Fright Nights

Fright Nights is a seasonal Halloween event at Warner Bros. Movie World on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. It started in 2006 as a single-night event called Halloween Family Fun Night and has since grown into a major park event that runs for about a month, offering themed mazes, shows, and rides. The name also applies to a Halloween special event at Thorpe Park in Chertsey, Surrey, England, which began in 2002.

The first Halloween-themed night event on the Gold Coast was held by Dreamworld in April 2004, rather than in October, and was never repeated. In 2006, Warner Bros. Movie World launched its own Halloween Family Fun Night on October 31, with a Scooby-Doo theme. After selling out, the park expanded it to three nights. This format continued until 2009, when the park re-themed the event for an older audience, advertising extreme experiences unsuitable for children. In 2010, Warner Bros. Movie World worked with Sudden Impact Entertainment and Lynton V. Harris to create mazes based on *Nightmare on Elm Street* and *Saw*, plus a *Psycho* maze. The Freddy’s Nightmare Maze was placed in Show Stage, the Saw Maze in a custom-built area behind Wild West Falls, and the Psycho 3D Maze in the Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster foyer. The Saw maze was originally planned for a sound stage, but that space was booked, so a custom area was built instead.

After the 2010 event ended, the park announced it would return in 2011. In mid-August 2011, mazes for that year were announced, and full details came out on September 1, when the event was renamed Fright Nights. The Saw and Psycho 3D mazes returned, joined by a new Zombie Apocalypse Maze in the adjacent Studio complex and a new Arkham Asylum Maze in the show stage. In 2012, the event brought new mazes and live shows. The Psycho 3D Maze, Les Damned de Burlesque show, and Club Blood bar returned. New mazes included The Film Vault, The Walking Dead Maze, and Hillbilly Slasher. New shows were Creatures of Rock, Death Derby, and Thriller Dance. Fright Nights returned in 2013, running on seven nights in October. Club Blood returned, but everything else was new, with two shows—Carnevil and Space Cowboy—and four mazes: Hillbilly Slasher 2, The Darkness, a revised The Walking Dead maze, and an Evil Dead maze. All rides were open except Justice League: Alien Invasion.