JoshC.

There will be enough ventilation within the buildings, occurring naturally or with the help of machines, otherwise they would not have opened the mazes in the ruins. It's an important thing in Covid regulations, especially for places in the entertainment side of things. My knowledge of the ruins is minimal, but I can only assume it's better ventilated than Creek Freak. I think this was an issue with Creek Freak - it simply wasn't dissipating quick enough, even with the machines turned off. Coupled in with fumes from the chainsaws as well, that caused issues. Which does lead to question of can the park confidently say the area is well ventilated enough to fit the recommend Covid regulations. If Alton's mazes are using thick haze/smoke this year, presumably it means they're able to refresh it enough to fit within those regulations. In any case, I still don't think Creek Freak should have opened this year, due to Covid. The route is largely narrow corridors so there'd be little room for actors and guests without breaking social distancing. Even if they could make it work, it'd be a much weaker experience in my opinion.

Went yesterday, had a good time. Helped very much by the low crowds which meant lots of interaction in the scare zones too. Mazes I'll be honest: both of the mazes were pretty poor. Platform wasn't helped by the group behind us catching up way too quickly, and because they were the very scared type, actors always targeted them. It's a shame actors towards the start weren't able to slow the group down, as towards the end, other actors certainly would have thought we were part of the same group. Roots of Evil is just poor frankly. I hear the park are improving the issues with time slots and maze queues. Sounds like they were too ambitious to start with and are now having damage limitations. Hopefully it doesn't hit them hard during half term. It's a shame that the two upcharge parts of the event are two of the weakest parts. Zones Swarm: Invasion definitely shouldn't be marketed as a scare zone. But the new music and the actors definitely add another layer to the whole area, which is very much needed during Fright Nights. I hope they keep it in future, but market it less as a zone and more as an added experience (Swarm Comes Alive if you will). The Amity / LycanThorpe High dance show is fine, but I still think it misses the mark a bit compared to last year. Outside of the show, the zones are okay, but a little bland. Amity High is okay thanks to being by Stealth, but LycanThorpe is pretty dead to be honest. Creek Freaks Unchained is great still. I imagine it struggles when busy, and I'd rather it not be like a very mini outdoor maze, but it works very well, and there's lots of good theming about. Still prefer it to the maze. Fearstival Arena is definitely my favourite area. They were enforcing the one way system where it was busier, but when quieter they didn't mind. All in all, it's a really good area, but one where you get more out of it by stopping and interacting with the actors. You can walk through and it be 'okay'. But if you interact with the actors, or let them interact with you, you see just how rich and deep every character is, and everything comes together really well. I think the zone suffers from its location, being a major pathway, so many people won't really want to stop and interact, they'll just walk through. So that means you lose some of the impact. In an ideal world, I think the stage should have gone where LycanThorpe High was, and then turn the Saw Alive pathway into the main zone. Would have helped it have much more impact, and give it more space, especially for the shows. I like how all the shows at the Fearstival arena are different. They tell a complete story, but you can still get it even when you see just one of them. And the mini fire and light show is good too. Saw the Crows a few times too, and they were decent. There's still issues with Fright Nights. Some of the audio overlays are nice, but I really hate the voice-overs. It just doesn't work for me (which is an added shame when the announcements are clever in tying many rides into a phobia). Lighting around the park is pretty dreadful in most places - white floodlights kill the atmosphere! And obviously there's issues of how the park copes when it's busy. And the fact that the key component of Fright Nights, the mazes, are rubbish is a bit of a sour note. But still, it was an enjoyable evening. I really hope that in the future the park keep with proper scare zones, and a show or two, to compliment a selection of mazes. I still maintain that if the quality is right, paying for mazes isn't a bad thing, but Thorpe will always have to balance that with at least one free maze to make it.

That'll be the same reason that they haven't used it for a proper maze since it became I'm a Celeb... It's difficult to use the I'm a Celeb / Jungle Escape route for a maze. One of the reasons Vulcan Peak was a hooded maze was to hide that. And when they changed it so part of the route wasn't a hooded maze, it very much felt like you were walking through I'm a Celeb, not a maze. Even if the park didn't want to keep Jungle Escape, they would have had to rip out all of Jungle Escape and build a maze in there. Something like that is not cheap, nor quick. They certainly wouldn't have been able to turn around a good quality maze in the timeframe they had. Again, cost and time would be a prohibiting issue. I wonder how well ventilated a marquee can be made too. Skin Snatchers is based inside the Towers, which is a huge old building which is well ventilated. That's the main thing, and that's pretty much what would have stopped Creek Freak from opening. I still am surprised it's open given I remember it being a very tight layout, but the building itself is suitable to run a scare attraction under Covid guidelines. The difference isn't that Towers were more willing than Thorpe. The difference is that Towers have buildings which could fit the restrictions, Thorpe didn't. Simple as that.

Main issue would be ventilation I'd expect. Creepy Caves was designed to be well ventilated when it housed animals, and the area itself still will be. Creek Freak isn't the best building for ventilation - I believe it had many shutdowns last year because the smoke from the maze wasn't escaping. That would make it a nightmare to approve from a H&S perspective during Covid.

Forgot to add in my last post: the TPM Fright Nights meet last year was on Sunday this time last year, and it was totally fine. A couple of minor incidents I believe, but none of us had an complaints. So the park had improved in recent years.

I believe that they opted to have a lot of plain clothed officers and security guards this year, which could be why there might feel like less of a visible presence. The other issue is that if things do happen and they're needed, they're obviously off park, so it seems like there's less. This would be particularly true yesterday when there's lot of incidents happening. This could be completely wrong, but I remember hearing something about there being some planning issues to do with the fencing, and that the council will only let it be a certain height, etc. And there's limitations as to what the park can do with it as it's technically a fence that is owned and maintained by the council. As I say, that might not be the exact case, but I do know it's not a simple case of the park can repair / replace it how they see fit. From what I understand, the park did put a big cap on number yesterday (I believe it's less than half the usual capacity they would have for such a day before Covid). Impossible to say what the actual numbers were like without being there, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people did get in without tickets. Plus, with pass holders not having their prebooked tickets checked, that could also be a potential problem. I'm sure the park had lots of other measures in place that we will never know about, but for one reason or another, what has happened, happened. I'm sure there's plenty of things that the park's security team did to stop things being even worse than they were too. That's little consolation to anyone who was there and no doubt didn't get anything like a full experience of course. Whatever they tried didn't work well enough.

Walking Dead isn't closed because of its indoor pathways. Whilst at first it being indoors was a bigger problem (many Merlin indoor rides didn't open straight away as they figured out a best way to deal with it), I understand that there are other reasons for it. I don't know what exactly, but it wasn't the deciding factor. There would be two troublesome things with using the tunnel as part of the maze: 1. There's no way to control group flow. 2. There's no way of having actors in there, because of social distancing. With the first point, in theory at least the actors can slow groups down who are too close to catching up with the group in front (in practice that's a different matter, but yeah). With the tunnel, the only way the park can control social distancing is by letting one group in as the other leaves. Given the tunnel made a quarter of the previous length of the maze, that's not practical. With the second point, there's the obvious issue of it making the ending either worse. There's also the H&S side of it in that you have a 100m long pitch black tunnel with no staff in there. What happens if someone gets hurt and needs assistance? I'd imagine setting up CCTV in there would be easier said than done too. Because of the safety things, I don't think they re-routed to justify the upcharge. But it certainly helps, since it's a different experience in some ways. I don't disagree with the key point: using that tunnel as a queue isn't great, from a Covid/social distancing perspective, nor a guest experience perspective. I do get why they've chosen it though, and I do think it's the lesser evil in the sense of how the alternative would play out if the maze went through normally.

In the one sense, you can argue it's not any different to any other indoor queue line, which still exist. The reasons indoor mazes didn't run was a mixture of things: not enough space to incorporate actors and guests with social distancing, lack of appropriate ventilation, etc. An indoor queue line is very different to an indoor maze. And in all honesty, I would feel perfect fine in a Covid-sense queueing in there if everyone was wearing masks and social distancing (though I know this is unlikely). But yes, it's hard to disagree that it's an unusual choice all things considered. It's equally unusual that both outdoor mazes have crouch sections, which see many guests touch the sides / top for stability. Not something that's been mentioned a lot, but something that does make you wonder.

Luna Cinema makes more sense than a regular cinema, since everyone is in their cars. Food still can't be served after 10pm in either case there though. I do think the 10pm rule with parks is a little over the top. I do think the parks are also going a bit over the top with some of the closing schedules by the sounds of it, though I guess it's not worth the potential repercussions.

That's...not how it should be working. The park and site (bar hotel obvs) have to be clear by 10pm because of the government restrictions. The park closes at 9pm - this means that all queue lines are closed, and all the actors will start leaving the scare zones around then. Because some rides have long queues, the queue lines are advertised as closing from 8pm. This means if a ride has a 75 minute queue, it will close before 9pm. At a push they could go for closing it at 8.30pm (8.30pm plus 75minutes = 9.45pm, plus 15 minutes to get the people out the park), but realistically they probably want the ride to stop running at around 9.15-9.30pm so they can get people going towards the exit earlier, and buying merch too. They shouldn't be closing queues before 8pm (unless it has over a 2 hour queue I guess, though that's unlikely at Thorpe at the moment). I've heard it's all been a bit stupid at the moment, and not working out how it's been advertised on the website. The park closes at 9pm, all rides (bar the kids rides and Rumba Rapids) should be running until then at the earliest. The fact they seemingly are not is poor from the park really.

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.