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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

No, Coaster Kingdom wasn't run by Marcus Gaines, it was run by Marcus Sheen. The sites aren't related.

CK ended simply as it took up lots of time, and the lives of those involved moved on. It was also a formative experience for me, the level of analysis and wit was above and beyond almost all theme park writing, at least for a period. John Phillips in particular was (and is) a wonderful critical voice.

I agree. We’re sadly lacking nowadays with thoroughly considered, detailed, independent and frank reviews with a spot of irreverence thrown in. This forum seems to be one of the few places it still exists.
 
I agree. We’re sadly lacking nowadays with thoroughly considered, detailed, independent and frank reviews with a spot of irreverence thrown in. This forum seems to be one of the few places it still exists.
The death of the written word in the coaster community, is a tragedy. That's before you consider that it has been replaced by teenagers reading Wikipedia over some stolen footage.
 
Coaster Kingdom did stand out as being the best one though. What were the other decent ones? Extreme Rides, Dark Rides UK, Theme Parks of England, Coaster Crazy... We definitely don't have so much of that kind of thing now. Although we do have more books, and some of the podcasts are very informative. The Season Pass Podcast is well worth a listen.
 
If you wish for information, naturally every post I write on here is utter genius and should be treated as the word of God himself, for I am he.

For example: Stealth was originally going to be a Vekoma bike coaster. True fact. [/s]
 
So Thorpe Park have been teasing for a while now about the line up for the 20th anniversary of Fright Nights. It appears that maze wise there will be two - Platform 15 and Creek Freak, both will cost extra.

 
So Thorpe Park have been teasing for a while now about the line up for the 20th anniversary of Fright Nights. It appears that maze wise there will be two - Platform 15 and Creek Freak, both will cost extra.



If you look at the replies to the comments bellow that twitter announcement there are a lot of hints towards at least one other unannounced maze (the new one they have been teasing related to volts/electricity and is probably going to be placed in the jungle escape area)

Also if you check the fright nights page on the Thorpe Park website there are three scare mazes with left hidden for now.
 
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You'd think for a 20th anniversary they'd not just have the same two mazes?

Covid reasons surely?
Well they were obviously expecting the restrictions to end as Creek Freak is not Covid-safe (hence why it wasn't used last year).
 
It's quite something to consider how this event has declined in scale and quality over the past twenty years. There was a time that it was approaching greatness in creative terms, as well as being so wildly popular that it seemed natural that it might progress to a 'hard ticket' event in the vein of Halloween Horror Nights. The 'UK's premiere Halloween event', for real.

I understand that we're hardly living through ideal circumstances for a Halloween event, but celebrating those two decades with a pair of pay-extra mazes and a couple of groups of roaming actors seems rather bleak. Perhaps there's more to come?
 
Platform 15: End of the Line is intriguing… could this possibly be P15’s last year in the lineup?

Also, I absolutely love the variation on the Island Theme used in that video!
 
I agree to an extent @Plastic Person - particularly in terms of it being big, brash and creative but the free for all format seemed to let it down, it was hard work to enjoy it, despite all the effort put in to make it what it was.

If I can pay something and actually experience the mazes (even if there are less) plus do some rides, I'd take that any day over what it used to be like.
 
Yes, I remember those 18k capacity sellouts every weekend and half-term, 120-180 minutes for each individual maze and most the major rides, a lottery whether you'd get to see Circus of Horrors and so on... Still, it's weird to see the event shrink, especially as every other urban farm across the country know seems to have a couple of goons dressed up as clowns and be able to turn over a solid grand per night in hot dog sales.
 
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