Thorpe Park - Fright Nights

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Dom
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It's a good looking visual, so let's hope this years event is a lot better than last years, though lets be honest, it won't be hard to beat last years.
Swarm Chris

More fearful updates on Fright Nights construction by SouthParks News. As we reported last weekend, construction is underway at Thorpe Park Resort to convert the former Loggers Leap station into a Fright Nights attraction.

New signage for Creek Woods Sawmill Ltd, along with a Fright Nights advertisement, has been added to the construction fences. Meanwhile, props placed outside the fences, including the base of the plants, indicate something freakish has happened at the mill.

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DeadJack5
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As reported by SouthParks News, Thorpe Park Resort have updated their website to confirm which attractions will be returning for FRIGHT NIGHTS 2019.

The Walking Dead: Living Nightmare, The Walking Dead: Do or Die, Platform 15, Blair Witch, Containment, and Screamplexx Cinema will all be back for this year's event. As rumoured, Saw Alive has departed the Island.

Three new attractions have also been confirmed, including a brand new "gruesome" maze, a "demonstration of dread" in a new FRIGHT NIGHTS show, and a "chilling challenge". Further details of these will be released at a later date.

Are you excited for this year's FRIGHT NIGHTS?



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Dom
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No matter how hard I try, I just can't get enthusiastic about this year's Fright Nights line up. I hope for the park it's a success and I'm sure it is, but I just feel that the current mazes are very stale and repetitive. I'm sorry Thorpe, but at the moment I have nothing telling me to visit!
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KaiPhillips
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New maze looks amazing thus far, I'm looking forward to this year myself.
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Justin
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The maze that looks the most interesting is Dead Creak Wood Sawmill. Hopefully, it will be a good hillbilly adventure that matches some of Thorpe's classic mazes. Not a fan of IPs for mazes and much prefer the uniqueness of in house brands :)
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Activist3
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Does anyone know how much the platinum fastrack for rides and mazes was last year?
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Owen
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I have to admit, I’m quite excited about Fright Nights this year. If what I’m hearing about the new maze and it’s name is true, I could see it being really fun and somewhat quirky too.

Fingers crossed for a great Fright Nights 2019!
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Swarm Chris

As posted by SouthParks, preparations for Fright Nights continue at Thorpe Park Resort.

Work on the entrance and exit to Platform 15 has begun, with a new entrance route appearing to go via part of the former Dead Creek Woods route, with a new stairway leading up to the platform just behind the Timber Tug queue. At Platform 15's exit, a new shed has been added which looks likely to house some of the actors.

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Construction is also ongoing on the inside of the as yet un-named new maze, although little has changed on the exterior.

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Swarm Chris

As posted on SouthParks, Creek Freak Massacre has been confirmed as one of the new “fears” for Fright Nights 2019 at Thorpe Park.

Chainsaw-wielding lumberjacks have taken over the abandoned Creek Woods Saw Mill in this new maze which will take guests on a bloody path through the Resort’s most intense Fright Nights attraction to date!
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KaiPhillips
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Keiran Adams has shared these images on twitter. 

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Swarm Chris

Thorpe Park Resort is set to be “The Home of Fear” this Halloween!

Featuring a brand new scare maze, Creek Freak Massacre, promising to be their most intense scare maze yet, the return of the Amity High vampires in a new show, and the return of some classic mazes, SouthParks News looks at all the details of 2019’s line-up.

Will you be heading to “The Home of Fear” this Halloween?
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If I'm brutally honest... no.

As a standard passholder, there's not much incentive to pay extra for what has in the past been a string of weak days out. In my time visiting, Fright Nights has rarely impressed, and after the plethora of poor reviews from last year, it'll take a lot of changes for me to return. Unfortunately, the addition of Creek Freak Massacre doesn't seem like it'll change that.

From the information released, this new maze sounds incredibly generic, and it feels as if there are places that have done the same thing (immediately thought of Chop Shop at Tulleys when I heard about it). Whilst a chainsaw scare can be effective, and if built up correctly can be genuinely terrifying- having a maze (seemingly) built up mostly of this one scare seems like it'll get old quickly, especially as Fright Nights has been doing chainsaw scares since time itself began. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong, as generic themes can be done incredibly well with the right set and sound design (looking at you Project 42, but that's an argument for another day).

For all we know, however, Thorpe may have ironed out many of the issues of previous years, but with their track record... I'm not feeling very hopeful unfortunately.
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Dan
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It’s unlikely that I’ll be able to get down to Thorpe for Fright Nights this year.

It’s a shame, but my last visit to Fright Nights was disappointing and I haven’t seen anything that makes me think “oooh, I need to try that”.
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Swarm Chris

As reported by SouthParks News, construction is continuing for this year’s Fright Nights at Thorpe Park Resort.

With BounceZilla removed, the shipping containers for The Walking Dead: Do or Die are now in place, with various theming items for this year's event being unpacked.

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Over at Creek Freak Massacre, additional signage has been installed, whilst further work is taking place on Platform 15's exit, with the tunnel now in place behind it.

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Amusingly, not long after posting we found that the Sanctum paintwork had been removed during the day.

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As reported by SouthParks News, THORPE PARK Official became the “home of fear” last night as FRIGHT NIGHTS 2019 was launched at a special VIP and media preview event.

With the debut of Creek Freak Massacre, as well as the return of several previous mazes, there was no shortage of scares to enjoy. SouthParks were invited to experience all the scares the Island has to offer.

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Swarm Chris

Unexpectedly, Thorpe Park have removed the passholder restrictions for weekdays next week.

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This week restrictions were, and still are for today, in place for all but premium passholders. It would appear that attendance has been low to moderate throughout the week, so I guess the lifting of the restrictions is a reaction to that.

Trouble is, next week many schools in the local area will be on half-term, so I'd expect it to be pretty busy, making the removal of the restriction a little odd to me.
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Morgan
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This is great news to hear. Perhaps they over-estimated demand with the Southern half term only just starting. It'll probably be back to usual Fright Nights chaos this week though! Regardless, it's nice to hear- might actually attend now.
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Morgan
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After sitting the event out last year and seeing as the silly annual pass restrictions have been removed, I decided to return to Fright Nights yesterday. In the past, I've never particularly enjoyed Thorpe's Halloween offering. I've always found their mazes to have bland set-design repetitive scares, and a lack of any atmosphere. After what was apparently an utter car-crash of last year, I'd heard that this years event was good. But after my previous experiences, I went in with low hopes- and unfortunately, they were met.

First up was their new maze, Creek Freak Massacre. I was unsure of this maze from the start- whilst it was nice to see a new attraction that didn't rely on an external property, it sounded incredibly generic, and with the marketing stating it was their "most intense maze ever!", I was nervous that it wouldn't meet that claim.
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The preshow began, and the script here was actually pretty good, which gave me some higher hopes- but before I knew it, I was told my "shift" had "started early", as I was told to head through a crawl space into the maze alone. I'm an absolute sucker for seperation in mazes, as it allows for some really intense encounters, and will often lead to having several actors crowding you at once. But unfortunately, this just didn't happen in Creek Freak. As I passed through the maze, the vast majority of actors just got a little close and did a generic snarl, before walking off. This was incredibly dissappointing! Also to note is how you could clearly see any actor quite a while before you got to them. Then came the first person to hold a chainsaw, so I got ready. Now, chainsaw scares are incredibly overused, and as a result, I'm generally un-phased by them, unless the actor is essentially dancing with it, and bonus points if they're crazy enough to use contact whilst wielding the chainsaw. But here... they just stood and stared. No chase, no movement in fact. Just... nothing. Maybe my luck would change with the upcoming strobe maze? Well, kinda. The actor in here was moving- a little. Never really chased into any corners or forced to run. On a positive, the strobe maze was disorienting. I back-tracked on myself by accident multiple times, which was weird. Eventually I found the exit, and once again- the chainsaw in here barely revved or moved.
It was such a let-down. Perhaps I'm just wearing rose-tinted glasses here (or maybe I've just grown a bit of a resiliance since I started doing mazes), but both Cabin in the Woods and The Big Top were more intense. There were lots of oppurtunities to deliver some scares, but none of them came to fruition. The chainsaws also detracted from the experience as every time you saw one, you were expecting to get chased- but alas, that never happened.
The design of the attraction was also a bit of a let-down. The vast majority of the maze was just a wide, empty wooden corridor with a red light, maybe a bit of haze. Whilst I can appreciate their efforts with transforming an incredibly small space, the corridors were incredibly bland and repetetive. In terms of lighting and effects- there's not much positive to say either. The maze is pretty much exclusively lit in red, but once again, it's just the same gel over and over. And with effects- there was one which was no surprise, as you could see the proxy sensor for it (and the haze highlighted it).
In short- Creek Freak Massacre is... ehhhhh. Despite a promising pre-show, everything was just... well, unenjoyable. As with the other mazes, it's a common theme at Fright Nights that "nothing happens".

Next up was Platform 15. In previous years, I've never really liked this maze, but we did it anyway, because you can't review something unless you've actually done it.
...yeah, I still don't like it. It's the same, reeeeally long drawn out corner through the woods at the back of the park. And, for the second time in this review- nothing happens. Now, "nothing" is something that can be really effectively used in a maze, assuming you've set-up tension prior. Holding tension is an incredibly hard thing to do as well- assuming you've got tension in the first place, as there's a lack of any atmosphere in Platform 15. Because of how wide the pathway is (for the most part), it's hard to feel intimidated by any of the actors. It's just a seemingly-endless trek to the exit where you're free to do another attraction, that's possibly enjoyable. 

Our final maze of the day was Living Nightmare, and whilst Platform 15 spends too long doing nothing, Living Nightmare spends so little time doing nothing! Once again, there's a lack of any atmosphere in this maze. Throughout a lot of the maze (the early ones in-particular), the set feels incredibly sparse. There's a lot of white walls with nothing else. Things change a bit towards the second half, but it's nothing crazy. There's also a lot of rooms that seem to lack a ceiling, meaning that if you look up there's just "warehouse". The same goes for sound-design. For the most part, there's no audio- and if there is, it's either incredibly quiet, or forgettable. 

After these, we felt done. There were still three other attractions to try out, but the lengthy queue-times for very little pay-off just didn't seem worth it.

Although I couldn't think of any positives about my trip, I don't want this review to be pure negativity- so some ideas on how Thorpe could improve upon the event:
  • Better sound design. The mazes (with the exception of Creek Freak which had a decently noisy finale) all feel really quiet, and it's no secret that sound really improves the experience as it can easily built atmosphere and tension. Heck, there are even some attractions which are entirely sound based, and are very effective.
  • More theming. Many of the mazes have large spaces with un-themed walls, which really detracts from the experience. If we really want to loose ourselves into another world, we need to be able to see all-sorts of persuading items and objects from said world.
  • More "aggresive" actors. I never felt targetted or intimidated by any of the actors at any point throughout my three runs. Perhaps implementing a script for actors to say that encourages involvement from guests, rather than a generic grunt. Characters conversing with guests really helps sell the world as it feels inhabited, personal, and therefore memorable. 
  • Opening the mazes earlier. I understand the want for free mazes, but because they're insanely busy, if you want to do them all there simply isn't enough time as all mazes are above an hours wait. If you opened them at, let's say, midday, that's three extra hours of maze time, and means guests have time to do an extra maze or two in that time, and it takes pressure off the rides.
I want to enjoy Fright Nights- I really do- but I kinda regretted going yesterday. Our experience at the park was more frustrating than fun, and I was genuinely bored throughout. It really says something when I wish I stayed home rather than going out to a place that's supposed to be fun. I really hope that Thorpe Park are able to improve their offering for future years- but until things have radically changed, I won't be going.
Swarm Chris

Perhaps earlier than normal, Thorpe Park have already started selling their Fright Nights tickets. The odd part is that the ticket type states it includes "Five Scare Mazes", where the number of attractions is not normally announced until August it September.

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I noticed earlier last week they had listed a few days incorrectly as Fright Nights dates, which have now been removed. As the number of mazes statement has remained and it is a clear part of the ticket description, I would have to presume this is the earliest Fright Nights confirmation Thorpe Park have done.

Sadly no detailed information exists, and the date is set incorrectly on the expanded info view.

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