Thorpe Park's flagship Halloween scare event has returned, and marks a major milestone, with 25 Years of Fear. At the exclusive launch night, we stepped into the darkness to see how this silver anniversary stacks up, experiencing everything from brand new haunts to returning fan favourites.
Atmosphere and Entertainment
The lighting and smoke effects across the park are excellent this year, creating a brilliant, totally immersive atmosphere and providing a perfect backdrop for rides in the dark. You cannot escape the scares at Fright Nights!
A fantastic new addition for 2026 is the Rebel Ball, sponsored by Fanta and occupying The Launch Pad. It serves as an electrifying central hub that comes alive with music, dance, fire performances, and the park's own Fanta Wolf DJ to fuel the ultimate Fright Nights party. The opening show is a great addition, creating quite a buzz before guests are released across the park.
Elsewhere, Lucifer's Lair is paired back this year as it crosses over into the Underworld where Lucifer roams and the night and takes aim at guests on foot. With no main stage since the Rebel Ball has taken over the live entertainment element, you can still expect devilish encounters and wicked surprises, provided you do not let the Lord of Darkness find you.
The Crows have moved to a new location in the park for 2026, abandoning Mawkin Meadow to spread their twisted rituals elsewhere in the park. While it is a dramatically cut-down version of the previous walkthrough, stepping into the shadows to encounter the crows is still a worthwhile, if much shorter diversion. Meanwhile, Purgatory Town brings some new twisted characters to Big Easy Boulevard.
The new Creature Campus: Reunion Reckoning show sees the Supernatural Schoolkids return twenty-five years after first stepping foot on Creature Campus, reigniting old rivalries as they battle to become the most powerful beings on campus.
Guests can also experience The Conjuring 4D Experience over at the Sunset Cinema, where the doors open to 1970 when Ed and Lorraine Warren uncovered the most horrifying case of their lives, confronting a demonic entity with hair-raising special effects and 3D projection.
Scare Mazes and Attractions
The maze lineup features fresh themes and new characters, though it was clearly a race to the finish line this year with many operational challenges on press night and some finishing touches still being applied in places. Across all of the returning scare mazes, it feels as though there has been a slight reduction in the number of scare actors resulting in numerous dead spaces, though every cast member that we encountered delivered a fantastic and energetic experience.
- Tenement (New for 2026): Step inside Nova Lux Senior Living where the lights have gone out and tenants have vanished, forcing you as an emergency electrician to restore power before your shared light fades and you discover if the LUXIVORA have returned. This brand-new maze features a unique design where each group is moved from one confined space to another using entry and exit doors controlled by the cast, keeping the experience tightly controlled. It utilises a torch system where the first and last guests hold remotely controlled, flickering torches that provide the only source of light, leading to some brilliant moments of pure terror in the pitch black. However, those holding the torches control what everyone sees, and you need to be at the front to witness a fantastic set piece scene. Inside, the set design is excellent with lots of detail, though a few spaces looked unfinished and bare. The attraction also features a very poor facade, consisting of a hastily erected semi-transparent mesh that does little to disguise the large white marquee behind, and interior sets that top out at about 8 feet with no ceiling to obscure the roof. Additionally, one piece of pre-recorded audio with a scare actor lip-syncing felt jarring and unnatural compared to the live dialogue elsewhere.
- DeadBeat: Set at two minutes to midnight, you must decide whether to surrender willingly or dance the night away embracing what may be your final night in a venue where the music does not soothe the soul, but instead devours it. This scare maze returns unchanged.
- Stitches (New Characters for 2026): Become part of the Toymaker's collection as you enter this twisted world of new creations, venturing deeper into Stitches where new toys await you for playtime. Since these are not the playthings that you remember, you must figure out if you will escape the workshop or become her next prized possession.
- Survival Games: YVEL's Survival Games return darker than ever, exposing contestants to bio-engineered chemical Harmony that turns them into terrifying test subjects, asking if you can escape the maze before Harmony claims you too. No changes here, but we had a really intense run.
- Trailers (New Scenes for 2026): Witness the power of film as iconic horror nightmares are reimagined into something far more sinister, and descend into darkness in a new screening called Blood Red Roses - a nice trubute to former scare maze My Bloody Valentine.
Star-Studded Launch Night
The silver anniversary drew an eclectic mix of well-known personalities to the park for the exclusive preview. Among the famous faces spotted tackling the new haunts and soaking up the atmosphere were Chris Hughes and partner Jojo Siwa, boyband December 10, grime artist Lethal Bizzle, Princess Andre with her mother Katie Price, newly coupled-up Ekin Su, TV personality Dan Osborne, Love Island star Casey O'Gorman, broadcaster and author Katie Piper, and footballer Emile Smith Rowe, all turning out to celebrate a quarter-century of top scares.
Final Verdict
Fright Nights 2026 brings an exciting mix of new additions like the Rebel Ball and the ambitious Tenement maze to celebrate a quarter-century of scares. While there are a few rough edges and finishing touches still needed alongside some dead spaces in the returning mazes, the energetic cast, fantastic atmosphere, and thrilling rides in the dark make it a noteworthy anniversary event.
