This weekend I headed up north to ride some of the 'new for 2013' coasters at Alton Towers and Flamingo Land; I also lost my Lightwater Virginity.
My trip began at a heaving Alton Towers, where I plowed through the crowds towards The Smiler - with all the frustrated energy I had been saving up since 23rd May. Seeing it in action for the first time, my first impression was that it doesn't look right in X-Sector - as it ruins the visual simplicity the area once had. Oblivion, the flat rides and the food stalls are stark and minimalist; so endless knots of Gertslauer track spewing out of a big concrete hole and twisting straight through the toilet blocks just doesn't do the area justice. The Smiler is an amazing mess of track, but it's too messy for X-Sector.
It doesn't help that the entire coaster is themed around a giant mechanical spider-like structure that looks like a hi-tech car wash. The Orwellian-esque mind-control narrative of The Smiler is not communicated particularly well through the tacky themeing. The screens at the top of the spider structure show a barrage of little clips from Dr. Kelman to carriage rotation to random people smiling; it's a mish-mash of images that failed to hold my attention as they appear to be too random to tell a story.
Each leg of the spider-wash has a different lame effect with a silly name: The Innoculator, The Giggler, The Tickler etc. But the best piece of Smiler themeing isn't even on this spider structure... say hello to The Cherry Picker:
Due to the queue line burrowing underneath the ride, the majority of the queue goes through a cage which I found very claustrophobic. After waiting an hour, the trains suddenly all stacked up at the station and an announcement was made about "technical difficulties." I was not happy:
But after half an hour of waiting, they managed to get the ride working again...phew! Then it was into the indoor station, which has some trippy 3D wall projections that look cool but don't really seem to bare any relevance to the ride. After this eyeball onslaught it is weird to go straight into the plain concrete baggage hold area. The station is very bright, I suppose it's meant to be like an operating theater? Or a mental hospital? At least it's easy to fill in the gaps of reason for their half arsed effort with the station.
The trains load rather quickly, there's no moment of suspense before you glide down the gentle, twisted drop into the first inversion. Before things have even got going, the brakes slam on and some snazzy orange lights go off above your head. I liked the snazzy orange lights. The first lift hill is quite slow for a Gerstlauer, and the inverted drop that follows is very underwhelming. I found the rest of the rides first half in the front row to be very smooth and fun, but not particularly intense.
The second vertical lift hill really feels like a struggle in a 4x4 train. Again, another non-event with the second inverted drop (I wish they had just put one proper drop in somewhere) before the best part of the ride: the roll over into the big airtime hill. This is a lovely moment. It is followed by a disgusting cobra roll of Gouderix standards and some other corkscrews, then it's all over.
I was surprised by how little affect the inversions had on me, I didn't feel half as dizzy as I do on Colossus. On this first ride I was pretty impressed with The Smiler and gave it 8/10. But I rode it again at the end of the day, at the back of the train; and had a completely different ride experience. My second ride was very rough, the train was rattling a lot and making a strange creaking noise throughout. My head was getting thrown around during every inversion, and I was just relieved when the ride had finished. So I don't really know what I think of The Smiler after that, but I'm lowering my rating to 6/10 for the coaster being so inconsistent.
I managed to also ride Nemesis, Nemsis Sub Terra and Thirteen in between queueing a total of 5 hours for 2 rides on The Smiler. Never going on a bank holiday weekend again! It took an hour just to get out of the car park.
En route to Lightwater Valley I found an amazing Travelodge / Wetherspoon combo palace!
This is the stuff budget chain dreams are made of <3
The next day I visited Lightwater Valley for the first time. I had low expectations because they didn't seem to have much there aside from The Ultimate; but I found Lightwater Valley to be a really enjoyable park. I liked how spacious it was; and the 'local village' vibe you get in the entrance - with a cafe selling bacon butties and these amazing chocolate spoons:
The first thing that greets you is the new Angry Birds playground, which is sterile and clinical looking. The main play area - which is supposed to look like the wooden houses from the game - looks a bit like an office block. It's all a bit too square and regimented for me, plus the game music blasting out on loop is very irritating.
I wandered off to the Bird of Prey center, where they have a vast array of owls, hawks and buzzards. As Alan Partridge would say, it's a "cracking owl sanctuary!" I came back later to watch the Birds of Prey flight demonstrations, which was really cool. The man giving the talk was a good mix of fun and informative, it was well worth watching.
First ride of the day was The Ultimate. I had heard a lot about how rough it was, but I still wasn't prepared. Nothing can prepare you for the second half of this coaster! I got stuck on the second lift hill on my first ride, making Europes longest coaster was even longer as the staff drove down in a car to get the ride going again. I really liked how far away from the park you feel on The Ultimate; it's like going on a little expedition to sandpaper land. For all it's roughness, The Ultimate is somehow very re-rideable, I can't explain why; but I was crying with both laughter and pain which was actually quite a fun experience!
After stretching out my battered spine, I rode Raptor Attack - which is a real testament to the idea that if you theme any ride well enough, it can be amazing. Raptor Attack has a bit of a Nemesis Sub Terra feel, in that you are going below the ground the investigate the existence of a scary creature. But this time it's dinosaurs and a mine shaft; rather than eggs and a research unit. The themeing is brilliant - you have to duck through the entrance tunnels, which slope down and get wetter the lower you descend. There are ominous splatters of blood on the walls, and walk ways made of metal cage that cover up a stream below. It reminded me a lot of the Crystal Maze <3
The ride station is like a small tunnel lit with a red light, great for building up the atmosphere. The ride itself is a smooth Schwarzkopf Wildcat, which is great fun in the pitch black. As you zoom around the track various dinosaurs light up with screeching sound effects, one of them is holding half a human body covered in blood. It's quite dark for a family ride. I really loved it.
Was great to see that they didn't just forget about the theme for the exit of the coaster. You have to navigate more tunnels with blood on the walls, red lights, banging and screaming noises to get out. It was fab to see Lightwater Valley had much such a great effort with this ride.
After mopping up the rest of the creds: 2 kiddie coasters and a Reverchon spinning mouse (ugh) I got to meet an Eagle Owl!
I also went on the tractor ride through the farm, which was a bit annoying as it was the only way to see the farm animals, and had very poor throughput. Then I found a crappy kiddie ride with hippos! I love hippos!
This ride also answers the question of the whereabouts of The Black Holes original tent..
After a couple more re-rides on Raptor Attack and The Ultimate, I left Lightwater Valley feeling pleasantly surprised that the park had kept me thoroughly entertained all day.
My final day up north was spent in Flamingo Land. I hadn't visited Flamingo Land since 2009, and was interested to see how much it has changed. There's a lot more animals in the zoo which is nice; but the layout of the park is a complete jumble of areas. The walkways are meandering and indirect, the areas are crammed full of any old kiddie rides and big coasters. The only part of the park which is noticeably themed is the new Dinoland - which looks like a really, really crap version of Jurassic Park at Universal IOA. Dinoland still looks like a mess though, as the majority of its' themeing consists of wooden fences crammed in wherever possible.
I headed over to Kumali at first, hoping it would have the smallest queue. But they were only running one train, so I ended up waiting over an hour for a short, boring SLC. Surely this park can't be making so little money that they only run one train on really busy days? They should rename it Queuemali with that terrible throughput!
I then resigned myself to buying 'Q Busters' for the rest of the coasters; and ironically ended up queuing for an hour just to buy a Q Buster. Most of the Q Busters had sold out by noon, there were a lot of disgruntled families around. As annoying as this all was, I did think £2 per ride for a Q Buster was very reasonable. (But then again, it's not like there's any world class coasters here...they should be paying ME to ride that Volare!)
Managed to race over to the zoo in time catch the Hippo feed, yay!
After this, it was lunch time. cue: another 40 minute queue just to buy some food. They only had one member of staff serving people in the restaurant. Ridiculous! I wasn't even half way through my day but it was already getting tedious to the point of wanting to just leave.
Next I rode Velocity, which was good fun in the back row, there were some nice airtime moments. Had a potter around the zoo, got told off for telling off some scummy kids who were throwing their crisp packets into the animal enclosures :x stupid parents.
Next up was the new Volare cred: Hero. It has ill-fitting 'scary' music, some of the sound effects sound a bit like the video from Nemesis Sub Terra (sorry, one of these days I will stop comparing everything to Sub Terra!)
In comparison to the Volare I rode on the CF Finland live, Hero looks a bit cooler because it's painted black. But it rode even worse, every corner and inversion was rough; plus the restraints seemed a lot tighter on the chest. I felt like I couldn't breathe by the end. It's a fittingly bad addition to a bad park.
Then I rode Flamingo Lands other new addition: Twistosaurus; which is surprisingly spinny and sickly for a family coaster. Not very enjoyable to ride, but the carts are cute and there are little dino eggs by the ride entrance that you can get inside for a photo op.
I finished up my rubbish day on Mumbo Jumbo, which entered the Guinness Book of Records in 2009 for being the Worlds Wildest Mouse. I quite like Mumbo Jumbo, even though it's a bit sluggish and odd. It has a decent amount of hangtime and, I don't know if it's due to the minimal restraints, but the beyond vertical drop seems to pack more of a punch than the ones on Eurofighters.
Overall, I was glad to be leaving Flamingo Land. It would take something really special to make me set foot in that poorly operated place again anytime soon.
My trip began at a heaving Alton Towers, where I plowed through the crowds towards The Smiler - with all the frustrated energy I had been saving up since 23rd May. Seeing it in action for the first time, my first impression was that it doesn't look right in X-Sector - as it ruins the visual simplicity the area once had. Oblivion, the flat rides and the food stalls are stark and minimalist; so endless knots of Gertslauer track spewing out of a big concrete hole and twisting straight through the toilet blocks just doesn't do the area justice. The Smiler is an amazing mess of track, but it's too messy for X-Sector.
It doesn't help that the entire coaster is themed around a giant mechanical spider-like structure that looks like a hi-tech car wash. The Orwellian-esque mind-control narrative of The Smiler is not communicated particularly well through the tacky themeing. The screens at the top of the spider structure show a barrage of little clips from Dr. Kelman to carriage rotation to random people smiling; it's a mish-mash of images that failed to hold my attention as they appear to be too random to tell a story.
Each leg of the spider-wash has a different lame effect with a silly name: The Innoculator, The Giggler, The Tickler etc. But the best piece of Smiler themeing isn't even on this spider structure... say hello to The Cherry Picker:
Due to the queue line burrowing underneath the ride, the majority of the queue goes through a cage which I found very claustrophobic. After waiting an hour, the trains suddenly all stacked up at the station and an announcement was made about "technical difficulties." I was not happy:
But after half an hour of waiting, they managed to get the ride working again...phew! Then it was into the indoor station, which has some trippy 3D wall projections that look cool but don't really seem to bare any relevance to the ride. After this eyeball onslaught it is weird to go straight into the plain concrete baggage hold area. The station is very bright, I suppose it's meant to be like an operating theater? Or a mental hospital? At least it's easy to fill in the gaps of reason for their half arsed effort with the station.
The trains load rather quickly, there's no moment of suspense before you glide down the gentle, twisted drop into the first inversion. Before things have even got going, the brakes slam on and some snazzy orange lights go off above your head. I liked the snazzy orange lights. The first lift hill is quite slow for a Gerstlauer, and the inverted drop that follows is very underwhelming. I found the rest of the rides first half in the front row to be very smooth and fun, but not particularly intense.
The second vertical lift hill really feels like a struggle in a 4x4 train. Again, another non-event with the second inverted drop (I wish they had just put one proper drop in somewhere) before the best part of the ride: the roll over into the big airtime hill. This is a lovely moment. It is followed by a disgusting cobra roll of Gouderix standards and some other corkscrews, then it's all over.
I was surprised by how little affect the inversions had on me, I didn't feel half as dizzy as I do on Colossus. On this first ride I was pretty impressed with The Smiler and gave it 8/10. But I rode it again at the end of the day, at the back of the train; and had a completely different ride experience. My second ride was very rough, the train was rattling a lot and making a strange creaking noise throughout. My head was getting thrown around during every inversion, and I was just relieved when the ride had finished. So I don't really know what I think of The Smiler after that, but I'm lowering my rating to 6/10 for the coaster being so inconsistent.
I managed to also ride Nemesis, Nemsis Sub Terra and Thirteen in between queueing a total of 5 hours for 2 rides on The Smiler. Never going on a bank holiday weekend again! It took an hour just to get out of the car park.
En route to Lightwater Valley I found an amazing Travelodge / Wetherspoon combo palace!
This is the stuff budget chain dreams are made of <3
The next day I visited Lightwater Valley for the first time. I had low expectations because they didn't seem to have much there aside from The Ultimate; but I found Lightwater Valley to be a really enjoyable park. I liked how spacious it was; and the 'local village' vibe you get in the entrance - with a cafe selling bacon butties and these amazing chocolate spoons:
The first thing that greets you is the new Angry Birds playground, which is sterile and clinical looking. The main play area - which is supposed to look like the wooden houses from the game - looks a bit like an office block. It's all a bit too square and regimented for me, plus the game music blasting out on loop is very irritating.
I wandered off to the Bird of Prey center, where they have a vast array of owls, hawks and buzzards. As Alan Partridge would say, it's a "cracking owl sanctuary!" I came back later to watch the Birds of Prey flight demonstrations, which was really cool. The man giving the talk was a good mix of fun and informative, it was well worth watching.
First ride of the day was The Ultimate. I had heard a lot about how rough it was, but I still wasn't prepared. Nothing can prepare you for the second half of this coaster! I got stuck on the second lift hill on my first ride, making Europes longest coaster was even longer as the staff drove down in a car to get the ride going again. I really liked how far away from the park you feel on The Ultimate; it's like going on a little expedition to sandpaper land. For all it's roughness, The Ultimate is somehow very re-rideable, I can't explain why; but I was crying with both laughter and pain which was actually quite a fun experience!
After stretching out my battered spine, I rode Raptor Attack - which is a real testament to the idea that if you theme any ride well enough, it can be amazing. Raptor Attack has a bit of a Nemesis Sub Terra feel, in that you are going below the ground the investigate the existence of a scary creature. But this time it's dinosaurs and a mine shaft; rather than eggs and a research unit. The themeing is brilliant - you have to duck through the entrance tunnels, which slope down and get wetter the lower you descend. There are ominous splatters of blood on the walls, and walk ways made of metal cage that cover up a stream below. It reminded me a lot of the Crystal Maze <3
The ride station is like a small tunnel lit with a red light, great for building up the atmosphere. The ride itself is a smooth Schwarzkopf Wildcat, which is great fun in the pitch black. As you zoom around the track various dinosaurs light up with screeching sound effects, one of them is holding half a human body covered in blood. It's quite dark for a family ride. I really loved it.
Was great to see that they didn't just forget about the theme for the exit of the coaster. You have to navigate more tunnels with blood on the walls, red lights, banging and screaming noises to get out. It was fab to see Lightwater Valley had much such a great effort with this ride.
After mopping up the rest of the creds: 2 kiddie coasters and a Reverchon spinning mouse (ugh) I got to meet an Eagle Owl!
I also went on the tractor ride through the farm, which was a bit annoying as it was the only way to see the farm animals, and had very poor throughput. Then I found a crappy kiddie ride with hippos! I love hippos!
This ride also answers the question of the whereabouts of The Black Holes original tent..
After a couple more re-rides on Raptor Attack and The Ultimate, I left Lightwater Valley feeling pleasantly surprised that the park had kept me thoroughly entertained all day.
My final day up north was spent in Flamingo Land. I hadn't visited Flamingo Land since 2009, and was interested to see how much it has changed. There's a lot more animals in the zoo which is nice; but the layout of the park is a complete jumble of areas. The walkways are meandering and indirect, the areas are crammed full of any old kiddie rides and big coasters. The only part of the park which is noticeably themed is the new Dinoland - which looks like a really, really crap version of Jurassic Park at Universal IOA. Dinoland still looks like a mess though, as the majority of its' themeing consists of wooden fences crammed in wherever possible.
I headed over to Kumali at first, hoping it would have the smallest queue. But they were only running one train, so I ended up waiting over an hour for a short, boring SLC. Surely this park can't be making so little money that they only run one train on really busy days? They should rename it Queuemali with that terrible throughput!
I then resigned myself to buying 'Q Busters' for the rest of the coasters; and ironically ended up queuing for an hour just to buy a Q Buster. Most of the Q Busters had sold out by noon, there were a lot of disgruntled families around. As annoying as this all was, I did think £2 per ride for a Q Buster was very reasonable. (But then again, it's not like there's any world class coasters here...they should be paying ME to ride that Volare!)
Managed to race over to the zoo in time catch the Hippo feed, yay!
After this, it was lunch time. cue: another 40 minute queue just to buy some food. They only had one member of staff serving people in the restaurant. Ridiculous! I wasn't even half way through my day but it was already getting tedious to the point of wanting to just leave.
Next I rode Velocity, which was good fun in the back row, there were some nice airtime moments. Had a potter around the zoo, got told off for telling off some scummy kids who were throwing their crisp packets into the animal enclosures :x stupid parents.
Next up was the new Volare cred: Hero. It has ill-fitting 'scary' music, some of the sound effects sound a bit like the video from Nemesis Sub Terra (sorry, one of these days I will stop comparing everything to Sub Terra!)
In comparison to the Volare I rode on the CF Finland live, Hero looks a bit cooler because it's painted black. But it rode even worse, every corner and inversion was rough; plus the restraints seemed a lot tighter on the chest. I felt like I couldn't breathe by the end. It's a fittingly bad addition to a bad park.
Then I rode Flamingo Lands other new addition: Twistosaurus; which is surprisingly spinny and sickly for a family coaster. Not very enjoyable to ride, but the carts are cute and there are little dino eggs by the ride entrance that you can get inside for a photo op.
I finished up my rubbish day on Mumbo Jumbo, which entered the Guinness Book of Records in 2009 for being the Worlds Wildest Mouse. I quite like Mumbo Jumbo, even though it's a bit sluggish and odd. It has a decent amount of hangtime and, I don't know if it's due to the minimal restraints, but the beyond vertical drop seems to pack more of a punch than the ones on Eurofighters.
Overall, I was glad to be leaving Flamingo Land. It would take something really special to make me set foot in that poorly operated place again anytime soon.
