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Scarefest 2014

Olii said:
I was reserving judgement on Scarefest as a whole until I saw the quality of the lighting. If what is seen in Dark Forest is of a similar quality park wide, I think I can forgive them for getting rid of Carnival. Just.
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I can't, sorry.

This WITH Carnival and Scary Tales, the additional up charge events to bring revenue back, and THEN you would have an improvement on last year.

I don't think that's too much to ask Merlin to back Towers with. I think that's minimum expectation for this event.

However, they have clearly gone in with lighting and it does certainly look atmospheric! I do hope they shopped in another isle other than the green one though because trees are green, so lighting them, green, seems a little.... I dunno :D

Seriously though, it does look nice from those photos.
 
Thirteen looks good too, hopefully the lighting doesn't intrude over to the outside section though:

10154254_762855137118266_8375618118585196228_n.jpg

Image from TowersStreet Facebook
 
I'm with TheMan.

The lighting is a great step forward, even though its not to the same standard of the southern parks. It shouldn't have come at the cost of Carnival. If Thorpe can afford to buy several lights to illuminate Stealth and open The Asylum in the same year, Towers can afford to keep the same mazes and buy coloured gels.

Scary Tales sounds nice, but it in no way compensates for the loss of a maze.

But umm yeah. The lighting looks fab!
 
I'd have liked to see it bathed in a darker colour, maybe a deep red, am I being a bit picky there not really liking it in green so much?
 
Thing is lighting was good a few years ago. Maybe not as good as what we seem to be getting now. But still good. Then suddenly we went from decent lighting everywhere to last year with little to no lighting.

I still can't forgive them for a lack of a third, free maze. Scary Tales looks awful, but I can appreciate the idea of it and management at Towers not completely leaving out a second free attraction. TOTT is a joke and has needed a new theme for years. The Sanctuary is OK as it is, although should have had major changes by now, or been removed and replaced.

Looking at it on the whole, good lighting or not, Scarefest still seems pretty 'meh' to me and there's nothing drawing me back in. I'm kinda glad I'm not bothering with Scarefest this year and keeping my money in my pocket.
 
I was wondering how TS have got these images, given it's not ScareFest yet, however for anyone else that's wondering, I've just had a text from @MattyH saying it's the staff preview night!

I look forward to seeing the lighting in all the other areas too! Don't let me down, Varney. Although I have to say that the generators look naff, and far too temporary. The temp fence around them doesn't do it any favours, and reminds me of a fun fair of sorts.
 
Well the simple act of colouring the floods (like we have all been saying for years) is certainly an improvement. By no means perfect, but a step in the right direction. Pools of light would be better than flooding the whole area, but I doubt we will ever see that.
 
Most lights are blue or green. I believe some red is on the way too. Some lights remain normal.

New Scarefest street entertainment troupe looks good too.
 
Well they've had nemesis lit up in red before so I hope there's no crappy excuses again. Although they were using a bunch of Par38 garden spotlights to do that which I think are now used to light up the queue area of The Sanctuary. Fingers crossed they bought some more.

Looks like its coloured bulbs they're using in the floods then. With that comes a lack of colour choice so don't expect too much but its far, far better than white light.

This must be why Carnival has packed it's bags.
 
Quick general review:

Mazes - well acted (ToTT was quite intense) but as we all knew no major changes. Of the two last night Terror was the stronger maze.

Zombie - better, looked good and the last tent was cool.

Lighting - better than every year except 2010.

Street theatre - very good, won't spoil but certainly interesting.

Scary tales wasn't open but I don't understand the hate looking at it through the fence. Not much was noticeably Carnival (lots of the stuff seemed covered now. They where testing the lighting and it looked good at night. Personally I don't mind reused theming (the new maze at thorpe is mostly recycled).

It's weird really, most of the things we moan about at SF (lighting) has been remeded this year. They have just missed out on a better event by cutting and allowing the mazes to stagnate!
 
It is a pretty major cut though @Dave is't it.

One of the core attractions at the event, free maze or coloured lighting seems to be a rather stark and unnecessary choice.

I wasn't too fussed by the recycling of props from elsewhere, from what I saw it just looked very plain.

Apart from some potentially misguided/over enthusiastic pricing shall we say, I think some of the additional add-ons seem quite promising, but in my opinion if you increase the profit making options you don't cut the free ones.

That is going to annoy people.
 
Overall Scarefest seems as an 'event' an improvement in 2013. Had there been a brand new maze experience for the thrill seekers then I would provisionally proclaim it the best Scarefest yet.

Park lighting, whilst not revolutionised, is better - with coloured bulbs in perhaps 70% of the generators. This adds a lot to areas which were previously awful (Dark Forest etc.).

Park street entertainment is better with the Ancestors of Alton doing random flash mobs and interacting with guests. Wonderful to see.

Zombies Scare Zone is similar but slightly improved on 2013. This feels good quality. Scary Tales was not open last night.

Haunted Hollow has the new Gargoyles - they look GREAT!

Fountain Square looks superb.

I think we have become so used to negativity regarding the development of this event since 2007 but in truth, we should almost be grateful for the small mercies of these little improvements that have been demonstrated.

Terror of the Towers and The Sanctuary are 99% identical to last year. Perfectly good mazes but they're a bit behind the times of what is now possible with technical equipment...

:)
 
Would you say though @AstroDan that, as I suspect, any triumph is purely down to exceptional talent on behalf of the Ents team given what are obvious budgetary restrictions?
 
It's good to hear that park lighting and street entertainment has been improved. From the sounds of it the whole park atmosphere should be better this year. I will take a while to get the lighting back to 2010 standards, it was phenomenal.

However good the lighting is though, and however good the street entertainment is; it does not excuse the fact that the main element of the event is significantly recuded. Two mazes instead of three and the two we do have are near identical to how they were last year.

It is a real pity, as if the event was how it's going to be plus Carnival (Sacry Tales would have to be in a different location) then we would have a really great event on our hands; it would have grown. This isn't what has happened though, as far as I am concerned the event is smaller this year and I still have zero excitement for it.

:)
 
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