This can be seen in many of the UK’s theme parks, including Thorpe Park Fright Nights.
Despite living a somewhat reasonable driving distance away, I’d never actually been to Thorpe Park before, but when I got an invite to try it out for the Fright Nights preview event, I couldn’t resist.
Rollercoasters hadn’t really been my thing as a child, but in my adult life, I had made more of an effort to give them a go, so I was curious to see what the park had to offer.
According to Thorpe Park’s website , Fright Nights “took home Gold for Europe’s Top Theme Park Scare Event at the 2024 SCAR Awards”, so it had a lot to live up to.
What was Thorpe Park Fright Nights 2025 like?
After driving to Thorpe Park – and somehow managing to avoid rush hour traffic on the M25 – my brother and I arrived.
Upon entering, we were greeted with a number of performers dressed up as twitching scarecrows who lurched at us and others to give us a small taste of what was to come.
From there, we made our way into the actual park and quickly made our way to Swarm for a go on our first rollercoaster.
With it being a launch event, the queues were very short, which was an obvious bonus, and the ride was an exciting start to the more extreme rides to come.
I think I was lulled into a false sense of security as I felt perfectly fine afterwards, which certainly wasn’t the case after some of them.
Moving around the park, it was clear a lot of effort had gone into dressing up the place, with extensive themed decorations such as pumpkin stacks and coffins, alongside smoke machine effects and colourful lighting to create cool visuals.
Next up on the rides front was a trip to Nemesis Inferno, which held a special relevance because of that one Inbetweeners episode, so it was nice to finally try it out.
After a fairly gentle start, I got a taste of what was to come with the rest of the rides, as it raced around the circuit, throwing you around.
This did throw off my sense of balance a little after disembarking, and the speed of Stealth didn’t help with that soon after.
What did it in for me was Colossus, which was by far the longest ride which threw you around in almost every direction.
That one made me feel quite lightheaded, so a sit-down was required for about five minutes to recover.
Up next was Hyperia, which put you upside down for what felt like a ridiculous amount of time, but was quite exhilarating.
Finally, we tried out the Saw – The Ride, with its almost vertical drops being absolutely wild to experience.
Something a bit more casual was needed after that, so we tried the Trailers scare maze, which was set inside a spooky cinema.
I’ll give the performers a huge amount of credit here; they were intensely committed in their short roles, especially knowing they would have had to repeat their bits almost constantly for hours.
I even got pulled aside from my group briefly into a cage where I was about to be ‘executed’ before my life was thankfully spared.
Overall, Thorpe Park Fright Nights was a fun time that was elevated by the commitment of the performers and decorations around the site.
The only criticisms I had were that the atmosphere in the scare zones, like Lucifer’s Lair, was a little muted.
However, that was probably due to there being a smaller number of people for the preview event, so it will likely be improved on a regular day.
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When does Thorpe Park Fright Nights 2025 run until?
Thorpe Park Fright Nights officially got underway for the weekend of Friday, October 3 to Sunday, October 5.
It will also be on for the weekend of Friday, October 10 to Sunday, October 12, before running every day between Thursday, October 16 and Sunday, November 2.
