Thorpe Park’s Fright Nights event is easily the best scare event that Merlin puts on in the UK. It doesn’t aim to be family friendly like Chessington or Legoland, and it’s much more compact and has a lot more going on than Alton Towers’ Scarefest does. I don’t think it’s quite as good as Fear Island at Fantasy Island, but they put a lot of effort into that in years gone by and it certainly shows!

This year marks 25 years of Fear, so let’s talk about what we experienced, what we liked and didn’t like and see if it still holds the prestige.

The Scare Mazes

This year, there are 5 to choose from, with 4 returning from last year. These are Survival Games, Dead Beat, Trailers, Stitches. New for this year is Tenement which we’ll talk about in a second.

I feel like 5 mazes is great on paper, and it makes the upcharge bundles look better but I feel like 4 mazes is about all that Thorpe Park can manage with their space. This year, Tenement took up the area behind Colossus, where The Crows of Mawkin Meadow usually reside meaning they were relegated to a much smaller area under Nemesis Inferno.

So is Tenement worth moving The Crows for?

In part yes! I think the idea of the maze is brilliant, as it requires the use of a torch (which is provided) as the entire maze is incredibly dark. Batched into groups of around 10, you’re given 2 torches that the lead and rear guests get and you have to stay as a group or risk losing the light and I really liked this concept.

If the lead guy, who can see whatever he wants, goes off too quickly, you end up fumbling around in the dark until you catch up again. Not only that but you’re funneled into specific sections where the torches stop working properly and the scare actors take them from you and pass them to other guests meaning the same people aren’t at the front all the time. This is a really great concept and I would like to see more mazes do this.

What let’s Tenement down is the lack of coverings over the ceiling. It would be miles better if the maze was completely covered, isolating any light from other sections in the maze so you really do feel like you’re in a building with the power out and you cannot see what might be coming.

The story was a bit flat too, it’s supposed to be that you’re an electrician coming in to get the power back on but the residents of Nova Lux (the building you’re in) have supposedly vanished.

In reality you don’t feel like you’re trying to get the power on or anything like that, you simply walk through a dark building and exit the other side seeing a random assortment of actors along the way.

I feel like this could have been improved with more special effects and a bit more of an escape room feel to it. Maybe you do have to flip a circuit breaker or RCBO or something like that every so often to be able to restore power to doors as the Luxivora (the evil entity for this maze) start to close in. It was a great effort that wasn’t bad by any stretch, but could certainly have incremental improvements!

Of the returning mazes, we did Stitches and Trailers this time around as we’ve heard negative reviews of Survival Games, and we did Dead Beat last year (and Dead Beat is pretty good to be fair).

Stitches was easily the one with the most creepy atmosphere to it. This one sees you touring a toy factory only the toys are being merged with humans in weird, twisted experiments and your up next! There were a lot of great theming elements to this one but the actors didn’t really add much to it, and the same can be said for Trailers too.

Trailers, which is in its 6th year now and has had incremental changes through the years which helps to keep it fresh. I feel like this one should be developed most though as it can easily be swapped around so you don’t always see the same films, even on subsequent run throughs in the same season. Id remove a lot of the scare actors here and replace them with special effects, sounds, lights and air cannons that can unsettle you as they can go off at any time, and maybe even at random. So you might see a scene that isn’t particularly scary, run it again and find more jumps than last time, and on a 3rd run, you’d get some of the effects but not all of them. It would make Trailers more of an immersive experience than the others I think.

I don’t feel like any of the mazes were particularly scary as the scare actors, despite differing costumes, all did the same thing. It was usually a case of the stand still, stare at you, then lunge forward, and stamp their feet to make noises to unsettle you and it just doesn’t work so much for me. I know they’re limited to what they can do by Merlin and RWS though. Still, I enjoyed the mazes enough!

The Shows and Scare Zones

This year, you’ll see The Crows making a return as mentioned earlier, alongside Lucifer’s Lair, Purgatory Town, Creature Campus and a new show called Rebel Ball.

Rebel Ball was supposed to be a bit of a party, celebrating Fanta of all things and featuring fire and effects but we only saw a Fire Spinner, who was decent and knew what he was doing, but wasn’t the most exciting fire performance we’ve seen! I think there were other shows on but we waited around for ages and never saw anything until we were leaving the park when there was a different show on that we missed. The app doesn’t tell you what times shows are on though, unlike the others.

Creature Campus: Reunion Reckoning is a culmination of 4 years of different shows, pitting different factions against each other over those years to see who rules the roost. This year, all the factions were in stage and you could immediately tell what the resolution would be. Why fight each other when they could fight the human world and win?

That’s a shame as it would have been nice for one faction to take over completely and bring this to a more fitting end for the series but the show was fine, well choreographed, decent music and it is much better at night. I think it’s time that this one was retired now though as it got bigger each year and the stage took up more and more space leaving less room to actually watch the show. Perhaps a Stealth based replacement….?

Lucifer’s Lair was a bit stripped back too, being a bit smaller than previous years but having the same elements of Lucifer taunting passers by and his minions caging those he seems unworthy. His voice is a little too distorted though so it does make it a little difficult to hear what he has to say at times but you get the gist fine enough.

Purgatory Town is well dressed but not much more unfortunately! There are loads of actors here that don’t seem to do much, standing around and talking to groups, but their costumes all look amazing, so it would be nice to see a show with them on.

Finally theres The Crows which has moved to under Nemesis Inferno. It’s the same idea as previous years but scaled down massively and though the Crows still look fantastic and the actors do a fine job, you’re in an out in literally 30 seconds.

If it we’re me, I’d remove one of the mazes, put Tenement where that was and leave The Crows alone as Mawkin Meadow is one of the best things about Fright Nights for me!

Everything Else

There’s a fun little distraction with Chupa Chups having an attraction that you can win prizes in, it’s completely free and you get stickers and sock, as well as loads of Chupa Chups lollies too. We had fun here, and as it’s included in your ticket, why not give that a go?

There are so many different food places now, offering a lot of different options to the usual Thorpe Park offerings. Pulled pork and chicken, cocktails, street food, steak sandwiches and Mac n Cheese to name a few. I felt these were expensive as we had loaded roast potatoes, which amounted to a Sunday roast with no veg, for £12, portions weren’t massive and the food was alright but nothing special. £14 cocktails were shocking though, but you did get a cool skull cup to keep so to wasn’t all that bad.

The AI problem

This is the controversial bit, there is so much AI being used across the park now, primarily by the food vendors which apparently it’s the food vendors that chose to do that and Merlin were ok with it. I’m not sure who I believe but it does take away from individuality when all the signs look the same. There’s even spelling mistakes which is bonkers considering it’s supposed to have had an AI look it over and then a human too…. What’s going on there!

Some of the new merchandise has AI generated parts to it too, I don’t particularly mind these as I think they look fine enough but I know that people won’t like them. I don’t mind some use of AI but when it’s the same thing over and over again, it looks awful. At least the merchandise only has parts that are AI so it sort of blends in I guess? It would be better if these were properly designed though, I will agree with the masses here.

Overall, we both enjoyed Fright Nights for what we saw. I’ve seen a lot of others complaining about cutbacks when compared to previous years but I felt 2026 was very similar to 2025, with more mazes than there were previous, more actors about the place and more food options than last year. Maybe less is more and reduced the amount offered to focus on making what you have the best it can be? Id visit again if I had time though, still a really, really good time!