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A trip to the East (aka not-been-there-before)

davidm

davidm

Strata Poster
Now with a thread title like that, you'd rather expect me to be off on some far-flung jet-setting
type trip to foreign, less-travelled climes wouldn't you? Well you'd be quite wrong...

--

I had some time booked off from work, but for various reasons had not organised a proper holiday,
so after a few lazy days at home catching up on video-games and the gardening I set off on a little
trip to a few places with a few coasters that I'd never been to before - notably the Eastern coast
(of England, rather than the US or even the far-East). :)

Saturday 30/8 - Some Culture...some coasters...

But en-route I wandered around the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for a few hours for a healthy dose
of "culture" before heading to the seaside. No great report to be had from here, just a few pics
of sculpture dotted around this country house near Wakefield.

This big thing is by Ursula von Rydingsvard, the park had an exhibition of her work on so there
were a lot of these around the place (I liked them though, so thats good)



The park's chapel was taken over by Ai Weiwei (who hopefully you will have heard of?), wasn't overly
keen on the stuff inside the chapel by him to be honest, but really liked this iron tree outside;





I went on a big trek all around the park - which turned out to be a schoolboy error since the vast
majority of the stuff was close to the manor house bit - my trek was something like a 4km walk around
the site to see about 3 things - doh!



And one of these was just a set of steps, wouldn't have known it was "art" unless I had read the
sign next to it. Hmmm.









Antony Gormley (heard of him too of course);



Back near the main bit, there were lots more odd things about











This was scary;









Another one of those, even scarier;



This is the indoor bit, housing lots of things by that Ursula von Rydingsvard







Anyway, all very nice and occupied a couple of hours fairly pleasantly.



http://www.ysp.co.uk

--

Onwards then to the mystical East (coast) and the first of my new-to-me places; Cleethorpes.

Pleasure Island Family Theme Park which is the home of 3 (well really 2 since 1 of the 3
is a Go-Gater and I draw the line at those) coasters. I get there around 3pm and they let me in
at a reduced £12 rate (rather than £19.50) which was nice I thought.

Odd place then, was actually more substantial than I had thought it was going to be, has some
real themed-buildings (OK well buildings that were trying their best to be themed) as an entrance
way and a little lake (pond?) around which were dotted their rides.





At the one end of the lake/pond was Mini Mine Train a fairly common Vekoma roller skater/junior
coaster thing. Anyway, fairly harmless and actually quite nice looking sat at the edge of the
water like it was.





At the other side of the small park, in the optimistically named "white-knuckle valley" is the
other coaster, the imaginatively named Boomerang, a Vekoma Boomerang(!).







After I'd got my "coaster fix" I was at a bit of a loss for things to do, didn't really fancy any
of the flat rides so I watched their sealion show for half an hour. Was ok, not quite SeaWorld but
you are where you are.

Honourable mention must go to this ghost train ride though which I did ride - and I thought it was
going to be awful but it was surprisingly "OK" (even though the throughput was very very slow).



Some scenery then;











notacred (for me at least);



notachance;





They have two big spinny ride things (one was broken) - surely two is overkill in a place this size?



They also have a small farm area (which smelled a bit),

"Oink-oink"



"not-sure-what-sound-a-freshly-sheared-alpaca-makes"



Carousel looked ok though;



Although it said;



So all-in-all, a bit rubbish place, but substantially less-rubbish than I had thought it was
going to be. The place wasn't what you would call busy for a Saturday at the end of Summer, but
there were still a fair few patrons around as I wandered out at closing time.

As I left they were giving out flyers - a letter from the owner person - imploring
peeps to buy a 2015 season-pass now (at a good reduced price to be fair) in order to fund investment
for next year. The cynics amongst you might think it was more to get some money now rather than
for future investment, perhaps this doesn't bode very well for the place?

And a little bit confusing, since next door is;

 
Sunday 31/8 - So bracing?

After a night in a hotel in Grimsby (never been there before either - town centre was ok I guess,
couple of pubs I went to for some food & pints were ok but quite quiet (was still early tho'), hotel
was a bit rubbish, McDonalds was very busy in the morning for breakfast) I headed down the coast a
bit to Ingoldmells.


So I made my way to Fantasy Island through a sea of caravans, then a sea of the world's beautiful
people (?) wandering the adjacent streets and parked up in a crappy carpark in the shadow of two huge
roller coasters. :)

To be honest this place was probably why I ended up doing this trip, not really as I thought it would
be any good at all but purely because it might not exist for much longer (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=38111)
in the same form?

Knowing that the place was known for "temperamental" operations I was a bit concerned that might be
spited, but as soon as I saw a few peeps boarding one of the big coasters I was happy and rushed off
to get my wristband ("cash only" sales - hmmm smacks of going-out-of-business!).

First up was the yellow one then, Millennium (wasn't this "Millennium Coaster" - why even
bother changing that?).



And it was actually OK I thought. Big drop, loop, some helix type stuff, another loop - all fairly
good, not much grace to it (or air) but I was pleasantly surprised. So much so I rode it again straight
away. Cool.






Obviously needed to get the other big ride which only opened as I walked up to it ; Odyssey (and
wasn't this "Jubilee Odyssey" - ok I understand that one, "Jubilee" is a bit poor for a coaster name!)

Quality signage though;





And this was _not_ good. SLCs are not great to start with and this one seemed to max out all the worst
bits of those rides in a huge custom layout. Ouch! It certainly _looks_ good, a mass of twisted
red and white track, and the train looks great making its way through the layout, but its just such a
poor ride. I rode it again just to make sure, and yes it was still most unpleasant.











Moving on, they have one of those lovely spinning wild mouse rides Fantasy Mouse which was of
course as thrilling as any of the other seemingly hundreds of these things...



Next door to the original mouse is a powered ride Rhombus's Rocket, which at least has an odd name
but was fun enough as it whipped its way around the park.





The last coaster is a tiny kiddy-ride 'Jellikins Coaster' (so I didn't get to ride this - no loss) which lives inside
the big ugly pyramid that sits in the middle of this park.



The pyramid is rather special, managing to be as ugly on the inside as it is on the out.



I rode the drop tower as well, that was fun and gave some spectacular views over the ugly park and the
impressive looking big coasters, but of course no photos from up there. :(





The park sits inside this vast, chavvy market where all the lovely inhabitants of the caravan parks come
to while away their day.



Fairly horrible place then. Happy I've been, happy never to ever go again though. :)



--

Escaping down the coast (past the big Butlins - used to be coasters there as well) I get to Skegness
itself and park up next to the pier (which is barely deserving of the name as it seems to get nowhere
near the water), on the otherside of the pier is the next stop though, Botton's Pleasure Beach
a 'traditional' British seaside park (i.e. a chunk of seaside land packed with rides of variable quality).





Following the tactic of seaside-park-maximising-space, a couple of the rides are one top of buildings
housing tacky amusement-arcades, the first ride like this I ventured on was the mini-inverted ride
(almost an inverted big apple) which was certainly a novelty for me if not at all exciting Queen Bee.





Next up was the unexciting looking Runaway Train which has the look of one of those small powered
min train coasters about it, but isn't powered and was surprisingly rather good fun for such a simple
layout.





An old and rather grotty looking (the 'theming' was all rotten) Big Apple up next - I think
I've done well not to have ridden may of these things in the past (maybe only the one in fact) but
I manage to spoil that 'record' a bit on this trip. :(





Next to the apple is the only larger coaster here, the Rockin Roller which is a spinning mouse,
but at least its one of the less-common Fabbri ones which at least have a different layout to the
'standard' mouse.









I don't do a lot else here, their not-so-big wheel (from which obviously a lot of these snaps were
taken) is pleasant enough though





And we can see the rubbish pier from here



as well as, in the distance, the coasters from earlier in the day







Gave their ghost train a go though ; was not as good as the one in Cleethorpes yesterday



Panoramic view from the rubbish pier;

 
Monday 1/9 - Great Yarmouth

Actually I had been here before, but that was years ago (back when I was a student) as I was then seeing
a girl who came from Caister-on-Sea (another world of caravans just up the coast), I distinctly remember
walking around Great Yarmouth one day when staying with her and I thought I remembered walking past an
old roller coaster then - but todays activities didn't remind me of any of that, so I must have just been
mis-remembering my student days!

Anyway, parked up in the Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach car park, which if nothing else gave a
view of the sea and wandered around the beach for a while until the park opened.





First up was the venerable old woody (the one I had thought I'd walked past some 25 years ago but clearly
had not)





And I really liked this :)

It doesn't do a lot, but its just really good fun, thoroughly enjoyable little ride and just all round
rather fantastic.







Has it always been so "blue" though (like back in the 30s when it was built?) - rather odd looking
I thought.



Anyway, loved it - favourite ride of the trip I think, rode it a fair few times through the day :)

Earlier in this TR, when I said I had only ever been on one Big Apple before, well it was this one...



...back when it was a new ride at Alton Towers - so that was probably well over 30 years earlier.

Anyway rode it again and it was in so much better condition that the previous day's version up in
Skegness - the scenery at least, the ride was much the same.

Next up was another Fabbri spinning mouse (so much for me earlier saying they were less common then)
Family Star - RCDB suggests that this is a smaller version than the one the day before, can't
say I particularly noticed though?



Rode a few other rides at the pleasure beach to get some value out of my wristband; some Snails
that wander around inside the structure of the big Roller Coaster (pretty sure they were playing the
Disney Small World song in there as well - odd?)



Their ghost train was OK, better than Skegness, not as good as Cleethorpres though



Never been on one of these giant "frog hopper" things either, so that was fun



Their fun house was a bit useless and by the time I'd watched some lame 4D film thing it was raining
quite a bit so hid out for a while in one of the arcades.

After a while rain had eased so I ventured back out and headed up the seafront towards the town
itself and the pier where lives the next small park Joyland Amusement Park.

This is a rather odd little place - rather old and "traditional" but rather small and cramped.
Not really sure that their coaster Tyrolean Tubtwist really counts as either a woody or indeed
as a roller coaster, but was interesting at least and worth a spin or two in the rain



Don't see much wood there?



Their other coaster (which at least looks like one) is Spook Express, a kiddy ride cunningly built
on top of the buildings that house this small park





Just to occupy a few minutes I also rode this odd looking 'Jet Cars' thingy





and the famous not-a-credit Snails ride



(which was as borderline coaster as the tubs I thought?)

This is a real coaster-credit though (ho-ho, see what I did there :roll: )



So I wander around the pier and the town for a while in the rain (seeing if any of it was familiar
from 25 years ago ; it wasn't) before heading back to the Pleasure Beach for a couple more rides on
the real woody before I head off for the day.

Leaving Las Vegas? (Flamingo, Circus Circus and Golden Nugget - there was a Caesars Palace further up the strip too!)



I was staying near Norwich, so since I'd never been there before either (apart from driving through
it a couple of times 25 years ago) have a wander around the city in the evening - was quite nice
I guess.
 
Tuesday 2/9 - Hills and Seas

To start the day I headed to Lowestoft's Pleasurewood Hills, which I'd also obviously never been to before...



Which was all rather pleasant I thought. The place got reasonably busy as the day got on (I left around
1:30) but was quiet for the first hour or so when I got all the coasters 'in'.

Figured that the new attraction might be the most popular (and these can suffer slow operations) so
headed to Marble Madness first up (which I had already ridden when at Flamingoland a few years
back). At least this is a normal mouse rather than a spinning one and had no wait at that time, all
good then.



Next up was the olde Schwarzkopf, Enigma which I had heard no good things about - but I didn't
find it bad at all apart from a rather violent brake at the end I guess, certainly more worthy of a ride
than another mouse or apple at any rate.





Back across the park to the boomerang next, Wipeout, another relocation, but not one I'd ridden
in its previous life. Quite scenically located next to a small pond this version had the more modern
trains compared to the Cleethorpes version of a few days before; don't think it makes much difference
though.





Some good views from the skyride of the boomer though





Last up for the park is a small tivoli, which seems to be called either Snake in the Grass or
Rattlesnake depending on which sign you look at - odd!





Its in the trees a bit and behind a fence, so hard to get any real shots of...



and was very "vibraty" (not a real word) in the way that some tivolis are.

Some more pics from the pleasant skyride then





I wandered around the park for a while taking some pics, really just waiting for the ghost train
to open (I assume because of the live actors involved then that why it opened 2 hours after the
rest of the park).



When it did open I was in the second 'batch' of the day with a father and his 2 kids - the kids got
spooked at the very first scene in the mini-walkthrough before the ride and so I got to ride the
thing alone - and it was very well done ; good mix of walkthrough / ghost train / ride ops dressed up
in theme etc. Cool - definitely the best ghost train on the trip then!



Q had built up by now for the rest of the park, so felt quite smug I'd got everything 'done' early on





Odd train/station just sitting there (a haunt I assume)



And train that actually moves







My Blobby's castle apparently;



So all-in-all a pretty nice park, I was quite impressed. It doesn't have a lot of stuff so it'd struggle
to be more than a half-day park even if you hit crowds I think but I did enjoy my few hours there
before I set off to the next stop...

--

...a bit of a drive South again and I get to Clacton Pier which was a step up from the previous
piers on this trip since at least this one made it out into the sea.





First up was Stellas Revenge, a fairly ropey Galaxi layout.



Wasn't great at all, nasty brake at end as well.

Next to that was another apple coaster, this one refusing to acknowledge its apple/wacky-worm heritage
is called Wild Mouse Coaster.



Behind that was a Go-Gater, which I've already made clear I draw the line at, and glad I do as otherwise
I might have been upset at it not operating today!



Much more worthy was a spinny-tower ride thing - a mini sky-screamer affair;



Which I was a bit naughty upon and used to take a few sky-bound snaps from;









All 3 (2?) coasters together;



The pier was quite nice in itself as well







The rest of the pier amusements included a go-kart track themed to Top Gear;



and some indoor-stuff for when it rains



Just outside the pier is another 'park' Pavilion Fun Park more geared towards small kids I would
think, but they do have a small coaster Gold Mine which was worth the £2 in tokens it took to
ride



So Clacton was a bit more pleasant than I'd expected it to be, but smaller than the other seaside
'resorts' I'd visited I guess.



 
Wednesday 3/9 - Saaafend

Adventure Island today then ; never been here before either.

Parked up on the seafront and wandered into the town for a looksee before the park opened for the day.
Town was a bit ugly I think (but then most UK towns are) but the seafront-bit was nice enough, with a
observation platform / elevator down to the pier-level thing going on.





Once the place opens up I sort myself a wristband and head off to the first ride of the day, the
compact Eurofighter Rage







Nice little ride then, doesn't do too much but doesn't do too much wrong either (if that makes any
sense?) - good ride for the park, something different to all the other stock "seaside rides" that I'd
been on this week at least.

Next up is the large tivoli Green Scream and this is quite fun too - nice long course and
not as "vibraty" as yesterday's smaller one was.





Fame for Mark's adventures of a couple of years ago too;



On the other side of the pier are the other 3 coasters here which I knock-off in a fairly quick fashion,
firstly the other tivoli Barnstormer which is actually quite fun for a little ride







Then the oddly named Kiddi Koaster which is rather dull





and finally the similar looking (and also silly named) Mighty Mini Mega



which was a bit more exciting but still not great.



Wander around the rest of the park, but don't ride much ; had a go on another one of these things
though which is fun



and the ghost-train here was pretty good too (no pics of that tho).







--



I've been moaning about all these tiny "rubbish-piers" that I've encountered on this trip (only Clacton's
so far had been any good) so faced with Southend's famous "worlds longest" pier I had to have a
trip down to the end of it (took the train along the pier)



But even this was rubbish as there was nothing really going on at the end of the pier apart from a
cafe place and the views back to land.



So that was it for Southend - was a nice enough day actually mostly just spent wandering around the
town/park/pier. And thats it for the coasters on this trip, I'll have one more day to add to the report
in a while but that day is sadly coaster-free :(

 
You've done a great job of capturing a lot of the east coast places I've got a soft spot for, regardless how tacky and cheap they are, in a really positive way.
 
Thursday 4/9 - Not a theme park, but...

...somewhat reminiscent of a Universal park in Orlando.

Needing some sort of tourist activity to occupy my trip home from the far East / down South that I had
ended up in, I had booked a trip around the Warner Bros Studios Tour near Watford, aka "That
Harry Potter thing".



Now I'm not a Potter-fan at all but I have seen the films and ridden the rides in Orlando and being
somewhat of a film-geek too I thought this would be interesting enough for a few hours and provide a
few interesting things to take pics of.

And it was OK I guess, pretty interesting ; probably not as much of the "how the films were made" as I
would have liked, much more "look at the shiny objects" and a procession through staged sets which could
have just come out of the theme-park (although you trusted them that these were the real sets rather
that the Universal copies of course).

I was probably more interested in what was going on over here than inside the tour itself;



Anyway, lots of things to take pictures of, so this will be a bit of a photo-dump for a while with the
odd comment;





Map of the tour if anyone is interested;



Tour starts with a little film and then (quite neatly) the film screen retracts into the ceiling to
reveal the entrance doorway into the 'Great Hall' set

















Unfortunately no big ride behind these gates :(

























Gringots coaster car?

















The outside sets bit was a bit rubbish though, although these two guys in suits were being given
a guided tour of the attraction (as an attraction I mean rather than as Potter fans) by this other
guy so eavesdropping the conversation for a bit I learned that their licensing conditions meant
that they could only sell the Butterbeer stuff in this area and they could not sell any other
soft-drinks in that area - JK protecting the brand a bit there!



and I heard that they were in the process of building a new cafe in that bit as well.





Some ugly creatures in the creature-shop;











Big model at the end was quite cool though





£25 for a bit of plastic!



--

Couple of processed pics as well then;







 
Thursday 4/9 - Spies like us?

To finish up my little tour, I stopped off at Bletchley Park on the way home to have a look
at all the war-time code-breaking stuff that they had going on there.



Was a bit underwhelming I thought - not a lot to see as such (mainly because everything was secret and
so destroyed). Lots of of emptyish huts (where all the code-breaking work was done) a few with some
set-ups like back in the war-days and stuff.



Me and Winston;

















Turing statue;



Enigma machine (rather than Enigma coaster of a few days before)









So a bit odd place - there was an included audio/visual-guide that had a lot of detail in it but I
found it a bit stupid to use (why would you go to a museum and then just sit and watch videos on a
little ipod thingy?). I'm glad that they are preserving the place as it has an important place in our
recent history but as a destination-attraction/musuem I think it has work to do. Some bits were well
done but then others were just odd and confusing.



And they seemed to let out some of the huts to other societies - there was a little cinema-projector
museum in one of the huts (very little to do with Bletchley Park I would think).

--

Also on the same campus (but definitely not part of Bletchley since they apparently have fallen out
with them big style recently) is the National Museum of Computing, which shares some of the
same history as Bletchey (it houses one of the original computers developed at Bletchely 'Colossus'
for code breaking stuff for instance) but also houses a lot of UK-computing history. Or more unkindly, some
lots of old computer junk.



Colossus (not the coaster);







Floppy disks - makes me feel old when these are in a museum!





I've owned several of these in the past too



As a kid the Cray supercomputers were the big-business, this one is green



The whole place is rather strange though, like a car-boot sale of computer junk in a crappy little hut!



--

Anyway thats the trip over now, nice few days away where I'd mostly never been before - tick!
 
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