Fright Nights 2023

[JackJRDN]

34 minutes ago, JoshC. said:

And another image from the park, which could possibly indicate a maze in a tent / marque this year!

 

Could we finally see the return of The Big Top 👀

[tactic]

I would love to see a tent maze in that area!!

 

22 minutes ago, JackJRDN said:

Could we finally see the return of The Big Top 👀

 

I mean we do have the big top entrance mouth thing out for carnivals right now so I guess it could be a possibility.

[JoshC.]

The Big Top will not be returning.

[JoshC.]

Whatever it is, it's gonna be intents

 

 

[ML27]

What’s the quality like of a maze in a tent?

[JoshC.]

34 minutes ago, ML27 said:

What’s the quality like of a maze in a tent?

 

Thorpe have had a few: Se7en, The Curse and both versions of The Big Top (the first incarnation was in 3 tents). You could even say Survival Games is in a tent-like structure too.

 

Really, if it's done well, it's not different to any other maze frankly. Some issues may come around where if you look up and realise you're in a tent, it can break immersion (but many mazes suffer with this issue, not just ones in tents).

 

If the maze is designed well, it won't matter whether it's in a tent, shipping containers or a permanent building.

[ML27]

I’d like to compare the size of it to other Thorpe Park mazes such as Trailers and Survival Games. It just doesn’t look that big. 
 

I might be wrong but this looks the same size as the old picnic cover tent from 2021. 

 

I hope they stick to a theme which that they can theme well, this will be the first maze in a four years that they’ve built but will have to take down again (and even then the previous mazes were shipping containers which stay intact.)

 

I don’t know if the quality is actually going to be there and I want them to stray away from futuristic which means they can keep everything plain 😂

A tent like this looks really low budget too for a multi million pound company.

 

[ML27]

They’ve posted this image in the Passholder group. It is hard to get a gist of the size of it but I suppose with lots of narrow corridors could end up quite big 

[JoshC.]

Tent seems to take up a similar size to Big Top.

 

1 hour ago, ML27 said:

A tent like this looks really low budget too for a multi million pound company.

 

The park did have white tents for Se7en and Curse (admittedly this is going back 15 years ago), so there's form there. Ultimately I find it makes very little difference to the experience. 

 

Whilst a solid exterior adds to the experience, I don't think a bad exterior takes away from the experience, so long as it's designed right.

 

The wooden/laminate flooring is interesting, and not what I expected. Can't think of many temporary build mazes which use that as their base.

[ML27]

Yeah apologies, with the tents it’s the optics of doing a maze inside a tent. However we could see a facade.

 

Flooring is very useful for scares, I assume it will make quite a loud noise when stamped on 

 

[coasterverse]

8 minutes ago, JoshC. said:

The wooden/laminate flooring is interesting, and not what I expected. Can't think of many temporary build mazes which use that as their base.

 

If this whole Mr Clappy thing isn’t just one massive red herring, then a haunted toyshop type maze could work quite well with this flooring. Although like you say an exterior doesn’t make or break a maze, if they do opt for a toyshop type maze, it’s gonna look hella tacky if it looks like a tent from the outside.

 

Lots of these small scare parks opt for this type of thing (because they simply can’t afford anything better) and it looks exactly as you’d expect… cheap and nasty.

 

The Big Top worked as a tent because… well… it was supposed to be a circus.

 

Who knows! Don’t have massively high hopes right now, but to be fair there’s zero theming in yet so I’m not gonna be a pessimist and I’m remaining hopeful that this could be good!

 

I’d much rather this than nothing new to be fair, so props to Thorpe for taking a risk!

[tactic]

I think the problem I have with the looks of that tent is that light will bleed through, totally ruining the experience in the maze before about 6 o’clock.

 

But then I’ve never done a tent maze so I could be completely wrong about the light.

[JoshC.]

9 hours ago, tactic said:

I think the problem I have with the looks of that tent is that light will bleed through, totally ruining the experience in the maze before about 6 o’clock.

 

But then I’ve never done a tent maze so I could be completely wrong about the light.

 

From having experienced the previous tent mazes, can confirm light bleed is not an issue (because mazes are designed with this in mind).

 

 

Also, I assume people are aware that many of the mazes at Tulleys are in tents, and these do not suffer from the issues that people are raising.

[coasterverse]

1 hour ago, JoshC. said:

 

From having experienced the previous tent mazes, can confirm light bleed is not an issue (because mazes are designed with this in mind).

 

Just to expand a bit on this, I'd imagine we're pretty certain to see false MDF walls and possibly even ceilings put in place too - the tent is basically just there to ensure it's all waterproof. Once inside the maze I'm sure it'll be perfectly fine and you'll likely quickly forget you're inside of a tent, which again pleads the question of how are they going to make the outside look like whatever they're going to put on the inside?

 

Again, at the end of the day it really doesn't make much of a difference either way - it's purely just for immersion and first impression's sake.

 

Excited to see how it turns out!

[ML27]

 

Credit to Theme Park Guide. See the original post here

 

Some retro Thorpe park items have been spotted including the rangers outfit.

 

Not sure what they are for because it surely can’t be for a maze because they are gonna get horrible and damaged in the rain. 
 

However if it is going to be used for the new maze. I hope they don’t destroy or alter the props. I could see it fitting in with the speculated toy shop or children’s toy box theme. (Side note - if it is this theme it feels like they’ve taken inspiration from the curse at Alton manor specifically the second half) 

[MattyMoo]

Dear God, I appreciate that when you have props etc. it makes sense to use them, but Merlin are obsessed with passing off old toot as "Easter eggs" and such aren't they?! It always screams "What rubbish do we have kicking about that we can make look old and abandoned, throw it all together, new attraction innit"

 

 

[Inferno]

It is a very Merlin thing to do isn’t it.  Odd.

 

Does it seem early for these mazes to be going up already?  A good sign hopefully?

[JoshC.]

20 minutes ago, Inferno said:

Does it seem early for these mazes to be going up already?  A good sign hopefully?

For some reference, Big Top (in 2016 and 17) started going up around this time of year. I think Survival Games started going up mid-to-August. Mazes in permanent locations start being built earlier too.

 

I would imagine the reason for the comparatively early start on the FN build is down to the number of man hours available. The park will have a small Production Team, and work with UVE (presumably - they've done Trailers, SG and been involved with FN for a couple of years now), to build the mazes and zones.

 

A maze in a tent will need to have all the walls built and then scenic design applied once the walls are in place. They can't really do that work prior to building the maze. As such, they'd need to start early to get that all set up. If they're stretched for manhours, they'll need to start early, hence why getting Death's Doors up early likely happened.

 

[JackJRDN]

Anyone else feel the timing for marketing fright nights and project exodus is off?

 

Fright nights was already being revealed this time last year, and with Exodus now in the limelight it will be hard to market both well. Not to mention the pressure on the team to put both plans into action.

[coasterverse]

1 hour ago, JackJRDN said:

Anyone else feel the timing for marketing fright nights and project exodus is off?

 

Fright nights was already being revealed this time last year, and with Exodus now in the limelight it will be hard to market both well. Not to mention the pressure on the team to put both plans into action.

 

I think now that the first Exodus 'reveal' is out of the way, Fright Nights will be next.

That should then give them a bit of wiggleroom during Oktoberfest to do some more teasing, and that will likely continue through Fright Nights and definitely over closed season if everything hasn't been released by then.

[Tatum-Riley]

I think most of the Fright Nights teasers do come from Jack Silkstone and because he is so focused on Exodus we haven’t really seen any construction updates as of yet. I agree now the promotional video is out we should see something soon, especially as they wanted to release it on national rollercoaster day. 

[JoshC.]

16 hours ago, JackJRDN said:

Anyone else feel the timing for marketing fright nights and project exodus is off?

 

Fright nights was already being revealed this time last year, and with Exodus now in the limelight it will be hard to market both well. Not to mention the pressure on the team to put both plans into action.

 

I don't think Exodus is in the limelight at the moment. The park have simply made a clear indication to the masses that they're building the UK's tallest coaster. For most people, that's huge news, and enough to spark interest. The park don't need to do any more advertising on that for a while yet, really.

 

Whilst it's true that this time last year we were half way through the Fright Nights reveal, in previous years, reveals / announcements usually happen in mid-to-late August or early September.

 

Perhaps a bit of a controversial opinion, but I think last year's slow burn announcement wasn't quite on the mark. The videos were great, don't get me wrong. But they didn't do a good job at showcasing each attraction, or communicating what each attraction was. Yes, they built up the story around the attractions, which was great for a small portion of the audience, but they didn't tell you what each attraction was (maze/scare zone/show) or accurately depict what to expect from it. Equally, the park only revealed new attractions in the last week of August. 

 

This year, the park could just do one big reveal for the entire event.

 

14 hours ago, coasterverse said:

 

I think now that the first Exodus 'reveal' is out of the way, Fright Nights will be next.

That should then give them a bit of wiggleroom during Oktoberfest to do some more teasing, and that will likely continue through Fright Nights and definitely over closed season if everything hasn't been released by then.

 

Yep, I think another thing is they didn't want the Exodus video in the middle of any Fright Nights campaign. Could send mixed messages. 

 

Oktoberfest is, comparatively, a small event. Almost the forgotten child of the park's event line up (which I personally think should be scrapped, but that's another topic). They can focus on FN advertising whilst Oktoberfest is being prepped / starting.

 

2 hours ago, Tatum-Riley said:

I think most of the Fright Nights teasers do come from Jack Silkstone and because he is so focused on Exodus we haven’t really seen any construction updates as of yet. I agree now the promotional video is out we should see something soon, especially as they wanted to release it on national rollercoaster day. 

 

Yep, Jack and Kieran have done the videos for Fright Nights (and the Exodus video from Wednesday). I don't think that they've necessarily focused on Exodus over Fright Nights; it will be a creative decision from the park to not do any Fright Nights promo work yet.

[JoshC.]

First teaser:

 

 

 

The line up seems like it will be revealed over the next week, with a new video at 7pm daily.

[Glitch]

I’m so happy to have a tent maze back. Curse and 7 were two of my favourites back in the golden days of fright nights, more tent mazes please

[StevenVig]

On 8/10/2023 at 12:35 PM, tactic said:

I would love to see a tent maze in that area!!

 

 

I mean we do have the big top entrance mouth thing out for carnivals right now so I guess it could be a possibility.

 

On 8/10/2023 at 12:12 PM, JackJRDN said:

Could we finally see the return of The Big Top 👀

 

Please just let it die already.

 

It's not coming back. It's never coming back. The more you speculate it coming back, the less of a chance it will happen. 

 

Get over it. It's not going to happen. Ever.