One failing torch between the lot of you, a retirement block where the residents have gone, and no lights at all. Thorpe Park’s new maze is its first in total darkness, and Fright Nights turns 25 this year.
Fright Nights runs from 2 October to 1 November, and the headline addition is Tenement, billed as the park’s first fully immersive pitch-black scare maze.
Tenement: the one to book
The setup is that you enter Nova Lux Senior Living as emergency electricians. The power has failed across the building, the tenants have vanished, and your job is to get the lights back on. Your entire light source is one handheld torch, shared between the group, and it is not reliable.
Everything else is built around that absence: reflections, illusions and sensory scares that only work because you cannot see what is coming. It is a genuinely different proposition to a maze that relies on strobes and a man with a chainsaw, and the reason to go this year rather than last.
What else is running
- Trailers, the film-nightmare maze, with a new screening called Blood Red Roses
- DeadBeat, set in a nightclub where the music is doing something other than entertaining you
- Stitches, in which you join the Toymaker’s collection
- Survival Games, where a bio-engineered chemical has turned the contestants into test subjects
- The Conjuring 4D Experience, a 3D-projection paranormal investigation and the only one rated 15+
Outside the mazes there are five scare zones: Rebel Ball, The Crows, Lucifer’s Lair, Creature Campus: Reunion Reckoning and the voodoo-themed Purgatory Town. Hyperia, the tallest rollercoaster in Britain, and SAW: The Ride both run after dark, which is a meaningfully worse experience in the best way.
What it costs
- Day ticket: from £39 booked online, which gets you the park and the scare zones but no mazes
- Entry plus four mazes: from £71 online. This is the one that makes sense
- Single maze: from £8 each on top of entry, if you only want Tenement
- Short breaks: from £109 per person including a night’s stay
The London x London Take: the honest maths is that a day ticket without mazes is not what you are coming for, and buying single mazes on the night gets expensive fast, so the entry-plus-four bundle is the only sensible purchase. Get there for opening rather than the evening, because the mazes on a Saturday in late October develop queues that eat the whole night. Do Tenement first while the group is still nervous and the torch novelty has not worn off. And if anyone in your party is thirteen and pretending not to be scared, note that the age guidance is 13+ and The Conjuring is 15+, so plan accordingly.
Need to know
- Where: Thorpe Park Resort, Staines Road, Chertsey, Surrey KT16 8PN
- When: 2 to 4 October, 9 to 11 October, then 15 October to 1 November 2026
- Closing: the park stays open until 9pm on Fright Nights dates
- Price: from £39 for entry, from £71 with four mazes, single mazes from £8
- Age guidance: scare attractions recommended 13+, The Conjuring 4D 15+
- Getting there: train to Staines, then the shuttle bus
- Booking: thorpepark.com
More of the season? Our guide to Halloween in London has everything happening closer to home.
