Fright Nights 2022

[MattyMoo]

Agree on the 9pm finish being too early - we were on park from 10am and to be honest, didn't think we'd last the day - but it's amazing how you get second wind once night-time falls - all of a sudden we had 30 mins left to go of the evening from nowhere!

[coasterverse]

3 hours ago, MattyMoo said:

Agree on the 9pm finish being too early - we were on park from 10am and to be honest, didn't think we'd last the day - but it's amazing how you get second wind once night-time falls - all of a sudden we had 30 mins left to go of the evening from nowhere!

 

This even happens to me sometimes with the 5pm closes. Get all the rides done early on in the day, look at the clock and it's only midday. Next time you look it's 4:55pm and panicking about whether to round your day off with Stealth or SAW!

[MattyMoo]

2 hours ago, coasterverse said:

whether to round your day off with Stealth or Swarm!

 

Corrected it for you 😃

[JoshuaWAHH3]

In hindsight for Fright Nights, I would like to outline some things that really stuck out for me when I visited:

 

• Scarezones: These I thought were class- my friends and I found ourselves really enjoying these. Death Doors was way more fun that expected, The Crows of Mawkin Meadow scared us more than any of the mazes did, and Creek Freak Unchained harassed me throughout the entire park. Graduation Sucks I believe is also a pivotal attraction for the park, the show is cool and the interactions with younger guest stood out. It is not scary, but a lot of the younger guests were loving chatting to the actors- it is a perfect tamer-side scare zone.

 

• Legacy and Birthday Bash compliment the scare zones well- I believe the atmosphere around the park is actually good with this stuff. Maybe it is a little nostalgia when looking back at past years? Theming has been very light since like 2013- though the soundtracks and music around the park was crap though, so that is a fair comment. But I would argue the park has more atmosphere than it has in a while, especially when you have a bunch of scare zones scattered around. In previous years they have been dead set on the mazes and nothing else, I do appreciate Fright Nights giving us some nice scare zones and shows- that is WAY more than Towers is offering.

 

• The Mazes: This is what lets the event down a little for me- you have a really strong maze in Creek Freak, and a fun but a little short maze in Survival Games, and a meh one. Do not get me started on Terminal. This lineup for me is really just okay- it gets worse when I paid £32 for it. I found the scare zones stole the show this year, and they were free! I think charging £32 for quite short mazes with varying quality is simply not worth it, and you are better off just visiting another event for the same price if you are deadset on mazes. I think if the prices were lowered I would be less pissed, but I felt my £32 purchase was one that I kind of regret, I do not think £8 (that is discounted) was spent well with Terminal, I think Thorpe are pricing their audience away from them with Scare Mazes, especially those hardcore into them. There is plenty of other events in the neighbourhood and Survival Games is fun but it is not a very layered attraction- in particular with its theming. £32 can not be justified.

 

So overall, I think this is the best Merlin event this year for Halloween. It does have its problems, mostly with pricing with the mazes. But I do think the Scare Zones really made me enjoy this year.

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[ML27]

11 hours ago, JoshuaWAHH3 said:

 

 

So overall, I think this is the best Merlin event this year for Halloween. It does have its problems, mostly with pricing with the mazes. But I do think the Scare Zones really made me enjoy this year.

I think pricing is the biggest issue, the lower the price goes > less you care about a run through. Until the wait gets longer and then you start caring again.

 

I genuinely think, if mazes were cheaper, there would be a lot less negativity. 

[JoshC.]

Ahhh, I was on park yesterday (15th October). It was a busy day, though by no means full. In fairness to Thorpe, I was impressed by the operations by and large. Long queues, yes, but most felt well managed.  

 

But that's not for the Fright Nights thread.

 

Once again, the park are having issues with timed tickets.

 

At 7pm, Survival Games had a queue which reached back to pretty much the gate by the Swarm toilets. Staff were saying it was 1-2 hours. For people with package deals, that meant if you did Survival Games then, you'd likely have no chance to do the other two mazes. The attitude from a few staff on the ground was very indifferent to this too; little care about the fact that people who bought a package would be out of pocket effectively. Also lots of people seem unaware that Trailers is 'meant' to be the first maze people do with the packages (it is a hidden sentence in the details of the package). It's also completely irrelevant and not something which has to be done. Also seems like the packages don't have strict time slots, meaning people can do mazes whenever (and, for whatever reason, choose to do them when it's dark). It's all a bit of a mess.

 

As I had a one shot ticket for Survival Games, I braved the 1-2 hour queue and it took about 90mins. And I'll give the creative and operational sides their dues here. The queue moved well. They weren't over-batching (group sizes no larger than 12). It is tempting to over-batch to clear the queue, at the cost of creating a weaker experience, but I'm glad they didn't give into that temptation. 

And the maze itself was good. Was it Press Night good? No. Was it better than the runthrough I had last Friday though? Yes. A good number of actors, all very lively, and everything worked well.

 

I think the main criticism I have about the maze would be the ending. Actors can effectively choose when people leave the maze, especially the ones by the exit. But they have no clue how long they've been in the maze. They can spend 5 minutes in the multi route 'arena' section of the experience before making they're way to the exit, or they could be there for 30 second and get there straight away. It creates wildly different experiences, and can leave those latter people short changed. It would be good if actors at the exit actively turned away people when they first discover the exit area, giving people more of a chance to explore the arena. Obviously that's incredibly difficult to do, as it involves the actors recognising faces in low light repeatedly, but if they can find a way to do it, it would be fantastic.

 

In terms of the other two mazes, I know people managed to get Trailers and Creek Freak done in the same time I go Survival Games done. That's a solid 45mins to dedicate per maze, and doesn't match up with the 2 hour limit they suggest when booking. So some more stuff needs sorting out there. 

 

I think, realistically, people should (and probably do) expect a queue for mazes on busy days, even when buying tickets. But the lengths of queues at this moment in time is too long on busy days. And really, no Thorpe maze at the moment is worth £10, let alone £10 and a 45min+ queue. That'll end up having a larger knock on effect if things continue.

[JoshuaWAHH3]

I think one thing that is meant to be a perk of paid maze tickets is the luxury of not having to queue 2 hours to enter the attraction- obviously not..

Timed tickets should be a thing in my opinion, and they should be some leniency on how long it takes to get through the four mazes- it feels crazy to have paid tickets and not have some sort of timed order, or anyway of managing the queue times. Scarefest sure has problems, but I never queued more than 25 minutes for a maze, so a hour+ would really p*ss me off, especially when the mazes do not live up to their prices.

 

Your critques of Survival Games is very potent and true- my friend thought it was a pile of sh**, while I really enjoyed it as I was sent in circles for 10 minutes. He basically got out on his first try, so did not see half the maze, and did not want to give another £10 for a potential other bad run through.

 

I also am worried about the queues during Half Term- if there is 2 hour queues for SG now, imagine how bad it will be in Half Term. When you've paid too much money for mazes that are not really worth the price, queueing hours for them will anger the masses in ways I pity their complaints team..

 

 

 

 

[Cal]

A nice behind the scenes tour of Survival games

 

 

[coasterverse]

11 hours ago, ThorpeAddict said:

A nice behind the scenes tour of Survival games

 

 

 

Just had a look at the Thorpe Park behind the scenes page on their website - one thing that really pissed me off last year (and even more so this year) are the different pricing points for behind the scenes tours of the different mazes.

 

£45 for Creek Freak, £50 for Trailers and £55 for Survival Games.

 

Like, really?! I get that Survival Games is a fairly big maze... but is it big enough to be worth an additional £10 over Creek Freak?! I genuinely just don't understand - they all have exactly the same benefits so it's not even as if you're getting more for your money by opting for the Survival Games package.

 

Also, Survival Games is big... but is there really that much to justify such a huge price jump? I feel like for the most part once you've seen the first few rooms you've seen everything - I've not been to Fright Nights so far this year (and not entirely sure if I will get the time to) but the common theme I tend to hear is that it's not overly themed in the actual maze itself.

 

Also, not 100% sure but fairly confident that they had the option to have behind the scenes tours of Creek Freak AND Platform 15 as a bundle last year - wonder why they didn't offer the option to do Creek Freak & Trailers as a bundle for this year?

[Cal]

I imagine they expect the newer the maze, the more popular they will be for behind the scene tours, and therefore price them accordingly

 

I do agree though £55 seems a bit excessive

[MattyMoo]

Watching this confirms I had a dog awful run on the left hand side (which arguably isn't as good as the right anyway).

 

"Definitely redo the maze because each experience is different" says Jack - yeah, I would m8 if it wasn't £8-10 a go.

[coasterverse]

1 minute ago, MattyMoo said:

"Definitely redo the maze because each experience is different" says Jack - yeah, I would m8 if it wasn't £8-10 a go.

 

Even then you're not guaranteed to be put on a different side, right? Could pay £8-10 for another run and still end up being batched on the same side 😂

[coasterverse]

19 minutes ago, ThorpeAddict said:

I imagine they expect the newer the maze, the more popular they will be for behind the scene tours, and therefore price them accordingly

 

I do agree though £55 seems a bit excessive

 

For what it's worth I think all three are pretty excessive - Creek Freak isn't too terrible, but you'd think that for your money you'd get more than a tour, a look at a fright nights 'museum' (which, let's be honest is just the Containment storage container with a clothes rail in the middle of it most likely) and a poster. Not even so much as a 'I Paid Between £45-55 For A Fright Nights Behind The Scenes Tour And All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt'.

 

I obviously don't know what the actual numbers are like, but I also can't imagine the demand for these tours is exactly sky high. The general population for the most part just want a day out at a theme park and to get a few scares in before they head home - it's really only us theme park and/or scare attraction enthusiasts that wouldn't mind looking at it behind the scenes.

 

I agree it's definitely a supply and demand issue, but much alike Thorpe's pricing structure for maze admission - I think they seriously need to work on their pricing structure for the behind the scenes stuff too.

[JoshuaWAHH3]

1 hour ago, coasterverse said:

 

Just had a look at the Thorpe Park behind the scenes page on their website - one thing that really pissed me off last year (and even more so this year) are the different pricing points for behind the scenes tours of the different mazes.

 

£45 for Creek Freak, £50 for Trailers and £55 for Survival Games.

 

Like, really?! I get that Survival Games is a fairly big maze... but is it big enough to be worth an additional £10 over Creek Freak?! I genuinely just don't understand - they all have exactly the same benefits so it's not even as if you're getting more for your money by opting for the Survival Games package.

 

Also, Survival Games is big... but is there really that much to justify such a huge price jump? I feel like for the most part once you've seen the first few rooms you've seen everything - I've not been to Fright Nights so far this year (and not entirely sure if I will get the time to) but the common theme I tend to hear is that it's not overly themed in the actual maze itself.

 

Also, not 100% sure but fairly confident that they had the option to have behind the scenes tours of Creek Freak AND Platform 15 as a bundle last year - wonder why they didn't offer the option to do Creek Freak & Trailers as a bundle for this year?

I remember in 2014 I am pretty sure I paid £20 for a backstage tour of Cabin, and £25 for Studio 13. I know that was a while back, but got that is one price bump. Also Survival Games probably is worse to tour than Trailers I bet- it barely has any theming, it is just a big black box with moving doors.

 

I think the structure like the maze prices is horribly extortinate, and one of the reasons why I do not go to Fright Nights as much. I'd love to rerun some of these mazes, but for £32, no thanks. Especially for only 3 mazes when I live 5 minutes away from a park that charges £40 for 10 mazes.

[Inferno]

Oh WOW. Those tour prices are just crazy.

 

Merlin’s scare events are getting ridiculous price wise. I’ve not been fussed enough to pay for them this year - Towers fireworks appealed to me more this year.

[Cal]

4 hours ago, Inferno said:

Oh WOW. Those tour prices are just crazy.

 

Merlin’s scare events are getting ridiculous price wise. I’ve not been fussed enough to pay for them this year - Towers fireworks appealed to me more this year.

 

Same with me, this is the first Fright Nights I've missed in a long time. As much as Survival games is tempting, I just simply don't think its worth it anymore for 1 run through

[MattyMoo]

Similarly, I didn't do Fright Nights last year - the pricing structure of mazes sort of turns it into a 2 year affair for me now it would seem!

Although, maybe I should have gone last year as my run on Trailers this year was pretty awful to be fair...

[ML27]

I went and did the mazes (except for SG) with someone who’d never done a maze and my god it was poor.

 

I went into the event grudgingly paying a second time to do the mazes for £10 each again. 
 

Trailers was poor, one actor maximum per room.  Bozos play zone had one and it was not scary at all. The run out corridor hasn’t been as good as last year, it’s too bright and lacks actors.

They were batching groups of nearly 20 and that’s the largest I’ve seen. Being at the back of the group meant the scares had already happened and the actors had to reset (bedroom scene) and  we were being held up in the corridors. The pacing was destroyed.

 

Creak Freak felt like a proper scare maze but still some actor issues remain. No one got sent through the tunnel but they tried their best to split people up in the few sections you can be split up. This felt genuinely scary and that you were involved in the maze rather than watching which how trailers feels.

 

 

Scare zones are not scary at all.

[tomathy]

Annual visit to fright nights for me and my family was on Monday, typically we also go to Alton Towers for Scarefest but considering the lineup hasn't seen much change this year we haven't bothered. Apologies for any negativity, try and frame it as a bit of sarcasm where possible.

 

Trailers
Overall we had a better run through of Trailers this year than we did last, there were more actors in place this year in our run. Only changes we noticed was the lack of the original actor meeting you back in the lobby before the finale of the maze, I assume this is to increase throughputs though, not exactly a change that I was at all bothered about. Without the hype that it had last year I really enjoyed it, it's not the strongest maze for scares but the sets are really nice and the actors were giving it their all.

 

Creek Freak

I don't know if its just me but this seems weaker than it has been in previous years. There didn't appear to be too many actors in there, however when they were present our group did get some really good scares. Just a pity that we wandered through most of the middle portion of the maze without seeing any actors at all. Like I said, I don't think this was Creek Freaks strongest year, still enjoyable but was hoping for a much more intense experience within Survival Games.

 

Survival Games

I was really looking forward to this maze, the reviews had mostly stated that it was fairly intense and that it had been jam packed full of actors. Firstly, the story seems pointless with the current guise of this experience, I understand this could just be teething issues with it being its first year but nobody else in my group was at all aware of why they were competing in the "Survival Games" or what it was for. After being pulled (and by pulled I mean somebody gently placing a hand on my shoulder and asking me to come with them) I fairly quickly caught up with the person who was taken before me. I only saw one other actor between this part of the maze and the main arena. Once in the arena it was clear that far too many people had been allowed in at once, there was a steady conga line of people making their way through the maze with most of the actors simply standing still and waiting for people to interact with them. I, by chance, made it straight to the exit room and was sent towards the runout which again contained no actors. For what is being sold as the most extreme (and most expensive) fright nights attraction to date I feel that this was a particularly weak experience. I'd love to say that I'd give it a second chance but paying another £10 for what could be another poor run didn't really appeal to me.

 

Legacy

Better with the screen, would be even better if the fire effects were working. A fire and light show without the fire does suddenly feel like you've walked into a particularly odd nightclub that only plays music that could be loosely linked to thorpe/halloween. Why does this feel like an advert for the park?

 

Crows of Mawkin Meadow

Great to see this expanded, the actors here were doing a great job within both sections of the walkthrough. The use of the Saw Alive queue seems so obvious that I don't know why it wasn't done before.

 

Deaths Doors

Surprise highlight of the event for us, not because of scares though but instead down to one unfortunate actor who managed to get his poncho stuck in the door that he left from. Watching him shouting "GET PUMPKIN MAN!" repeatedly to get the other actor to let him out had us and quite a few others in stitches. Later on we asked him if he still had his poncho only to get a very snappy "NO" back from him. Fantastic interaction, and well played given the unfortunate situation.

 

Overall

I noticed that the mazes all have queue times listed within the app, however this is only useful if they are moderately accurate. Trailers for example was listed as 0 mins on the app, but we queued for 40mins at 15:10. This wasn't helped by the fact that there wasn't a member of staff checking tickets at the start of the queue. From what we gathered, plenty of people didn't have tickets until later in the day but were joining the queue now anyway. Survival Games was listed in the app as a 45 minute queue, upon arrival there was no queue at all, nor was there a queue when we left the area, still listed as 45 minutes. Ride queue times were vastly inaccurate as well. It's a shame to see the event in the way that we did, I understand that in some cases we were unfortunate but when you're paying £10 per person per maze you do somewhat expect the experience to be a little less flawed.

TLDR:
Trailers was fun, Creek Freak had some decent scares but lacked actors, Survival Games really lacked actors, Legacy exists but unsure why, Crows was much better, Deaths Doors was great, queue times were being silly.

 

[endsop]

My Fright Night Review 2022

 

I went to Thorpe Park over a 3-day period to fully experience Fright Nights, I purchased the Fearsome Four package, but have a Merlin Platinum Pass so do not have to pay for admission. 

 

Day 1: Saturday 22nd October.

The park was fully sold out and only available for pre-bookers this day, and you could see it throughout the park. We arrived at the park for around midday and stayed all the way through till 9. Fortunately, I was with a friend who held a RAP, allowing us to skip most the 2–3 hour queues. We got on all the major roller coasters except from Colossus. In the dark we did: Stealth, Tidal Wave and Swarm. We also saw the Graduation Sucks! show and experienced Deaths Doors.

 

Day 2: Sunday 23rd October.

For the remaining 2 days, I didn't have access to a RAP. Luckily the queues were not too bad, but the weather was the opposite. We ended up leaving the resort at about 3pm when all the rides closed due to thunder and lightning. We still managed to get on a few of the biggies and TWD. 

 

Day 3: Monday 24th October.

On Monday we focused on doing the Fright Nights attractions, getting there for park opening and staying all the way through till 9pm. First, we did Trailers at about 3:30, it was a good maze, similar to last year's Trailers, but with a few more actors inside. We went on to do Creek Freak next, it is very similar to last year's maze, but with the adaption of the new Project Exodus into the script, and as usual I loved the chainsaw run at the end. We went on to do the new scare experience, The Terminal. This was a fully immersive experience, with noise cancelling headphones playing surround sound audio in pitch black, I think they could of slightly improved it by adding more live actors or effects. Finally, at around 6:30pm, we did Survival Games. The new extremely intensive scare maze did not disappoint, with live actors grabbing you and running at you, this was by far my favourite. After we had done all the paid mazes, we went on to go through some of the scare zones. The Crows of Mawkin Meadow was probably one of the better scare zones featuring a few live actors and lots of scares. 

 

Altogether my visit was extremely enjoyable and worth the journey up.

[JoshC.]

Jack Silkstone has released the first half of his Fright Nights documentary / BTS, where he details about his involvement with the teaser videos, marketing, etc:

 

 

 

I haven't watched it all, nor the second half (which is released tomorrow). But, the amount of work that has gone into the teaser campaign is obscene. And I'm not sure I mean that as a compliment.

 

The park had early ideas for Survival Games, the locksmith character, etc. shortly after last year's event finish. Which is great. And then Jack and Kieran and marketing had ideas for the teaser campaign.

 

Jack and Kieran pushed for the teaser reveal campaign, with videos for each attraction. The corridor of locked doors was a custom-built set from scratch. The sheer number of man hours that went into building it, doing scenic work for it, having staff on hand for the shoot and so forth is insane. On top of that, each video had multiple hours of filming work put into it; prep work would start during the day, filming in the early afternoon and then go past midnight. 

 

I don't know how it works in terms of pay, but Thorpe actors tend to be on hourly wages, so just paying them for several hours adds up. Then whatever hours the permanent marketing members put in, plus whatever rate Jack and Kieran command. 

 

I absolutely admire Jack and Kieran's creativity, effort and the passion they clearly have for making the content they make for the park as fantastic as possible. But they themselves must have been running themselves into the ground creating this content. It's crazy.

 

And for what? They created some cool videos, which have details and Easter Eggs far beyond noticeable comprehension. The videos created a world-building far beyond what the attractions can tell. Enthusiasts like the videos. But they don't do an accurate job of portraying what the attractions will be like. And they have next-to-no impact on the actual quality of the event.

 

Again, it's very admirable what they have done, the scope given by the park and the preparedness of the park to put in the time and effort to create a high quality teaser campaign for the park's premiere event. And it's great that the park continue to give nods to geeks. But at the same time, one can't help but wonder if this is misplaced time, effort and (most importantly) money from the park. Especially when they could create a much more modest campaign for a significantly less effort and get similar results.

 

And as mentioned, Jack and Kieran especially were putting in tons of hours of work into this. Definitely feels like they ran themselves into the ground a bit doing this. Clearly a labour of love for the cause. 

[ML27]

It’s clearly inspired by the aim to get Fright Nights, the Halloween horror nights status and storyline. It’s amazing the content side of it but in reality… is it?

 

First of all I’m going to remove the people. I'm gonna view this as, this is what Thorpe Park created and put out.

 

There is a big distance from the marketing and reality. None of the videos show what the experience is going to be like. It is simply a way to provide the story, which isn’t relevant if the story isn’t portrayed in the attraction or in the event. 
 

The quality of the videos compared to the quality of the event isn’t there. Legacy is held on an empty swimming pool, like why should I have to walk across sand on an uneven platforms.

 

Just create videos which showcase the event and show me the maze and snippets from inside. That’s what the GP care about

 

 

[coasterverse]

I think the idea of having storylines behind each maze is great (from an enthusiast point of view) but like you guys have mentioned, it gives the general public no real clue of what to expect from the mazes - so does it really do the job from a marketing point of view? I can't help but feel like it's setting the park up for failure when they have these incredibly produced videos (definitely can't fault Kieran and Jack here!) and then members of the general public attend the event and it's basically just MDF walls either in a tent or in shipping containers - an experience you can basically get at any of these scareparks around the country... definitely not something you'd expect from a premier theme park.

 

I think the best option is to have a best of both worlds - have a storyline driven teaser, and then at the end of the video cut into a compilation of the maze(s) with teaser clips of what it looks like inside/the reactions of people that have gone through it, that way it controls expectations.

 

Would be interesting to see if the park's marketing budget is worth it or not!

[Glitch]

I think that’s a tad harsh, what they are doing is excellent but when they add up all the hours I wouldn’t be surprised if the pay isn’t the best…. But by having the creative control it shows their talent and can be added to CV’s for future projects later down the line. Fair play to the guys! I look forward to seeing what’s next!

[Inferno]

I thought the same about the hours that went in to those teasers. Especially as they had basically nothing to do with the actual event itself in the end.

 

I suspect this was a case of being “all in” as it was a huge opportunity for them, and held the potential to open them up to the rest of Merlin and the industry as a whole.

 

A bit of an investment in self marketing I think - but everyone wins, they produced some great content to showcase what they can do, and TP got some high quality teasers (all be it a little off piste).

 

Well done to all of them.  Although I’m not too keen on the YouTuber marketing stuff, I think they produce some great content for the park.