Inferno

This is something that's been playing on my mind for the past 3 years or so. Whenever I visit a theme park these days, there's usually one or two moments throughout the day where I feel like the odd one out. At 30 years of age, I feel old. I look round me when stood in a queue, and most of the other guests are teenagers or adults with kids. Yes, there are a few couples or older groups etc who visit, but they're a rare sight. Usually the feeling passes after a moment, and I brush it off with my usual "who cares, I love theme parks!" take on the situation. But this year at Fright Nights, it really hit me. For most of the day, the feeling stuck with me. I know it wasn't the case, but I felt like the oldest person on the entire park. Nearly everyone queueing around me was in their teens (except my theme park buddy who is a year younger than me), and going through the mazes with a group of young teenagers did make me feel like an old man, reminiscing about mazes from over 10 years ago, when many of the other guests would have been toddlers. As we head towards next weekend, me and Mrs Inferno are heading to the fireworks at Alton Towers, and I have a very faint feeling of dread building - am I getting too old for all this stuff? I've always been a firm believer in just going for it, and if anyone ever asked me the question "am I too old to go to a theme park", I would say absolutely not! But just lately, I'm beginning to understand why people might feel that way. I'd love to know if anyone else ever feels similar, and what your take is on being "too old for theme parks"?

I think overall it’s probably been mixed. For me personally, unfortunately it’s not been the best season. My experience at fright nights was really bad, and I have found the ride lineup to be getting a little stale now if I’m honest. Black Mirror was a cool addition, but the hype was over within a matter of days. It’s the same with DBGT and Walking Dead, to me they were never really that good as new attractions to the lineup, so it feels like the same lineup that it was 10 years ago (minus Loggers and Slammer). I think it’s well overdue time Thorpe finally got a proper new attraction to generate a bit of a buzz, and to freshen it up a bit. Interested to hear others’ thoughts on the year!

I think it does still include the flat rides. One thing to note however is that the mazes don’t have Fastrack queue lines - your ultimate fastrack ticket allows you entry to the main queue, so you may be queueing a while for the mazes. You should get shorter queues for the rides though.

With the mixed reviews Fright Nights have received this year, I thought it might be interesting to hear what you'd change about the event if you were given the task by the park. I'm not talking about wild aspirations here - no Halloween themed RMCs built for FN '22 please! 😂 Imagine you're in Thorpe's position, and this is your brief: You have a limited budget (same budget as 2021) to deliver Fright Nights 2022 There must be "something new and unique" that can be marketed by the park There's limited resources to get this done - imagine how this is in reality, a small team to deliver the event What would your realistic Fright Nights '22 look like? What would be different, and what would you keep from this year? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - My 2022 Fright Nights would look like this! Creek Freak would return as Creek Freak Extreme, and would receive a boost in actor numbers from the closure of Unchained. Trailers would return, and somehow marketed as a sequel, with a new room 21 and small changes throughout. Hell Cell would open in the events space - I mean, we've seen the trailer, this is the real deal! The front of the marquee would be themed to a prison, and it would be a heavily red lit, strobe-filled nightmare search lights throughout the beach area. A new scare zone would open where the stage currently is, based mainly on whatever the 2022 attraction is going to be (a bit like the Welcoming), and would be used as a marketing tool showcasing the new theme. Nemesis Inferno and Colossus would get some sort of Hell themed overlays because of hell cell, taking advantage of their enclosed indoor stations. The Crows would return. The fire/Light Show, birthday bash stage area and Swarm Invasion would go for budget reasons. We can’t have it all! Flat rides would have smoke machines and/or coloured lighting, along with new music and dispatch audio The 3 main Mazes would be max £5 each Parking would be free to improve guest experience (perhaps ticket prices are slightly raised to compensate? Better coloured lighting around the park pathways.

⚠️ Apologies, negative post ⚠️ Thought I'd share my thoughts on my 2021 FN visit. I think it was one of the worst theme park visits I've ever had. Really, really disapointing. Without going in to too much detail, here are the basics: Crows was a nice surprise, really well themed and offered something different (for free). It was too busy to be 'scary', but it's more a US style scare zone which I thought was a good addition. Platform 15 wasn't bad. Not worth a tenner, and it's ready to retire now, but I was glad to have a last go and see it off. Some nice lighting and a clearer storyline this time. It's clear how much effort went in to building Trailers, but there were very few actors in my run through, the experience was very rushed and lacklustre. I think if this opened a few years ago as part of the admission price it would have been quite good, but now they are charging I expected more. I would have loved to have tried this when it opened, because it appears to now be in "clear the queue as fast as possible" mode. Creek Freak was an embarrassing waste of time and money, and is a shadow of what it was when it opened. Hardly an actor to be seen. Compared to how this was 2 years ago, this year's version of creek was dreadful. None of the mazes are worth anywhere near £10 a run-through. Thorpe's mazes aren't high enough quality to warrant an upcharge at all. The Swarm's scare zone basically didn't exist. only 3 actors when we were in the area. Didn't have chance to watch Legacy unfortunately. Our couple of night rides were good, as always. Throwback to how TP used to be. Scarefest wiped the floor with Fright Nights this year, and they didn't even hype it up or add anything new. I'd love to see a slight return to FN's roots - ditch the ridiculous upcharge for mazes, introduce more smoke machines and coloured lights around the park and in the ride areas, and I'd love to see the return of the ride overlays they used to do, to make the rides more part of the event. So sorry for the negativity, but I'm really, really disappointed and feel ripped-off by my visit if I'm honest. FN has become too expensive for the experience they're offering in my opinion. I think the team that put the event together did a great job. Trailers is a great idea and a beautiful maze, but the event just doesn’t seem to work smoothly when it gets busy. Operations let it down

True. Reclaiming land from a lake is probably even more expensive though I’d imagine, and they’ve got an entire island already reclaimed just sitting there. By that logic I agree it would seem odd if they decided to “delete” X:/NWO’s building (+slammer) for a new ride, but it would be a great place for one in the long term wouldn’t it, and would really change the park, rather than just “slapping a new ride on the side of it”, which supposedly didn’t work financially in Swarm’s case. This is a long shot, but perhaps management are thinking of investing in a major multi-year change / rejuvenation in the existing park by finally replacing X, Slammer, Loggers, potentially even Storm surge and Derren too, then in the future expanding the “new Thorpe Park” by building something out on to the reclaimed island behind Stealth? It might sound far-fetched, but this is the company building multiple entire Legoland parks from scratch. They can afford these sorts of investments if they want to. With the London Resort threat apparently looming, this would make a statement. 🤷‍♂️ Doubtful I know. It’s fun to speculate though isn’t it. I bet it all just turns out to be another f****** walk-through thing.

It’s difficult though isn’t it. I bet a lot of people wanted a “throwback” show of some sort, because it sounds fantastic - and that’s exactly what they’ve done. The thing is, a lot of Thorpe’s audience were toddlers (or not even born) when FN started, and I’d like to bet that most people at the park on a given night have only visited FN once or twice, maybe even never before. (I’m pretty sure even Mr Silkstone himself has said he only started going to FN in the last few years, and didn’t get to do Asylum) A lot of guests simply don’t care about the details either - for example I drag Mrs Inferno to all sorts of scare events, and she enjoys them but I don’t think she could name many past mazes or place the theme tunes tbh. Most people aren’t all that bothered, they just want to enjoy it for what it is at the time. I think this sort of show was really only going to appeal to a few hardcore fans, and mean nothing at all to everyone else. I love that Thorpe have put it on to be honest, and from what I’ve seen online it looks like a great effort. Given a “throwback light show” brief, I couldn’t have done any better! I’d have probably added a big screen and had a defined ending of some sort, but really I think they have done a good job, especially if they (I assume) had a tight budget and short timeframe. If it’s not well received, it was worth a go. They tried something. Looking forward to seeing it in person this week

Yeah the Perfect Day is an odd one isn’t it. I remember hearing it a few times at FN that year because it was the theme song for that terrible film, but it doesn’t stand out to me as iconic at all, especially as there were only a few roaming actors. I would have said Asylum’s “other” theme tune was more iconic than that to be honest. Or maybe Studio 13’s queue music (although hardly a banger for the show, granted!) The one that stuck in my mind as “THE” Fright Nights song was always this one from My Bloody Valentine. (Skip to 1:25 🥲) It’s all subjective though isn’t it 😊 I guess it depends what you hear when you’re at the park, what you were doing at the time it played, and what sticks in your memory! I’ve had a huge wave of nostalgia listening to those just now! I miss the “old days” (not that it was that long ago!)

I’m going next week so really looking forward to seeing it in person. From the videos I’ve seen online though, it seems like a good show - something different at Thorpe. It’s a bit unusual isn’t it? I think it’s the ending for me that makes it odd, and the lack of crowd. I always think Thorpe struggle with shows. Apart from their fireworks years ago, their shows are always a bit ‘out there’ and nearly always poorly attended. I have a lot of memories of the Sun Scream shows, like the bike stunt show in the arena and the various live music things they’ve done in the past, they all have very small audiences for some reason, and always seem a bit of an after thought compared to the rides and mazes. even recently, Big Top Showtime barely had a crowd ever. Shame isn’t it.

Hope you're having a good day there today Kelly! Let us know how you got on with this.

Has anyone heard anything about Legacy?

😲 Wow - I think you might be on to something Josh! Coaster I think I agree with you about TWD though. The X:\NWO text on that poster is making me think it’s maybe something to do with X too, especially as it’s in a pyramid. 🤷‍♂️ Thats pretty Egypty already I guess? The Walking Dead as a brand is pretty dead in the water now isn’t it. Seems strange if they’d spent all the money theming X to that, only to pull it out a few years later, but I guess the same can be said for scare mazes to some extent, and they’re sometimes only up for a matter of weeks before being scrapped. 2022 is only a few months away, but they could pull off another X retheme over winter if they really wanted to. If it is X:\Pyramidz - Can we have Revenge of the Mummy scale theming please! 🙏 (ever the optimist) As for Old Town - it’s got to be the site for a big 2023 coaster hasn’t it. It must be!

I’m kind of just realising that FN’s 10th anniversary (& Exp10’s opening year) being 10 years ago, which means that half of FN’s history has taken place since then….. I realise that is is obvious, but wow I’m getting so old! 😳 Exp10 opening feels so recent to me. I completely agree with all that’s been said about looking back at the past mazes fondly - I don’t think perhaps the likes of Asylum would be quite as well received today as it was at the time. Really Asylum was little more than a chain-link strobe maze with a lit-up sign out the front and a great theme tune. But wow was it scary. I seem to remember scare mazes making me (and everyone else queueing) genuinely nervous. They, especially Asylum, seemed to have a legendary reputation which I think just added to it. I think as well the hands-on-shoulders thing, and the bizarre group photo (with all the random strangers in your run through) and briefing on the ‘stage’ in front of the queue before going through the iconic blue door added to it too - it felt like such an event! I think we expect a lot more from a scare maze these days, unlike a few years ago when really we didn’t expect much more than simply to be scared. Now we seem to expect a full story to be told and for it to be well themed throughout - the bar has been raised massively, and quite rightly so since they now charge for a runthrough. I think that’s why Experiment 10 and Cabin In The Woods (and the towers mazes) impressed so much at the time, because it added so much more to what most people were used to seeing from a maze, including the likes of Tulley’s at the time. I think expectations are just extremely different now. Mazes have stories and are generally really well themed. Big Top was a little different for me because it almost felt like a slight step back to how mazes used to be - it was more simple in what it was trying to do. Even the beloved Big Top though was a far cry from how mazes used to be a few years before. The way the BT’s soundtrack evolved throughout the maze, and the work that went in to the set designs, it was nothing like the old mazes at all - it was so much more, and clearly had a much bigger budget. I don’t think there’s any going back to how it was, not without people calling it lazy. I think scare mazes are having a bit of an identity crisis at the moment. Most mazes aren’t built simply to be “scary” anymore - they’re really more of a scenic theatrical experience aren’t they? (I’m not complaining about that - just kind of rambling/realising) A good point was made earlier about the “10th birthday” being celebrated by a plastic cake being wheeled about on a trolley and a maze with “10” written on it - and that was great back then! Now everyone expects a lot more. ———— Tl;dr - I think the unwritten ‘definition of a scare maze’ has changed too much for Asylum and co to be as well received as they used to be. People expect more now. (sorry for my rambling post 🙄) Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Oooohhhhh - Very interesting! I wonder if these are the scenes in a new cinema style maze? Could they even be doing a series of 'tributes' to mazes from the past? That would help stop unfair direct comparisons to the originals. Beyond the chair - Something to do with the dentist chair in Containment maybe? Nightmare on Staines Street - Asylum vibes? Vulcan Voodoo - Vulcan Peak tribute? (why..) Ship Happens - The Curse tribute? Or Saw Alive throwback (as it was on a boat)? Hell Cell - Hellgate / exp10 combo? Or could it be referring to the prison in the walking dead? Seven Dolls - Got to be something to do with Se7en? Bozo's Playzone - The big top showtime type thing? Breakout at Brainsbury's - (love this) Maybe a supermarket zombie breakout themed maze? Very different!

Platform is a surprise - for some reason I thought last year was its last? I’d love to see a Studio 13 style throwback maze in the jungle building, packed with references to some of the best mazes from the past. A return of the Big Top would go down very well too I think! intrigued to see if they do anything special for the 20th, but I’m not holding my breath 🙄

Surely they need something with far more capacity than this (likely) single-train coaster is going to offer? Queues at Chessington can be unbearable with few high-throughput rides to offer any relief.

I wish they'd use the amazing "nee naw" IMAScore music that's sampled in this:

That's really, really interesting. Quite surprising to see that all 4 parks were all only up about a million(ish) visitors p/a in 2019 compared to their opening years. That's mad. Nearly all of the last 7 Thorpe "investments" are hilariously bad when you compare them to the last 7 of all the other parks. It's quite telling that they consider some of those to be "investments" when compared to the others. Bouncezilla is listed as an 'investment' for example, while no mention of the other inflatables & small things elsewhere 🙄

That's extremely disappointing that a couple of days in, it's already in this state. I hope not, but I fear Black Mirror might suffer the same fate before long. It seems that the most consistent UK attractions are the ones that don't rely on anything 'special' happening - the coasters for example: As long as the trains continue to run round the track, the experience is much the same. as soon as effects start coming in to play though, it's unfortunately all down hill from opening day.

Completely agree about the headsets. Extra cleaning or not, surely this is still a silly risk to take at the moment, pressing at the same sweaty plastic box against hundreds of people's faces every day? Ew. I'm just trying to imagine 'riding' DBGT without headsets... Surely it's literally pointless 😆 It's bad enough with them. An app sounds like a good idea. I guess it would rely on everyone's device somehow playing the video at the same time, which could be a challenge given the lack of signal on busy days. If they turned the queue in to a tech support troubleshooting session prior to riding it could work! I really just can't see the point of opening it again to be honest. This would have been a good opportunity/excuse to quietly close it down without too much fanfare. Unless maybe I'm wrong.. Do people actually enjoy it?

What's always baffled me about the entrance is how long it can often take to get inside the park. Alton Towers can get you through the turnstiles in minutes. Yes, the Monorail does drip-feed guests in a controlled manner, but even the queue for the monorail at the other end is nearly always much faster than queueing to get in at Thorpe. AT can process far more people, far more quickly. I kind of agree with Marc, for me the issue isn't with the buildings or how it looks (although yeah, wouldn't complain if they did something different..) It's more about how dreadful the first impressions often are. The big logo sign is pretty cool imo, and the screen is quite good. It's the queues and temporary "f*** it that will do for now" nature of everything that's the problem. Is it just a case of more throughput needed maybe (somehow)?

Well my first thought is "ugh please no", but considering Zodiac and Detonator were basically funfair rides, they fit in nicely.. I guess they could keep them (or similar) and try to make them fit in?

That could be cool - do we have any reason to think this may be something 'special'? It looks like a jetty to me.

This hasn't aged well, has it. Both of these things seemed better before 😐

Wow, same here for DBGT. I thought Covid would be a good cover story for closing it down for a second season, conveniantly phasing it out without drawing too much attention to the closure. Surely Ghost Train isn't bringing in any money, especially considering the number of staff it takes to run it, plus the additional cost of actors for Black Mirror? Does anyone even think of DBGT when they think of Thorpe, really? Good news Black Mirror is finally opening.