JoshC.'s Pursuit to 400 - Drayton Manor Still Kinda Sucks

[JoshC.]

Mirroring my Road to 300 TRs, I'm going to put in a bunch of TRs I've got for the rest of the year, as I aim to reach 400 creds by the end of the year.

After bagging #370 in the form of Hyperia, 30 in 7 months should be achievable, right? Let's see...

Emerald Park
A couple of weeks back, I visited some friends who recently moved to Belfast. Naturally this meant doing to 2 hour-ish drive towards Dublin for Emerald Park.

We arrived a little after park opening and the main thing was that there TONNES of school trips. Late-May seems to be school trip season, I guess.



A bee line was made to the park's new area, Tir na N'Og. The big headliner, Fianna Force, had seemingly just opened for the day, so I joined a short looking queue. Unfortunately, looks deceive, and inside the station building is a hidden cattlepen queue, which is noisy and smells of teenagers. And a good 20-30 minutes wait too. Bleurgh. Also, Irish school trips jump straight to the top of my ranking as the worst to queue with (taking the crown from Dutch school kids). Just noisy, rude and vaping.



There is a nice projection in the indoor queue though, with a bit of a story

Anyways, the coaster. I was sat near the back. It's good fun - smooth and forceful, and as with all new Vekomas, it is graceful in its transitions between elements. And again, like with new Vekoma, it can feel a bit over-engineered and a bit too controlled. The final third features a couple of pops of airtime, which are still a novelty for me on an invert. But it does also peter out a bit towards the end, and maybe could end a few seconds earlier.




Next up was The Quest, the interlinked Vekoma boomerang. Short queue, and almost identical to Saven at Farup, and Light Explorers at Energylandia. The 'stretched out' boomerangs have grown on me, and this is quite nice. The theming for this is very much unfinished though, and it is currently closing early on midweeks.

As well as Quest's theming being unfinished, the area around the ride is very much unfinished. A restaurant is still to be built. It is very sparse and dead. It's a real shame it's had to open like this, but I guess these things happen. Not a good look all the same, mind.



Not finished theming your ride? Just stick up advertising posters instead!


Now time for the pettiest complaint you'll ever hear from me. This tower theming for Quest's spike is cool. Really cool. But they couldn't have designed it so it encapsulates all the supports too? I don't know, it just really annoyed me.

With Tir na N'Og completed, it was time for the park's other headliner, Cú Chulainn, or CuChu, as I'll refer to it as. The queue for this is ugly - a huge outdoor cattlepen in the middle of the ride. Security were patrolling around and looking out for queue jumpers, and in fairness were effectively dealing with them. I queued 40 minutes, although it was reasonably quick-moving which was nice.



Now I'd heard some bad things about CuChu, and I'm not a big fan of Gravity Group woodies. However, I was really surprised with this. The ride was smooth, with some classic woodie charm to it. It had cool laterals, pops of airtime and was a really good length. It doesn't outstay its welcome, although could perhaps end a bit stronger. The only downside to the ride was the awkward overbank turn (which at one point was marketed as an inversion?). That was clunky and unnecessary, and did take away from the ride a bit.


Wood is good.

With the Big 3 out of the way, I sped through the 3 family creds (which fortunately had short queues) whilst my friends did the Zoo (they couldn't bring themselves to do kiddie rides). We then reconvened for the park's water ride: Viking Voyage. It's good fun, with some cool big pieces of theming. It lets itself down by being a bit rough around the edges, but for what was/is a small local park really, it is actually alright.

And that brings an end to a few hours at Emerald Park. It's a nice little park, perhaps a bit overpriced for what it offers (43 euros when booked online, 52 on the gate). I'm obviously not their target audience, and their selection of spinny flat rides does not appeal to me at all. But I guess if they can offer and build big investments like CuChu, Viking Voyage and Tir na N'Og, that's something at least?

---

Round Up
Cred Count before trip: 370
Cred Count after trip: 376
Favourite cred: CuChu
Least favourite cred: The family creds were all +1s tbh

 

[JoshC.]

It's been almost two weeks since I managed to go to Port Aventura World, so now seems like an appropriate time to start the trip report.

But before we get into it, I preface with some waffle, as per. My summer holidays were meant to be filled with theme park adventures, with new parks, plenty of rides on Hyperia on my doorstep, and more. The holidays kicked off with one of, if not, the, worst visit I've had to Alton Towers.I had to jaunt to PA, and as I write, I was meant to be in Gardaland, hitting up MovieLand Italy tomorrow. Sadly, the Italian Trip was cancelled as I had to have a minor surgical procedure on Sunday (waiting 7 hours at A&E for the privilege). Fortunately, I'm almost recovered, and will be fine for my trip to Walibi Rhone-Alpes on Friday, but will have to wait a bit longer to get my 400th now.

Anyways, sad waffle out the way. Port Aventura.

Goons were always shocked when I said I hadn't visited PA. The truth is, it simply never climbed high enough up my radar. I started travelling abroad in 2015. Naturally, all theme parks were new to me, but I also chased parks which were introducing new rides too, to time that well. Obviously, PAW added Ferrari Land in 2018, so it came up on the radar, but it just never worked out. And since then, it just never had the appeal for me. However, this year, it finally climbed high enough up the ladder to be booked.

I booked to stay on site for 1 night, using the Hotel Roulette to get the cheapest offer (ending up in Hotel El Paso), and bought Fastrack for 1 day. I flew in to Reus, which was simple enough, and my first day, I was there just after opening.

First ride of the day was Furius Baco. Baco was the last hydraulic launch coaster I needed in Europe, but one I'd heard such mixed things about. It very much seemed to be a love or hate ride. My first ride was on the 4th row, inside seat and it was...underwhelming. The launch didn't seem that powerful, and it certainly didn't seem that fast. The layout is uninspiring. The ride wasn't rough, but it wasn't comfortable. All in, it just...existed? I was very ambivalent to the whole experience.



On my second day, I didn't have Fastrack but used the single rider line. I bagged an outside seat on the penultimate row. And my god it was dreadful. Shakier than a...milkshake, that's being shook? I don't know of an analogy I'm going for. But it was far from pleasant, let's put it that way. The launch remained meh, and the uninspiring layout was just a pain to get through. So yeah, terrible. No thank you.

Operations were poor, and the lack of offload station really seems to harm the ride, since you're just sat waiting for the train to be sent for ages.



Now we'll go from one extreme to the other. Shambhala. I've ridden two B&M Hypers (Candymonium and Nitro). For context, on my first ride in each case, I found them 'good, but not great'. But on re-rides, I grew to love and appreciate them more. As such, for my first ride, I went in with muted expectations. I very much was saying to myself "I can't judge Shambhala on my first ride".



And yeah, my first ride was fine. Good. But it didn't really do much for me at the same time. I could tell I'd ridden a good ride, and one which I was very happy to re-ride, but yeah, it didn't leave me with a "woah" feeling or anything. I returned later in the day, however, and - as with Candymonium and Nitro - later rides helped me appreciate it more. It's a beast when it comes to floaty moments. It's got one awesome hill just before the splashdown filled with a decent amount of ejector. The whole ride flows so well, and is so easy to ride. I wasn't a fan of the ampersand element; it is just a really long turn at a comparatively sluggish speed.


Looks pretty all around the park

But, it is a ride you can sit on all day if you wanted, and enjoy it. And towards the end of my day, that's what I was doing. I ended up with two front row night rows, which were incredibly enjoyable. I didn't get a back row ride (side note: it did seem that one of the two trains they were running had the back row out of service), but I got close to the back and it was equally good.


Sploosh

Much like with my experiences of the other B&M Hypers, Shambhala is a great, easy-to-ride and re-ride coaster. It cracks into the lower end of my Top 10% (ranking at #32, one above Nitro, but well below Candymonium). But yeah, it doesn't hit the spot for me. I guess that's because I prefer the more intense / rough and ready ejector airtime, which B&M Hypers, including Shambhala, don't really offer.

The now-dwarfed Dragon Khan is an interesting ride. Definitely showing its age, being a bit rough and ready. Only slightly younger than the original Nemesis, but open longer - I wonder how long its shelf life is? But yeah, fun layout, good length, but just a bit uncomfortable. I found the entrance to the zero-g roll on the rough side which took away from my enjoyment.


Was I taking a photo of Shambhala or Dragon Khan? We'll never know for certain...

Pretty much the only ride which wasn't included on the Fastrack package I had was the new coaster, Uncharted. However, with an indoor queue line and advertised 60 minute queue, I didn't mind the idea of being out of the scorching 35 degree Celsius sun for a while.



The exterior is nice

The queue line was great. Interesting to look at and be in, extremely well themed, with story along the way. There's 6 'story scenes' within the queue, which are all exclusively in Spanish. I found this a bit odd considering most of the park offers English translations / subtitles. I found out towards the end of the queue that if you have the PA app, and turn Bluetooth on, you can get translations for each scene, although it is literally just in text form.



Anyways, the ride. I knew enough about the ride (Intamin multi-dimensional coaster), and I think I'd seen a visual of the layout during construction. But I went in ignorant to what the coaster would do. So here's my spoilery thoughts...

Starts off nicely with some theming, and also the car demonstrating that it can spin, which I thought was cool. However, after the first turn, that's where the theming ends, with just a couple of screens for the rest of the ride.

The ride starts with a little launch, whose only purpose is to take you to large screen. I really liked this feature of the ride; whilst you watch the screen, your car is on a turntable, which turns, but the car spins in unison, so you don't know the track has turned. This lends to a sideways launch to a spike, before spinning slightly to face forwards, and going into another launch.

You go through a layout which weaves in and out of itself. This would be so much better if it had some of that theming from the queue line. It also includes a couple more launches.

The ending it pretty cool, with the car stopped looking at screen, before it rotates you so you go backwards down a final, steep, drop whilst looking up at a screen. Really cool idea and a memorable ending tbf.

Non-spoilery thoughts:
-Where's the bloody theming in the ride?
-Cool use of technology
-I like the ending
-Not as good as Mission Ferrari

Tbf, I ended up riding this 3 times throughout my stay, and I did enjoy it. I think I perhaps enjoyed it more because of what it could be, rather than what it actually is. That is to say, the ride system and layout is fun, but the theming lets it down. At the same time, this is Port Aventura, a park not exactly known for highly themed indoor experiences.

Another note: the operations. Dire. There's 3 cars, each seating 12 people. On two of my goes, it wasn't uncommon for there to be all 3 cars in the station / finale scene. Even when operating well, this can't have the greatest throughput for the park.

In terms of coasters, the other major ones are of course Stampida. Now, in most instances, I effectively rank duelling/racing coasters together / side-by-side, as they end up being similar rides that ride very similarly Stampida is an exception, with the Red side being decent, and the Blue side being terrible, in terms of how they ride. It's a mystery as to why, but the Red side runs as you would expect a classic woodie to run, with that liveliness to it, but not affecting the quality. The Blue side feels like an 80 year old rickety structure on the brink of the collapse.

Stampida also highlighted a major thing which felt 'off' to me about the park, which I will talk about in a bit.

The other creds on park are little more than +1s. I was looking forward to Diablo, the Arrow Mine Train, but it half of its layout is lift hills. That did end up being my 350th though.



As for other rides on park...
Hurakan Condor is a large drop tower with small ride cars. This gives the unwanted side effect that towards the end of the drop, it becomes a bit rattly, as the small, light cars can't cope with the speed and duration. Shame, as I like drop towers.



The log flume and rapids are a fun duo. The log flume loses points due to me being in a partially flooded boat which wrecked my shoes. The big splash ride and the splash battle are also fun, giving a lovely water ride selection for the park.

Finally, the Seasame Street dark ride, Street Mission. I love a shooting dark ride. I never really grew up with Seasame Street, so don't have the connection others will have. But I enjoyed this. It's fun and quirky. Sure, it's a screen-based dark ride, but it has enough charm and feel around it that it doesn't matter. There's a big scene towards the end which is great fun. Being more child-orientated too, it was quirky to see a scoring system where the bigger targets (cookies) are worth more points, when usually smaller targets are worth more But at the same time, that made sense within the context of the story. Fab.
Also appreciated the multi-lingual-ness of the attraction.




But PA doesn't just offer rides, no. Shows are a big part of the offering too.

Templo del Fuego is one which I'll chuck in here, even though it's more of an interactive walkthrough experience to a degree. This seemed like a bit of a steal to get on, as friends who have visited the park more frequently say that this seems to be unavailable a lot? Anyways, this was fantastic. The opening scene is primarily spoken in Spanish by the actor, but you can follow along, especially with the odd bit of English sprinkled in. Although, awkwardly, there was an English-speaking group who didn't think so I walked out of a fire escape half way through this scene...

The next scene was all out fire, explosions and drama. The closeness and quality of it all was surprising, and just an utter joy to watch. Up there as one of my absolute favourite theme park fire shows.

There's also the park's end of day show, with loads of floats on the lake, along with fireworks, water effects and god knows what else. Really long show too. Perhaps a little too drawn out, but utterly fantastic to watch. And I think, in general, PA's shows are perhaps their greatest strength.

So, back to the aforementioned, and mystery, thing that felt 'off' with me about PA. It felt like I was in a Roller Coaster Tycoon park. Coaster stations way higher than pathways so they fit in. 1x1 spiral queues and long cattlepens squeezed right by ride stations in the least imaginative way possible. Pathways felt like route marches to certain things, rather than having rides/shops/things integrated in them. Don't get me wrong, the pathways were nice and themed well. But the design of them just felt like it was designed in RCT.
Heck, even Shambhala/Dragon Khan feels like something out of RCT, with one coaster going over another because you don't have space to spread out.

Now, on paper, this isn't an issue. But once I thought this, I couldn't shake it from my head. And I don't know why, but it just drained some enjoyment for me from the park. It made the park feel a bit more rigid and restrictive to me. Logically, it shouldn't. But it did.

I know this sounds silly, because it is. But it did just make things feel off.


As a park, PA looks lovely and has a solid selection of rides to be fair. But it does feel like it's resting on its laurels a bit. The newer additions (Street Mission and Uncharted) were totally needed and clearly missing pieces of the puzzle. Still, the park needs a bit of kick up the butt and a reset to just feel more complete. Oh, and sort out the bloody operations.



Ferrari World
I visited this on the first day. Beyond the creds, I wasn't interested in anything else here, so this was a cred run of a park.

And herein lies the first issue. Ferrari World is apparently a "park". But they have just stretched out what is a theme park area into a park. And really, they stretched out Red Force into an area in the first place. So this whole park is simply one ride which has been stretched out to be so much more.

So, I got to the park just before opening, and headed straight to Red Force. The ride hadn't even tested that day. But 2 test runs about 15 minutes later, and it was open.

It ran well for about 10 minutes, before then shutting down for about 45 minutes. No announcements or apology. Just stood waiting, fortunately under a canopy, but still in 35 degree heat. Another 20 minutes and I was on. I tried to get front row, but with no front row queue and a firm "No requests" policy, I was given the penultimate row.

And eurgh. The launch starts off good. It accelerates. And accelerates. It's fast. Then faster. But then, for the final third of the launch track, it is rattly and bouncy and horrible. The only way I can describe it as if you're driving a manual car and put the car in the wrong gear, except you're going 100mph. The top hat is fine.

Then the breaks. You're carrying such speed going into them and you slow down so much so quickly that it's a proper little gut punch. Painfully quick deceleration.

It's a shame as I like Stealth and love Kingda Ka. So I thought another launch/top hat combo ride would be a joy. But nope. This was just bad. Red Force? More like Red Farce.


The one redeeming feature: you can get very close to the top hat.

I picked up the +1 in Junior Red Force then left. Wasn't interested in the 1hr+ queue for the flying theatre, and I wanted to explore the main park more. Maybe if this wasn't a whole separate park, and just an area, I'd have gone back. Oh well.


Hotel El Paso and Back to Reus
Just some quick words here. Hotel El Paso is nice enough, nothing crazy but does the job. Breakfast was lovely.

The journey back to Reus airport was a bit more of a faff though. The main PA website recommends a couple of ways to travel between the airport and park. One was the Contigo bus service, in conjunction with JTG, where you could pre-book a shuttle bus which goes directly between the airport and hotels. You have to pre-book so the shuttle bus knows which hotels to go to. The timing worked out, so I booked it. I asked Hotel Reception where to wait, and waited for the bus.

Nothing came at the slated time. Website says allow 10 minutes, so I did. Still nothing. Tried calling the recommended number of the company, and it just rung out. Went to hotel reception to see if they could help; all they could do was provide the same number. Tried it a couple more times whilst waiting for about 20-30minutes longer, still nothing.

Ended up having to ask hotel reception to arrange me a taxi. Cost wasn't as extortionate as it could have been (just under 30 euros), but still not ideal.

Reus airport is small, and there was an annoying Spanish family not letting anyone into the queue for the security check for 5 minutes for...reasons. They were literally just stood/sat outside the entrance to the security check queue, not letting anyone go pass. Took a security guard having a small conversation with them before they entered the queue. But yeah, just annoying.


Anyways, Port Aventura World final thoughts.
It's a nice enough place, but not fully a "me" place. Happy to have ticked it off, but not in any way itching to return any time soon.

Round Up
Cred Count before trip: 376
Cred Count after trip: 387
Favourite cred: Shambhala
Least favourite cred: El Diablo
Biggest surprise: Templo del Fuego
Biggest disappointment: Red Farce
Fake Milestones:
-350th steel cred: El Diablo
-75th park: Port Aventura
Other fun things: I'm a teacher, and I've come to realise I will almost always bump into students I teach when I visit Thorpe, being my local park. I didn't expect to bump into one of my students in PA though, which I did...

 

[JoshC.]

And so, the next stage of my pursuit to 400 takes me just outside Lyon to Walibi Rhône-Alpes. Had my trip to Italy not been cancelled, this actually would have been where I got my 400th. Oh well.

I flew into Lyon on Thursday evening and stayed at one of the many hotels which is within a stone's throw of the airport. Friday morning, hire car in got, I made my way to Walibi.

I made a decision to avoid toll roads on the drive there, only adding an extra 10 minutes to the journey. This gave me an extremely scenic journey, but also through lots of long-winding roads, single lane country lanes and some rough roads. It also meant that I arrived to the park from the 'other way'. With the park being in quite an isolated area, this meant I saw no signs for the park - or, indeed, any sign of the park existing - until I was literally right there. It's always nice when you just see a surprise park.



I'd arrived about half hour before park opening, just in time for gate opening (although this only let's guests into the entrance area of the park, with a couple of small rides open). I was armed with the knowledge that the park's new coaster - and big reason for coming - Mahuka had been shut for about 3 days prior. The park's Facebook page also updated that morning saying it was still closed indefinitely.

Whilst hanging around, I saw some people with the Walibi RA app on their phones. Strange...I tried finding one last night but had no results. After a bit of sleuthing, I found out that the Walibi RA app isn't available to British users. Eurgh, how annoying. It meant I would have to rely on my own sense of direction to get around the park (no paper maps were to be found), and use queue-times.com to get queue estimates.

Anyways, with no Mahuka, but a clear sign pointing to the other big ride, I made the decision for my first ride of the day to be Mystic



Tucked away nicely, but still looking striking from all angles, this Gerstlauer infinity intrigued me with its hangtime-y / backwards ending. I was surprised to see that this had a single rider queue (I couldn't find any mention of this on the website), but I made use of it. This proved useful, as the ride was on 1 car (3 rows of 4), but I was able to get on the first car of the day.


I like the station and the whole voodoo vibe

Now, before talking about the ride itself, I love the vibe around Mystic. Themed broadly around a witch doctor / voodoo curse, it's something I haven't really seen before on a theme park ride (only really for Halloween attractions actually), so it had that novelty. The theming was minimal, but cute. And the audio was fun and catchy; the dispatch sequence of an overly dramatic menacing laugh made me chuckle.

As for the ride itself. Vertical lift done at a good speed. A solid first drop, followed by a top-hat like element which offers solid airtime. A zero-g roll follows, which is fast and whippy and great fun. Some sort of dive loop thing follows, which is a weak part of the ride for me. It then meanders around to an upside down spike, which offers GLORIOUS hangtime which lasts for ages, and certainly tests your faith in the lap bars. This amount of hangtime won't be for everyone, but I loved it. The backwards bit of the ride is fine; not too long to be offensive, but an interesting enough meander to be worth it.



On a bit of a side note: Gerstlauer clamshells. I actually...really like these restraints? They're comfy, secure and just seem all round good. Dare I say...I prefer these to B&M clamshells?

So, with Mystic done, I decided to make my way around the park. Walibi RA is another European park which, loosely speaking, has a central lake with the park being based around it. So you can just walk around it in one direction, and tick everything off.

I came across the park's log flume. It had a short queue, with temperatures already soaring to 30C, but not one to say no, I did it. Very basic layout, not very wet.

Continuing on, I found a very closed Mahuka...


Mourning the missed opportunity, I dragged myself away and found myself veering towards the park's other water ride, their rapids. Queue-times listed this as having a 30min queue, and I saw it was regularly getting 75-100min queues the last couple of days, so I decided to bite the bullet. After all, getting that long a queue, it must be solid, right?

I found out the reason for the long queue times is simply because it has rubbish capacity. A small handful of boats, meaning it was a painfully slow moving queue. The ride itself was okay. Not very "rapid" for a rapids ride, and not very wet, but a nice layout. I think I could call it a slightly vamped up version of Rumba Rapids at Thorpe and not lose any sleep over such a comparison.

I'll talk about this more later, but herein lies an issue I have with Walibi RA: operations. A busy, hot Friday in August. Main coaster advertised as closed (although that can't be helped, but still a negative). One major coaster on one 12-seat car operation. Water rides with poor capacity and resulting throughput. Not great.

Another thing I haven't mentioned yet, the other two major coasters at the park opened late. It had just gone 11 at this point, and the park's woodie had just opened up, and their Vekoma Boomerang was still closed. Ouch. But naturally, it was time to gravitate to the wood, with Timber....



The queue was at the entrance, with no SRQ in sight, but I sucked it up and dealt with it. It moved slowly at first, not helped by a short shutdown (although this was communicated well). With the entrance being right by the lift and first drop, you hear some cool sound effects around this bit. On dispatch, a lumberjack's chainsaw revs. As the train proceeds to drop, the lumberjack proceeds to shout "Timberrrr". Really fun.



After about 30 minutes of queueing (not including the 10min shutdown), a SRQ randomly appears. I find these types of SRQs for coasters really annoying, verging on counter-productive, but hey, at least it exists. And with that, I was on in a couple of rides.

The ride isn't very tall, but has a decent length for its height. It does a lot with its layout, with nice pops of airtime. It's a really good ride for the park, and putting it in a historical context, when this ride opened in 2016, would have been a huge deal for the park. Perhaps as the park has grown, the train capacity is a bit on the smaller side now, but it's still decent.



Sometimes the simple theming is the most memorable

I moved onto the nearby Woodstock Express, which was really just a +1. It's my first Zamperla Zig Zag coaster, and yeah, it's just like any other wild mouse, although the connection onto the lift hill was very clunky and resulted in me bashing my back.

I was crying out for lunch at this point, which seemed to be what everyone else was doing. I noticed whilst wandering the park prior to lunch that the food outlets all seemed busy. But this had really peaked during lunchtime, naturally. After some wandering around, I decided to eat at the park's big restaurant, Quai 39, which unfortunately was quite poor, especially for the price point.



At this point, I had completed a full loop around the park. I still had two open creds to get. So I decided to wander over to the kiddie cred, grab that, then the Vekoma Boomerang, before re-rides, shows and mopping up other rides. As I retraced my steps, I heard a gentle roar I hadn't heard before at the park. It was coming from Mahuka. "Hmm, that's strange. Wonder what ride that is?" I simply thought to myself. The kiddie cred is just next door, so I was heading that way anyway.

Then, as Mahuka's double top hat element came into sight, I saw a train cycle through. With people on. I had to do a double take at that point...surely not?! As I carried on in that direction, sure enough, people were entering the area, and I saw another train cycle through with people. At this point, I picked up the pace from a gentle stroll to a more determined walk, before realised that was silly as there were a tonne of people there anyway.


It's nice to see this with people

And with that, I was in the Mahuka queue line.


It's a well themed queue

I had looked for an SRQ, but couldn't see one. This was surely a ride which would benefit from it, with it's 1-across seating and 9 people trains. Maybe it'll appear later in the queue a la Timber.

The queue was pretty full, but I didn't mind. This is by far the park's best queue line, winding in and out of little huts and canopies, where archaeological digs have been taking place. And you're next to or under the ride for a fair bit. And it moves fairly consistently. I was in the station in about 40 minutes I think, and bagged a front row ride.


This is a nice, loose, look at the area and layout




I don't Wannabe left out, and I'm So Curious, what's with the 90s references?

Unlike RMC single rails, the train doesn't slowly move through the station, and you can pull down your own bars. With two trains, it runs just like any other coaster. The seating is slightly different, with your legs not bent into a slightly awkward angle, and instead just being 'normal'.



The ride crawls out the station and into the first launch, with a sound effect to boot. Again, this is a coaster which isn't very tall, and doesn't have a particularly high top speed, so the focus is on low-to-the-ground elements. You go through an inverted top hat which is cool, then twist through some theming, with some gentle pops of airtime. You also invert over the queue line and station, with an elongated corkscrew which is smooth and graceful.





You then hit the second launch. And this is where my sole complaint with the ride is. The tyre drives for the launch don't launch you until the whole train is on them. This means that the train hits the tyres and slows down a bit. Nothing significant, and you still travel at a decent speed, but it was noticeable to me. And it was enough to disrupt the flow of the coaster. When the launch kicks in, though, it does have a nice kick to it.



You then go through an outerbank turn, which gives some serious airtime, followed by a glorious airtime which tries to fling you out the park. The rest of the ride is low-to-ground, speedy, whippy with gentle pops of airtime. It's away from theming for the most part, with the exception of a slightly hidden roll, close to ground, over a pond. That leads into a couple more pops of airtime into the brakes.




For a double launch coaster, it's short, but packs a punch. Aside from the minor complaint of the launch, it is a fantastic coaster. And it jumps into my Top 10%.

I went straight round for a second ride. I noticed in the station there were 3 batch points, 1 for the main queue, 1 for Fastpass, and the other unknown. With disabled guests using the exit, I wondered if it was for a SRQ, which might be hidden in the Fastpass queue. I wandered through the Fastpass queue, and it does indeed split into two lanes, one labelled Fastpass, one unlabelled. I thought I'd try my luck and ask, but the batcher simply shook their head. I expect that an SRQ is planned / being experimented with, as it makes sense, but they're letting things die down a bit.
It should be said, however, they were batching well and I rarely saw an empty seat. Maybe an SRQ isn't that necessary?

Anyways, the queue had died down a bit, so I was happy to wait in the main queue. I ended up at the back this time.

At the back, there was a bit of a vibration which could be heard. But I certainly didn't feel it, nor did it detract from my ride experience. It certainly could be something that has more of an effect on certain rows / develops into something worse. But for me, no issue whatsoever. Ride is still great at the back. Still features great airtime after that second launch. I slightly preferred the front, because the airtime and hanging you get on the outerbank turn is simply brilliant.

Dragging myself away from Mahuka, I picked up the other two creds, including a Zierer Tivoli, and then Generator, the Vekoma Boomerang. No SRQ, but this has the Sunkid train featuring a lapbar. To my disgust, the lapbar is pure metal, no sort of cushioning around it. This meant that whilst the ride itself was actually fine (no OTSR = no head bashing, despite so lateral movements), the restraints completely kill your legs and gut. Not helped by me being a larger bloke, sure, but still, awful.




Also, the logo looks like an electrified penis. If this ride was actually a bit more comfortable, I might endearingly have referred to it as "The Electric Penis Ride", which would have been pretty cool.

I returned for a ride on Mahuka, although just before riding they had to take a train off. 1 train ops on that would be painful, so I took that as a sign to cut my losses and run.




Journey back to Lyon and the airport, for my Friday evening flight, was easy, as was flight home.
Side note: I had considered putting Le Pal onto this trip too, but being a 3 hour drive away, plus not really peaking my interest, I decided against it. Maybe another time.


Final Thoughts
Walibi RA has a decent line up and is a very nice-looking park. Being part of CdA, they have the backing and pedigree to become a really good park. And they clearly have intentions to, with talks of them rebranding as Walibi France being a thing.

But right now, they are suffering from their own success. The park doesn't operate the rides well enough, causing painful queues. This isn't helped by the fact many rides don't have throughputs, or possible capacity, that are appropriate for their current success and popularity. The park need to look at investing in their support line up, whether that be adding more rides with reasonable throughputs, or investing in improving capacity to their existing rides (looking at you, rapids ride). I'm obviously not saying they need a 2000pph machine which requires 10 staff to run, but just something which helps the park out. The park are also crying out for an indoor attraction too.

But yeah, the park are really on the right path. In the space of 8 years, the park have really turned themselves into a solid regional park, and one that is worth the effort to visit for an enthusiast, even if it is slightly out of the way.

 

[JoshC.]

Being over a month since I got a new cred, it was time to creep closer to 400. This time it was a return visit to Drayton Manor, with my mum and near 10-year-old brother for their first visits.

I visited Drayton for the first time in 2014. That was my first visit to a non-Merlin in 11 years. I returned in 2015, just before my first European cred trip. And had not been back. And let's face it, there was zero reason to return. Until now, thanks to a new cred, the removal of the nut-crushing Shockwave trains and general improvements apparently.

But unfortunately, Drayton Manor still kinda sucks.

Firstly, the opening times. 10.30am-5pm on a Saturday in September. Sure, September weekends are quiet at parks, but I dunno, 6 and a half hours of park opening feels pretty short.
We'd arrived in plenty of time, and whilst the barrier were shut, the side gate to the park was open. I believe this was so hotel guests could access in some way? But it was left completely unmanned. Definitely saw a few groups of people just saunter in.

Anyways, first stop was The Wave. No, it's not a new cred, but with 1 train and being a big ride, we could be in for some hefty queues. Fortunately, I got on the first train of the day. The lap bars are nice and comfy. The lift hill moves at a reasonable pace and is quiet now. And the ride itself is...fine. It's a big improvement on Shockwave, in that I'd actually ride it again. But being a bog standard sit down coaster with an unimaginative layout, it doesn't offer much. The once amazing zero-g roll feels neutered now too. So yeah, inoffensive, but meh.

The operations didn't look great (I saw trains going round like once every 5-6 minutes). Also, there's a big wasp nest on the side of the station.



We continued around this area of the park. The rapids are fine. I found a nice bench whilst mum and brother did the spinny rides. We did Storm Force 10 which is wetter than I remembered, but also good. Operations weren't great, but at this point, the park was quiet enough that everything was walk on / one cycle wait, so not too bad.

We moved over to the Wild West area and my brother really wanted to do Sheriff Showdown, since like me, he loves shooters. Since it had no queue, we went for it. Once upon a time, I called this the UK's worst ride. Whilst it still ranks low down the list, it's perhaps not that worthy of such an accolade. However, I still don't like, and my brother didn't like the fact there wasn't a tracking light to help you aim.

Now it was time for the big one (for me at least), Gold Rush. It was still morning, so we were getting Cycle 1 (going forward over the lift hill first), with Cycle 2 coming from 2pm according to signs.



Something that struck me though: many people didn't know about the different cycles, and the signs are small enough to be ignored. The cycle times don't vary significantly enough to affect operations. So why haven't the park just opted to do the cycles more randomly, or alternate them, or whatever? Could be more cool and bring more eyes to it. But heyho, they've got their reasons I'm sure.

We waited about 35-40 minutes for this. It was on 2 trains but operations were bad. To highlight what was going on in the station:
-Train enters, guests leave.
-New guests enter train.
-Gates close.
-Batcher batches entire next train
-Batcher walks entire length of station to get to the train-side of the air gates
-Batcher and second host check all restraints
-Batcher re-walks entire length of station, and presses button to confirm dispatch

The whole process takes forever and is very clunky. In fact, trains were regularly on the break run for 2-3 minutes. So that whole process is taking the entire ride time (which isn't exactly short), plus a couple of extra minutes. Painful.

Ideally they'd have another member of staff to check restraints, so the batcher could just...y'know, batch. Or have the batcher do the batching after checking restraints. The whole thing is so slow and painful and I hate it.

As for the ride itself. It's...fine. It's a family coaster and that shows. The experience is very neutered and basic. The shed with the launch bit is nicely themed - and the backwards launch took my brother by surprise! - but aside from that, the theming is basic and pragmatic. People saying this was the "best themed family coaster in the UK" were significantly over-hyping it. Storm Chaser, Th13teen, Scorpion Express are all just as good, if not better, in terms of theming.

I like what Intamin have developed with this multi route coaster though. Cool piece of tech. I can imagine this being really cool in an indoor coaster setting, or on a larger thrill ride, where you can get different experiences. Definitely lends itself to a more story-telling coaster approach.
It does beg the question of why Drayton went for this, rather than a more classic / traditional coaster. Or even why they didn't go for a family coaster with some sort of swing feature (a la Wakala), but I guess it does help increase ride time.

So yeah, Gold Rush. Fine. Adds nicely to the park. But nothing much more to add.



After this we had a spot of lunch in the Pizza Pasta place. I was pleasantly surprise by the prices - they were reasonable for theme park food. However, there were multiple items on the screens which they didn't have, which was frustrating, and the wait time for food was very long, given how quiet it was in there.

Had a meander around the Zoo, which is functional and nice, and then went to The Haunting. We joined the queue and a group was just batched in, and we didn't quite get in, meaning we knew it was a 15 minute wait. It's such a difficult one this. I get that operating it in a more chunked fashion would be more staff intensive, but one group every 15 minutes is laborious, and many people gave up queueing for it.

The experience is still fun. The madhouse section itself was the most underwhelming part. Firstly because they had to restart it because the audio was broken and that took everyone out of it. Secondly because it just doesn't do the madhouse trick well.
Also, am I getting my madhouses confused. I could have sworn when I did this last time there was some hilarious ending of something appearing out of the centrepiece (like bats or something)? But this time, nothing. As I say, I could be confusing madhouses, but I thought there was something more at the end?

Also, the exit is through a shop (at one point an ice cream place I think?), but it is now completely empty and a shell. Felt tacky.

And with that, we went into the new-to-me Vikings land:


The area does the job nicely. It's cohesive and fits together nicely. It's one of those areas which is spare on actual theming for the sake of theming, but as the rides themselves are themed and customised, and things like fencing choices are sensible, it works out nicely.

The shortest queue in the area was, surprisingly, Jormungandr, so we ticked that off. I forgot how hilariously slow the ride is, and how it feels like it's struggling to get round half the circuit. And also, that it wins the award for closest pieces of track. But yeah, it was inoffensive.

It was at this point the heavens open. A storm had been predicted, but when it would hit varied by weather forecaster. It was about half 2 at this point and heavy rain came down, We left Vikings Land (all other rides are stuff we've done before and aren't fussed by) and tried to figure out the next move. The rain cleared up, and we decided to try Gold Rush again.

However, when we joined the queue, the rain came again, along with thunder and lightning. Many people left the queue, but we opted to stay since: 1. We were undercover and dry and 2. We were close to the front thanks to all the people leaving. Sadly, we couldn't wait the rain out. Staff were great at keeping us updated, but yeah it was hammering it down.




We eventually left the queue (the heavy rain on a metal roof started to freak my little brother out a bit), and tried to find somewhere else to wait the storm out. We made our way to the sweet shop at the intersection of the Wild West are and pathway to the Zoo. After a couple of minutes in there though, we were told we'd have to leave as the shop was closing?! I assume there's reasons behind this (either to move staff elsewhere that's higher priority, or because the entrance way to shop had a ton of water which was risking coming into the shop). But it was a crazy thing to do - effectively telling groups of guests to leave an undercover area and go back into torrential downpour? Didn't help that the staff member was very blunt and matter of fact over it.

We headed to the canopy across from the sweet shop and waited another 10 minutes or so for the rain to die down. It didn't completely stop, but became more manageable to be out in. Went into the gift shop next to the sweet shop, which clearly had some flooding as staff were sweeping water/dirt out.

It was difficult at this point, as it seemed to be rain / storms for the rest of the day, and there was no way of knowing what rides stood a chance of opening. Staff didn't seem to know what rides were open, and of course can't be expected to know when rides might re-open. Obviously undercover rides were fine, but these were crammed full (when leaving Gold Rush, Sheriff Showdown's queue was overflowing). So we decided to call it a day, after already being soaked through, it just didn't seem worth hanging around. As we were leaving, we saw that one of the entrances to the Adventure Cove area was blocked off due to the train track area flooding too. Oops.

This is now the second park visit this year cut short due to torrential rain for me, following my Motiongate wash-out, though fortunately this wasn't anywhere near as bad. So peeps, if you visit a park with me, bring a rain coat (I guess that's a fair warning for the Thorpe Live next week!).

So yeah, the weather didn't help, but Drayton Manor still kinda sucks. Operations are rubbish. The park is practical but nothing to write home about. And that's what Loopings do with their parks. They turn them into sensible, reasonable, local parks, but nothing to write home about.

Two final things:
-Drayton offer a rainy day guarantee, but only if you pay extra when buying your ticket. And you get a free ticket to return, but only within 30 days. Feels a bit cheeky. But as we had no likely intention to return regardless, we opted to not bother.
-The park needs to invest in an app, and/or proper queue time displays. Queue times I can forgive to a degree as that's trickier / more time-consuming / expensive to implement (and they slowly have started to with a couple of screens around the park). But an app feels so necessary in this day and age. Their paper maps are a bit rubbish / overly crowded. An app would further help with navigation, guest communication and guest experience. Invest in an app Drayton.

 

[Ollie]

Also, am I getting my madhouses confused. I could have sworn when I did this last time there was some hilarious ending of something appearing out of the centrepiece (like bats or something)? But this time, nothing. As I say, I could be confusing madhouses, but I thought there was something more at the end?

It definitely used to. Was infamously known on here as "bats on sticks" the ride.