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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

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code-red said:
Blair Witch and Platform scream low budget and need to be retired
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Platform required a lot of money for the route to become usable. The village section (ie: the best part) didn't break the bank but also wasn't cheap (it probably cost more than 3 mazes did last year). There were more plans in place for it to grow and gradually get better and better whilst also changing, but they weren't realised.

Blair Witch is fine as a filler attraction imo. A spooky, not particularly side maze to do which has a very different feel to the rest. It's cheap, it's simple, but it's also different, and Fright Nights needs variety.
 
I did Blair witch a few years ago and thought it was “fine”, however last year was a lot worse, the maze was so much shorter than previous years and also lacked in any actors or scares.

It’s fine as a walk though with no queue, but when you see it has 45 min plus queues you know things are wrong.
 
The Fright Nights passholder preview "evening" is from 3pm to 5pm?

That really stinks of doing the absolute bare mininum, passholder night used to be 6/6:30pm - 10pm and it was the entire park open exclusively, not just letting people go in the mazes during normal opening hours.

They sell the passes with the promise of exclusive events but this is just lazier than lazy. 3pm to 5pm is no use to me and I suspect many others who are at work, and 2 hours wouldn't be enough to justify a visit anyway.
 
The commercial benefit of a passholder evening for Fright Nights was that it got lots of pesky passholders ‘out of the way’ so to speak. Visiting on passholder night meant they were less likely to attend on other days, so you could squeeze in more full paying guests and take more money.

Seems this has been lost in their constant obsession to reduce operating costs.
 
There’s a definite malaise to Merlin’s Halloween offerings. When Halloween events were few and far between, Fright Nights were relatively decent. Over the years, stand-alone attractions have come on leaps and bounds, whilst Thorpe have just reshuffled their offerings. By comparison, Thorpe’s event is now just not worth the price and crowds.

We have now visited elsewhere for the last two years of our usual annual trips with non-enthusiast friends, as they feel the same.
 
venny said:
There’s a definite malaise to Merlin’s Halloween offerings. When Halloween events were few and far between, Fright Nights were relatively decent. Over the years, stand-alone attractions have come on leaps and bounds, whilst Thorpe have just reshuffled their offerings. By comparison, Thorpe’s event is now just not worth the price and crowds.

We have now visited elsewhere for the last two years of our usual annual trips with non-enthusiast friends, as they feel the same.
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Same here, visited The Howl and Dr Frights last year instead. These smaller events put a lot of effort into their mazes and are good value for money.

Fright Nights has always been busy, but at one point it was so good it was worth it. It's a complete waste of time now.
 
Coaster said:
The Fright Nights passholder preview "evening" is from 3pm to 5pm?

That really stinks of doing the absolute bare mininum, passholder night used to be 6/6:30pm - 10pm and it was the entire park open exclusively, not just letting people go in the mazes during normal opening hours.

They sell the passes with the promise of exclusive events but this is just lazier than lazy. 3pm to 5pm is no use to me and I suspect many others who are at work, and 2 hours wouldn't be enough to justify a visit anyway.
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Not to mention 2-3 of the mazes will be in broad daylight!
 
I was under the impression that the very thought of a Rollover hot dog was enough to scare people anyway!

 
I went to fright nights last Sunday, it was a rainy day (it was better than forecast, but occasional showers did seem to impact the less prepared) and so queues were nice and short. Coasters occasionally got short queues but for the most part were 5 minutes. Will talk though the mazes I did so far, so stop reading now if you are spoiler averse.

The mazes on the other hand had relatively long queues.

I did platform 15 in the daylight, as it was a 5 minute queue. The initial backwards walking monologue was inaudible, especially when walking past the speakers dotted along the fence. Could maybe do with one of those walking tour microphone speaker boxes. Would be reasonably on theme.
The dark tunnel was somewhat dark, though plenty of gaps to see clearly the shoe laces. Our groups got too close so the finale was somewhat ruined. I got no scares at all on this one, and think it should open at dusk like Blair witch.

After a couple more walk on coasters we decided to do creek massacre. An interesting blend of sub-speices group splitting maze elements and skin snatches American accents and wet leather. Got a couple of scares in this one, with actors popping out from well hidden doors. Though the group did get stopped in one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen, an actor and guest went nose to nose (literally touching) and staring into each others eyes most romantically. It took a good few minutes to resolve and move on, which lead to the group behind singing why are we waiting. Could have been handled better by the actor I think. Overall quite good, and I really liked the sign, though the sign could've been painted black on the back, as in all white it stood out a lot from the queue, small detail.

The final maze I did was Walking Dead do or die. It was pitch black by this point, and I didn't get to do this maze last year. It was supposed to be a 20 minute wait, but it was delayed. A few security came over and seemed to sort it out. The 3 full groups of Thorpe park staff with clipboards went through, if they want the full experience they should bloody queue, not leave guests waiting. The maze was good, a strange mix of good themeing and herris fence. The outdoor space felt a bit too wide and open, even in the dark. It also seemed a bit quiet. I enjoyed it, got 2 scares.

The scarefest soundtrack across the park was far improved from last year, with each area retaining its identity more. I quite enjoyed the audio, though last year the subwoofer under stealth could be heard across the park, they didn't do that this year.

I must mention Colossus, what was going on? Fake Russian announcements? Plastic party skulls zip tied to the rafters, cobweb on the speaker looked so obviously like cotton wool (in contrast to the real spider webs in the light shades which looked pretty good), the single piece of 'creepy cloth' draped up, found for £1 on Amazon. It look like the Halloween party store had spewed up in the station. On the up side the lighting was pretty good.

Effects wise there was an uptick of things turned on, though still several noticeable absences (the body of saw didn't spurt water, and none of swarms screens were on). It was the first time I've seen the mist on inferno lit up, it looked good!

The dome was a bit bizzare, red pulsing lights, fog and a single moving head white spot. Not really clear what they were going for. The video on the screen above the map was good, showed off fright nights well.

Finally roaming actors, didn't see this year. Last year the clowns were really great, and scaring quite a lot of people. The highschoolers were present at stealth plaza, people seemed very scared of them, but they aren't exactly scary characters? Maybe they were scared by the invasion of American culture. First prom now homecoming, ahhhhh! Too scary!
 
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I suspect the reason for the Colossus station looking tacky is that the ride staff have done it off their own backs. To be fair I think something a bit cheesy and naff is genuinely better than nothing in this case.

General atmosphere at Fright Nights has been drab for years now and I have no intention of returning after last year's shambles.

The new maze sounds promising though.
 
D4n said:
I suspect the reason for the Colossus station looking tacky is that the ride staff have done it off their own backs.
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Yes this is exactly it.

Going back 10-15 years ago, when we had things like 'When Hell froze over' at Inferno, it was exactly the same: staff putting in the time and effort, and usually money, off their own back. As Fright Nights wasn't as big a deal then and standards weren't as high it was fine and went down well.

These days, standards, expectations and such are much higher. And with Merlin being stricter on safety, they're not keen on untrained and unqualified staff making their own theming efforts to bring in.
 
The same used to happen at towers, the Nemesis team I know always got their own things to decorate the station.

I do think it’s what let most of these parks down, the entrances usually look good but the rest of the park looks rubbish. Even if they only did one or two rides a year after a few years they would have theming for most major rides.
 
One thing it shows is how passionate staff are about their attractions.

Sent from my Swift 2 Plus using Tapatalk
 
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