hardly going to make that much of an impact on a day where there's 15000 people on park.. Rumba is a weird one. It definitely helped give non-maze goers something else to do, and certainly was a good thing for families who visited during the day. But again, like Loggers, it's popularity during Fright Nights is minor, rarely getting a queue and not being a headline thing. I also wonder if it would have stayed open beyond dusk this season following how over-cautious Merlin are being with Rapids rides. Rush is the one that will be missed the most. Good throughput, always attracting a queue, well-received a next to a major maze. It was always good at soaking up queues, especially as many people would ride it before doing Big Top. Rush's closure appears to be related to the ropes needing to be replaced earlier than usual - if that's true then (as long as Thorpe were maintaining the ropes correctly which I'm sure they would), there's not much they can do. This is by no means excusing Thorpe, as there's only so many times one park can have rides suffer 'unfortunate, exceptional' closures before you have to ask questions if somethings up, but it's not an active decision they've chose to do. I presume the fifth attraction you're referring to as not being open is I'm a Celeb? If so, that's silly, since it's never opened during Fright Nights, and never will. So it's not a case of that being an attraction down. Certainly don't think anyone should give Thorpe a free pass, but if we look at things in context, I think it's easy for people to be over dramatic about how bad the ride closures are. There's one ride which is closed which will actually affect guests on a larger scale, which isn't great, but I don't think it's going to make things anymore hellish

Not really, as there's been a change in procedure this year. Obviously when the wind speed has been extremely high they've closed a large majority of rides down, but this is the first year they've been more sensitive regarding it.

I guess it wouldn't be Thorpe without a meant-to-be operational S&S ride closed from September onwards...

Dumbfounded how Banana Ride and Timber Tug suffer from Weather Delays, yet Saw does not.. But yeah, as said above, it's a hot topic at the moment. But it's always going to cause confusion and issues with guests when they're told a ride is shut for high wind speeds, and it doesn't feel THAT windy.

Given that Sanctum is an outdoor maze, could it be that the containers are just being used as things for you to walk around to help the route? The containers were pretty beaten down in the 2015, hence why one wasn't used at all. Using them to shape the route is cheap, and has the chance to create jump scares (bashing anything against those containers makes a VERY loud noise after all). In all honesty, I expect Sanctum to be a bigger, better, more coherently themed version of Dead End; given the space behind Swarm is just blank it's all I can see working there.

The Merlin parks will calculate a 'Rides per Guest' number. This is done rather crudely, by taking the total number of people who have been on the rides and dividing it by the number of people on park. Legoland will have quite a small RpG number for many reasons. They have live shows, play areas, meet and greets and Miniland - all things which aren't included in RpG numbers - which a lot of kids will want to spend a fair amount of time in. They also get a lot of babies visit, who naturally can't do much, which pulls the average down. Quite a few rides don't have big throughputs which doesn't help either. People alao take a long time to eat too. And you'll probably get quite a few parents who decide to skip it on rides to take photos as well. All of those things drag the number down. The average RpG numbers for all the Merlin parks (and probably every park worldwide if they do it) would be lower than you expect. Enthusiasts tend to forget how much your average guest will dawdle, spend time not riding things, etc. I genuinely expect Legoland's RpG number to be between 4 and 5. For Legoland to use it publicly as a way to say someone rode more than the average number of rides is silly though. It's a simple, slightly crude, way of internally figuring out how many rides people are getting on average to keep a tab on ridership. Hopefully not too many pick up on it, else they've shot themselves in the foot. Totally agree with the bloke that 30 minute wait times are ridiculous when you've purchased something giving "near instant" ride access mind.

I guess this is more a bit of confusion about how we call certain things. What you're calling the theoretical throughput is what I'd call the maximum throughput. That would be, like you say, the hardware running flawless with no faff from staff or guests and in no way achievable. These are usually numbers you see advertised on manufacturers' websites as well. Theoretical throughput is what is quoted to the park's by the manufacturer when the ride is built. This would take in some factors, such as any extra safety precautions the manufacturer has put in place at the request of the park / to comply with certain country's H&S laws, and consider how long it'd take to check bars in the best possible scenario. Some of these are hard to measure accurately or precisely, so are normally just guesses when first quoted. But this is why it is possible for some rides to exceed their 'theoretical throughput'. Saw does it regularly as (I think?) it's one of the few rides which hasn't really lost any staff compared to its first season, safety checks on the restraints haven't changed and there's no seatbelts. So with a good team who are used to it, it's possible to go above the theoretical target. The likes of Swarm and Th13teen have also exceeded their theoretical targets; usually in their first season when they were new, had more staff and more motivated staff. Some rides have their maximum and theoretical throughputs as the same (Rush springs to mind), which means that they aren't usually reached. At first, Ghost Train had it's theoretical throughput set as it's maximum throughput, which is hilariously high but also wildly achievable since that doesn't include time to get guests on the train and wearing the headsets.. Thorpe (and presumably most parks) use the theoretical throughputs as target ones as well, but these can rarely be achieved at Thorpe / Merlin parks right now, especially with their minimum staff operating and self-imposed safety precautions. The theoretical throughputs are rarely adjusted following these. I believe Colossus' maximum throughput is advertised as 1300pph, theoretical was around 1000-1100, but at the moment 700-800 is about all that's realistic.

It's a little known fact that Professor Burp's first name is Andrei, and he was in fact a Romanian businessman. When the factory was finished, he did try to sell it to Andrex for the retheme since it matched his name so closely. But that fell through, so he had to go with another bathroom product......... That and things don't always have to make thematic sense if they just 'work'.

Something which has been overlooked... Does this suggest we could see something similar to Cabin in that you can choose rooms to go through, etc? Would be nice, and good to see the idea working out and being kept fresh.

Nothing was supposed to open this summer, just announced. Betting £10 it's this (lifted straight from the press release)... This is why people shouldn't read into social media posts too much. They mean next to nothing and only disappoint those who think about it too much.

As has been said, loading and restraint checking systems have been slowed down in the recent wave of Merlin being more cautious on the safety front (some of the reasoning behind it is also justified). I've noticed things have gotten better recently though to be fair; likely down to staff finally adjusting to the new procedures. With a good team, Inferno can be one of the best performing rides...unfortunately that doesn't always happen. Stealth performs reasonably well and consistently. It can do slightly better than it normally does (and it does!), but it's not awful. Colossus is by far the worst (even when on 2 trains). Mixture of reasons for it to be honest.

Walking Dead ey? Who saw THAT one coming... Two new mazes is great; the last time we saw 2 new large attractions at Fright Nights was 2013 (2015 had 2 as well, but Containment is not really a large one). So it's easy to forget that sort of thing. For those saying about is this really the largest Fright Night ever... We have 6 scare attractions, presumably roamers, and the cinema. There has never been more than 6 scare attractions at one Fright Nights. Couple that in with 2 big name IPs (Walking Dead and Saw), and it's fair to call it the biggest FN in my opinion. Now for a mass quote of people in no order... A lot of Platform can't be seen from Monk's Walk, and they've had all year to add to it. So there's potential for new stuff. They could also add to the 2 mile long tunnel of nothingness for new scenes. I see nothing wrong with 2 attractions of the same general theme. I haven't watched the show either, but it does sound like the attractions are going in different directions / different stories. Plenty of scope for different ideas. I'm sure the idea of 2 mazes from the same IP will be a big draw to some people as well. Will have to agree to disagree about Saw Alive's quality. But I can't really see that going until the Saw contract runs out to be honest; it is such a staple now and it has become quite synonymous with Fright Nights. Like it or not, it's currently the new Asylum! Platform 15 has the opportunity to be a good maze, and we've seen in the past they are able to completely change and upgrade mazes in their second year (Big Top, Blair Witch, etc). Interesting you say about 5 big-budget indoor mazes.. The budgets of more recent mazes have tended to have larger budgets as far as I'm aware. Outdoor mazes struggle a bit granted, since some of that budget had to be pumped into ensuring things are safer, and it's difficult to create a scare environment outside. However, Thorpe are drastically short on locations at the moment, with I'm a Celeb not a suitable space for a scare attraction, and Thorpe wanting to avoid the beach after them having loads of flooding issues in 2015 with Big Top. With no arena now as well, and shipping containers proving to only work out as a short term solution, they're in a difficult scenario (and I reckon Towers will be in a similar situation with the shipping container usage in a couple of years time..). I heard some rumours that Blair Witch was actually meant to return this year (which would also mean this year would have been the 'biggest FN' with 7 attractions), but there were some issues with the location which meant that it couldn't. Could explain why Blair Witch was hinted at returning! I don't think this will be similar to other Walking Dead mazes. It's been said how it relates more to the recent season, whereas all the other ones have been very generic from early seasons. And I really hope it's not like the Movie Park one (I'll be doing a blog post why that one was so awful). But it is my biggest concern about Walking Dead being around - the one at MPG was said to be really good, and it seemed to get a lot of praise from AMC. So if that's the standard, the bar is set quite low... There was quite a lot of hype for this, probably too much yeah. I think there was actually slightly more planned this year, but things have fallen through / been delayed. So maybe if all the original plans worked out, the hype would have been worth it. It also doesn't help that we as enthusiasts have figured out Walking Dead weeks ago. Reckon the GP are lapping this up though... So yeah, tl;dr - I'm looking for to this. There's potential, and I know that things behind the scenes have been ever improving at Thorpe. I have some concerns, but I'm remaining optimistic that they'll be unfounded.