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Scarefest 2024

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@Alix I kinda get what you are saying. Once you get over the initial "it's just jump scares" worry, a lot of mazes can be boring. I always think it's a shame we aren't allowed to get in to character ourselves and engage in a bit of LARP with the actors.
 
Quick summary from today (done the 4 main mazes + scare zone).

- Didn't arrive till 10.45am. Thank goodness I didn't turn up any earlier. Rita was (surprisingly) the only ride working reliably until about 11am. Got a quiet ride on 13 at the end of it's "weather delay" even though the weather was fairly mild today. Then went to Rita, which then broke about queuing for 5min so aborted that.

Basically, some old story with ride reliability this year. No surprises there.

- Daz Games: Didn't do it last year. It's cheap themeing, to be fair it was quite fun and chaotic and the actors were really good. Just don't expect a lot theming wise.

- Mine Tours: Last time I did this was with the helmets. Great theming, average actors on my run through. Not as good as the run through I did a few years back.

- Attic: Had quite a good run through actor wise. Just the same really nothing to say.

- Compound: Saved the night. Very intense, reminds me of survival games at TP but done much better. Expect to be split up, loads of routes inside. Probably my fav merlin maze since Big Top at TP.

- Burial Grounds: Really enjoyed this (more than some of the mazes). Quite intense acting.

Overall, a good day. Shame about Hex. Trommel (still) not working on Curse. Queues died down after about 4pm (Sunday). Think most of the queues were caused by rise reliability issues as nothing worked this morning lol.
 
Ben Anderson said:
Basically, some old story with ride reliability this year. No surprises there.
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Were we visiting the same park at all? The only ride I noticed which had any downtime was TH13TEEN, and that was about 20 minutes in total.

We arrived inside the park at 1015, and didn't chase the app.

In order:
Oblivion
The Curse at Alton Manor
Galactica
Nemesis Reborn
Spinball Whizzer
TH13TEEN
Congo River Rapids
Runaway Mine Train
The Blade
Marauders Mayhem
The Smiler
Oblivion
Rita
Spinball Whizzer
The Wicker Man
Nemesis Reborn

We also had plenty of wandering around time, with lots of admiring of the decoration and just seeing the park.

Not a single ride we queued for experienced any downtime, whilst queuing for it. Estimated times were often over estimating. The only exception being a night ride on Wickerman, which was advertised at 40, and ended up being 1 hour and 20, after all of RAP descended.

I've got to give the park its due operationally, it was firing on all cylinders today. Short queues, manageable, little downtime. You can see from the order we hit things up in, we weren't following a plan or using any "Thoosie" knowledge.
Ben Anderson said:
Think most of the queues were caused by rise reliability issues as nothing worked this morning lol.
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I didn't experience the queues you allude to, and I certainly didn't experience the reliability issues. Funny how two people can be on the same park and have vastly different experiences.

The visit today was the complete opposite of our previous attempt to get night rides in this season, with an appalling Alton After Dark attendance.

The only disappointing thing of note is that my Greylag cousins have gone on holiday, preferring warmer climates at this time of year. The Canada geese / cousins were still representing though.
 
Recently back from a visit today. Didn’t get on park until about half 12 and managed:

- TCAAM
- Gangsta Granny
- Amigos
- TOT
- Woodcutters
- Daz Games
- Watched Sin show and Alton Ancestors
- Altonville Mine Tours
- The Attic
- Burial Grounds
- Compound
- Wickerman

Overall:
The lawn setup remains a welcome change, but I can’t help but feel like most other things it needs some permanency now. A park the size of Alton Towers needs a suitably sized, large indoor stage venue. A suitable place though in a decent location may be hard to find (replace Spinball? Replace the conference suite? Replace big fun show time? The express disabled car park?) They have proven they can get it to work, it now needs suitable investment.

As good as the re-skinned f&b trucks are, again something permanent is now needed, either the lawns needs to be converted into something more hard standing, the food trucks should be converted to permanent “huts” for all seasons. The central “event space” at Efteling is a good example. Or on another level the permanent festival booths at Epcot

The park at night as always looks stunning, the increased lighting around the park is a welcome change, but it appears a little more work is still needed to be rid of the generators and hopefully this continues but it’s noticeably better.

TCAAM:
Given this is the parks premier scary attraction it’s a shame it’s not involved more. More live actors, its own maze.

GG:
Who knows what the future holds for the area, but a solid child’s dark ride given the constraints. The photo op needs removing from the queue and a bit of queue line damage removing. Otherwise reliable still!

Amigos:
Great for the kids. Despite some less than convincing accents , you felt the staff were having great fun. If nothing else I feel either dungeons isn’t completely gone yet or the boat ride at least will stay as it hasn’t been touched, but as others have said it will take some work to put back. Obviously the “surgery” scene has been reused. Shows just how much space/potential is in there.

TOT:
Again great for what it was. And similar to the last point, there is clearly oodles of space in there that should really be used with ride hardware.

Woodcutters:
Fine, bland food. No toilet inside a restaurant. The building in general was cold. And you order from a QR code. One of only two places on park you sit down and use a knife and fork…the “teachers lounge” on towers street and Swiss Cottage need converting into restaurants again sharpish.

Daz Games:
Pleasantly surprised, but it’s at the wrong park. It belongs at Thorpe, it should have always been to Thorpe. Take it out and do VIP Scarefest package like fireworks out the conference suite. We’ll have trailers from Thorpe.

Sin show and Ancestors:
I’m sorry, the male singer just isn’t very good, female was good though. Song selection felt a little obscure. Ancestors were great as always.

Altonville:
First time doing it, and we enjoyed it. Female deputy at the start was excellent. Ending could have been executed better and the queue being so close gave the game away. Felt the end lacked the confrontation element, would have preferred to see to chainsaw indoors. Given its age it seems clear this is maze has run its race, and the towers needs some more opportunity to repair. We noticed that side of the building just how un water tight it is.

Attic:
Our run through wasn’t as good as last year. The initial actor doing the pre show was poor. And the fire effect in the pre show was naff. Maze itself felt like it lacked actors. But again still good.

Burial grounds
Fine for free. The theme suits the outdoor nature.

Compound:
Real highlight. Needed stronger explanation around touching. Definitely think it needs a 16+ age limit as saw a few upset kids.

Improvements:
- Not my cup of tea but character meet and greets with “The freaky friends”, Emily Alton, The Phalanx, The Ministry of Joy, the Wraiths, the beornen, the Alton Ancestors. Seems a real missed opportunity considering Merlin own all the IP, it wouldn’t take much to set these up in each area.
- Light show on/around the towers every 30 mins after 6/dark.
- Maze queue times added too the app
- A family walkthrough down Haunted Hollow seems like something that should happen
- The gardens are still a state, and the council should be disproving all planning applications until it’s sorted. It’s doing what appears to be irreversible damage now for generations to come. It’s a jungle.
- Wraith, Ministry of Joy, Pirate, Emily Alton, Beornen, mazes are all missed opportunities.
 
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Benzin said:
Given how absolutely packed Haunted Hollow gets after dark I don't think they could put actors in there. Maybe the plaza of busts but not on the actual walkway.
Click to expand...

Maybe they could put more moving or static props, lighting and smoke and market it more like a ghostly lighting trail.

I love all the ideas above and a towers lighting show, they definitely need to get rid of one of the mazes to free up more actors around the park and make the other mazes more solid.

I actually feel they have to many mazes now and the money they save could invest in new high quality mazes like compound not Daz.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Haunted Hollow with some extra lighting and smoke/mist effects could work after dark. It would be great to see actors there, but I think the previous attempt was a security nightmare. It's quite a large path, so it's harder to control over a structured scare zone such as Burial Grounds.
 
Tbh i think they miss a trick with not using the curse more.

It could be an epic family scare zone. They have an enclosed area in gloomy wood they can use and they have a long queue line they can utilise with scare actors. They could fill it with people who Emily killed at the new yrs eve party.

We will be going on weds hopefully they still use the same amount of actors in the mazes as they do on weekends
 
As I mentioned it doesn’t need actors to make it atmospheric light trail it can be brought alive in so many ways, you can also have actors behind scenery/glass etc. So they can’t be touched?
 
PhalanaxOperativeA1127 said:
I may be misremembering, but didn't they have a Haunted Hollow Live event before?
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They did and it was very good. You had grave diggers, undertaker, Emily Alton etc , smoke machines - it was very well done and very atmospheric. Unfortunately I believe during a visit from a particular group of people some of the actors were assaulted and it never returned after that.
 
Queue times suggest today is busier than Friday was.

I'm in a pickle because, after the first Scarefest that Wicker was open (almost a 3 hour queue :eek:), I've bought FP's. But there's 4 of us so it's not cheap. After seeing the queue times last Friday (we're going this Friday), I planned to not bother*. Now I'm not sure.



* Point of bloody annoyance (I don't know if this has been brought up before):
You have to book a solo FP slot at a certain time of the day, with solo FP's for each slot limited so users are spread out across the day (I get that with FP packages you don't have a time slot) . We've always stuck to our slot and, whilst I get there has to be some leeway due to the size of the park and size of queues easily throwing you out 15/20 mins, there are so many people who'll just buy up a FP for 1pm but turn up when it's dark. And the AT staff do nothing to stop them.
It's got worse year on year (presumably as word has spread) and last year we queued for 25 mins on the FP queue. There was a large'ish group in front of us with FP times hours before and they just got waved through.
 
Ash said:
Recently back from a visit today. Didn’t get on park until about half 12 and managed:

- TCAAM
- Gangsta Granny
- Amigos
- TOT
- Woodcutters
- Daz Games
- Watched Sin show and Alton Ancestors
- Altonville Mine Tours
- The Attic
- Burial Grounds
- Compound
- Wickerman

Overall:
The lawn setup remains a welcome change, but I can’t help but feel like most other things it needs some permanency now. A park the size of Alton Towers needs a suitably sized, large indoor stage venue. A suitable place though in a decent location may be hard to find (replace Spinball? Replace the conference suite? Replace big fun show time? The express disabled car park?) They have proven they can get it to work, it now needs suitable investment.

As good as the re-skinned f&b trucks are, again something permanent is now needed, either the lawns needs to be converted into something more hard standing, the food trucks should be converted to permanent “huts” for all seasons. The central “event space” at Efteling is a good example. Or on another level the permanent festival booths at Epcot

The park at night as always looks stunning, the increased lighting around the park is a welcome change, but it appears a little more work is still needed to be rid of the generators and hopefully this continues but it’s noticeably better.

TCAAM:
Given this is the parks premier scary attraction it’s a shame it’s not involved more. More live actors, its own maze.

GG:
Who knows what the future holds for the area, but a solid child’s dark ride given the constraints. The photo op needs removing from the queue and a bit of queue line damage removing. Otherwise reliable still!

Amigos:
Great for the kids. Despite some less than convincing accents , you felt the staff were having great fun. If nothing else I feel either dungeons isn’t completely gone yet or the boat ride at least will stay as it hasn’t been touched, but as others have said it will take some work to put back. Obviously the “surgery” scene has been reused. Shows just how much space/potential is in there.

TOT:
Again great for what it was. And similar to the last point, there is clearly oodles of space in there that should really be used with ride hardware.

Woodcutters:
Fine, bland food. No toilet inside a restaurant. The building in general was cold. And you order from a QR code. One of only two places on park you sit down and use a knife and fork…the “teachers lounge” on towers street and Swiss Cottage need converting into restaurants again sharpish.

Daz Games:
Pleasantly surprised, but it’s at the wrong park. It belongs at Thorpe, it should have always been to Thorpe. Take it out and do VIP Scarefest package like fireworks out the conference suite. We’ll have trailers from Thorpe.

Sin show and Ancestors:
I’m sorry, the male singer just isn’t very good, female was good though. Song selection felt a little obscure. Ancestors were great as always.

Altonville:
First time doing it, and we enjoyed it. Female deputy at the start was excellent. Ending could have been executed better and the queue being so close gave the game away. Felt the end lacked the confrontation element, would have preferred to see to chainsaw indoors. Given its age it seems clear this is maze has run its race, and the towers needs some more opportunity to repair. We noticed that side of the building just how un water tight it is.

Attic:
Our run through wasn’t as good as last year. The initial actor doing the pre show was poor. And the fire effect in the pre show was naff. Maze itself felt like it lacked actors. But again still good.

Burial grounds
Fine for free. The theme suits the outdoor nature.

Compound:
Real highlight. Needed stronger explanation around touching. Definitely think it needs a 16+ age limit as saw a few upset kids.

Improvements:
- Not my cup of tea but character meet and greets with “The freaky friends”, Emily Alton, The Phalanx, The Ministry of Joy, the Wraiths, the beornen, the Alton Ancestors. Seems a real missed opportunity considering Merlin own all the IP, it wouldn’t take much to set these up in each area.
- Light show on/around the towers every 30 mins after 6/dark.
- Maze queue times added too the app
- A family walkthrough down Haunted Hollow seems like something that should happen
- The gardens are still a state, and the council should be disproving all planning applications until it’s sorted. It’s doing what appears to be irreversible damage now for generations to come. It’s a jungle.
- Wraith, Ministry of Joy, Pirate, Emily Alton, Beornen, mazes are all missed opportunities.
Click to expand...
We've had Nox Infernus, Darkest Depths, The Sanctuary & The Welcoming in previous years covering a lot of those "missed opportunities"
 
Our Mini Trip Report from our visit on Monday 14th,

We arrived inside the park at 9:45 am, we noticed on the App that not all rides were opening at 10am. So headed to WM, eventually opening at 10:30am. We had low expectations due to general opinion that we had read/watched of the 2024 season, however, in terms of rides operations/downtime etc. We all agreed it was one of the best Scarefest visits we have had.
All queue times were accurate, and only experienced one 10 minute down time while in the queue for Rita.

In Order -

Wickerman
Galactica
Nemesis Reborn
Nemesis Reborn
Blade
Curse of Alton Manor
Runaway Mine Train
Spinball Whizzer
The Smiler
Fandango
Thirteen
Rita
Wickerman
The Smiler
The Smiler
Nemesis Reborn
Nemesis Reborn
Wickerman
18 Rides in Total

We didn't rush round the park, and took our time to enjoy the decorations etc.

We didn't do any of the Scare Mazes as these are not our thing, so cannot comment or give our opinion on these, we have always gone for the extra park opening hours.

Was going to do Burial Ground, but after our last ride on WM it has just turned 8:30pm.

Had a slow walk out from WM, via Katanga Canyon route and onto Forbidden Valley and out the hotel exit, this area of the park looked fantastic, and barely anyone around! Definitely recommend to have a walk around here after the rides have closed to truly appreciate it.

Some excellent staff interactions, in specific the older gentleman who was working on Blade in the morning, true credit and gave us some "Merlin Magic"

We had a great time and look forward to what 2025 brings!
 
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