jessica2

agreed I am pleased with this! It never made sense for me to have a random bitty unrelated land breaking up amity, bigger lands/themes have more impact.

I love Tulleys but I was picking between thorpe and tulleys this year, and decided that as Thorpe had 2 mazes I hadn't done and new shows etc and tulleys had no new mazes, it made more sense to go to thorpe. Agreed that tulleys needs a new maze to keep the interest, and perhaps consider retiring e.g. hellements.

I went yesterday and will do a more detailed review in the spoilers thread. I also wanted to echo JohnnyRocket's point above, I was very confused as to why the maze queues between 3-6pm were all a good hour or so long (so I imagine many people did not get them done in their timeslot) but when walking past the mazes at 7/8pm there was a 5-10 min queue. This is with the trio of mazes being sold out in both the afternoon and evening timeslots! Also- Thorpe telling people the maze queues were all 0 minutes on Saturday was definitely a load of rubbish as the app said 0 minutes for all of them despite them being around an hour. We did survival games last and interestingly it had a sign up to say to do it at the end of your slot, as it was 'very busy'. Makes me dread to think how it will cope on busier days assuming once the trio packages sell out more people will book one shots. Overall though despite that I thought it was the strongest fright nights in a very long time and I don't think any element/attraction was bad at all, which is a first, and we managed to do everything pretty much. Highlight had to be the crows, I love the theming and the atmosphere was spot on! But genuinely thought all the mazes were quality this year for different reasons, just a shame about the queueing but hey that's thorpe for you!

Same re first Sunday! Its always my choice too- I think the nice weather will certainly make it busier than usual though its now saying Saturday will be the warmest day. Is anyone going to press night on Thursday?

just as a practical update, I saw the evening maze ticket for this saturday and the 28th have sold out, I guess even when they're indoors people do prefer to do the mazes in the evening and are prepared to pay extra for it. This weekend is predicted to be good weather too so I imagine saturday will be heaving. I am due to go sunday but slightly concerned it will be packed! I think I will stick with an afternoon maze ticket regardless.

Hadn't seen anyone posting these yet but some pictures of fright nights construction on theme park guide: The front looks pretty cool. You can also hear the audio testing on the theme park guide page and it sounds cool if a little different to what I expected, hard to comment too much at this stage. I did notice some of the adverts on Facebook for the maze had very erm basic makeup going on and didn't look scary at all, I hope that the actors will actually look scary and not just like they've put on too much blusher/about to star in a school play/going on a trip down the shops. ...then there's this bus which I must admit I'm slightly puzzled by, at the moment you can't really see it much at all which slightly defeats the point of it. I guess we will see how covering the bus with these stands works into the dance show.

It wasn't super clear from the video, is this just some new/updated scenes rather than a complete overhaul?

Theme of new maze could be good as I guess scary/creepy dolls can be effective. Not sure how you make an entire maze out of it (e.g. in the attic at AT there is a toy scene which is cool) but I guess we will see. It does also put me off going to fright nights nowadays the fact that you get one chance (unless you're buying multiple entries) at having a good run through on a maze, so I tend to go on what I predict will be the quietest day (maybe the first Sunday), and STILL the couple of times I've gone I've ended up in a huge group with a load of teenagers and there's hardly any actors in most of the rooms hah. Go figure... I will say, mazes like asylum with strobes, loud noise and general chaos meant that, even though you were going through in quite large groups in a conga line, you still always got good scares and in a way it didn't matter so much about where you were in the group, it was still intense. I think thorpe may now be missing a maze which has an intensity like asylum (and to some extent creek freak) had, but who knows maybe stitches will bring that. Haven't done survival games so can't comment on that. I hope they do consider things like this when designing mazes, I.e. how will it perform in sub optimal conditions, rather than when one influencer goes round with the full cohort of actors.

Maybe not, but I do remember them saying this was the last year of amity high vs werewolves. I guess yes that's factually correct, but I had assumed it would be replaced by a new concept rather than something tacked on.

So hang on, they'll now have lycanthorpe, amity high and some sort of witch coven all together? This does feel a little random or even lazy, as a way to keep the lycanthorpe/amity thing going but chuck in a random extra element so it can be 'new' again.

On this one- the ember things look a bit like burnt/flaming feathers, and Icarus flew too close to the sun and his wings melted/burnt off. But I also may be looking into it too much. If they wanted to do a full on Icarus story, and then are unable to call it Icarus, perhaps they changed their mind. But flying too close to the sun does go with the tall height part.

When I saw the photos on thorpe park manias facebook page, I thought it looked like something off of a run down pier! Baffling. Agreed the outside I thought looked great... it seems such a shame to cover that up like this. Whoever makes decisions at thorpe needs to give their heads a wobble! I'll try to remain positive but I think its going to be dire.

I saw this.. I'm wondering does anyone know what the safety checks like at WW? Are they comparable to say Thorpe?

I found I always had to explain to the people I was with what the theme was, as usually friends would ride it and say afterwards they had no clue what the theme was and ask me to explain lol. It was the same for inferno at Thorpe. I personally like thought-out theming, so I would like the use of screens, effects, props etc in the queue line. The red river would be ideal, if it cant be dyed then perhaps steam effects or some sort of lighting could work instead. No need to reinvent the wheel though. I agree I'm less keen on a full on pre-show if its not optional. Having said that, the swarm's screens seem to be broken or at least not on most of the time so I would say if they go down the screen route, to make sure its not like they work for 6 months then are off forever more.

Ah- I should have bought for next year then while I was there! Good tip for 2024 as Mat says hah. A complete retheme of the hayride would be great IMO!