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Milky Way/Cornwall's Crealy, 18/19 June 2011

Mysterious Sue

Strata Poster
Have video...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdOhtaBIA4I[/youtube]

It's my first attempt so be nice, but please give me any advice you think could improve it
Sorry about the poor video quality - it was taken with my phone

(Vadge, I nicked a couple of your photos, hope you don't mind)
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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I'd forgotten all about that.
 

Nic

Strata Poster
^lol!

It's alright though, it's not in my head anymore. I've moved onto something else. Someone with an AMAZING voice! *chops onions*
 

peep

CF Legend
Oh Sue, now you make me all sad for missing out on this trip, I want ball pond times :( Also epic lols at Will kinda stumbling after jumping off the swing.
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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Seeing as Mysterious Sue has managed to cover Milky Way with photos, I'll skip that report and just do Crealy with photos.

We arrived! Despite the Cornish Roadblocks of Spite! It's not the most dramatic of entrances.
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My initial thoughts were "what a dump". As you walk through the shop to enter the park, you are greeted with farmyard view and several shed like buildings. It looks crap. There are a few animals around though.
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This looks crap, let's do this first.
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It was crap! It's essentially Wind in the Willows (Wind /of/ the Willows?) with less familiar characters.
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We moved past the farmyard area and towards the CRED, which we could see as we entered the park. We passed some Porn Ponies on the way.
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Vadge wanted to ride it, but NO! We had to get the cred first in case it "spited" us. We never did do the Porn Ponies. Meh.
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So here we are, at the one and only cred at Cornwall's Crealy, Morgwar.
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Tbh, the station/inside queue looks pretty good. It's like a Cornish fisherman's house.
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Thankfully the cred didn't spite us.
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It's nothing special. Unfortunate children who don't travel much would probably love it. To me, it was simply a +1. A few points for theme though...
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Mysterious Sue and Stone were spited by the capacity, so they has their own exclusive train.
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One last look at the station. Again, it looks half decent.
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We discussed that it's probably the most expensive cred we've ever got. (Entrance price/number of coasters, £10/1, so a £10 cred.)

Is that IT? Is that all that Cornwall Crealy has to offer? One cred? How on earth will we fill a day at this farmyard dump?

This is how!
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Cargo net!
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Sacks!
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SLIIIIIDE!
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ANOTHER SLIIIIDE!
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The parks new attraction for 2011 is this bouncing dinosaur ride! I've forgotten the name but I'll research it for when I write the guide.
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It's actually pretty good. The barrels bounce up and down as the they turn like a merry go round. It's quite a good sensation, imagine a small drop bounce tower.
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Near the bouncing dino things are three (maybe four) playhouses for children.
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Inside are kiddy play areas.
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The best one imo is the Orange House.
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The perfect place for a group photo!
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As the 14 of us left the house, a young family tried to get in. They LOLd at the seemingly never ending line of adults leaving the house.

As I'm a third of a way through my Crealy report, I'll leave it at that for now. Break up the photos a bit. I'll post part two a little latter on.
 

Nic

Strata Poster
I'll start with a warning: My photos are ****. There you go, you've been warned.

Friday night

All of us (except Ian) stayed at Jordan's. It was fun. I got quite drunk, then had 2 uncomfortable hours of sleep on a very small sofa. Massive thanks to Jordan for letting us all invade her house.

Saturday
After somehow managing to convince Will to walk to Co-Op, I cooked bacon sarnies for everyone. We then all disappeared off. After a brief mince at the services, we all arrived at the utterly FAB Milky Way Adventure Park. The mince machine had already arrived, but we couldn't find them. I called to ask where they were and were told "The manager invited us in for a coffee! Sashay over to the entrance, and he'll come and meet you!" As expected, Marten came and met us, and guided us down to the cafe where we found the mincers. He made us all tea/coffee (thank you so much, it was greatly appreciated!) and introduced us to Larry, the rides manager (who had kindly stayed on at the end of his shift to have a chat to us). Between them, they gave us a talk about the history of the park and the rides. Who'd have known that the park is as old as me! :) It was interesting, and I learnt a few new facts, although I think most of us were itching to get on some actual rides after the long journey. We headed outside to get the two Pinfari (of sorts) CREDZ!


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(No, we don't know where the yellow paint went either)
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It then started raining so we made a hasty retreat indoors. This is just one reason why the Milky Way is so fab. If it starts pissing down, 90% of it is indoors, so it really doesn't matter. We had a short while before meeting Marten again for a behind the scenes tour of The Clone Zone. We decided to have a ride on it before the tour so as not to reveal and "spoilers" to those who hadn't ridden it before. The walk-through was just as great as I remembered it. My favourite part is still the teleporter room, even if the smoke was a bit excessive. One thing I don't remember though is there being live actors in there! I was doing fine until a mystery hand appeared from a hole in the wall and patted me on the head. I then spent the rest of the ride in utter TERROR. Actually, I remember being terrified and riding the whole thing with my eyes shut last time, so perhaps they were there all along. Anyway. The ride is more of a dark ride than a coaster, if I'm honest. Bat-fliers are "meh" at the best of times, and without going fast enough to "fly" round the corners, it's a bit pointless. However, the home-made theming is utterly fantastic, so we'll let them off. I came away from my last visit with a real soft-spot for this ride, and this return visit hasn't changed that.

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Marten then came back to meet us and took us into the station, then on a partial track-walk. I love the typical west-country attitude to Health & Safety "Whatever you do, don't touch the track - it's still live and you'll get electrocuted". If only other parks were more like this and less utterly paranoid when taking people into usually restricted areas. Again, the talk was very interesting. I particularly enjoyed hearing about how Caripro had completely screwed them over, but they fought on to fix all the problems themselves, and eventually got the ride up and running. We all had to glare at eachother and try not to snigger when Sue asked the immortal question "So, where did the name Clone Zone come from then?". (un)fortunately, no one took the bait, and we left the tour with no mention of gay sex shops.

As predicted, Gavin couldn't contain his excitement...
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(Apologies. My camera doesn't like the dark at the best of times, and it was very smoky in there which really didn't help)


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After this we went on the dodgems. They're former travelling ones, so are COVERED in flashing lights. They're inside a room lit only by these lights. This coupled with very loud dance music give it the atmosphere of a fairground at night. IT'S EPIC!!!!!1!!111!!!1!! They also have the fantastic policy of running alternate rides for different ages. They'll do one run for parents with very young children which is on a low speed with bumping discouraged. They'll then let the older kids/adults loose on a faster speed with no need to worry about upsetting the little ones. It's such a simple yet effective idea, I really don't know why more places don't follow suit. So yes, anyway, queue 2 goes in a row with pure CF-takeover. As you can imagine, it was utter carnage.... but AMAZING all the same! <3

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Next, we had a lunch break. We went to the cafe above the indoor play area. I wish we'd gone to the other one instead though, as that looked much nicer when we were in there in the morning. Ah well, I'll know for next time.

Next up was the indoor (adult friendly) play area. OMGONEELEVEN!!!11!! CF were typically excited and all quickly disappeared up onto the slides etc. Most time was spent in the ball pool.

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(eugh, god knows what all that crap was on my camera lens </3)

All round the park, there's these awesome murals on the walls. They must've taken ages, and are MASSIVE. They're awesome.

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To end the afternoon, most of us ventured back outside to find the play equipment. We hadn't made it to this end of the park on my last visit, so I didn't know what to expect. All you need to know is that there's zip wires. And slides. And swings.

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So that was it for an amazing park trip to a fantastic park. Last time I went, I came away in Love with The Milky Way. This trip hasn't altered that. No, there's not a massive amount there, but there's just something about it. The park has an atmosphere about it like nothing I've ever experienced anywhere else. You can immediately tell that it's family-run, and they clearly treat all their staff like extended members of their family. What this place lacks in budget, it more than makes up for in creativity and imagination. The Stanburys clearly love the place and pour their hearts and souls into it. It really shows, and helps to set it apart from the competition. Once again massive thanks to Larry for staying to chat to us, to all the ride ops and staff at the park for being completely friendly and welcoming, and to Marten for the discount, showing us Clone Zone, making me much needed coffee and generally making us feel really welcome. THANK YOU! :D

It was then back into the cars for the hour-and-a-bit journey to the campsite. About halfway there, this happened...

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The camping was awesome. The rain held off, the laughs were plentiful, and nobody disgraced me by getting any complaints from fellow campers (unless you count Ian shouting at Richard to "SHUT. THE. ****. UP!" at stupid o'clock in the morning as a complaint?! hehe)

I'll do Crealy another night :)
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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Crealy - Part 2

After the group photo, we headed towards the drop tower, The Beast. The ride is hardly beastly, therefore it is an unoriginal name. However, it's a kids park, so I'll let it off.
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It's not very tall, about 50ft according to their website.
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We all rode it apart from Stone Cold, who was suffering from TMATNB.
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Before we took our seats, it was noted that an old lady with a walking had just got off the ride.

Vadge managed to fit on, despite her worries about having to do the Walk of Shame.
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It goes up and down. It's a bounce tower, but probably borders more on the drop tower side. Loads of willy-lift, hence our chorus of "ooohhh, ahhhhhh" as it did it's thang.

The view is pretty plain. However, you can see more of the MASSIVE play areas which are all joined together.
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Clowns to the left of me...
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...Jokers to the right.
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Here I am, stuck in the middle of you.
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After The Beast, we wandered towards the water area.

This when I noticed that the park is split into sections. Having a desire for order, I quite like this. For example, there's the Animal area, the Water Ride area and the err...something else area. There was something a bout this grouping that I really liked. It stopped being a park of random rides plonked down, but a park with a logical layout.

Anyway, the dinghy slides were first. Officially known as "Raging River", or in CF Terms, "Raging Dyke" or "Raging Hardon".
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I won't commentate on these photos, they can speak for themselves.
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The same old lady with a stick who we saw on The Beast also rode Raging River! Of course, this elevated her to fab status, complete with a short-lived obsession about her amazing fabness to ride anything despite being in the latter part of life and mildly infirm. Yes, she genuinely was fab. Vadge remarked it was like looking at herself in 30 years time.

Staying in the water ride area, the next stop was Thunder Falls.
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Thunder Falls is a travelling, unpainted log flume that has a permanent home at the park. It doesn't look amazing, nor does it appear to be rather thrilling.
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A confident Mince Boat goes down the first drop...
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...and minces out.
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However, there is a second, bigger drop!
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The second drop really does the job!
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Moist times did happen.
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If Cornwall's Crealy has taught me anything it's; If it looks good, it'll be crap. If it looks crap, it'll surpise you.

Fab old Lady also did the log flume! She's fab!
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That'll do for part 2.
 

Nic

Strata Poster
PMSL at the copious photos of FAAAAAAAAB lady <3 <3 <3


PS....
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsUXAEzaC3Q[/youtube]
 

Ben

CF Legend
I've forgotten the name but I'll research it for when I write the guide.

Dizzy Dina the Drag Queen Dinosaur, duh <3

And yay for fabbbbbb lady <3 I <3 her more than life <3<3<3lessthanthree<3
 

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
WTF? Milky Way's Big Apple used to be yellow/green/brown/whatevercolour...

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Enjoying the reports so far, but the fab old woman is clearly Nic in ten years time, not thirty!
 

tks

Strata Poster
Nic said:
PMSL at the copious photos of FAAAAAAAAB lady <3 <3 <3


PS....
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsUXAEzaC3Q[/youtube]

:lol:

I'm going to add one of the few photos i was bothered to take this weekend.

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this slide was crealy good.
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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Crealy - 3rd and final part.

The water area is bang next to a lake. There were model boat enthusiasts (ModelBoatForce) using it.
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We walked up a hill towards the Pile of Ship, passing another lake on the way. Or maybe it's a pond.
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It's up the hill where The Viking Warrior sits. A few of us sat out. It's quite unremarkable. Very silent. Too silent.
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It was at this point that we had done all the rides. Cornwall's Crealy only has seven rides; the CRED, Porn Ponies, Pile of Ship, Flog Lume, Bouncing Dino Things, Beast and Dinghy slide. The other attractions are play areas, walk-thrus and animals.

Big play area with zip wires and slides!
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Death slides seem to a be common thing in the western side of the UK.
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We could have done an interesting silhouette photo here if I had asked people to pose.
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Willy does zip wire.
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Unsuspecting zip wire buffers...
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Jake pulling Richie.
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BOSH!
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Enclosed spirally slides were next.
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Here's Ben doing a bit of a Deirdre Barlow impression imo. But that's alright because Deirdre Barlow is probably fab.
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Mysterious Sue, looking a bit perplexed.
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Aha, here's why.
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A nasty lump appeared near Neal's wrist and it appeared limp...
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Putting the slides aside ("aslide"), some people went for wee breaks, ice creams etc. We trickled inside the Haunted Castle. I expected it to be a ghost house.....
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...I was wrong!

It's ANOTHER playhouse! In a way, it's the central hub to all the other play areas. You can access the cargo net play area and the spiral slides from the Haunted Castle! It's like a massive multi-level-maze play area!

It starts off with an optical illusion. (I say "starts off", but you can enter it from one of many ways!) This corridor actually gets narrower! For me, it was an actual "wow" moment!
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Inside there was another slide and foam climbing things!
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Poles!
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Rope bridges!
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There's a pitch black maze where I kept "accidentally" bumping into Mysterious Sue.
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Rope swings!
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And yes, yet another near-vertical death slide.
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As we trundled back to the exit, we stopped to look at the animals. You can buy the animals if you want!
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Once I got past the lacklustre entrance and down towards the rides, the park improved greatly. I tried to compare it to other parks that I've visited. It's got that "middle of nowhere" feel to it, a bit like Oakwood. It's got a very family friendly vibe to it, just like Paultons Park. In fact, it's very much like Paultons Park before they upped their game and went a bit "shiny"; loads of play areas, standard rides, nice setting. It's got a sparsity like Lightwater Valley. It screams "family".

Cornwall's Crealy is perfectly suited for families, which is handy as that's their target audience. If you're a hardcore ride enthusiast, you won't like Cornwall's Crealy because there isn't enough variation to impress and entertain you. However, if you are a theme park enthusiast who's happy to ride what's on offer and spend a few hours loosing your street cred in play areas, then you'll love it! I did!
 

Ben

CF Legend
Ian said:
Here's Ben doing a bit of a Deirdre Barlow impression imo. But that's alright because Deirdre Barlow is probably fab.
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I'm elongating my neck, it's what Tyra teaches you.
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
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Ben said:
Ian said:
Here's Ben doing a bit of a Deirdre Barlow impression imo. But that's alright because Deirdre Barlow is probably fab.
crealyjune%20(81).jpg

I'm elongating my neck, it's what Tyra teaches you.
Who? Tyra Banks come up as #1 google, so her?
 
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