Recent content by Howie

Ooh this should be a fun read. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Voltron, but also EGF and Kondaa too. Oh, and kudos on the title. 👏👏👏

Hypercoaster - Land of Legends. Couldn't wait til May for Hyperia, so me & the wife minced over to Turkey this week to get some Mack hyper action. S'good. Really, really good actually, I liked it lots. Ima give it a solid 9 out of 10. Great layout, decent length, it's got height, speed...

Cor blimey, the last time I had a Merlin Pass it wasn't even a Merlin Pass, it was a Tussauds Pass, so that tells you roughly how long ago it was - 2003 to 2004 ish, I think. I used it to visit Alton Towers lots at the time, especially when there was talk of a giant cross-valley woodie being...

Yeah and given that The Ride To Happiness stalled on the top hat once when somebody farted in the queue line, I suspect the Mack boys will be keen to avoid that happening again, especially on their newest hypercoaster's maiden test run with so much attention on it right now. Wouldn't be...

If I was Warner Bros though, I think I'd be saying a big fat yes to that, wouldn't you? Surely a huge influx of international Harry Potter fans coming to within an hour away of your Studio Tour would be a good thing, right? I can't imagine any Potterphile coming to the UK to visit Universal and...

Interesting watch, Mushy. 👍 Now then, what's this about chocolate toothpaste?

I kinda felt the same way at first, although I do wonder if, at 80-odd miles per hour, you'd even be able to hear any onboard audio above the sound of the wind and 24 screaming chavs. Probably not to be honest, so I'm ok with that call. However, to not install lights on these trains, along with...

Yep, first thing I thought of when I saw the train was 'Hey - it's a Lamborghini' but, being the old man that I am I immediately thought Countach rather than Gallardo. It's cool. I like it. It's kinda retro, just like the Countach. Please God let it have lights. I also rather liked the new...

I'm also reminded of how good it used to ride at Chessington. My first ever ride on it, or any Topscan for that matter, which would have been in 2002, was shocking! There was no build up, it went from a standing start to full-on, full speed, mental spin mode in a matter of seconds. It was...

May? Aww man, that's ages away. 😪 Some cheap holidays to Turkey about at the moment though, might just go and ride the one at Land of Legends instead. Can't be arsed waiting for this thing.

Got some updates on this from Monsieur Getley if anyone's interested: The trains were manufactured in Friborg, Switzerland by a company called Stephan S.A. https://www.stephan.ch/ It's funny, with him being a Stoke lad, I kinda assumed that train assembly took place somewhere nearby, ready to...

Dunno. Mrs Howie is on her way to work this morning with a list of questions to interrogate this guy with: where the train assembly took place? The company he worked for at the time (cos it wasn't B&M)? Who the other guys in the picture are? The guy in the third picture with the hat is a big...

My missus has got a new job. Part of that job involves managing a team. One of her team members is an engineer who worked on Oblivion's trains back in the day. That team member lent me a bunch of his personal photographs to share with you lot. Here are some of those photographs...

Yesssss! This is more like it Gav. 😁

I've loved Nemesis since I first rode it - which will be exactly 30 years ago next week. It was my outright number 1 coaster for 22 years running. It's very likely that my first ride on Nemesis is the reason I'm here now, 3 decades later, babbling sh*te about coasters late at night on an...