Fright Nights 2023

[Tatum-Riley]

Just wanted to start the hype for Fright Nights this year. 
 

What mazes does everyone want to return? 
 

Personally I would like them to go back to the roots of Fright Nights with the likes of Asylum, The Curse etc. 

 

[EDIT] : By saying I would like them to go back to the original mazes I mean more of a straightforward linear path with proper jump scares.

[ML27]

Years ago people would have said they wanted multi-route mazes back.

 

Trailers is definitely coming back, it’s a weak maze. First year, it was good. Last year it was really tame. It doesn’t make sense the concept of it being a throwback, but it can still work. However I can’t see them changing things as it is its 3rd season. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was coming back in 2024, I’d be disappointed if it was still.

 

Survival Games is definitely coming back (maybe a few tweaks). This maze is my issue with Thorpe Park investing into Fright Nights attractions when it could do with some hardware. The building has been stood unused since last November (yes, except scarecon) apparently their largest investment. I can see this staying around for years.

 

This year would be the best year for a crows maze. They’ve opened the lake picnic area up, and theoretically the maze could go from Saw to Vortex. They’ve installed infrastructure such as power and lighting. It makes sense since Creek Freak is gone. I think I’ll miss it this season. The crows is in its third year and normally final.

 

Also a replacement for Amity High

[tactic]

Just ask Jack Silkstone. He will deny he knows everything but in reality has know the lineup since park closed for off season last year.

 

I hope survival games returns as I didn’t get to do it last year and it look really fun. Trailers on the other hand I wouldn’t mind if that went to be honest.

[Tatum-Riley]

I agree that Trailers is a bit dated now, as much as I loved it during the first year and even last year it definitely needs refreshing or something added. 
 

Survival Games was a strong addition, however I do think it has kind of lost the thrill and excitement it had in its first year. The building is obviously still standing and I don’t see it going anywhere for a few years. 
 

I hope they bring a couple more mazes instead of the strong focus on scare zones as I was completely disappointed with The scores and Deaths Doors last year. I do want the Crows to come back in some way though. 

[coasterverse]

Trailers needs to do one in my opinion - I never understood the hype. I experienced it in its first year and thought it was absolutely dire - the scenes are ridiculously small, so much so that you can see and anticipate all of the scares well ahead of time. I think it's trying to do too much in too small of a space, it would be so much better if they just reduced the amount of scenes, therefore giving the remaining ones much more space to play with.

 

I never experienced Survival Games as I didn't go to Fright Nights last year, but yeah I agree with the general consensus that it's 99.9% guaranteed to stay for the foreseeable. But from what I saw online, the space is fairly generic so could fairly easily be spruced up every/every other year to fit a different narrative. I like that it's a multi-route free flow maze in a decently sized building - a maze of this scale warrants the upcharge imo, some of the smaller ones not so much.

 

I feel like Creek Freak is definitely going to return in some form, probably just as a scarezone around the old Old Town area and will probably fairly strongly reference Exodus. Maybe we'll even get something completely different in the area that will drop hints about Exodus' name and theme (in hindsight this sounds more likely).

 

The Crows were probably the strongest thing to come out of Fright Nights '21. The park are seriously missing a trick if there's not a Crows maze of some sort this year - they are a perfect example to prove that jumpscares don't always need to be loud and involve sound effects and flashing lights. They do the job of being perfectly eerie just stood around watching you and then stomping towards you as a jumpscare.

[JoshC.]

Construction had begun on the site where Death's Doors was last year:

 

https://twitter.com/J_Silkstone/status/1684539562230526102?t=6UwnRfKLeV6Y8I2ZZQuqjg&s=19

 

[MattyMoo]

Was that teddy fella used at all last year? I don't recognise him but could be cos I'm a fake fan.

[JackJRDN]

6 minutes ago, MattyMoo said:

Was that teddy fella used at all last year? I don't recognise him but could be cos I'm a fake fan.

Could be wrong, but was he not a part of birthday bash?

[ML27]

He was part of deaths doors.

 

As part of carnival they have a card which shows a bear and called it Mr Clappy. I don’t know if the bears are related or what?

[tactic]

I just assumed that card was related to fright nights and thought the teddy was something to do with a maze or scare zone this year. 

 

Didn’t go to fright nights last year as I was on holiday but I would assume that the card is just hinting that death doors would return this year if the teddy was part of it.

[JoshC.]

Well Death's Doors is back up...

 

it's a interesting scenario, building a scare zone so soon. Especially one which can be built so quickly. I guess, in part, it helps advertise the event. 

 

I'd also hazard a guess that they don't have the manpower to build multiple attractions in September, plus doing whatever they need to on existing attractions and running the other events. Thus creating a need for building stuff now.

 

We'll be getting a new maze (presumably just the one). It was strongly suggested that it was the last year of Amity vs LycanThorpe. The space the Crows took up is a lot more open so needs more work too. Plus if they choose to bring back Terminal, that needs improvements. So there's a lot to do.

 

I've also heard that the park now has an Events/Entertainments Project Manager, as well as more staff focused primarily on the operational and design features of Events, particularly Fright Nights. Hopefully this will allow a much more streamlined process all round.

 

 

[ML27]

Deaths Doors being back up two months early is rather strange. There is the argument of it being a bad thing, it’s a small park and already areas are closed off until the end of the season. This doesn’t matter too much as it’s only a cut through, very invasive to the area tho. 
 

The scare zone was weak last year, if you say it’s good. You either know the actors or can really involve yourself with the actors. Personally, I like to experience things but not necessarily get involved. The concept was good, but not scary at all. It must be the worst one for an actor, sit behind a door all night get people repeatedly banging on your door constantly and hope they are still there once they’ve knocked.

 

I’ve seen a lot of production staff walking around Thorpe Park which is a good thing if they are given support and a budget. Should mean higher quality events and these people should know the park and events a lot more as they hopefully should be permanent staff. 
 

Where is a new maze going to go? I can’t see them building another building to house a maze. Back in 2021, Neil (then general manager) now divisional director said that indoor mazes were the way they wanted to go. I have a feeling tho, it maybe a shipping container maze back to the likes of the walking dead mazes. There isn’t just the space for an indoor one.

 

[MattyMoo]

1 hour ago, ML27 said:

Where is a new maze going to go? I can’t see them building another building to house a maze. Back in 2021, Neil (then general manager) now divisional director said that indoor mazes were the way they wanted to go. I have a feeling tho, it maybe a shipping container maze back to the likes of the walking dead mazes. There isn’t just the space for an indoor one.

 

 

I would imagine shipping containers on the picnic area plaza where Saw Alive queueline used to be.

[tactic]

How quickly do we think the can rip out black mirror to put a new maze in there??

[JoshC.]

2 hours ago, tactic said:

How quickly do we think the can rip out black mirror to put a new maze in there??

 

Not quick enough to close it now and put a new maze in there for October, would be the blunt answer.

 

6 hours ago, ML27 said:

Where is a new maze going to go? I can’t see them building another building to house a maze. Back in 2021, Neil (then general manager) now divisional director said that indoor mazes were the way they wanted to go. I have a feeling tho, it maybe a shipping container maze back to the likes of the walking dead mazes. There isn’t just the space for an indoor one.

 

I certainly expect another indoor maze, but as you say, there's no way they'd create a new building, and there's no pre-existing building which can house a maze.

 

My best bet would be shipping containers. You can see the appeal: everything can be done off site, and then you simply drop them into place and connect up the electrics. After all, that's what Experiment 10 / My Bloody Valentine was. And that could certainly fit in either the Saw pathway, the Lost City area or the Beach.

 

The second option would be a teng. But I can't imagine Thorpe wanting to build, dismantle and rebuild a tent maze each year again. At the same time, it could happen, and that could be why they've started Death's Doors so early.

 

 

I'd like to see (in the future) the park revisit outdoor mazes again. Possibly just the one, as a free experience. I guess a sorta evolution of what the Crows experience has been - a walk through which gives you a taste of what the mazes are like, whilst not being at the same level. Whets the whistles for some, helps introduce people to the concept if they're unsure too.

[coasterverse]

17 hours ago, JoshC. said:

I guess a sorta evolution of what the Crows experience has been - a walk through which gives you a taste of what the mazes are like, whilst not being at the same level.

 

To be honest I found The Crows to be the strongest addition to the Fright Nights lineup in a while. I genuinely found it significantly scarier than Trailers & Platform 15 when I visited a couple years ago (I didn't go last year so can't comment on Survival Games, but from what I've read online that wasn't overly scary... just disorientating). Creek Freak was pretty intense though, I'll give them that.

 

This is the thing the park need to get right - the value for money in the mazes.

 

It's almost as if the actors that are put in scare zones know that it's a more difficult job to effectively get scares right in an open space, so are going out of their way to make the scares as impactful as possible. In the mazes the actors know they can hide and jump out of corners which gives them free scares, but I personally just find them all super predictable and it doesn't make me jump in the slightest. This is something I had a massive issue with in Trailers - those scenes are ridiculously small. You enter the room and can see every inch of every scene from the doorway, so you can always pre-emptively anticipate scares.

 

I've said it since 2021 and the park need to half the number of 'screens' in Trailers to open up more space for less predictable, more impactful scares. Then it has the potential of being one of the better mazes on park - at the moment it's mid at best.

[ML27]

Survival games was a weird one last year, a lot of the hype from the maze was from two/three things.

 

1) Thorpe stating it was the largest investment, now we know largest isn’t always best (creak freak wins)

 

2) The fact it was hands on and portrayed to be more aggressive. (Being 6ft 3 meant that it was more of a tug and me walking myself backwards) it also was not hands on at all other than the first part

 

3) Multi Route, you could kinda tell where you were by looking at the ceiling. But most rooms were dark and empty and lacking actors. So it didn’t match the hype of a multi route maze.

 

Thorpe have a very difficult situation now, four returning attractions at least. Crows, Deaths doors, Trailers and Survival games. I’d say 2/3 of them need work or changing completely and working with a new theme and concept. They also would be good as tamer additions, if they had bigger, intense mazes. These attractions would be good with another 3 scare mazes to do as would provide variety. Which we aren’t getting, Fright Nights used to be maze after maze as there was alot of choice especially as far back as 2019.

[coasterverse]

I can see how easy it is for the park to fall back on fan favourite mazes, what with Trailers, Platform 15 and Creek Freak all returning year after year and before those Asylum was certainly also a fan favourite that ended up returning for a good few years - all most likely due to their popularity.

 

I wonder why the same didn't happen for Roots of Evil or Vulcan Peak... 🤔😂

 

But I would really like to see them just piggyback off of the success in other ways. The park have proven that they are fully capable of making consistently good quality mazes, I think they just need to bite the bullet and go against the grain and refresh the lineup each year. That was the joy of the shipping container-style attractions as they were small, compact, could be moved around and due to their size meant that gutting and replacing wouldn't be an expensive affair.

 

When you have the park building mazes into purpose-built buildings such as the Trailers building, you become a bit stuck because gutting and rebuilding a new maze becomes a much more complicated affair.

 

Although Survival Games is for all intents and purposes, a shipping container maze, the sheer scale of it again makes it difficult to completely gut and retheme as it'd be suuuuuper expensive to do. Obviously we don't know for certain that Survival Games will be returning as Survival Games, but looking at the way previous large Fright Nights investments have gone at the park - Thorpe tend to keep new investments for at least 3 years.

 

I really hope 2023 is the final year of Trailers as we know it.

I'd have much preferred if for this year they managed to totally gut the Trailers building and convert it to a Creek Freak maze if we had to keep a past maze for this year.

 

Speaking of the new maze for this year... Egyptian-themed scare maze, anyone? 👀

[MattyMoo]

All I know is, doing the Blue Light day last year as well as standard FNs made me really miss the multiple-run through days. I'd be more keen if Thorpe offered an unlimited maze ticket to be honest. I very much begrudge the "one and done" ticketing system, especially on quieter days where they could easily have more run throughs. (That said, last year the ticket scanning was sporadic at best, meaning a couple of extra run throughs may well have occurred 👀 )

[tactic]

I think the park are cautious to offer a ticket that allows people through the maze more than once though due to capacity issues. The mazes already have very low throughputs and allowing people to do them multiple times (even if they have to buy tickets for more) would increase the queue times for the maze. The park is stupidly busy in the last week of fright nights and making people queue 30+ mins for a maze that they had to pay at tenner for (or more if they offered an unlimited go ticket) would not go down well with the general public and press.

 

I think this may be the reason we don’t have free mazes too. The queues used to end up at like 2 and a half hours sometimes and the park just don’t want that to be the case on. Or I could be completely wrong here and thorpe just want more money, that is a possibility…

[coasterverse]

I'm pretty sure I read on the passholder Facebook group a while back that they were toying with the idea of an unlimited scare maze pass - someone threw a ballpark figure out there of £100 I'm pretty sure and the park came back and said it'd likely exceed that amount if they did decide to implement it. (Don't quote me on the figure - I definitely remember the conversation taking place, but don't quite remember the ballpark figure thrown out there by a member of the group)

 

I get that it has to be expensive to avoid everyone buying it and therefore solving nothing, but surely they can get away with charging less than that. Even at £100 a pop, for that to be worth the money you'd need to do the mazes 20 times (and that's just to break even, you'd have to do it more than that to really get your money's worth!) - which would be a stretch considering just how busy peak Fright Nights can be.

[MattyMoo]

20 minutes ago, coasterverse said:

I'm pretty sure I read on the passholder Facebook group a while back that they were toying with the idea of an unlimited scare maze pass - someone threw a ballpark figure out there of £100 I'm pretty sure and the park came back and said it'd likely exceed that amount if they did decide to implement it. (Don't quote me on the figure - I definitely remember the conversation taking place, but don't quite remember the ballpark figure thrown out there by a member of the group)

 

I get that it has to be expensive to avoid everyone buying it and therefore solving nothing, but surely they can get away with charging less than that. Even at £100 a pop, for that to be worth the money you'd need to do the mazes 20 times (and that's just to break even, you'd have to do it more than that to really get your money's worth!) - which would be a stretch considering just how busy peak Fright Nights can be.

 

Very true - by contrast, Tulleys VIP is now £102 each including fees, if you order on Black Friday. Last year we managed 26 run throughs in total using that - when you factor in the fact we got a £10 food voucher, £5 drinks voucher and £15 merch voucher - even discounting the merch, you would almost certainly eat and drink on a visit, so £82 for the ticket, £3.15 a maze represents good value to me.

[Glitch]

https://www.container-xchange.com/blog/shipping-container-investment/ - Invest in your shipping containers now, Thorpe may have a large order coming soon.

 

*Not financial advice*

[JackJRDN]

Could we see a new Saw maze this year in the new picnic section inline with the new film "Saw X" releasing this October?

[tactic]

I guess that is a possibility but I don’t know how the ip works with thorpe. Would they need to get another ip for saw to use it in a maze? (I’ve got no clue how the ip worked with saw alive) 

Regardless, I would like to see a saw themed maze though, if done well it could be very good.