Mixed feelings on Fright Nights this year but on the whole this post deserves to go in the 'wtf Merlin' topic. Started off with Vulcan Peak, it's awful. You have a bag on your head and follow a rope for a few minutes during which time there were no actors and the only effect was a gust of wind.
I really enjoyed Living Nightmare. The first half is nicely themed and the actors were very grabby and hands on. If this lasted more than three minutes and had a proper ending it would be a fantastic maze.
The outdoor mazes all merge into one for me. Blair Witch was the best of the bad bunch, actually has proper scenes and scripted scares this year. The forest sections make you feel isolated which the previous iteration of this maze failed to do. Dead Creek Wood is possibly the worst maze I've ever done. Barely any theming, a boring infection plot and a few coughing actors. Why is budget being spent on bland nonsense like this? Platform 15 limps on for another year, people seem to rave about the more recent versions of this but I don't get it. Yes the house section is awesome, it's very creepy with some great scares but it takes up about 5% of the runtime. The rest is dull, especially the overly long intro and the tunnel where the main scares come from the fact there's string hanging down from the ceiling. It's such an uninteresting maze but you just know it will return for its fourth season next year. Do or Die had some potential (nice chainsaw scene and some dark smoke filled containers where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face) but there were some tedious outdoor sections and black walls, it looked really unfinished.
Highlight for me was Saw. I had a great run through at the back with Pig Face stalking me through the freezer stroking my ear and the bloke in the Saw 4 scene pulling back my hood as I tried to exit.
So not great on the maze front this year. Only 2/7 are traditional themed indoor mazes and both are good but not a patch on the stuff at Towers and Tulleys. The rest while having some interesting moments are on the whole low quality and when this is the majority of the event there's a problem.
Operations were fantastic though, two trains on all the coasters during the day with walk on queues. Such a rarity for Thorpe but I loved it. Waited ten minutes or less for most of the mazes too which was great.
If you're from down South just go to Tulleys.
Another one of the “features” includes “Discover[ing] the Resort's own constellations” so in other words looking up at the f***ing sky. 
