Today I visited West Midland Safari Park. It's one of those odd parks that stays open when no other UK parks would dare. Term time? Freezing cold? Raining all day? All excellent indicators to get out your African animals and open all your water rides!
Upon arrival, I counted a whopping 6 cars in the car park and I just knew it was going to be mayhem. Chronologically, I did all the animal stuff first, but I'll save that for later and skip to the juicy cred stuff now.
The amusement park section of WMSP had more staff in it than visitors, it was a little eerie being in a park that quiet. God knows why the park was so dead when it boasts these 3 major coasters:
- a Big Apple
- a Vekoma Junior
- a Reverchon Spinning Mouse.
People should be queuing out the door for those rarities!
I headed for le Grande Pomme first, just to get my adrenaline pumping. The name of the coaster made me chuckle, because it is a blatant lie.
As any goon tell you, the tech components of Big Apples actually come from Italy, whilst the track is manufactured in Bucharest. Sigh.
Rhinocoaster, which is the Vekoma Junior cred, had a super cute train.
But a super dull layout.
Even Twister - the Reverchon Spinning Mouse- was themed. By themed I mean, sponsored by an ice cream that I can never find in the shops anymore. The coaster had twisting green and yellow cylinders attached to the tops of the supports, that somewhat resembled the ice cream of the same name. This Twister made me feel for sick than I ever recall the ice cream making me feel, though. I felt too apathetic post-spinning-mouse to take a picture of it. Or to look at one ever again.
Still. Plus 3. Now time to mess around on the multitude of cute flat rides this park offers. Firstly, they had a zebra carousel.
Neigh horses. Just zebras. Fab.
Secondly, they had cat bumper cars. CAT BUMPER CARS!
Some were painted like cheetahs, others tigers. They all had little bows around their tails! They were slow and the cycle was short, but I was still feline good because the cars were so cute. Someone should really make some dog dodgems, too.
Thirdly, they had a classic ghost train!
It had no gimmicks, no shooting, no 3D, no music, no sound effects, no working animatronics, no fog, no lighting...no fun.
There was also a hippo-themed flat ride, which was the less intense version of a Gerstlauer Polyp. I wouldn't normally ride something sickly like this, but I just can't resist anything hippo-based. <3
They should re-name it Hurling Hippo's, it was endlessly stomach churning.
In Denmark, I rode one of these fun fire-engine flats, where you have to shoot water at the targets in the middle whilst the truck moves up and down. I was excited to see another one of those here.
If you look closely, you can see that the truck has a Zamperla licence plate!
If cute-but-rubbish rides aren't your thing, there's a surprising drop tower named Venom that really took my breath away.
It fires you down without any warning, and the fall is pretty intense.
As I went to ride the log flume, the ride attendant told me I was the only person who had ridden it that day. I felt proud of myself and my commitment to crappy water rides...until I got splashed by icy water.
Some of the animal enclosures are in the adventure park area, most importantly: Hippo Lake. A keeper came out and let me feed some cabbages to the hippos, which made my day.
(Especially knowing they charge about 70 quid for such privileges at Flamingo Land, ha!)
He's chomping on a cabbage there.
The safari was good, not too long and with a good mixture of animals. (And no monkeys ripping the car to shreds!) The walk-around zoo sections were quite small but there were lots of talks where you could meet the animals, which made up for that. I held a giant millipede, it was gross.
My main complaint about the day is that none of the hot food outlets were open. You could buy coffee and cake, but not a proper meal. Cranky with hunger, I left after about 3 hours - having done everything in that amount of time. Good thing I left early too, there were 10 cars in the car park now and the place just would have been way too busy.
In conclusion, it's not the Best Midlands Safari Park, nor is it the Worst Midlands Safari Park. But solely for being open on a Thursday in early March, I still give it 10/10.
Upon arrival, I counted a whopping 6 cars in the car park and I just knew it was going to be mayhem. Chronologically, I did all the animal stuff first, but I'll save that for later and skip to the juicy cred stuff now.
The amusement park section of WMSP had more staff in it than visitors, it was a little eerie being in a park that quiet. God knows why the park was so dead when it boasts these 3 major coasters:
- a Big Apple
- a Vekoma Junior
- a Reverchon Spinning Mouse.
People should be queuing out the door for those rarities!
I headed for le Grande Pomme first, just to get my adrenaline pumping. The name of the coaster made me chuckle, because it is a blatant lie.
As any goon tell you, the tech components of Big Apples actually come from Italy, whilst the track is manufactured in Bucharest. Sigh.
Rhinocoaster, which is the Vekoma Junior cred, had a super cute train.
But a super dull layout.
Even Twister - the Reverchon Spinning Mouse- was themed. By themed I mean, sponsored by an ice cream that I can never find in the shops anymore. The coaster had twisting green and yellow cylinders attached to the tops of the supports, that somewhat resembled the ice cream of the same name. This Twister made me feel for sick than I ever recall the ice cream making me feel, though. I felt too apathetic post-spinning-mouse to take a picture of it. Or to look at one ever again.
Still. Plus 3. Now time to mess around on the multitude of cute flat rides this park offers. Firstly, they had a zebra carousel.
Neigh horses. Just zebras. Fab.
Secondly, they had cat bumper cars. CAT BUMPER CARS!
Some were painted like cheetahs, others tigers. They all had little bows around their tails! They were slow and the cycle was short, but I was still feline good because the cars were so cute. Someone should really make some dog dodgems, too.
Thirdly, they had a classic ghost train!
It had no gimmicks, no shooting, no 3D, no music, no sound effects, no working animatronics, no fog, no lighting...no fun.
There was also a hippo-themed flat ride, which was the less intense version of a Gerstlauer Polyp. I wouldn't normally ride something sickly like this, but I just can't resist anything hippo-based. <3
They should re-name it Hurling Hippo's, it was endlessly stomach churning.
In Denmark, I rode one of these fun fire-engine flats, where you have to shoot water at the targets in the middle whilst the truck moves up and down. I was excited to see another one of those here.
If you look closely, you can see that the truck has a Zamperla licence plate!
If cute-but-rubbish rides aren't your thing, there's a surprising drop tower named Venom that really took my breath away.
It fires you down without any warning, and the fall is pretty intense.
As I went to ride the log flume, the ride attendant told me I was the only person who had ridden it that day. I felt proud of myself and my commitment to crappy water rides...until I got splashed by icy water.
Some of the animal enclosures are in the adventure park area, most importantly: Hippo Lake. A keeper came out and let me feed some cabbages to the hippos, which made my day.
(Especially knowing they charge about 70 quid for such privileges at Flamingo Land, ha!)
He's chomping on a cabbage there.
The safari was good, not too long and with a good mixture of animals. (And no monkeys ripping the car to shreds!) The walk-around zoo sections were quite small but there were lots of talks where you could meet the animals, which made up for that. I held a giant millipede, it was gross.
My main complaint about the day is that none of the hot food outlets were open. You could buy coffee and cake, but not a proper meal. Cranky with hunger, I left after about 3 hours - having done everything in that amount of time. Good thing I left early too, there were 10 cars in the car park now and the place just would have been way too busy.
In conclusion, it's not the Best Midlands Safari Park, nor is it the Worst Midlands Safari Park. But solely for being open on a Thursday in early March, I still give it 10/10.
