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How successful has your 2017 been?

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
Glad to see lots of people had a good year.

Not quite over for me yet either, but we can do the maths.
Another success story:
New creds this year - 202
Parks visited this year - 67
Days spent gooning - 53

Best new cred - Python in Bamboo Forest
Best new park - Universal Japan
Worst new cred - Not much stands out as terrible, maybe the second side of the Golden Horse tilt thing.
Worst new park - feel like slagging off Spain, so Parque Dattractions.
Best trip - Korea & Japan
Worst spite - Steel Dragon
Best non park experience - attending Music Bank in Seoul

Been a fun first year on the forums.
Hope I can maintain this momentum.
 

Sandman

Giga Poster
Not quite sure how many new creds I've got this season, but I'd guess it's somewhere around 30-40??
Definitely my favourite season goon wise, managed my first Live (and a half) and got lots of decent new creds/memories.

New parks: Walibi Holland & Belgium, Parc Asterix, Plopsaland, Efteling & Movie Park
Total number of park days: 11

Best new cred: Taron
Best new park: Efteling


Worst new cred: Cobra (Walibi Belgium)
Worst park: Movie Park (not actually a bad park, but compared to the rest I'd go with this)
Most surprising new cred: Zeus... also shoutout to Psyke Underground. Loved it.
Funniest moment: Howie's Blitzbahn reaction, Bandit at night, some of the Taron at night stuff.
Best trip: Ghosterforce
Best park experience: Taron at night.
Worst travel moment: The absolute sheer panic trying to get to the airport from Walibi Holland. I can still feel the sweat dripping and my heart pounding a month later, how the hell did we make it Howie?!

Best non park experience: Moving into the new flat with the partner.
Best people I met: Howie, witchfinder, Chris, Ian, Rachel, Coaster Hipster, ATTACKHAMMER,chainedbanana, daviddoc, SilverArrow, the list goes on. I've met too many decent new people this season, I feel like I need to shake hands with Alvey just to balance things out.
 

Howie

Donkey in a hat
Worst travel moment: The absolute sheer panic trying to get to the airport from Walibi Holland. I can still feel the sweat dripping and my heart pounding a month later, how the hell did we make it Howie?!

That WAS intense, wasn't it? :D
You wanted thrills kid, when you go on a trip with Howie the thrills keep coming right up to the very end!
 

AshleyScared

Roller Poster
New Creds: 25
New Parks: 2
Favorite Park: Cedar Point
Least Favorite Park: None
Favorite New Cred: Maverick!
Least Favorite New Cred: Cedar Creek Mine Ride. Burn that thing at the stake.
Surprise New Cred: If we're talking new creds that surprised me at how good they were, Gemini. If we're talking unexpected new credits, a Dragon Wagon at some random fair.
 

CSLKennyNI

Giga Poster
New parks: Europa Park, Klottens and Toverland
27 New creds.

Best new cred: Star Trek/Arthur/Dwervelwind
Best new park: Toverland

Worst new cred: Python (Efteling)
Worst park: Efteling (I've mixed feelings and opinions on Efteling in general, but we just the most god awful day there last summer - queue jumping, widely inaccurate queuetimes, rides shut for half the day with technical problems, children urinating in public, massive queues...)

Most surprising new cred: Star Trek
Funniest moment: Bandit was hilarious. Also I was just glad to finally get on it after it having spited me on both of my previous visits.
Best park experience: Phantasialand's 50th anniversary fireworks - the atmosphere, the display, the music and the crazy Germans dancing in the lashing rain along to it. You've not lived until you have been at a midnight rave to Maus au Chocolat music in the pouring rain with fireworks going off overhead.

Best non park experience: Being given the great opportunity to create an exhibition for National Museums NI. (It opens in January at the Ulster Transport Museum should anyone find themselves in Northern Ireland next year.) ;)
Best people I met: All the people at GhosterForce were lovely and it was good to meet people from CF for the first time!
 
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Not that successful, honestly. I've kind of had to sacrifice creds for school this year which is okay with me. I still got a handful of new coasters and had an amazing trip with Mark and Ben going to parks I'd been to in addition to some that were new for me. I know next year will be better in terms of my coaster count, but I really enjoyed my main trip this year because it was a nice combination of relaxation and amusement parks.


Best new cred - Storm Chaser
Best new park - Mount Olympus
Worst new cred - Hm, nothing comes to mind as being that bad. Maybe the kiddie coaster at Mount Olympus.
Best trip - June trip with Mark and Ben
Worst spite - Didn't have one, yay
 

Benenen

Hyper Poster
New Creds: 46
New Parks: Europa Park, Holiday Park, Phantasialand, Gardaland, Mirabilandia, Movieland Park, Flamingoland, West Midlands Safari Park
Best new cred – Taron
Worst new cred – Blue Tornado at Gardaland. I'd heard smooth things about this SLC but it took so much straining to get through without pain.
Biggest surprise cred – Diabolik, the inverted boomerang at Moviepark Italy. It was so smooth and forceful! And it really threw me doing the first section backwards and the second section forwards. The other big cred based surprise was tolerating Hero and being so utterly fascinated with it I went on four times.
Worst spite – Expedition Geforce. But I did get to see an animatronic flash her tits later on the dark ride so not a wasted day.

Favourite park of the season – Phantasialand, I went on a freezing cold day in January hence why this doesn't make my 'best individual day at a park' but objectively this is definitely the best place I went to.
Best experience – Back seat of Blue Fire straight after a lunchtime pint. I've never zenned out on a coaster quite like it. Special mention to the first time I did Twin Peaks at Caneva Aquapark, I couldn't believe how long and steep that drop was! In fact the whole day there was amazing, I've never seen a selection of slides that beat you up so violently.
Worst experience – Going to Thorpe Park on a weekday in June. I thought it would be quiet but good grief was it rammed. Every coaster other than Saw was on one train with a 45+ minute wait, I just couldn't be bothered with the faff of it all.

Best individual day at a park – The first day I had at Europa Park, the first few hours I was so gleeful knowing how much stuff there was still left to do.
Worst individual day at a park - I've been pretty lucky, apart from that day at Thorpe and the Geforce spite it's all been smooth sailing this year.
 

mo237

Roller Poster
Didn't leave the UK this year so it's not the most impressive year, hoping to change that in 2018.

New creds: 4
New parks: Drayton Manor
Best new cred: Probably Rage at Adventure Island. Not the most impressive ride i know, but Shockwave and G-Force are a bit naff.
Worst new cred: Hmmm... probably G-Force. It's decent, but just a bit painful i guess.
Biggest surprise cred: Accelerator, wasn't expecting it to have as much force as it did.
Total amount of days spent at parks: 17 (and an extra hour at Alton as i arrived really late)
Favourite moment: My first run of Subspecies in a year <3
Least favourite moment: Going in Big Top with a huge group of annoying children who kept on stopping every few seconds.
 

ThomVD

Giga Poster
Best new cred: Piraten
Worst new cred: The Big One
Biggest surprise cred: Dragon's Fury
Worst spite: Nothing major this year. Ikaros was the most annoying spite, and then there's the inverted coaster at Tivoli Friheden...
Favorite park of the season: Alton Towers, closely followed by Tivoli Gardens.
Best individual day at a park: There are several. First day at Alton Towers and the day at Liseberg stand out. Chessington was the most surprising day.
Worst individual day at a park: Hmmm, nothing that stands out. Thorpe was a bit meh compared to other amazing days.
Best trip of the season: My Denmark/Sweden trip. For me, it was quite a daunting trip. I started in Copenhagen with a friend, then travelled alone through Denmark with public transport, took the boat to Sweden and met up with several other friends there. It all worked out well in the end though, and was just an amazing trip with a great mix of creds, culture and spending time with friends. The other two major trips (UK / Germany & France) were great too though.
Best people you met: Haven't really met anybody new that was worthwhile this year, but I did meet up with a lot of foreign friends.
Best non park experience: Travelling alone through Scandinavia. I just love the feeling of independence and freedom travelling alone. Also, attending the Avenged Sevenfold & Disturbed concert with my best friend. We just had the best time <3
Favorite travel moment: I was being a bit stupid and booked a camping that was 6 km away from Fårup Sommerland or the nearest bus stop. But the owner of the camping was the friendliest person ever and gave me a lift from and to the bus stop. I could also borrow her bike during the three days I stayed there. Cycling through the sunny Danish countryside to Fårup or to do some shopping was something that I already remember very fondly.
Worst travel moment: Not being able to find the Flixbus stop in the Copenhagen station and NEARLY missing my bus. Running around with a big backpack is extremely stressful.
 

TilenB

Strata Poster
New creds this year: 26
Parks visited this year: 10
Days spent gooning - 9
Best new cred: Flying Aces
Worst new cred: Yolo Works
Biggest surprise cred: Arkham Asylum in Warner Bros. Movie World, SLC that didn't hurt? Wow
Worst spite: Technically the biggest spite was Jet Rescue in Sea World or Movie World's Green Lantern. I was also quite bummed by Tobotronc being down, despite the website saying it was up and running. I'm not including DC Rivals on this list, since I always knew it won't be ready by the time I get around to visiting the park, so not really a spite, considering it was still very well under construction (topped off only a day or two before my visit)
Favorite park of the season: Strictly speaking, Ferrari World, but none of the parks I did really stand out in any way. Ai Pioppi for the quirkiness,
Best individual day at a park: I'm guessing Dreamworld, despite a ****ty coaster collection and a bunch of SBNO rides, I managed to enjoy my day there quite a lot. They have a nice flat ride and waterslide collection, though.
Worst individual day at a park: Probably the day I've spent in Movieworld/Wet'n'Wild. Bunch of rides were down in both of the parks and there aren't many to even begin with. Operations were awful and the assinine policy of making one empty their pockets into a paid locker, just put an additional sour feel to an already unenjoyable park (though, I've heard they've since discontinued the practice)
Best trip of the season: Easily Australia. I've never really thought I'll be making it Down Under, so I was quite ecstatic when dad said if I want to join him on the trip. It was also probably the longest trip I've taken so far, being away from home for 18 full days. The trip started with a day in Abu Dhabi, which we mostly spent in Ferrari World. We started our Australian part in Cairns, seeing the Great Barrier Reef and then renting a car and driving all the way down to Sydney (with a couple of days spent in Gold Coast on the way down) and finishing off with another 4,5 days in Sydney itself. The trip I did to Spain was great too.
Best people you met: The guys I did the Spanish trip with were great. I only knew one of them before we started the trip (a friend from Uni), but the other 2 ended up being really cool guys as well. Ofc, it was also nice meeting some of the fellow CFers on the Vienna Live.
Best non park experience: Great Barrier Reef and Blue Mountains in Australia
Favorite travel moment: Spending one day walking through snow in Andorran mountains and swimming in the Mediterranean Sea the next day was quite fun. Also getting a free wristband at Scenic World in Australia, because my debit card refused to work
Worst travel moment: Getting the wrong bus out of Abu Dhabi towards Yas Island. The bus we got on should've had a stop on Yas Island, but ended up driving past the whole complex without leaving the highway. We got off on the next stop, which was just a random place in the middle of the desert. The scorching heat of 40+°C was just an insult to the injury. In the end, we ended up crossing the highway (luckily it wasn't busy) and got the next bus back to Abu Dhabi and then we got a cab that took us to Ferrari World. Ugh...
 

caffeine_demon

Strata Poster
Slightly slow despite the UAE trip

New Creds: 36
New Parks: 16
Finally visited Greenwood and the people powered coaster

Best new cred: Formula Rossa. (followed by Karnan) (both new creds in my top 10)
Best cred ridden in 2017:-Formula Rossa.
Best new park: Bollywood park (for quirkyness and great technical quality in the rides) or Potts Park (for being a good solid family park)
Best park visited - Hansa Park

worst new cred - MP xpress (honorable mention for that fiorano thing in ferarri world
worst cred ridden - MP Xpress
Worst new park - Knightleys funfair (legoland dubai if you want a proper park)
worst park visited - as above

Fave moment - realising that bandit is now pretty damn sweet since it's retracking
Least fave moment - Thorpe park being surprisingly busy on school term friday during fright nights

Spites: Dragon gliders and turbo track (touch and go for opening during our trip)
Dubai glow garden - Closed for "rain"
no night ride on karnan

Surprises: Bollywood park - only a few rides, but all excellent
Formula Rossa - Expecting fun, but blew me away!
The spinner at sparkys
Smurf express (great gerstlauer kiddie cred)
Movie parks drop tower
Potts park piggy village ride

fave flat movie park's drop tower (think the only flat I rode this year!)
Fave simulator -= Lagaan (bollywood)
Best dark ride - Sholay (bollywood)
Best water ride - Zoomerango at aquaventure, followed by hamlools humps at yas

Fave non cred moment - zip safari at zip world!
fave non theme park trip - kew gardens
 

Antinos

Slut for Spinners
It was one hell of a good year for me - my best since 2010.

New creds: 62
Total creds: I did not track this metric, but I believe it's somewhere around 170-180
New parks: 9
Total parks: 20
Best new cred: Tatsu - took me 12 years to get back out to California and take a spin on it. It was flying coaster perfection.
Best new park: This is a tough one. Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, Six Flags over Georgia, and Seabreeze stick out in my mind (all for different reasons).
Worst new cred: Tough to recall anything new AND bad - likely Whistle Punk Chaser due to the shade cast on us from all the parents waiting behind us.
Worst new park: Beech Bend
Spites: The most notable was Full Throttle but I'm hardly disappointed. Less notable spites were the kiddie creds at Darien Lake, Seabreeze, and Fantasy Island
Favorite moment: Tough to choose one. Seeing @tomahawk fit on Lightning Rod, gooning at Seabreeze, and my California trip all stand out.
Notable surprises:
- Mystic Timbers being so good
- Enjoying Disneyland as much as I did
- Flight Deck at CGA being unbelievably intense
- SFDK being such a fun park with great rides
- Enjoying SFOG as much as I did
- Lake Winnie
- Kentucky Rumbler
- Darien Lake and Seabreeze
- Thunderhead being so much better than I remember

Really hoping 2018 shapes up to be another great year. I'm sure it will!
 

jayjay

Giga Poster
It's somehow been quieter and more hectic than expected. Not done many trips, but those that I have done were fairly epic. Here's my stats:

Another success story:
New creds this year - 90 (to 335)
Parks visited this year - Something like 30, cba to count

Best new cred - iSpeed, Mirabilandia - fun, fast and whippy (Honourable mentions: Wodan, Katun)
Best new park - Europa Park (Honourable mentions: Mirabilandia, Familiepark Neusiedlersee)
Worst new cred - Brighton Pier - Turbo. Atrocious twat of a thing, ew! (Dishonourable mentions: Blue Tornado, EuroSat, Project X Teststrecke)
Worst new park - Skyline Park, which vies for a shot at my worst park ever, but still not quite Schwaben (DMs: Legoland Deutschland, Bobbejaanland)
Best trip - April Interrail - long, full of exciting new stuff, full of non-coaster excitement too
Worst spite - Colossos... again (but at least I knew in advance this time)
Best moments: So many, but Kärnan ERT with a group of enthusiasts legitimately nervous was amazing.
Best non park experience - Aside from the non-coaster stuff on the interrail holiday, Portsmouth Victorious Festival with @Mysterious Sue was amazing fun!
 

silenthillXD

Hyper Poster
New Creds This Year: 15 Creds - Not too bad going. Most of it came from me sweeping up more creds in the UK and making my first major abroad trip to Disney. Next year should be better though, with my first major Florida trip!

Parks Visited: 13 - All of the usual UK suspects, but visited Adventure Island and Fantasy Island for the first time. Interesting parks, but yeah… Fantasy Island is a dump. It’s clearly improving, but I don’t think i’ll revisit unless they have their Halloween event on.

Best New Cred: Hyperspace Mountain - Well this one took me by surprise. As much as i’ve heard bad things about this ride, it shot straight up to my number 1 cred. Sure it’s a little uncomfortable at points, but the layout is great fun and the Star Wars overlay is fantastic! It’s just an incredible overall experience that totally sucks you in from the moment you leave the station. Probably won’t stay no. 1 for long what with Orlando next year, but hey it’s still a great ride.

Worst New Cred: Odyssey - I was naive to think a huge SLC could be anything other than unbearable. Outside of Hero and G-Force there aren’t many rides which have me clamouring to get off once the train has left the station. Odyssey is another one to add to the lift. It was just jolty and rough, it was incredibly unpleasant. While the layout was certainly interesting, the experience itself was so unpleasant it entirely undid the benefits of having a somewhat interesting layout.

Biggest Surprise Cred: The Ultimate - What the hell did I just ride?! I had previously been spited by this ride a couple of years back. Considering how much I hated the park, I didn’t really feel the need to go back soon. Turns out that was a huge mistake. The Ultimate is incredible. The ride actually wants to kill you, but that’s ok. It’s totally outrageous. The second half of the ride is all out insanity. You’re making manoeuvres that just shouldn’t exist, and the banking is all kinds of wrong. But while it’s super painful, you’ve got to love it! Don’t think it’s one for quick successive re-rides, but I absolutely love it. Legitimately top 10 material for me.

Best New Ride: Tower of Terror - Without a doubt, the best attraction I have ever experienced. The theme is so eerie and unsettling, that you have a real sense of apprehension while going through the experience. The ride itself is incredible and stupidly intense for what’s ultimately a family thrill ride. Ultimately, it’s better than any cred i’ve ever ridden. I can’t get enough of ToT. Can’t wait to ride the supposedly better version in Florida.

Worst Spite: Pirates of the Caribbean - Well I guess at least both of the mountains were open… But yeah it would’ve been nice to have ridden Pirates. I have done it a couple of times as a child, but I can barely remember anything of it. Would’ve been nice to have ridden it, but considering what else I got to ride, i’m not too fussed.

Favourite Park of the Season: Disneyland Paris - Can’t decide between both of the parks, so i’m going to say Disneyland Paris as a whole. Sure Studios is mostly trash, but let’s be real Ratatouille and Tower of Terror are world class experiences. Anyway, both parks have incredible rides that ascend the traditional theme park fare and become full on experiences.

Least Favourite Park of the Season: Dreamland Margate - I guess it’s kinda harsh to put this here considering all of the money woes they’ve had, but dear god… they managed to pull off one of the absolute worst scare events I have ever visited. So much so, I completely forgot to ride Scenic for the second time and left the park fuming. Absolute waste of time and money, shame considering Screamland was pretty much perfection in its first two years of operation. How the mighty have fallen.

Best Non Park Experience: Fear Avon Valley - Wow, scare events have really upped their game this year, and Fear Avon Valley is no exception. They’ve now got a line-up of four scare attractions, each with their own unique theme and feel. You’ve got some super theatrical and immersive ones, alongside what’s probably one of the most intense scare heavy strobe mazes I have ever been in. If you’re into scares, I really do recommend Fear Avon Valley, it totally lives up to the hype!
 

Lucy

Hyper Poster
New Creds: 18
Milestone: Getting my 200th cred with the amazing Taron :)
Best new park: Phantasialand
Surprising new cred: Has to go to Thunderbolt at Coney Island - really smooth and a genuinely fab coaster although Cyclone was pretty good too!
Worst new cred: Toss up between Temple of the Nighthawk and Santa's Spinning Coaster at Winter Wonderland this year.
Surprising non cred: River Quest at Phantasialand - such an awesome ride and now it's my favourite rapids.
Special mention has to go to the amazing food at Europa Park - it was great to get back there this year and there were various new things I tried which were fab like the Goulash Soup and the Black Forest gateau from Food Loop :)
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
So, my season is over now - figure I can do this topic...

New Creds This Year: 59 - This was more than I originally expected, but a couple of trips to Germany/France bumped the numbers up a bit. Bucked the trend of me having 'big year > small year > medium year' too, as I was due a small year this year. :p

New Parks Visited: 15

Total (different) Parks Visited: 16 - Only park that I didn't do for the first time this year was Alton Towers.

Milestones:
500th Cred - Alpina Blitz, Nigloland, France.
100th Park - Skyranch Pampanga, Philippines.
400th Steel Cred - Chenille, Nigloland, France.

Best New Cred: Taron. No doubt in my mind.

Worst New Cred: Shambhala - There, I said it. Okay, let's discount all the obvious crap like SLCs (MP-Xpress was vile), kiddies, etc, Shambhala was the biggest let down for me. I really was expecting great things, but it was running very poorly. I will admit, I don't doubt that it would be very good if it was running fast, but it was pretty lackluster last weekend...

Biggest Surprise Cred: Silver Star - For years and years this has always been touted as one of the worst Hypers. It absolutely is one of the best. It was running incredibly well, foreceful, fast, airtime, all fantastic. Absolutely not what I was expecting. It's fair to say that @Lofty, @Ben and I were gobsmacked on the first ride...

Best New Ride (non-coaster): Voletarium or River Quest - I dunno what else to pick, but these two stand out immediately, so that must count for something.

Worst Spite: Star Trek - lazy ****ers couldn't finish it in time. ;)

Favourite Park of the Season: Phantasialand - What a wonderful place. The ride design, park layout, theming, atmosphere, was all brilliant. I loved my time there. And thoroughly enjoyed Hotel Matamba too.

Least Favourite Park of the Season: Walygator - What a ****hole.

Other: This year has been pretty social for me - I've done more trips with CFers than any year before - I think. I've met @Lofty, Sam, @DelPiero, Liz for the first time, which has been great and long overdue! I've enjoyed spending time with everyone who's been on the trips. Hexenhaus was brilliant (beer by train!), Hotel Matamba was fab, Europa Park Aperol Spritzs were great. It's been excellent! Not to mention all the creds! :D

That's just about it!
 

TilenB

Strata Poster
Worst New Cred: Shambhala - There, I said it. Okay, let's discount all the obvious crap like SLCs (MP-Xpress was vile), kiddies, etc, Shambhala was the biggest let down for me. I really was expecting great things, but it was running very poorly. I will admit, I don't doubt that it would be very good if it was running fast, but it was pretty lackluster last weekend...

Biggest Surprise Cred: Silver Star - For years and years this has always been touted as one of the worst Hypers. It absolutely is one of the best. It was running incredibly well, foreceful, fast, airtime, all fantastic. Absolutely not what I was expecting. It's fair to say that @Lofty, @Ben and I were gobsmacked on the first ride...
Sounds like Europa Park finally got a buyer for the Silver Star trims in the last off-season, huh? :)
 

Mysterious Sue

Strata Poster
Creds:
This was supposed to be a quiet year saving towards a house.
I ended up with 141 new creds (my third best year in number terms) bringing me up to 850 exactly. Opps.

Parks:
Think I’ve visited 46 parks plus Winter Wonderland, 30 of which were new. Wow, that’s pretty good going – I blame much of it on the South Coast cred run.

Best new cred:
Schwur des Kärnan – new number one. It has the complete everything – theming, story, airtime, tricks, quality, utter fear, incredible to look at…

Worst new cred:
Loop It at Allou Funpark in Greece. New number one worst cred ever. Burn it. Burn it to the ground.

Biggest surprise:
Maverick for sure. Expected to hate it as I’m the opposite of an Intamin fangirl but bloody hell is it good.

Worst letdown:
Voyage. I thought it would be a top 5 contender but it was just a bit boring :(

Best New Ride:
Fluch Von Novgorod. As a coaster it’s good but not amazing (although the launch is fab). But as a whole – **** yeah! The theming raises it into my top ten all-time favourite rides.

Worst Spite:
Xcelerator. And the afternoon ride on Karnan.

Favourite new park:
Silver Dollar City. Was so tempted to make it Hansa because it’s so friendly and gorgeous. Build a B&M Hansa – I’ve a spot just waiting for you.

Least Favourite Park of the Season:
Indiana Beach. And it wasn’t that bad, just a bit sad looking. The out of tune oompah band didn’t help.

Best individual day at a park:
Just got back from Phantasialand Wintetraum. Took my mum which was a bit of a gamble but she loved it. It was beyond Christmassy and the Chiapas projection mapping (with fire) was superb.

Best trip of the season:
Think I need to mention both US road trips here. First one in September taking in 10 new states down from Wisconsin to Mississippi with 12 new parks (including SFGreat America, Kings Island, Holiday World Silver Dollar City and Dollywood) and visiting the Smoky Mountains, Detroit, Chicago, St Louis and about a million other places, plus getting my music geek on in Nashville, Memphis and the Mowtown Museum. Then, in November, I did a little trip between LA to San Francisco which was just really chilled. It included my first visit to Disney, Universal, Knotts and Discovery Kingdom. Also got to tick seeing Morrissey off the bucket list (as anyone in the song game thread knows, I’m a huge Smiths fan).

Best non-park experience:
Loads. I’m going to do a proper 2017 review as there was so much good stuff this year. If I have to pick one thing it was probably Rocamadour in France – a monastery carved into a cliff and you walk down through the different levels, with these astonishing views, to the medieval village below (see picture I stole off the web below). Also the St Louis museum - that was just off the scale incredible. Also, also, seeing so much live music this year – as JayJay said, Victorious festival was great – I got to finally see British Sea Power (who I’ve adored since uni), plus Maxiimo Park and Elbow again.

rocamadour-16294-52_w800.jpg


Best people you met:
Loads of fab new people have turned up on CF. Think I met Sandman, Witchfinder and Heartline Coaster this year (or end of last). Great to meet Coaster Hipster, GuyWithAStick and Jarret at last. Also got to reunite with Jer and Kim (when Jer came over from the US) and Error (when I met up with him at Kings Island and Cedar Point). Hadn’t seen those guys since the 2012 Live!

Worst non-park experience:

Being so ill at Easter that my skin turned yellow because my kidneys stopped functioning properly.

Biggest accomplishment not theme park/travel related:
Having gone veggie a couple of years ago, I’ve decided to go proper vegan. Had a lot of slip-ups, mainly in the US where food is just eurgh, but I’m getting there.

Favourite memory:
Sitting on Karnan’s lifthill. Trying and failing not to shed a tear. And seeing all the hardcore enthusiasts have the fear too.
 
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