Thorpe Park Fright Nights, October 2025

We visited Thorpe Park a few months back while they were just setting up some of the Fright Nights areas and Evan said he’d quite like to see it when it was on, so as the kids were off on half-term the week of Halloween, we booked a trusty Premier Inn and headed off for a theme park roadtrip. Though nothing could have prepared us for the chaos of a first day that would follow.

It was a difficult day at Thorpe Park this time. It had some positive points, but it was just far too busy to enjoy thoroughly. During Fright Nights, the park was open until 9pm and as we have a nigh on 4-hour commute to get there we thought we’d start off a little later and aim to get there around lunch time when the usual mental queue to get in will have subsided. Boy, were we wrong.

We rolled into the car park just before midday, greeted with a sign that Thorpe Park was sold out for the day and only available to those who’d pre-booked. We were also in the overflow car park so we knew it was going to be hellaciously busy. We queued for a little over an hour just to get into the park. It opened at 10am, so to have an hour long queue and more at 12pm shows how busy it was. It was mayhem.

Needless to say with a full park we wouldn’t be getting on many rides. The queue to get in was enough, but the rides were worse. 150 minutes for Colossus, and Hyperia was on 160 minutes at one point. All the main coasters were 90mins plus for the majority of the day. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll happily wait in a long queue, but some days it’s just not worth it. I did say we’d wait in a big queue for a night ride on Hyperia though, and we did!

The reason it was so busy was because of Thorpe Park’s annual Halloween scare event: Fright Nights. The event sees the park transformed with scare mazes, scare zones, wandering actors, shows and new food and drink options around the park. We caught some of the shows, perused the scare zones and I may have upped the ante from my scare zone at Towers and tried a proper scare maze.

Entry to Fright Night is included with your park ticket, but you’ll need to shell out some extra pennies to enter the scare mazes. A pass to try the parks four scare mazes started from £34, or you could book a ‘one shot’ starting at £8 per maze or £10 for an evening run. VIP packages were also available that included fast track access.

For this years offerings, you get the choice to experience Stitches, Dead Beat, Survival Games and Trailers. Each themed slightly differently, but the concept is the same: walk though narrow corridors and expect someone gruesome to jump out at you to scare you, attack you with an axe, see crazed nurses, masked crazies and more. Stitches is set in a crazed toy factory, Dead Beat inside a horror fuelled nightclub, Trailers is a jaunt through a cinema and Survival Games is a biotech horror survival game.

At around 6pm, we walked past ‘Trailers’ and I noticed the queue was really short, so I had a “should I?” moment and decided to give it a whirl. When in Rome… I booked the one shot ticket and headed in. You’re in the Super Spark Cinema foyer with it’s florescent pink lighting, then lead into a deranged world of crazy scenes, zombie crawling out of a bed to get you, psychotic doctors with skinned human remains, killer clowns, crazed people swinging axes at you and characters jumping from behind curtains and shouting at you.

Not sure how long they should take, but it felt like it went pretty quickly. I found myself holding back so I could get scared, as there was a group of us together and only the first few got the ‘scare’. By then I could see what was coming so I loitered to get involved too. Did feel like I missed a lot though, as the actors would pop out with a scare then move to another doorway to scare elsewhere in the maze, so it was a few minutes of just walking empty corridors.

Some of the actor costumes were fun and the scenes looked good too, but it’s not my thing. As I said with the free zones we tried at Alton Towers, I just felt like I didn’t know how to act in there and I was just smiling at everything more than getting that jump scare feeling that I thought I’d get. Maybe I had a bad run, or maybe it’s just not for me.

We spent a lot of our time between the 2 scare zones of Purgatory Town and Lucifer’s Lair which seemed to us to be the hub of activity. We had Elliott with us who at 7 is in no rush to be scared, so these areas seemed the least offensive to him. There was also the Crows of Mawkin Meadow area which is by all accounts a great area to visit, and Creature Campus which has a show over near Stealth, but there was nothing happening while we were in the area.

Purgatory Town had taken over Big Easy Boulevard and was the most Halloween decorated area, with lots of pumpkin décor, spooky themed food trucks and the occasional roaming actor. Some good photo ops around here too. There was also a Stranger Things house advertising the new series and handing out handfuls for Chupa Chups lollies to all and sundry.

Lucifer’s Lair was another scare zone next to the arcade and Camden Bar. Here, was where we saw a few of the actors, with Lucifer and his winged minions running through the crowd, scaring the teenagers and taking pics with anyone who was brave enough.

This was also where you’d find the show stage. We caught the rock band playing their set, knocking out some Green Day, Blink 182 and AC/DC tunes amongst others. So we pitched up and enjoyed some drinks with that. Jo tried the Blood Bag cocktail (£8.95) which just tasted like fruit, not sure there was much vodka in it. We also caught the Fire show, which was a group of dancers strutting their stuff to a dance remix of rock/metal classic songs with flames erupting from the stage roof.

Aside from the usual stalls and foody areas at Thorpe Park, each area had a few new options. Crepe vans, bars, hot dogs, dirty fries, burgers. Plenty to choose from. We were being boring so just had some Burger King burgers. Can’t go wrong with a bacon double cheeseburger! Evan did get some curly fries from one of the stalls near the Calypso bar too, and they were nice!

We did manage a few rides, though not the ones you’d expect. Elliott wanted a go on Mr Monkey’s Banana Ride and we also did the classic 3-lap special on Flying Fish. He also went back for a night ride on it too. Me and Evan braved the big queue for one ride only. I was determined to enjoy a night ride on Hyperia, so we jumped in the queue around 7pm and after 2 hours and 10 minutes I enjoyed braving the Golden Goddess on a night ride. I say golden, the lighting package gives it a red/pink glow. Still a great coaster either way.

Other than that the only other thing we did was bleed the 2p machines dry of cheap tat keyrings, squeezy vampire toys, wolf rings and sweets! We know it’s not Elliott’s favourite place as there’s not much for him to do (though he is close to being Hyperia height) so we always stock up on £1 coins to use in the arcade to keep him entertained. We came back with quite a haul too!

Having actually participated in Fright Nights in some small way it was only fitting we got a magnet to celebrate. We had to buy a few more things too as you could get a plush Fright Nights chainsaw toy for £1 if you spent £15 on anything in the store. We came back with a Fright Nights mug and magnet, plus a Swarm keyring for Elliott – for some reason he absolutely loves Swarm and is desperate to get on it! They did have a decent selection of Fright Nights merchandise too, including t-shirts and hoodies, bags, mugs and pins, and as we were there towards the end of the event, some of it was already on sale.

Whilst it was great to see Thorpe Park during Halloween and Fright Nights, it wasn’t our favourite visit. We’ve spoiled the kids with short queues most of the time so anything over 10 minutes and its like they’re in pain at the thought of waiting. It was great to see the park by night too. The lighting on Stealth and Colossus looked great and I’ve love to get back for some night rides on those in the future. Glad we managed Hyperia, even with the massive wait times.

Onwards to our Premier Inn of choice. This time it was the Premier Inn Bracknell Central. If you do ever stay here, make sure you get a top floor room. We we’re ground floor and the floorboards above were so creaky it was hard to get any sleep when the neighbours were walking around at 6am! Breakfast was nice though. Good mushrooms!

Fright Nights is done for 2025, but keep an eye on Thorpe Park’s official website for details of Fright Nights 2026!

Next stop: Brick or Treat at Legoland Windsor!