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Thorpe Park Fright Nights 2013

Not sure if anyone has seen, but Thorpe Park are starting to drip feed information regarding this year's Fright Nights:

For the first time ever in the UK, Halloween fans will have to decide their own fate in a scare maze

With multiple routes to be taken in your hunt to escape to safety, The Cabin in the Woods will disorientate all those brave enough to face what lurks in the shadows
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From: Thorpe Park website

When I looked yesterday, the Day 2 information was up as well, but this has now gone. It was about My Bloody Valentine and the description read (not direct words, didn't screenshot them) that you will be chased through the mines and will have to escape. Interesting, it showed the location as The Arena, so could this be in what was Experiment 10?
 
Yeah - that quote about "The first time ever in the UK" about making a decision in the path made me laugh so much. It's far from the truth.
 
Here we have a first look at two of the costumes. Posted on Thorpe Park's Facebook Page...



Looking pretty good! Plus what is that equipment behind them? Is it for lighting for a promo?
 
I don't know if anyone has seen the updates on the numerous facebook groups, but The Asylum looks very much set to return. Blair Witch is confirmed as an outdoors scarezone, Cabin in the Woods is confirmed to be in the X building and My Bloody Valentine is confirmed to be in the old Experiment 10 shipping containers (With the layout remaining exactly the same) Allthough it should be noted the shipping containers seem to be hidden behind a wall, and there is a old mine building facade on them. There are also props for You're Next around the parks apparently. Anyone else excited yet?
 
It'll be for promotional imagery for the park, they're photo shoot lighting equipment pieces. I'm not excited so to speak, I'm more looking forward to seeing how realistic (to the IP's) they're going to make it.
 
Lofty said:
It'll be for promotional imagery for the park, they're photo shoot lighting equipment pieces. I'm not excited so to speak, I'm more looking forward to seeing how realistic (to the IP's) they're going to make it.
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Have you seen the image of the outside of the Universal Studio's Cabin in the woods maze? Not that I was expecting Thorpe to have anything near the same level of quality, but woah.... Thorpe have got quite some way to go if they want X's pyramid to be an immersive cabin in the woods. Thankfully Bloody Valentine's shipping containers don't seem to look too bad with the facade over them. In all honesty I don't think there will be much detail, and I can so see them reusing props from previous mazes, but if certain scare maze sites are to be believed apparently they had a rather large budget, so I would be dissapointed if they weren't realistic to the IP's.
 
Yeah. I have seen HHN's Cabin in the Woods' attraction and let's just say; their art department for that attraction alone has a bigger budget than most UK events have for all of their attractions - ha.

The thing is; in a way, it's not about how big your budget is, it's about how creative your team can be in producing something of worth and enjoyment. HHN is a BIG example of this; their attractions are visually stunning and no other event in the world comes close to their theming, BUT their attractions are the most passive you'll ever experience. It's literally a case of walking through scenes and witnessing something happening as opposed to anything actually happening to the guests themselves and creating a more immersive narrative that makes it an 'active' attraction. HHN HAS to do this though, merely for the fact their visitor numbers during the events are that staggering they need to use the conga system for their guests (one large batching system through the attractions as opposed to group batching).

The reason I'm saying this is; Fright Nights has the possibility of falling into this exact same category. Look at Saw Alive... it had the potential to be really incredible, sadly, it fell FAR from the mark of a good attraction due to it being you looking at scenes happening and nothing actually happening to the guests. It created a really boring experience that you literally could have gone to a live art horror installation and seen nearly the exact same thing.

I'm really hoping that Thorpe aren't selling their event out in terms of bringing these big names in, creating great looking sets and then skimping on the performance element. In my honest opinion, scare entertainment in any of it's platforms is nothing without the live performance of an actor. If you wanted to look at lovely scenes, go to a museum or an art gallery. Time will tell in the next few weeks how it all turns out.
 
Actually yeah thats something I hadn't thought about! Some of the Universal mazes look amazing, but when I have seen the videos of walkthroughs they just seem ridiculously passive as you said! Oh dear, I hope Thorpe don't go down this route, I would hate to see their mazes turn into that, especially as they are the only mazes at the Merlin parks that are allowed to involve touching. I think though, aslong as the current conga sizes are kept that shouldn't be implemented. But it does sound to me that the Blair Witch scarezone may fall under the passive experience, in the same way Zombies at Alton does. Lets just hope they don't turn the mazes into walkthrough shows, and atleast if they do, we still have The Asylum!
 
When it comes to Scare Zones etc, they don't really matter in terms of group size. Due to the large open spaced areas, there's no need for smaller groups. When it comes to scare attractions/scare mazes (I detest that term), the fact a lot of the UK based attractions rely on claustrophobic corridors and smaller scenes (to gain the best actor interaction), having a really long conga line wouldn't work at all. HHN's attractions are VAST inside, the scenes and corridors are really large and wide.
 
Forgive me if this is a stupid question but are all the mazes free with park entry? It's just that I know AT charge for some mazes and I assumed TP would be the same but can't see any prices.

Thanks
 
^ yea all mazes are free with entrance tickets.

Also on a side note we now have a map with locations of all mazes....
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Courtesy of face book.
 
Slammer is down, until fixed. They are working on the ride, as they had maintenace crews working on it over the past couple of days, but all signage etc has been removed.

and also if anybody is hitting the park on the 11th, and do see me, then come and say hi.
 
^^ I'll be there on the 11th too :)

I'm looking forward to seeing how Thorpe create these new film-based mazes, especially Cabin in the Woods. That film has some interesting psychological elements to it - it's a pretty an ambitious choice for a Merlin maze, especially with universal's HHN setting the standard so high with what I've seen of their version.

I'm a bit gutted that the original maze Thorpe have kept is The Asylum; I did it several times last year and didn't see the chainsaw man once. I'm convinced he's just a sound effect! The only good bit is the corridor at the start, the rest of the maze was more irritating than engrossing. I would have much preferred Experiment 10 to stay on this year.
 
^ As I said above though; HHN have incredible theming, that's where it stops. There's nothing interactive and engrossing about the attractions. It's the same as walking through a museum.
 
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