Ghost Train

Thorpe Park's Ghost Train is a rethemed version of their Derren Brown's Ghost Train ride.

As Ghost Train, all references to Derren Brown have been removed, with the ride receiving an entirely new storyline and - possibly the largest change - the virtual reality headsets are gone too.

The story is now set around an old railway and the mysterious story of "The Believers". Visitors are invited to become passengers on the last train from Thorpe Junction to Chapel Station, travelling down the line where they find themselves inside a crypt and embroiled in the centre of the Believers' story.

The ride is now very much actor-led, with live actors providing most of the action and scares throughout the attraction.

Derren Brown's Ghost Train always had fairly mixed reviews, with most people complaining the experience was overly long and not scary. The story which revolved around fracking quickly became dated, and there were constant problems with broken or glitching VR headsets.

Ghost Train could be seen as a welcome refresh, if only it was actually any good. Sadly, it isn't particularly great. In part this is because it is constrained by its predecessor's ride system. Riders spend a long time "travelling" on the train, which actually takes up the bulk of the fifteen or so minutes the whole experience lasts.

SPOILERS AHEAD

It leans heavily on the live actors to keep things interesting here, and their acting quality is somewhat ... let's be nice and say amateurish. The script hasn't given them much to work with, and so it all descends into some random striding up and down the carriage and a lot of shouting and trying to be scary, largely unsuccessfully.

The middle scene now takes place within the aforementioned crypt. There are a few nice visual effects here, but again largely it leans too heavily on the actors and the poor quality script. The climax should see visitors terrified and rushing back to the train but with much of the story not really explained properly, this is more of a shuffle of bewilderment.

The second train ride is similar to the first in large part, with more shouty actors trying desperately to fill the time before the final special effects sequence (don't expect much) after which visitors are let out into the same fake gift shop ending from the old Derren Brown days.

Overall, the train ride part should be a major part of the experience, but feels more like a long tedious pre-show before a fairly basic and underwhelming gag show ... followed by another drawn-out post-show. Merlin's Dungeons attractions have shown they can pull together good comedic horror shows with decent-enough acting, so it's baffling why they didn't follow the similar pattern here (or if they did, how it went so tits up).

END OF SPOILERS

Ghost Train was never going to be a revolutionary change to Derren Brown's Ghost Train, considering it was just a retheme of the previous attraction. Unfortunately, as seems to be the curse of the ride since its inception, it fails to deliver much on either the entertainment or the scare front. Thorpe Park have obviously spent some cash on the retheme, but it was probably a waste of money on the whole. Arguably, the new Ghost Train is even worse than the previous incarnation - a standard old fashioned cheap fairground ghost train would almost certainly be better.

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Construction

The ride was still being transformed into Ghost Train at the start of the 2023 season, and did not finally open until May.

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