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Brean Leisure Park, 3rd Nov 2012

Ian

From CoasterForce
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Darren B and I went to Brean on Saturday. Apparently Somerset had loads of snow. There was evidence of snow slush but no coating. The park itself was soaking wet. HUGE puddles covered the pathways, wellies were required for this park.

Anyway, it's a typical seaside sort of affair - spin & spews, cloned coasters, dodgems, arcades.
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Four creds to be had!

Astro Storm is the old Space Invader Deux from Blackpool. It looks quite lovely with a new paint job and no decapitated heads laying about. An impressive coaster for a typical seaside park. I found it slower compared to when it was at Blackpool. No burdenous stair-based queue line either!
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Spinning mouse cred. I hate these coasters, this was no different.
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Shockwave - spot the loop behind the station. A fab little ride. It's not going to make anybody's top 10 (unless you've been only been on this and 9 others coasters) but it's good fun and the loop is tight in intense, reminded me of Klondike at Hayling Island.
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FYI, the big pool of water in the middle of the coaster track is a counter weight. Darren thought it was to pour on the ground in case the puddles ever dried up.

Caterpillar Coaster. I had to ask them to open this for us. No shame! Darren said it was his first caterpillar coaster. This one doesn't have a static shock apple, instead it has a Disney tent.
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There's quite a lot of Disney characters dotted about the park. I guess it means they can justify charging more by bringing a bit of of Americana to the west coast.
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Not content sloshing around in the puddles, Darren went on the log flume.
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We went on the dodgems twice. Both times we bullied the young children riding with us. I felt proud of myself. They enjoyed it anyway.

We went to the nearby Wimpy for lunch. It was awful although this made us laugh.
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The Sky Diver drop tower was 'mazing! We went on this about six times. Loads of willy lift and a cute ride op as well.
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Sky Diver is probably the best ride there imo, although Terror Castle - the ghost train - comes a close second.
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I was expecting a lame, old fashioned ghost house experience similar to the one at Blackpool but NO! Terror Castle was brilliant from start to finish. BOOM! It starts with the screams and jumps immediately. I loved the different scenes, the noise, the animatronics and frantic pace of the ride. It chopped and changed direction so quickly, there was a scare every second! Brilliant! It's always rewarding to go to a park and find a little gem of a ride and this was it. It took me by surprise, I loved it!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUXAP0jTGEI[/youtube]

We spent about £5 each on the 2p machines.
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We ended up winning two toy skateboards and keyring thing. We also won loads of tickets!
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We fed our tickets in the ticket munching machine....
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...and ended up with 214 tickets!
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Each ticket is worth 1p off in the gift shop so we bought ourselves a large nougat bar thing each. We could have bought 10 for the amount of money we put in the machines, but where's the fun in that?

I was expecting Brean to be anything special so I wasn't disappointed. Now I've "Brean there, done that", it's not a park I'd rush back. There was enough there to keep me entertained for a few hours, staff were friendly, four creds to add to my count, but best of all was Terror Castle. Now that is a ride to write home about. Thanks for reading.
 

T0M

Hyper Poster
Awesome, been on holiday down that way a couple of times when I was tiny but I don't recall this place.
 

furie

SBOPD
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"Can I have a big bender in a bun please?" I thought Wimpy stopped selling those years ago. They're really nice, though asking for one with a straight face is impossible.

Superb report though Ian. Brean, what a silly place :lol: So expensive, but it's clean and tidy and there are a couple of good rides. The Booster was great, as was the Afterburner. Terror Castle was excellent and the Pinfari looper was fine. I'm desperate to get back to ride the 4-man-bob though, I loved SI(2).
 

marc

CF Legend
Yeah good report, I really enjoyed the day we had there after the live years ago.

The ghost train was brilliant, forget how many times we rode that lol.
 

nadroJ

CF Legend
Haha, did you really not know about the ghost train? Surely you've seen Will's infamous 'I don't **** like ghost trains!' video?

Lol, Brean. Was the pikey market visible from the Big Apple?
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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nadroJ said:
Haha, did you really not know about the ghost train? Surely you've seen Will's infamous 'I don't **** like ghost trains!' video?

Lol, Brean. Was the pikey market visible from the Big Apple?

Nope, never seen Will's video. And no, the market ends in October so missed it by a week!
 

Thekingin64

Strata Poster
If you want good food at Brean, there's a Subway just down the road, next to some other restaurant place.

Every ride i want on at Brean was a bit of fun really but the Afterburner was down all the time for maintenence. :( It was also my first Booster as well and it was amazing! So much fun!

The beach there is also very nice even though it's a longer walk than the map implies.
 

Darren B

Giga Poster
No photos I'm afraid, couldn't be arsed to take a camera or anything in with me, packet of fags and lighter was enough!

So Brean, we expected to walk in, mop up the creds, and leave, all within half an hour. We lasted 4 and I've got to say I secretly enjoyed it. So there wasn't the greatest selection of rides, but what they had was actually good fun and we worked out that if we'd have bought tokens over the wristband (£20) we would have spent 50 quid!

The coasters... Shockwave was so awful it was nearly fun, Astro Storm was turd but well themed (for Brean), The spinning mouse was Vile, the caterpillar coaster was a caterpillar coaster.

Best of the rest, the ghost train was pretty awesome even though I don't normally care for them. The skydiver (mini shot & drop) was the best ride in the park, it just felt so good! And the dodgems were just pure fun, especially when you see a group of young teenagers getting on, and as Ian put it we quite enjoyed bullying them (in a nice way of course!)

So in a nutshell it's a glorified fairground, worth visiting but not worth going back (well not in a hurry) and to be fair Ian ain't the worst company so we managed to get plenty of Sh1ts and giggles out of the day, so be advised, take good company.
 

Martyn B

CF Legend
Brean is a weird place. Its basically your average grotty seaside fair, but with out the grotty. It's just plain, simple and clean. But very **** expensive.

I'm surprised you got on so much considering the weather and empty the park looks.
 

The Grape Wizard

Hyper Poster
Nice report! It is just your average grooty fair as said above but it is funny at the same time.

The ghost train was terrifying haha, its so grim. Was expecting your average pop-round the corner ghouls but no... It's worse than Saw ;). Plus they gave us a free ride on Shockwave (by accident) so that was good.
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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Martyn B said:
Brean is a weird place. Its basically your average grotty seaside fair, but with out the grotty. It's just plain, simple and clean. But very **** expensive.

I'm surprised you got on so much considering the weather and empty the park looks.
The weather was dry! The puddles in the photos were from overnight. The puddles were so bad, we had to swim to get on the dodgems!

I agree, Brean is very much average, grotty seaside fair IN style, but in execution, it's actually quite a decent park. The park is clean, the rides are "substantial" and it doesn't suffer from the cramped feeling that most grotty seaside parks to. I enjoyed Brean and would visit it regularly if I loved in close proximity.
 

CookieCoasters

Giga Poster
Why did you think the sky tower was amazing. I watched a video of it and I thought it looked pretty dull. Is it one of those rides that rides a lot better than it looks.
 

dj-fireball999

Mega Poster
Terror Castle was designed by Wardley, if I remember correctly. Something that I've been wanting to try for a while. Shockwave is actually my favourite Pinfari looper. It just doesn't seem as "jarring" as the more compact layouts that came later on.
 

furie

SBOPD
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Wardley designed the Ghost Train at Barry, could you be getting confused with that one?

Terror Castle is made up of stock items imported from a "horror scene" manufacturer/supplier in the US. Though oddly, it's the same manufacturer/supplier who did the zombies in Duel :lol:
 
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