The ultimate evening at Movie World's Fright Nights

Warner Bros. Movie World's Fright Nights have become the highlight of the theme park calendar, and the Ultimate Terror Tour is a great way to experience everything on offer.

Image: Parkz. Warner Bros. Movie World delivers another winner with Fright Nights in 2017.

Editorial By Richard Wilson
17 October 2017

Parkz was a guest of Warner Bros. Movie World for the Ultimate Terror Tour. All opinions are our own.

Fright Nights is an evolving beast and over the course of the last decade has become the flagship event at Warner Bros. Movie World. In 2017 the event features four mazes (Jigsaw, Halloween, From Dusk Till Dawn and The Conjuring 2) plus a plethora of additional activities, performances and roving street scarers and entertainers.

Thousands flock to the theme park each weekend in October to be scared out of their wits – if the Fright Nights activities aren't enough for you, there's always the theme park's arsenal of thrill rides – and rightly so, given the quality that Movie World delivers year after year.

The Ultimate Terror Tour is a premium upgrade available that includes Fast Track access to all mazes and rides, plus a range of additional perks and exclusive experiences. The afternoon starts with welcome drinks and canapes before a behind-the-scenes encounter with all of the park's performers as they undergo their nightly briefing before being unleashed on the public. From here you're ushered into a prime viewing position for the opening show.

For the full evening Ultimate Terror Tour participants have access to a lounge which includes a themed dinner buffet and a quiet corner to relax with a beer – or making use of bottomless soft drink or the colossal chocolate fountain.

At the centre of the evening is the namesake Terror Tour. Each year this takes on a different form – after last year's decidedly theatrical performance, this year it has once again become a fully fledged tour that makes use of one of the park's most recognisable pieces of scenery.

Spoilers follow. Skip ahead to the photos if you want to enjoy all the surprises of the Terror Tour.

A behind-the-scenes tram ride takes you to the ghost town of Wild West Falls. We've been transported back in time to Johnsontown – a twisted nod to Jonestown and the johnsons that we're about to encounter.

The town's sherrif takes us on a tour where we witness no shortage of mystery and mayhem. Tempers fly in encounters with all sorts of townsfolk from the one-eyed blacksmith to the town drunk. Along the way we meet a father and his chained up daughter, an escaped inmate, an eager prostitute and a vengeful tribal chief. Bullets and insults fly, fireballs explode and guests are tormented.

The whole experience is puzzling and alarming in all the right ways with performers unafraid to hurl insults at guests and keep the entire affair thoroughly spontaneous, mature and anything but PC – as you'd expect in a place named Johnsontown. It's exactly the tone that you want from a night event of this style with no family-friendly concessions made. And it all makes brilliant use of the surprisingly expansive, detailed sets that riders on Wild West Falls normally race past.

The tour itself has a no-camera policy, so you'll just have to take our word that it's an experience worth having. For the rest of the Ultimate Terror Tour and Fright Nights, we give a glimpse below...

Ultimate Terror Tour participants get to sit in on the staff briefing for the night. It's a great chance to hear the inner workings of Fright Nights.

And it's a rare opportunity to get up close with the costumed characters in daylight.

The characters take seats amongst all Ultimate Terror Tour participants for selfies.

Rain unfortunately saw the Bloodlust - Dark Magic show cancelled due to its location in the exposed Hollywood Stunt Driver arena.

The courtyard and function room adjacent to Rick's is the exclusive lounge for Ultimate Terror Tour participants. Movie World even rolled out weather befitting a horror film for last weekend's Fright Nights.

Horror theming fills the Moroccan courtyard.

The lounge is drenched in red light and filled with assorted horror props.

There's no shortage of spooky curios throughout the lounge.

The buffet is no different.

Dig into that rib cage for some cold cuts.

Ultimate Terror Tour participants can help themselves to the buffet and unlimited soft drinks throughout the night.

The desserts include this graveyard cheesecake. There's no shortage of sugar on offer.

Now this is just downright horrific.

This is how you'll feel once you're done with the Terror Tour buffet.

Guests line Main Street for the opening show that kickstarts each night at Fright Nights.

The performance is a ritual of Fright Nights and perfectly sets the mood for what's on offer for the next few hours. Like everything about Fright Nights, it changes and evolves each year.

The bar on Main Street is a great place to sit back and just watch the madness with a beer or an alcoholic blood bag.

Movie World is drenched in fog for the night.

And the park's iconic fountain is unrecognisable.

There's something really freaky about being surrounded by fog and unable to see more than a few feet ahead.

It's not ideal conditions for a night at a theme park, but the rain really did kick things up a notch in terms of atmosphere.

The mazes are the highlight of any Fright Nights experience, and Movie World have become masters at delivering this experience with new themes and adjustments every year.

The old Lethal Weapon alleyway has become a fog-drenched, thoroughly claustrophobic scare precinct.

Long stretches of pathways are drenched in menacing lights and fog.

The Panic Rooms are one of a handful of extra activities with a surcharge. Like most "escape room" activities, groups are locked in and race against a clock to find clues and solve a mystery.