witchfinder
Giga Poster
My wife and I had a short break in the New Forest over the Bank Holiday weekend, so we took the opportunity to visit a few parks on the South coast that we've never been to before, and also visit West Midland Safari Park on our way home. In total I managed 13 new creds from five different locations over a five day period, starting with...
Day 1 – Paultons Park (Friday 27th)
Having made most of the trip down from Stoke the night before, we had just a 45 minute journey from Basingstoke to Paultons Park. The master plan was that Friday would be the quietest day as the schools were still in session, but the car park was pretty busy when we arrived.
Not quite a Six Flags calibre view of the coasters from the car park, but not bad!
Our arrival at the entrance plaza confirmed that our thoughts of it being a quiet day were misplaced... :roll:
Turns out most of the schools had inset days on Friday so seemingly everyone had decided to visit Paultons due to the promise of nice weather. Our best hope was now that the majority were there for Peppa Pig World!
Once we got through the turnstiles we headed straight for the new Lost Kingdom area and joined the queue for Flight of the Pterosaur, which was already looking quite sizeable. Actually, at any other park this only looked like a 30 minute queue at most, but with so many small children riding and some lacklustre batching by the ride attendants, we queued for nearly an hour, with the ride only dispatching every 5 minutes or so.
From standing in the queue line, it seemed like the ride looked a bit slow and boring. Thankfully once we finally got on, it was more exciting than it looked and is good fun, particularly the part where you’re hung out over one of the shop buildings, and the final helixes that lead back into the station. Obviously it’s nothing too thrilling but certainly one of the best family coasters I've ridden in the UK, if only for the superb theming.
Next we headed to the other new coaster, Velociraptor, expecting another long wait. Surprisingly there was no queue at all and we walked straight on! Even more amazingly, this ride was being efficiently run by a single operator, whereas FotP had 3 or 4 people running it and still wasn't dealing with the queues very quickly.
The queue line for this ride is awesome by the way – the cages with the ride going overhead and the motion-activated raptors are great touches that would be appreciated much more if we’d actually had to stand in a queue! :lol:
The ride itself was very enjoyable. It seemed faster and more thrilling than the Ben 10 ride at Drayton Manor, especially in reverse, and the station flythrough was great! I also finally got to ride one of these Family Boomerangs on the front and back row, which I’d never managed at DMP.
Next up was the last dino-themed coaster, Dino Chase. No thrills to be had here on this kiddie cred, but again the theming was superb, breathing new life into a tired old coaster, and the waiting time was mercifully short.
One look at the queue for the Dino Safari ride confirmed that it had a pretty long waiting time, so we moved on to Cobra, which I was really looking forward to trying out. The queue for this was again pretty short at around 15 minutes, and in fact from this point we didn’t wait much longer than that for any of the rides we went on, as many of the families seemed to disappear for lunch.
Cobra was excellent – I love the mix of Wild Mouse style sharp turns, swooping helixes and all the bunny hops at the end, including the ‘shed chopper’ moment! Definitely the best coaster at the park, although the two new ones were both worthy challengers.
A quick go on the Magma drop tower followed, where I got to take this pic of the Lost Kingdom just before being bounced around...
After this we went back for another ride on each of the new coasters and then had lunch, which wasn’t bad for a theme park. Then we watched the Alive! Dinosaur encounter, which was funny as the T-Rex scared a few kids, and then we left the park for an hour to go and pitch up our tent at a nearby campsite, before heading back into the park for more.
We watched the 4D cinema movie, predictably dinosaur themed, but it was rubbish. The effects weren’t timed very well with the action and the 3D glasses were really poor. So we then moved on to Critter Creek and the final new cred of the day, Cat-o-Pillar.
Again, they’re done a great job re-theming an older ride, although this area was generally weird. The coaster itself was pretty boring of course.
We were going to go on the water rides but the threat of rain showers and only having an hour left meant we headed for another ride on Cobra before finishing up back in the Lost Kingdom, where we finally tried the Dino Safari. Again, the theming is great though obviously this is very much a ride for smaller children.
As the queues had pretty much gone by now, we grabbed one last ride on FotP and Velociraptor just before the rides closed, then had a wander around the gardens while all the families left.
All in all we had a great day at Paultons. It is rather pricey to get in at £26 for an advance ticket, but food and drinks are priced reasonably for a theme park. I don’t like the way they force you to exit the park through the shop – for parents this must be a nightmare – but I suppose that’s pretty normal these days.
The new area is fabulous and I'm sure it will really take the park to a new level. The animatronic dinosaurs and all the rock work were superb, they now have rides that compete with the bigger family parks, and in Cobra and Velociraptor they have two of the UK’s best family coasters IMO. I'm intrigued to see what they do next and how rival parks react...
Day 1 – Paultons Park (Friday 27th)
Having made most of the trip down from Stoke the night before, we had just a 45 minute journey from Basingstoke to Paultons Park. The master plan was that Friday would be the quietest day as the schools were still in session, but the car park was pretty busy when we arrived.
Not quite a Six Flags calibre view of the coasters from the car park, but not bad!
Our arrival at the entrance plaza confirmed that our thoughts of it being a quiet day were misplaced... :roll:
Turns out most of the schools had inset days on Friday so seemingly everyone had decided to visit Paultons due to the promise of nice weather. Our best hope was now that the majority were there for Peppa Pig World!
Once we got through the turnstiles we headed straight for the new Lost Kingdom area and joined the queue for Flight of the Pterosaur, which was already looking quite sizeable. Actually, at any other park this only looked like a 30 minute queue at most, but with so many small children riding and some lacklustre batching by the ride attendants, we queued for nearly an hour, with the ride only dispatching every 5 minutes or so.
From standing in the queue line, it seemed like the ride looked a bit slow and boring. Thankfully once we finally got on, it was more exciting than it looked and is good fun, particularly the part where you’re hung out over one of the shop buildings, and the final helixes that lead back into the station. Obviously it’s nothing too thrilling but certainly one of the best family coasters I've ridden in the UK, if only for the superb theming.
Next we headed to the other new coaster, Velociraptor, expecting another long wait. Surprisingly there was no queue at all and we walked straight on! Even more amazingly, this ride was being efficiently run by a single operator, whereas FotP had 3 or 4 people running it and still wasn't dealing with the queues very quickly.
The queue line for this ride is awesome by the way – the cages with the ride going overhead and the motion-activated raptors are great touches that would be appreciated much more if we’d actually had to stand in a queue! :lol:
The ride itself was very enjoyable. It seemed faster and more thrilling than the Ben 10 ride at Drayton Manor, especially in reverse, and the station flythrough was great! I also finally got to ride one of these Family Boomerangs on the front and back row, which I’d never managed at DMP.
Next up was the last dino-themed coaster, Dino Chase. No thrills to be had here on this kiddie cred, but again the theming was superb, breathing new life into a tired old coaster, and the waiting time was mercifully short.
One look at the queue for the Dino Safari ride confirmed that it had a pretty long waiting time, so we moved on to Cobra, which I was really looking forward to trying out. The queue for this was again pretty short at around 15 minutes, and in fact from this point we didn’t wait much longer than that for any of the rides we went on, as many of the families seemed to disappear for lunch.
Cobra was excellent – I love the mix of Wild Mouse style sharp turns, swooping helixes and all the bunny hops at the end, including the ‘shed chopper’ moment! Definitely the best coaster at the park, although the two new ones were both worthy challengers.
A quick go on the Magma drop tower followed, where I got to take this pic of the Lost Kingdom just before being bounced around...
After this we went back for another ride on each of the new coasters and then had lunch, which wasn’t bad for a theme park. Then we watched the Alive! Dinosaur encounter, which was funny as the T-Rex scared a few kids, and then we left the park for an hour to go and pitch up our tent at a nearby campsite, before heading back into the park for more.
We watched the 4D cinema movie, predictably dinosaur themed, but it was rubbish. The effects weren’t timed very well with the action and the 3D glasses were really poor. So we then moved on to Critter Creek and the final new cred of the day, Cat-o-Pillar.
Again, they’re done a great job re-theming an older ride, although this area was generally weird. The coaster itself was pretty boring of course.
We were going to go on the water rides but the threat of rain showers and only having an hour left meant we headed for another ride on Cobra before finishing up back in the Lost Kingdom, where we finally tried the Dino Safari. Again, the theming is great though obviously this is very much a ride for smaller children.
As the queues had pretty much gone by now, we grabbed one last ride on FotP and Velociraptor just before the rides closed, then had a wander around the gardens while all the families left.
All in all we had a great day at Paultons. It is rather pricey to get in at £26 for an advance ticket, but food and drinks are priced reasonably for a theme park. I don’t like the way they force you to exit the park through the shop – for parents this must be a nightmare – but I suppose that’s pretty normal these days.
The new area is fabulous and I'm sure it will really take the park to a new level. The animatronic dinosaurs and all the rock work were superb, they now have rides that compete with the bigger family parks, and in Cobra and Velociraptor they have two of the UK’s best family coasters IMO. I'm intrigued to see what they do next and how rival parks react...