FRIGHT NIGHTS is back at Thorpe Park for 2024, where with epic new heights, come petrifying new lows! This year’s event adds a fourth scare maze to the line-up, alongside returning mazes, scare zones and shows. Attraction Source was kindly invited by Thorpe Park to attend the VIP Preview event on Thursday 3rd October in order to experience everything on offer.
DeadBeat is the new for 2024 scare maze, set within a club where the music doesn’t soothe the soul; it devours it! The maze is located in the space most recently utilised by Black Mirror Labyrinth on the backside of The Walking Dead: The Ride building, with guests entering through the same entrance portal which has of course been rebranded accordingly. After being checked off the guests list in a marquee outside of the building, you’re batched into another holding area which does make it feel as though you’re waiting to get into a club – the eagle-eyed will note that there are a number of posters in this area containing a host of Easter Eggs.
Your journey through the club takes you through different areas including its cloakroom (featuring smells which suggest this might not be the most upmarket of establishments), dancefloors, bars and VIP areas, with a pulsing soundtrack heard throughout. A number of scenes fully utilise the building’s height, most notably in the main dancefloor areas where DJ Canistro, the host of the “last night on earth party”, can be seen watching over from above. On your way through, you come across fellow guests where the music playing through their headphones seems to have induced a seizure-like state, causing them to convulse, gag and their eyes to glaze over. Before long you also encounter demon-like creatures, known as Viscerals, who are seeking to feed on your soul. At approximately the half way point, a false mirror jump scare seems to mark you passing over into a parallel dimension as you travel back through the same-looking areas, creating a sense of disorientation. From here on the Viscerals become more prevalent and, when you return to the main dancefloor area, what were previously fellow guests have seemingly all now transformed into Viscerals. Clever set design actually sees the two dancefloor areas positioned adjacent to each other with a two-way mirror in between, meaning you may just catch a glimpse of guests on the other side. The strobe-maze finale is set within a Visceral-infested boiler room, with smoke blasts and animations on the walls adding to the apocalyptic chaos. Overall, while the maze does feature some good scare opportunities, including a relatively unique-to-the-UK overhead actor scare, it seems like there are limited places for the actors to hide such that a lot of scares can be anticipated. Nonetheless, the concept of DeadBeat is definitely one of the most unique scare maze themes seen at Thorpe Park, and once again sees the park make good use of the available space.
Returning for its fourth FRIGHT NIGHTS is Trailers. However, 2024 has seen the Director (of Studio 13 fame) take over Superspark Cinema, with the character now the focus of the pre-show scene. The Director’s cut has also brought new scenes to this scare maze, including throwbacks to past mazes Platform 15 and Creek Freak Massacre, along with the recently departed Death’s Doors scare zone! The scenes replace Ship Happens / The Nightmare on Staines Street, Hell Cell and Vulcan Voodoo respectively. This certainly provides a welcome refresh of what is longest-standing of this year’s maze line-up, with the attraction on good form for our run-through.
Last year’s new addition, Stitches, also makes a return for 2024. Guests who dare enter Howell’s Toy Emporium to embark on a factory tour will soon discover that it very much remains inhabited by the Toymaker’s wicked creations. Although the scare maze remains unchanged from 2023, this is no bad thing as it means it retains the highly detailed scenes and creepy set pieces which were praised last year. The experience is once again made by the cast of actors and their variety of gory costumes, each reflecting a different experiment by the Toymaker. Stitches therefore remains a strong part of the FRIGHT NIGHTS line-up.
Completing the 2024 scare maze line-up is Survival Games. This multi-route scare maze is the only attraction where the scare actors will actively touch you and seek to separate you from your group, adding to the intensity of the experience. This starts from the opening scene where guests are separated into cages – the scene itself has been slightly reworked for this year, now featuring a victim in an electric chair in the centre of the room, with guests using buttons in their cages to vote as to whether to save or kill them. Although the finale didn’t feature chainsaws during our run-through at the preview night, these were present on the first day of the event. While the maze is arguably the most intense of the FRIGHT NIGHTS line-up, its multi-route nature does result in some inconsistency of the guest experience – whilst some may find themselves spending a considerable amount of time lost within the battle arena, others can be quickly ushered towards the exit leaving them feeling short-changed by the experience.
FRIGHT NIGHTS is more than just the scare mazes, with free-to-enter scare zone, The Crows of Mawkin Meadow, back for another year. Although remaining in the same location, this year guests are batched into the walkthrough following an initial safety spiel similar to that for the scare mazes. A new addition to the village of Mawkin Meadow is a barn-like structure, seemingly being where the villager’s store their meat. This acts as one of two routes through the first half of the walkthrough, with the other option being a winding outdoor pathway off to the left of the barn. The attraction opens at 5:15pm, although is best experienced after-dark as this is when the village is at its eeriest, with it more difficult to tell which of the scarecrows aren’t so inanimate…
A new addition for 2023, Lucifer’s Lair is another returning attraction for FRIGHT NIGHTS 2024, being both a scare and entertainment zone. Similar to last year, the area contains live roaming scare actors and nail-biting entertainment, including a dance show, live band, and fire display. The cast have nonetheless received new costumes, including new and improved looks for Lucifer and Lilith themselves. The area retains its energy and strong atmosphere, with always something going on to engage guests in what acts as something of a hub in the centre of the park.
Completing the 2024 line-up is Creature Campus: Looks Can Kill! Situated in the Stealth plaza, this scare zone features an hourly dance show led by the witches of the Sorcerors Sorority. However, this year has seen the Sarpedon Society, a new coven of Gorgons led by the infamous Medusa, arrive on campus. Although we didn’t catch a performance during the preview event, we did manage to during opening day. Over the course of the high-energy 10 minute show, the witches and the gorgons battle it out, with it eventually being the latter who prevail as the witches are turned to stone.
With this year’s FRIGHT NIGHTS sponsored by Fanta, the brand has taken over Big Easy Boulevard, as marked by a large LED-screen ball. Guests can enter the Fanta Fortune Cabin for a unique photo opportunity and characters can also be found roaming the area.
Overall, FRIGHT NIGHTS 2024 remains a strong all-round event, with the line-up benefitting from the addition of fourth, good quality scare maze that brings another new concept and further capacity to this always popular event. The spread of the scare attractions around the theme park combined with an impressive amount of lighting creates a suitably spooky park-wide atmosphere once darkness falls. It now feels as though Thorpe Park have established a solid formula for FRIGHT NIGHTS and so it will be interesting to see how they choose to develop it in future years.
Fright Nights runs on 4th – 7th, 11th – 13th and 17th October – 3rd November, with the park open 10am – 9pm on all dates and the four scare mazes open from 3pm. There is an additional charge for the mazes, with individual tickets available for £8 in the afternoon before 6pm and then £10 in the evening. Annual passholders can experience the mazes before 6pm for £6.40. Thorpe Park also offer combo tickets in the form of the Terrifying Trio and Fearsome Four Package, providing one entry to each maze with the latter also including DeadBeat. The Terrifying Trio Package is £24 in the before 6pm and £30 in the evening, while the Fearsome Four Package is £34 in the before 7pm and £38 in the evening. Annual passholders can obtain discount on the earlier afternoon packages, which are priced at £19.20 and £27.20 respectively, and can also experience unlimited mazes from 3pm – 6pm every day of FRIGHT NIGHTS with a Frequent Fears Pass priced at £99.
Are you planning a visit to FRIGHT NIGHTS this year? Will you be heading to DJ Canistro’s last night on earth party? Let us know via the Attraction Source social media channels.
