JoshC.

I've always wondered this too. They have used the theme before in previous Fright Nights audio loops around the park, but to my knowledge it's never been part of the ride's audio, nor saw it part of Saw Alive. So part of me thinks it could be down to some weird contract thing, it that they can only use it during Fright Nights / only use it so often, else they'd have to pay more or something. Could well not be the reason, but I can think of any other reason why they wouldn't have used it really, given how recognisable and iconic it is. I remember hearing that the reason why Tobin Bell never voiced Jigsaw in the ride* or maze is because it would cost 'a large six figure sum' for him to do so, which Thorpe weren't willing to pay. So there's certainly form there too. *With the exception technically being the puppet as cars come back into the station, where it says "Congratulations, you're still alive...", which I believe is just the line from the film brought in.

The physical process of having your temperature and bag checked is quick. The queue to get is simply because of the number of people there. As said above, just get there as early as possible (9.15ish is a good shout) and you'll be fine. The turnstiles will open shortly after 9.30 in my experience, so you're good to go from there.

Actors aren't running the ride. They could dress up the hosts in similar costumes if they wanted (in a similar to to how Ghost Train had themed uniforms, or for a better example, the likes of Wicker Man and Smiler and Towers), but it adds a layer of complication, especially since it's different departments and stuff. As I say, Swarm Island is very much an area whereby you get what you put into it. If you interact with the actors, and watch the little things they do between each other, it's a fun experience. If you just focus on getting to the queue, you would barely notice they're around (particularly on a busier day). Fun fact: the alien hands that the military guys wear are in fact spare hands from the demon costume used in Ghost Train!

Corrr, no one posted updates throughout the evening? Blimey, that's a first I have some mixed feelings about Fright Nights this year, but I have to say, the park have done a decent job with the (ever-changing) restrictions in place. Let me give a brief run over all the different attractions and I'll leave with some final - perhaps surprising - thoughts... Quick word on actors. They did a great job with distancing. Because both they and guests are wearing masks, they can get up to 1m to you, but usually tried to stick to 2m. Roots of Evil So the new maze for the year. In all honesty, this isn't much different to Blair Witch. There's a quick pre show in the Jungle Escape building, which I imagine is there to help get more groups through whilst keeping people distanced. When you enter the woods, it seems to be the exact same layout as Blair last year, with the ever dense shrubbery and buildings too. The buildings have been rethemed to look like tree roots are taking over them. I think Roots suffers from Covid restrictions though in a major way: actor numbers. Because of the dense forest area, there's not many place where the actors could interact with you without breaking social distancing. This means that in moments when you need there to be actors, it can fall a bit short. Many of the actors that are there are military personal to guide you through (because of the story), or covered in trees to blend into the environment. The upside is that at points you do feel very secluded and alone. Mix that in with the household only thing, and that will get a lot of people on edge. Platform 15 Brave it backwards! The tunnel has been turned into a queue. The long pre show has been cut to a quick 'Where is the conductor?' talk. The village hasn't had much work done, so loses some of the wow factor you get from it from a visual standpoint. And, in general, the village is quite weak. The train has derailed on is on its side, with no more fire effects. From the train, however, the actors did a good job. Quite a few hiding spots (including the old Love Island cabins which have been repurposed), and lively actors bashing against the metal walls. It's basic stuff, but it's the best they can with what they have, and again, it will get people. The ending features a 'fake' ending (but the type where it's obvious it's not the end), followed by a group of actors along with a train effect. I think we missed the train effect though (not the actors' or our fault). The Upshot on the Upcharge Is either of these mazes worth £10? To me, no. Do I envision a lot of enthusiasts paying the price and moaning saying it's not worth it? Yes. Do I think the public will feel short changed by paying £10 for the mazes? Well, I don't know... I've been doing scare attractions for a long time (I did my first one 17 years ago...), and I've done a lot of different ones. And I've paid money to get much more unique experiences than what's on offer in Thorpe this year. Thorpe's mazes rarely 'get' me any more. And I'm sure that's the same for plenty of people reading this: people will have done so many of Thorpe's mazes, had the opportunity to do them in small groups, etc etc. So if anyone's there expecting that because Thorpe's hand has been forced to charge for mazes they will magically become significantly different and better, you're in for a shock. For the public though, the mazes offer a different experience. Going through in small groups will leave many on edge from the get go. The lack of actors invading your personal space creates the fear of what could happen, rather than what is happening. I can see a lot of people going through the mazes and feeling very satisfied with the experience they get, because it's different and much more personal. Will people think it's worth £10? Only time will tell... In my opinion, they're the level of maze I would only pay £3-5 for. I think Thorpe perhaps should have gone for a price point in the £5-7 region to get the balance right of not making it too expensive, whilst also making sure it's not too cheap. Creek Freaks: Unchained So straight off the bat: I loved this. Nicely themed scare zone with good actors. Simple story. Good opportunity for load of different interaction points. Everything here just works. There's one issue. This is a one-way scare zone, and it's been made very much into a path. If anything, it's more like a very short outdoor maze (though, it definitely shouldn't be marketed like that). I don't know how it will cope on busier days, and I do worry there may end up having to be a standby queue if the area gets too busy. Again, that's something that time will tell with. In many ways, I prefer this to the actual maze, just because you can have a bit more fun with the characters. It all comes together nicely. And obviously with chainsaws afoot, it will make things even more memorable. The Fearstival Arena This was kind of an unknown thing in many ways. However, this could well be a sleeper hit of an attraction. It's basically a freak show / carnival come to town. It's not clowns, it's all the other sort of characters. And it's that nice mix of fun and scare. It takes itself seriously enough that people will get a scare out of it, but it's light hearted enough that people can laugh with it too. It's something different! There's a short show, as well as a mini light and fire show too. These will play on a sort of 'as and when' basis, to make sure that not too many people crowd around. Being a major pathway, there may well end up being some congestion on busier nights, but hopefully this won't be an issue in the same way Creek Freaks. Terror at Amity High / The Howling of LycanThorpe High I'll bung these together. Again, there's a dance show at Amity, which is very similar to last year's (I think there's one new song). There's a slight difference in that the LycanThorpe High students crash the school and also join in the dancing. It misses the mark a little bit, in the sense that they don't really seem to compete all that much - there's a little mention of it in the audio, but not much else. Didn't get to see the show at LycanThorpe, but I imagine there's a similar set up. There's always actors roaming around each area too, and they're both alright. It's similar to last year in that they're playing stereotypical high school teens. The LycanThorpe characters don't feel very werewolf-like compared to the Amity characters, where it feels more obvious that they're vampires in my opinion. I don't know if it's because it just feels very similar to last year, but it's not *as* good as last year. The lack of real competition between the two characters feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. But it's still fun, and gives a good atmosphere. Screamplexx This is still the same films as the past couple of years (though I think it changes in every showing). The difference is there's a couple of actors (such as The Director) who roam around outside and do a little pre show before the films too. The actors do a good enough job with what they've got. The films are terrible. Thorpe really should, ahem, cut their ties with BloodyCuts after this year. The Swarm: Invasion I think some expectations should be set here. This isn't really a scare zone in my opinion. This is 'a few actors have been placed round the Swarm island to create more of an atmosphere for Swarm'. And that's fine. It's what Swarm needs over Fright Nights. You have a couple of military like personal and a few of Lez Cougan's followers, warning you of what The Swarm can do, and what "they" are hiding. One of the conspiracy theorists even has a microphone that can play over the island's audio to drawn attention to a mini show happening. It's all a bit of extra fun really. It's one of those areas where you could walk through to Swarm's entrance and likely not even interact with an actor if you wanted to. And equally, you could spend a lot of time watching them and interacting with them. It's what you make of it. They have changed the audio with this though, and it's a lot better. You get the actual You Me at Six song play occasionally, which is nice. The rest of the audio just sounds a bit darker and creepy, and it suits the area and theme really well. I was impressed there. The Crows As I've said before, calling roaming actors an attraction is a bit of a stretch, especially when through no fault of your own, you may not see them. But these guys are good - costumes are creepy. And I'm sure they'll get a lot of people running. Scare Zones - Final Say The zones aren't that bad really. Time will tell how they'll cope on a busy day with thousands of people wandering through them all the time. But there's some good concepts there, a good - and large - variety of actors, and they really do add extra atmosphere to the park. Final Thoughts The mazes this year aren't the best. There's no getting round that in my opinion. Under the circumstances, it was never going to be easy for Thorpe to execute their mazes though. But the park have, under strange circumstances with limited time, created an event which has a lot of atmosphere and a lot of potential. Over the past decade, I think it ranks as my 3rd or 4th favourite Fright Nights year, which I think is pretty damn good. But hear me out. If this event had a couple of indoor mazes over a couple of scare zones: say Creek Freak moves back inside, and LycanThorpe replaced by a maze in a tent/marque, plus had Containment, and social distancing wasn't a thing, this could have been an even better event. Would it have happened like that if Covid wasn't a thing? We'll never know. But if things go well, then hopefully this shows Thorpe that a mixture of scare zones and mazes is a great way forward.

The thread for any photos, views and such about Fright Nights 2020! If any photos or videos come about from inside the mazes through tonight's preview night, feel free to post them, but still use Spoiler tags just in case.

Worry not, everyone's favourite unofficial Thorpe Park fansite shall be covering the event!

Indeed, much repurposing and reusing. Moreso at Thorpe than Towers (where that's only localised to Freak Show). I guess in some ways we shouldn't be surprised - it's a way to cut costs after all. And given Covid, and the fact the park seem to try and minimise spending anyway, it makes sense. I don't have a problem with it if it's done well, though. The stuff in the Fearstival Arena looks nice, for example. I'm less sure about the idea of reusing Big Top's walls in Old Town, or some of what has been seen down Platform 15 though. Puts on mod hat As mentioned earlier, we believe that there is a Press event tonight, so no doubt there will be photos from the scare zones in 'show mode', and possibly even inside the mazes. A separate spoiler thread will be set up later to post all that stuff, along with any reviews that come about. This thread will stay open for a little while so people can avoid spoilers if they wish. Takes mod hat off Also, with the BBC reporting that new Covid restrictions are likely to come in place in England from Monday, it will be interesting to see how this will affect the park. Particularly Fright Nights, but in general. The Spelthorne area (which is next to Thorpe, but where loads of staff will live) was seeing a steeper increase in infections a few weeks back, but things are a bit better now, so it's less likely that a tiered system will affect Thorpe severely, but who knows anymore...

I believe Press Night is this Thursday, so there should be some reviews out before the event (though will be interesting to see if the vloggers in particular are allowed to record in the mazes, given the fact they're paid-for experiences).

Thorpe have mentioned on their Fright Nights page that, due to the 10pm closing restriction, the park has to be clear of guests and effectively 'closed' from 10pm. As such, they will close some ride queue lines from 8pm: What I imagine this means in practice is if a ride has more than an hour queue at 8pm, it will close then, to ensure people have time to leave the park. Otherwise, the queue line will remain open till 9pm. The mazes likely won't be affected due to having timed slots, so long as timings work out well. A sad reality, but not too surprising given the circumstances. I do wonder how chaotic things will be with trying to get everyone *out* of the park by 10pm though!

The tunnel itself is very long (about 100m!) and very narrow, as well as very dark. The thing is, it's not the best thing for a queue line at the best of times, least of all during Covid (in my opinion). They could chuck in extra lights, stick social distancing markers on the wall, etc, but I just don't see it working out. In other words, that tunnel is part of the maze. That means they'd still need a queue line outside of the tunnel. Even with timed slots, there'll be loads of people with the half hour slots (anyone who's been to Scarefest, or remembers The Passing will know there can sometimes be quite long queues still!). The area outside the tunnel is quite small then leads to a massive pathway - so it'll be interesting to see how much of a queue they put in place. And after that, whether it'll actually cope with the demand the park will experience!

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10164587106160624&id=283706330623 Some updates from today! I quite like what they're doing to Old Town

And we have a view of Platform's entrance... That seems to nix my earlier musing that they may in fact use the tunnel area as a queue. It'll be interesting to see how much of a queue line they will build and if it'll be sufficient.

Agreed. Even some dark humour somewhere along the line would be good. It's all very serious, and that can get a bit samey. It's another reason why Big Top worked well in Thorpe's line up imo, because it was able to be a bit less serious, whilst still being able to scare people. Given the diverse range of themes this year, it would be nice to have some things a bit more light heartened. The Amity High / Lycanthorpe High combo has potential. I think The Crows should be creepy / serious characters though. The concept feels like it would be better suited to an actual area (where they could have fake characters for the actors to blend in, for example). But just having these weird, creepy characters stalking and appearing out of nowhere has great potential. We also have some work happening on Swarm Island...

The costumes for The Crows look very nice.

If there's been any benefit to the park opening in July, it's that the likes of Samurai, amongst others, haven't had the chance to tear themselves to pieces just before Fright Nights.

To be honest, regardless of what they say, if it was truly because of the issues with people not being able to pre book dates, then they would have removed passes sooner. And they wouldn't have removed the £1 booking fee either. Whether because of Covid or not, I expect they're planning on changing the structure of the passes. Would fully expect to see the cost of what was a Premium pass increase and be rebranded, and perhaps see cheaper options with further limitations.

I don't see them cancelling the events unless they have to tbh. At this point, they've gone through the process of designing attractions, building them (possibly getting in contractors who will have to be paid the same amount either way), plus hiring staff, along with marketing the event and collecting money from people who have paid for the event and the mazes. Cancelling them now means they still spend the same on design and building costs, plus have to refund a lot of people (unlike smaller / independent events, they can't get away with the "we'll validate your ticket for 2021's event" as easily). It's a lot of money to just throw away based on a 'what if', when they can instead just run for as long as possible, get some money in, and refund others if necessary. Just the way I see it at least. Equally, Towers today have released an 'after 4PM' ticket for £25 for Oktoberfest and Scarefest, which very much suggests that - currently - their plan is to press ahead with the event.

When you spend 2 hours making a meme and your head cannot contain your brain anymore... Maybe should have gotten 1000 experts in instead?

The park closes at 9pm for this year's Fright Nights. The potential issues are: -How strict the definition of 'closed by 10' means for a theme park -Rides closing at 9pm and having longer than a 1hr queue. -Potential ramifications for food outlets, in particular for hotel guests These are issues which have solutions, but it does change the way the park operates, and requires a lot of clear communication from the park. Pushing closing time forward to 8PM wouldn't solve the problem, especially when people have booked maze slots for after 8PM. It's just another issue the park have to overcome, and not an ideal one. The threat of local lockdown, and national ones, is also a worry. Although Thorpe Park is in Runnymede, not Spelthorne, which I believe is classed as being in a better position. However, many staff will live in Spelthorne, so whilst the park wouldn't necessarily have to close, it may well be forced to.

I'm sure Thorpe (and Towers) are, simply put, bricking it right now. Everything is so up in the air and there's so little they can control. More and more independent events are cancelling too, despite maintaining they would open - I can only think of a handful still running now. I guess at this point they'll just run when they can. Everything is still being set up and they've spent the money on designing and building stuff, hiring actors, etc. At this point, they have to run whenever they can otherwise it's all for waste (a risk that they were no doubt aware of). As for the village section, I see no reason why it can't stay during Covid. Since you'll be in your own bubble it doesn't particularly matter if you enter an enclosed section briefly. How they'll manage it with actors though is a different question. And whether the village section is still usable too.. I also wonder what the situation is for actor experiences and the "Rule of 6". If a group of 6 enters these maze, then technically an actor makes it an unallowable group of 7 at any point. I'm sure that's me overthinking it, but the government's rules are usually ridiculous, so who knows what their rule is in that sense. Vaguely related too, I wonder how Thorpe and Towers will cope with the 10pm restriction coming to place? It's not uncommon for some coasters to have longer queues at park close - will they be having to stop running rides at 10pm regardless? And it limits people staying onsite with the evening meals. Not a desirable situation. Obviously that's something that will come clearer later today, hopefully, but all a bit of a faff.

Certainly true that there were concerns within Merlin about RMC after New Texas Giant. Rumours were still rife about one for Towers in 2017 of course, though The Smiler incident was the nail in the coffin there. I'm under the impression that when the 2017 coaster was cancelled, RMC was not under serious consideration. Merlin are still considering RMCs for future projects. Indeed, RMC was considered at one point for Thorpe this year (there were RMC rumours all the time of course, and where there's smoke, there's fire). The issue ultimately came down to a change of philosophy from Merlin about what to give Thorpe to invest in terms of money, along with Merlin's further issues and decisions to invest even less in the parks. Covid complicates things even more. So long story short, RMC is not off the table for Merlin. The bigger issue right now is when Merlin will approach the table of making a big investment, especially at Thorpe. As for Thorpe following RMC, almost definitely something that was done for a bit of fun. I'm sure other parks follow them, and there's nothing to be read into it really.

I went to Blackpool for the first ever time a little over a week ago. Some thoughts... -Icon was fun, but not great. Launches are probably the weakest I've done. Only one good airtime moment. The layout is well integrated around the other rides, but not particularly interesting. -Big One is a big old meh. Did nothing for me. -Grand National is a national treasure and by far the best attraction at the park in my opinion. Opinion is likely swayed because I only rode it in back row which is probably a smoother seat, but still. -Was spited by Nick Streak. 😓 -Park feels like it needs a water ride which gets you suitably wet. The open water rides looked too wet imo, and obviously Valhalla has a reputation for a reason. -I liked the dark rides. The Pleasure Beach itself is nice enough for what it is. Not my cup of tea really, but I had fun all things considered. Blackpool as a town is even tackier than I imagined though. Eurgh.

I feel like I've heard this every year since the Raptor was announced. 😂 No denying they've got potential and look like fun rides, but they don't seem to have taken off as well as RMC's conversions of wooden coasters. And they're having issues with the T-Rex model too still. Maybe one day they'll be a big thing, but it just feels like the model is ticking along right now, and not going to be the next big thing.

Update from Theme Park Guide: https://themeparkguide.co.uk/news-page/Fright-Nights-2020-Preparations Should stress there's a couple of spoilers in there, particularly for Platform 15. Speaking of Platform 15, a thought I've had recently. What if this year they completely get rid of the tunnel, and use that area as a queue? Having the entrance to the maze where it's ended in previous years leaves effectively no space for a queue, which is necessary even with timed tickets. They could obviously get rid of a bit of it, but I could see them just getting rid of it entirely. Of course, the reason for the tunnel idea because, technically speaking, people aren't allowed to walk down that route whilst Saw is operating unless undercover. So an undercover queue would still be necessary, but that's easily sorted out really.

Rookburgh soft opens today, with the hotel to open a week today. The area will limit the number of people allowed in during this soft phase and is subject to closure at any time, as one would expect at such a point.