Fright Nights 2023

[Guirken]

I went for the first time in over a decade on opening night. 
Overall I really enjoyed it.  
Main Street was great, Hellbillies had some good scare actor interaction. Killer Klownz lacked some atmosphere. Themed music would have helped this area. Having the bright lights of the carnival games takes away from it all. 
 

Wild West at night was cool BUT where’s the fog, flames, actors. A missed opportunity there. It looks great all lit up though.

DCeased was a victim of the marketing. You can tell this is where the budget went with the themeing and costumes -  both were exceptional. At the end of the day though it wasn’t scary and was all one and done for me. 

Where were the zombie hoards? I would of loved to see a whole room of zombies and the heroes saving us and then the next scene were running from Batman!

As for the other mazes, best of the night was Conjuring. Circurse was fun and I got some good scares but it’s really short. Hellship themeing and audio was top notch but the scares were few and far between. Death Row was solid without being great. 

A solid 7.5/10 for the whole night. 

[STRAWS]

The 13th is now sold out according to the website however like before you can still buy tickets for it. its all a lie. New management is killing the park.

[Guest 239]

18 minutes ago, STRAWS said:

New management is killing the park.

The park's management is largely the same as it's been for the past decade. The only real difference is that they need to please their parent company instead of shareholders. 

[STRAWS]

Is Movie World still owned by Village Roadshow or do they only own the licensing to the park now. 

Edited October 11, 2023 by STRAWS
grammar mistake

[Guest 239]

Movie World is still owned by Village Roadshow but the company no longer trades publicly and were bought out by BGH capital. There was very little shake up in management during this transition. 

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

(For completeness) the Warner Bros elements and indicia including DC are all used by Village under licence from WB.

[kujotess]

On 9/10/2023 at 9:17 AM, New display name said:

DCeased sucked.  All the actors did was scream in your face.  Worst maze from memory in a long time.   Rooms way to open to create an scary atmosphere.

Conjuring was the best maze of the night.

The others were ok, but did I tell you, how much DCeased sucked?  

Agreed, that’s why I said “in terms of sets”. They could definitely use it as a daytime walkthrough attraction.

 

 I think there’s still potential to amp it up.  Firstly starting with the superhero’s makeup, because you could barely tell they were zombies. Secondly, add more zombies scare-actors. Thirdly, dim the lights and the rooms need more smoke. Also change the audio, the moaning and screaming playing on loop gets old and awkward, and add some dead body mannequins around the superheroes to get the point across more. 

 

I do disagree with it being “small”. Maybe the batman/robin room was a squeeze but most of the rooms are almost too spacious. I filmed a walkthrough and watching it back there is too much open space which definitely took away from the “scary” factor. 

 

Yeah maybe it is a bad maze.. 

[Vidgamer]

Just looked at tickets for next weekend and the Underground Club has gone down to $35, includes 2 drinks which is actually really good value.

Edited October 11, 2023 by Vidgamer

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

10 hours ago, Vidgamer said:

Just looked at tickets for next weekend and the Underground Club has gone down to $35, includes 2 drinks which is actually really good value.

 

On 06/10/2023 at 10:24 AM, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

If they have a fire sale on the later nights it will probably indicate they missed the mark...

My conclusion - The Underground Club has missed the mark. 

Would have done better putting some escape rooms or another maze in there.

[themagician]

I haven’t heard anything about the escape rooms this year. Has anyone done one? And where are they located?

[Gobbledok]

What even is this so called club

 

I cant see why anyone would want to spend their night inside some room listening to some radio metro djs

 

Club Blood years ago was never popular and its only saving grace was you could get a drink and set on the terrace and watch all the action in the street

[New display name]

The club does have some exclusive entertainment besides radio metro djs but when I was at MW, I didn't notice many people going in or out.  It needs to be paired with with something else like a VIP experience.

[ShakeShack]

On 12/10/2023 at 7:31 AM, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

 

My conclusion - The Underground Club has missed the mark. 

Would have done better putting some escape rooms or another maze in there.

Sadly there is a whole range of issues, stopping them from using that building for anything more than they currently are.

 

On 12/10/2023 at 7:51 AM, Gobbledok said:

What even is this so called club

 

I cant see why anyone would want to spend their night inside some room listening to some radio metro djs

 

Club Blood years ago was never popular and its only saving grace was you could get a drink and set on the terrace and watch all the action in the street

It seems as though it was created to be a "rest" space, whilst being somewhat exclusive. It's obviously missed the mark, but on the positive side, hopefully this pushes them to reintroduce UTT. 

[New display name]

There is no in-between in, can we use this building for guest or not.  

 

A night club party zone was never designed as a rest zone.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

2 hours ago, ShakeShack said:

Sadly there is a whole range of issues, stopping them from using that building for anything more than they currently are.

1 hour ago, New display name said:

There is no in-between in, can we use this building for guest or not.

It's more nuanced than that. Think about it - why do they never use the second half of the indoor queue and make everyone stand outside in the sun, with crude tape on the ground...?

The building obviously has capacity limitations, my guess is fire evac requirements.

[Brad2912]

Time planning for tonight as visiting with a mate from interstate who won’t have time for a day visit so it’s the old mazes vs rides conundrum. 
 

obviously WWF at night isn’t a usual or regular offering but have they “haunted it up” in any way or is it just as normal but dark? 

[Gobbledok]

Its pretty cool as a dark ride

but no actors or anything

[New display name]

1 hour ago, DaptoFunlandGuy said:

It's more nuanced than that. Think about it - why do they never use the second half of the indoor queue and make everyone stand outside in the sun, with crude tape on the ground...?

The building obviously has capacity limitations, my guess is fire evac requirements.

There would be less people walking in a maze than queued for Scooby inside.

43 minutes ago, Brad2912 said:

Time planning for tonight as visiting with a mate from interstate who won’t have time for a day visit so it’s the old mazes vs rides conundrum. 
 

obviously WWF at night isn’t a usual or regular offering but have they “haunted it up” in any way or is it just as normal but dark? 

No haunts on it when I went.

[Brad2912]

6 minutes ago, New display name said:

 

No haunts on it when I went.

Cheers mate. No point wasting time in the queue then. Would much rather do DCR or SE then 

[New display name]

Knowing how much people love the new DD ride cycle, I hope you won't be disappointed to find out, the intensity of the new cycle was too much for DD and it has broken down again. 😔

 

 

[Vidgamer]

1 hour ago, Brad2912 said:

Cheers mate. No point wasting time in the queue then. Would much rather do DCR or SE then 

Throughout the night Batwing was consistently quite low wait time and Rivals was very high wait time. Superman hovered around 30 minutes, if that helps in anyway.

Maze wise DCeased and Conjuring were the busiest, we got a second go at the Conjuring by lining up at 10:00, at that time they were pumping people through the maze, Hellship stays pretty quiet.

[Brad2912]

DCeased and Conjuring as well as Rivals and SE are our must dos

of the other 3 mazes, which is the best one? 

[Vidgamer]

7 minutes ago, Brad2912 said:

DCeased and Conjuring as well as Rivals and SE are our must dos

of the other 3 mazes, which is the best one? 

I think Death Row. I think if you went for Death Row after Conjuring you could squeeze Hellship in before close. Circurse is quite a small maze. 

[Brad2912]

Little review from tonight.

arrived at 5:30. Gates open and rides running already. Walk on to GL, 30mins for SE as only one train.

headed to DCeased first, got to the queue about 6:10 and it was about 7:30 when we got into the maze. As others have said, great sets, good costuming, but not scary. Really could be a day time walk thru. 5/10

grabbed a slaughterhouse stack on the way to conjuring which was surprisingly very good (and decent value too with unlimited refills) 

Queue for conjuring was about an hour. Strange delays where you wouldn’t move for 10mins, then move real quick, didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to it. Definitely the best of the night (didn’t go last year so can’t make comparisons). 8/10

Was not 8:40 so made beeline for DCR. Unfortunately they’d had already closed the queue unless you had FT, so we headed back to maze precinct (walked by WWF but that was closed to new queuers too)

Death Row queue was about 15mins, was solid, some good sets and well staffed. Too short however. 6/10

Hellship wait was also around 15/20mins. Really liked the effort that had gone into the sets, and costuming was good. Again too short. 7/10

Hit some shops and then headed home. We easily could have done CirCurse too but my mate has a clown phobia and I CBF queuing on my own, looked about 20-25mins wait. 
 

all in all it was an improvement on 2021. 
 

the band on Main Street on the hour added some atmosphere, and the roving characters on Main Street were plentiful.

the night is weaker for no longer having IP roving characters and now just having generics. 
 

Squeezing 4 mazes into the 2 sheds takes away from the experience as they are just too rushed. 
 

I’d rather they have 3 mazes in total and 1 per shed. The extended maze time would allow for more people to be moving through so it wouldn’t impact on queue times too severely. 
 

overall, I’d give the night a 6.5/10.

 

[themagician]

6 hours ago, Brad2912 said:

all in all it was an improvement on 2021. 

I think you mean 2019!

Good review though. It seems like everyone has the same opinion on this years fright nights. 

Edited October 13, 2023 by themagician