Fright Nights 2020 - No Spoilers

[MattyMoo]

16 hours ago, jessica2 said:

Looking forward to my first 2020 visit to Thorpe, and the first day of fright nights/fearstival, on Friday! Does anyone know when press night is this year?

 

It's tomorrow, just waiting for my confirmation of attendance thanks to "nearly 400 followers" on my instagram.

[jessica2]

1 hour ago, MattyMoo said:

 

It's tomorrow, just waiting for my confirmation of attendance thanks to "nearly 400 followers" on my instagram.

Super jel ha. Bet you can't wait for the coveted #sociallydistanced selfie with Gemma Collins and Katie Price, probably the most scary attractions there!

 

Here’s some progress photos (not mine) from thrills and attractions uk’s Facebook page showing the fearstival arena, creek freak unchained, and the roots of evil board for anyone interested.

[MattyMoo]

I think the word of the day for Fright Nights and Scarefest is repurposing 🙃

[JoshC.]

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...

 

 

[MattyMoo]

Can't wait for press night tonight, see you there lads.

[Ringo]

Are TPM not invited to the event today?

[MattyMoo]

3 hours ago, Ringo said:

Are TPM not invited to the event today?

 

👀 👀 👀

 

Classified information.

[Ringo]

22 minutes ago, MattyMoo said:

 

👀 👀 👀

 

Classified information.

Obviously so 😂 

It was the way Josh put

5 hours ago, JoshC. said:

we believe that there is a Press event tonight

It’s common knowledge there’s an event this evening

[MattyMoo]

See you there, I'll be wearing my TPWW mask and SLKSTN x XNWO hoodie.

[JoshC.]

5 hours ago, Ringo said:

Are TPM not invited to the event today?

 

2 hours ago, Ringo said:

It’s common knowledge there’s an event this evening

 

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

[Glitch]

From looking at the videos here's my takeaways, I will probably go at some point this weekend.

The event looks really good in terms of scarezones and entertainment, I think Thorpe will continue the maze payment  model from now on as theoretically queues should be lower whilst there is still enough entertainment on park so that you know you are at Fright nights rather than  just being at a park with mazes generating less complaints of log queues for average attractions. 

 

My only issue is what is the point of having as enthusiasts and Thorpe alike call it a 'VIP& Press Night', I think the agency have failed here as all I see on social is 1 strictly dancer attend and then post about it. I always thought with these events the aim was to drum up as much coverage as possible however tonight that has only been the case for enthusiast sites.. Take Tulley's for example, I certainly don't think it would be at the same level of popularity if they didn't have a great influencer and PR strategy with the likes of the Zoella vlogs bringing in millions of views yearly.

 

So then what is it for? Enthusiast fan pages? Who will already be going and spending there money and have highly engaged enthusiast followers who have already bought their tickets and their maze tickets and so if anything your loosing revenue here as do you think the quality is good enough that these enthusiasts (if your page is invited) will be buying tickets to go through the mazes again.... somehow I don't think so, more of a once is enough stick to scarezones instead demographic. And then it's also shocking to see Merlin working with TPWW but I guess he has the family market. And then we have some influencers who may not have the followers but put a lot of time and passion into creating Thorpe positive content being left off the guestlist, just seems like a bit of a slap in the face to them TBH.

 

Perhaps this year it would of been best to have a no camera policy so everyone is experiencing it themselves for the first time rather than making a decision to buy an expensive ticket based on POV's, which I think if anything will put more people off the high ticket price items.

 

Just my thoughts, I look forward to visiting over the weekend.

 

[Matt 236]

Just a heads up for anyone that might be visiting Fright Nights this year, queue closing policy.

 

Due to current operations and guidelines, the park will now close queue lines before park close especially if such attractions have long queues. This is so they can clear the park by 9pm and site by 10pm.

 

Take Saw for example, if it has a 75 minute queue towards the end of the night they would close the queue line at 7:45pm or earlier. We just missed this and did Colossus instead where we went on the second to last train of the night.

[JoshC.]

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.

[LK_]

Is towers doing the same for their queue lines? 

[Ringo]

7 minutes ago, LK_ said:

Is towers doing the same for their queue lines? 

Closing early yes, they have it on the app but reports are even they closed some before the advertised time over the weekend 

[Glitch]

Yet Luna cinema can run films with a start time of 9.45pm, makes no sense.

[JoshC.]

37 minutes ago, Glitch said:

Yet Luna cinema can run films with a start time of 9.45pm, makes no sense.

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. 

[Cal]

3 hours ago, LK_ said:

Is towers doing the same for their queue lines? 

 

On Friday, everything remained open till 9 with the exception of Thirteen, Smiler and Wickerman as they all had queues. Them 3 rides showed as 'queue at capacity' on the app. 

 

On Sunday all rides on the app / queue line entrances showed as closed from around half 8, however they were still letting us get in queue lines right up until 9. I assume the rides with queues however did close the queues early again.

[JoshuaA]

On 10/12/2020 at 4:39 PM, Glitch said:

Yet Luna cinema can run films with a start time of 9.45pm, makes no sense.

Yeah cos it aint like people are in cars or anything (so nobody walking around, and really no risk of transmission).. Makes plenty of sense to me lol

[MattyMoo]

Twitter would seem to suggest that today is "that Sunday".

 

Really don't envy the staff and actors tonight :(

[Cal]

Today sounds and looks pretty horrendous. Thoughts go out to all the staff and actors working tonight and I hope no one was injured. 

 

It does amaze me how this has been allowed to get as bad as it has. This happens every year, and every year it seems they are not prepared for it. 

[Ringo]

Went yesterday and was surprised there was no visible police, usually you see them walking round with the parks security.

 

tonight sounds terrible, the frontline staff have been let down by management if reports are accurate. It’s also common knowledge that for years a % of that group get in via Monks walk - why haven’t the park done something about the fencing.

[Glitch]

It's a real shame. Capacities are set so the online booking system can't be 'oversold' as such. However you would have thought lessons would have be learnt by previous years. Perhaps police are required to patrol the entrances to Monks for example if that were the case.

 

[Jack]

This evening was truly horrible. It was almost as if everybody else on park was constantly on edge and allowing ‘them’ to do whatever the hell they wanted to make life easier. It was as if everybody was aware and subconsciously thinking the same things, but nobody said or did anything about it because they come in such large groups. 
 

it’s always the second Sunday... and I was a complete fool to think COVID would stop them.
 

Queue jumping is the least of staff worries, I witnessed two fights tonight. One of which lead to a dad, who had been queuing for no less than 90 minutes for inferno with his two children, having to leave the queue line limping and with a bloody nose. It was extremely disturbing to witness.

I don’t envy anybody working at the park tonight, however I hope they are all as safe and well as they can be.

 

Thorpe need to sort it out, it’s beyond a joke now. 
 

I can confidently confirm that them being on park was the scariest part of tonight and that’s coming from a 6ft5 man. I didn’t feel safe. I dread to think how all of the younger groups and families felt.

[JoshC.]

12 hours ago, Ringo said:

Went yesterday and was surprised there was no visible police, usually you see them walking round with the parks security.

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.

12 hours ago, Ringo said:

 

tonight sounds terrible, the frontline staff have been let down by management if reports are accurate. It’s also common knowledge that for years a % of that group get in via Monks walk - why haven’t the park done something about the fencing.

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.