Coaster

I was posting from the Saturday and the second post you have quoted is from Sunday, what is your point? Yesterday was much quieter!

The ratio of fastrack and/or RAP to main queue is terrible tonight.

I really dislike the way people take artificial lights into the mazes when filming. Surely that completely ruins the experience they're trying to create as well as revealing too much?

It's the first picture of the ride's demolition that has come online so I thought it was worth sharing on here, that's all. On that note though, Pleasure Beach did say it was carefully dismantled...

Isn't the purpose of these press events to take pictures/videos, promote the event and give reviews? It seems strange to spend the entire evening in a bar/not posting any reviews if you've been invited to one of these events.

This picture has surfaced online today; NOTE: This picture does not belong to me.

It's not better than nothing though, it's actually pretty poor that they think this is acceptable to sell as an "event" after weeks of people asking online about the passholder preview night. It was a staple part of Fright Nights from 2013 onwards and this just feels like they want to sell the passes with the expectations of similar events but when it comes to actually running the events they can't be bothered.

Passholder preview "evening" is from 3pm to 5pm? That really stinks of doing the absolute bare mininum, passholder night used to be 6/6:30pm - 10pm and it was the entire park open exclusively, not just letting people go in the mazes during normal opening hours. They sell the passes with the promise of exclusive events but this is just lazier than lazy. 3pm to 5pm is no use to me and I suspect many others who are at work, and 2 hours wouldn't be enough to justify a visit anyway.

Thorpe Park have updated the description of Creak Freak Nightmare on the website; https://www.thorpepark.com/fright-nights/creek-freak-massacre They really are pushing the "most extreme maze ever" line, will it really be scarier than Experiment 10? I am confused by the dates, does this mean the maze will not be open for the first weekend of Fright Nights?!

Blackpool Pleasure Beach was fun today after a 5 month break, I enjoyed getting back on the rides with The Big One being the highlight. Even after riding many coasters elsewhere, The Big One is still very special and one of my favourite rides ever. I am still yet to find a better first drop and the ride was flying round, absolutely incredible coaster and I'll never tire of it. It was running two full trains all day, excellent. Speedy Pass unfortunately continues to destroy the ride's operations by causing the trains to stack and making extra work for the platform staff which then causes the throughput to plummet. The Speedy Passes had been massively oversold today with the queue down to the bottom of the exit path from midday onwards, I saw two full trains of Speedy Passes sent as well as multiple rows in the others. The new outlet in the Sky Force shop is being used to upsell Big One Speedy Passes at the expense of guest experience, it's worse than ever now. It was noticeable that on the occasions where there was a break in SP users, dispatches were much better. Disgraceful that they allow fast pass to slow down the rate at which trains are dispatched whilst also blocking the exit path. The ride isn't designed for it, total mess! On the plus side, the new Big One soundtrack is excellent and the retro feel of it suits the ride perfectly. It adds a great atmosphere around the ride's queueline/station and is a brilliant improvement IMO. I rode Icon once today and didn't enjoy it at all, the layout is good but it's taken much too slowly IMO. I appreciate why a lot of people enjoy the smooth nature of the ride but it's not for me, there are other far better examples of smooth coasters elsewhere. In the interests of saying something positive about it, the soundtrack was nice and loud! Valhalla remains dreadful, however River Caves (interior) was looking fantastic with audio levels good, scenes looking great and most of the animations working. There was some lovely new timed lighting in the first scene as well as a new sound effect and the inside felt refreshed in general whilst retaining the classic feel of the ride. Brilliant! Grand National was noticeably bumpier than on my last ride in April, but I still really enjoyed it. Sat in the back row. Park hours were very stingy, 6pm close on a relatively busy sunny Saturday is no good. Big Dipper and Infusion went down to one train towards the end of the day. The Noah's Ark park exit is looking very tired and could do with some TLC! We had a look at Boulevard Hotel and the staff were willing to take us for a look into one of the rooms, I have to say the entire hotel looks incredible. The park looks and feels worse than it ever has done in my opinion, devoid of any of the character, charm and colour it used to have and many of the rides/areas look in need of TLC. Whilst the staff were fantastic throughout the park, unfortunately Speedy Pass made queueing for The Big One a misery and reiterated to me why I spent 5 months away from the place. It's not good enough when an older Arrow hypercoaster runs 3 trains with 30 second dispatches, the SP system on Big One is an absolute joke. Overall I had a good day at Pleasure Beach and it was great to get back on some of my favourite rides, but IMO there are still many issues which detract from the overall enjoyment of the park.

I'm intrigued as to why there is the red canvas on the outside of the old Loggers station/Creek Freak maze?

It'll be the wildest scare maze in the wilderness.

I hope we see changes to Do or Die, it wasn't exactly special last year. Also what does Do or Die mean? Do what?

I miss the sugar puff adverts. Or was that Chessington?

I think parks should generally offer a well-rounded lineup but Thorpe is another story altogether really, I agree they have become very mismatched with removing family atttactions but opening different (poorer ones). My point is that I don't think parks should totally alienate the family market by closing all the rides when they have a Halloween event on. Maybe in the evening it makes sense, but during the day it just seems an excuse to cut costs. That said, Thorpe have basically alienated most target audiences already one way or another.

I'm not so sure, not everyone who visits is there for Fright Nights and the standard ride offering shouldn't really be affected IMO.

As good as Big Top was in 2016/17, let's not forget its debut year in 2015. It was advertised to the hilt and looked incredible from the outside but was one of the most underwhelming/cheap feeling mazes of all time IMO. Suppose it was more-or-less an entirely new maze in 2016, though. The marketing for this new maze seems weird, they're pushing the whole "most intense maze ever" thing and it looks like it's their main focus for this year's event but there is no mention of it on the website homepage and the Fright Nights page doesn't promote it as the focus. Also they sent an email with a "behind the scenes" preview but the link just went to the generic Fright Nights page. One of the pictures on the email was old Loggers Leap queueline theming (not that it really matters, if it's there they may as well use it). I am intrigued by this new maze as the idea could be good and I like that it's an original concept. I just hope Thorpe can deliver what they've promised.

Ah, 2011. Easily my favourite year of Fright Nights, the excitement surrounding Experiment 10 at the time was huge! I think for this year, at this point I'm just hoping that Creek Freak Massacre is a good, solid maze because the rest of the lineup looks poor. There used to be such a huge buzz about Thorpe during Fright Nights; the mazes around the park, the audio, sights, smells, it was such an incredible event and it just feels marketing-led and poorly executed nowadays. At least Inferno in the dark is always good.

Can we also bring the Wild Mouse back whilst we're at it?

I just don't really see it as progress. We have lost arguably the UK's best pirate ship and they are removing another of the park's only thrill rides (as well as the only inverting ride at the park). Albeit, Rameses is past its best now. This new concept for a drop tower looks good but in my opinion the above two rides make a more wholesome ride lineup than one drop tower. If Buccaneer returns or is replaced suitably then fantastic, I just don't think it's likely.

Of course it's great that we are potentially getting a fun new themed drop tower, but I'm looking at the entire picture and circumstances of the park rather than just the new ride. Another thing to consider is will it fit in with the rest of Forbidden Kingdom in the way that Rameses did?

It doesn't seem likely to return given the track record Merlin parks have with attractions closing "temporarily" and then never re-opening. Happy to be proved otherwise!

So we're losing two flats (Buccaneer and Rameses) and only getting one?

It's a shame when you think that there will only be 2 fully indoor horror mazes this year. Remember when we had Asylum, Experiment 10, Se7en, The Curse and Saw Alive as the event lineup. Or Cabin in the Woods, My Bloody Valentine, Asylum, Saw Alive and The Blair Witch Project as a more recent example. It's a joke that they still advertise Fright Nights as the UK's premier Halloween event, regardless of how good this year's new maze is the others don't really do anything for me, Platform 15 is good after it gets dark but when you look at the lineup we used to get, this year's is very sparse. Also, Thorpe Park is one of the UK's biggest theme parks, it's not really acceptable that they "don't have anyone who knows how to build The Big Top" when independent events are running 5+ full scale mazes. It was an incredibly popular maze and the park just can't deliver it? That's just sad.

Thorpe buying rides with unsuitably low throughput does ring a bell in fairness. Sorry.