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(My first proper visit to) Flamingo Land PTR..

Martyn B

Martyn B

CF Legend
Well actually, its just a TR at the mo, pics will be up soon. I thought I'd get on with the report as I have alot to say as this was my first trip to FL as a proper entusiast, or critic? :lol:

Anywho, where do I start.....the Rides!

Velocity

The parks best ride by far. I wasn't expecting the launch to be half as good as it actually was, totally took me by surprise. Just a shame it slows down soooo much on the last turn. Also, shame no thought at all was put into the ride's location and 'themeing' - of which there is nothing. Really good re-ride-able fun though. 9/10

Kumali

Hmmm. Nice ride, good fun, but a bit too 'meh'. The first drop is very good, but its soon over before you know it. And like Odyssey, its killed by a slow, dull helix. I think I prefer the standard SLC to this model, they're more intense. Kumali seems more like the 'tame' model for youngsters. And here's me being VERY picky, I personally dont like the silent brakes, I love hearing the thunder of trains smashing into the brakes, I dont know why but its add to the experience to me, and I was disapointed to hear nothing, it almost a bit odd, as you just come to a hault, with no noise at all. :(

Unlike Velocity, you can see some thought went into Kumali. Its a nice enough area, just a shame that there's tall fences and over grown weeds everywhere - especially between the station and brake run, it looks horrible. 7/10

Cliff Hanger

Woah! Best S&S tower in the Counrty! The force from both drops is immense, the drop from the shot, and the actuall drop are very very forcefull compared to the other towers of this type. Just a shame the area surrounding the ride is VERY run down. 9/10

Corkscrew

Not as bad as I was expecting it to be really. Only banged my head once, and that wasn't anything to cry about. No where near as muderous as Alton's, still a poor ride though. Its a shame as they start quite well, up until after the corkscrews, then obviously its just utter shoodyness. Again no effort with this ride as it is very bland, like its surrounding area. (I know its from the 'old' Flamingo Land times, but the surounding area isn't!) 5/10

Wild Mouse

I love these rides, I really do! Much prefer these to the spinning mice. Though this one isn't as good as Chessy's for the following reasons - the obvious one being the lack of any sort of themeing (and yet more 'blandness'), but what done it for me was how hard and the block braking was, it really killed the ride, and me! Still good fun though. 7/10

Mumbo Jumbo

Really not impressed with this. The brakes on the drop just totally ruin it for me. You cant experience what the steepest drop is truely like if its covered in brakes. And the rest of the ride was a bit 'meh' and very rattly & bumpy for a ride thats like what, 3 months old? The down hill twist was cool though.

Another bad thing for me was that it felt like it was going to stall on every element/turn, though that ment there was some good hang time. You can see this is a 'new' FL attraction as there area is nice, pretty simple, but ok really. I think they've done what they could do with the budget they have. Shame the ride is pretty naf. 6/10

Thats all for the time being, I have to go now, I'll try and finish it later, though I do have ALOT more to say :D
 
B

Blaze

Hyper Poster
Good report, pretty much the same views as I have there, there is only 1 point between our rating for each ride aswell. Hope to see some more, I'll try to get some of my pics up aswell.
 
Martyn B

Martyn B

CF Legend
Well here's some more, I'll do what I can in the time I have, Ii just dont want to rush things.

Flip Flop

Another of my favourite rides at the park, shame about the colour scheme & name though, and obviously not as good as Maelstrom, but still a very good, fun ride, in the best looking area of the park. 8/10

Spongebob 4d

Now then, I love Spongebob, so there was no way I was missing this! Was ok, a bit short, and I dont think many of the effects were working as on leaflets it mentions all sorts of effects that I didn't see.

I thought this attraction was in the Metro area of the park, but its actually apart of Splosh - which is actually further away. This seemed a common theme throughout the park. 6/10

Sky Rider

Nothing amazing, but then its not expected. It looks nice, as appose to the many tacky travelling versions of this ride. However, it clearly has some kind of African/Lost Kingdom 'theme', yet it is a part of the Splosh area?!? 6/10

Now thats it for ride reviews, I went on more, but they were the only ones worth mentioning really.

Zoo

Wasn't overly impressed with the Zoo. The one thing that stood out for me was the lack of 'interaction' with the Animals. Like I mentioned in the TR, FL seems to be very strict on H&S, and this theme runs into the Zoo too. About 90% of the animal enclosures were set too far away from the pathways. There's fences running along side the paths, then another (electical) fence ste about 2 metres into the enclosure, so the animals never came even close to the edge for guest to see properly. This was even in place in the Farm area, which is just silly! At most Farm attractions you even feed the animals yourself, but no, not here, god forbid you to even get close to an animal!

The other bad point for me ws the Lion enclosure, which is in the middle of the Lost River Ride - and if you dont want to go on that and get soaked, you aren't going to see any Lions!

Apart from them 2 points, it was ok. I liked the high walksways over some of the enclosures, and the Bird Show was good. Chessington's Zoo is far surperior to me. 5/10

The Park

Overall, its good. We stayed till 5pm, which is rare for us, unless were at Alton or Chessy. You can see the park is improving, but there is still lots of room for improvment, I guess the park is still a work in progress?

Firstly I dont really like small parks having seperate themed area's - it just doesn't seem to work (Pleasure Island is another culprit of this). Also I dont like rides being in the entrance area, it looks a mess. Flamingo Land, Pleasure Island and Lightwater Valley are all guilty of this. Though I have to say Flamingo Land's is the worst. Just like the Seaside area, it seems very very run down and looks incredibly tacky (And whats with the Waveswinger with a capacity of like 10?)

Now then, onto the Corkscrew, lets face it, it needs to go. Its ugly, not very good, takes up alot of space, and absolutely stinks of oil. The whole area surrounding it stinks of oil, and is also the most bland of area's with a major lack of any sort of atmosphere. So remove the Corkscrew, and add a few family rides, like a Log Flume, and a custom MS spinner that interacts with the area (a bit like Fury) and also please do something with Velocity's area, give it a tunnel or something, PLEASE! Even my partner (who isn't an entusiast) commented on how dull, bland and empty it felt, and she also said about how it seems no effort was put into some parts of the park.

And for my final 'rant'......Ride ops! Seriously, they need to sort them out. They all seem to take as much time as they like when it comes to dispatching rides. Either chatting to each other, on their phones, or chatting up little girls.

On Mumbo, there were 2 ops on the platform and 1 in the control box, and the ops on the platform had to keep shouting at the one in the box to dispatch the cars as he was in another world on his phone! And this happened more than once, and I could see the 2 ops on the platform were getting very annoyed at him. This is the sort of behaviour you expect to see at Fantasy Island, not at FL.

Also I was disapointed at the lack of info regarding ride opening times when we first got into the park. All ride queue's were open, yet some of them didn't have any staff manning them. We went to Velocity first, we were first in the queue and went straight to the front. There was a mechanic and 2 ride ops just standing about doing nothing, there were more people joining the queue, and after about 10 mins you could hear people saying 'whats going on then" to each other as we were all just standing there, and so were the staff, no one said anything to us. After about another 10 mins they decided to start testing the ride, then the mechanic appeared to hand over the ride to the ops, so I thought we were getting somewhere, but then they started faffing around doing pointless things, like adusting their clothes and checking the train up and down for some reason. Now I wouldn't mind them doing this, if there was a sign at the entrance saying it was closed, but no such thing. I swear they were faffing around on purpose as they knew we were waiting to get on. It was childish and very unproffesional. It wouldn't have been so bad if the ops had actually spoke to us to tell us what as going on. Very rude - again, this was a theme throughout the day.

We then walked all the way round to the Corkscrew as I saw it testing whilst queueing for Velocity, but we were disapointed to find knowone there at all, no ride ops, no staff, no one at all. Again there was no sign saying the ride was closed etc. These little things really annoyed me as it was just wasting our time.

Now then, some people would say I've been pretty harsh towards FL so far, but I haven't, I've been honest. The park is good, and we had a good time, it just has some major flaws which I hope they're going to get sorted soon. It has a good selection of rides, but the locations are a bit questionable.

Personally, I think if you were to swap FL's rides with LWV's rides, you could have one of the best parks in the country, in one of the nicest settings, just like Alton. :D
 
E

Emmett

Giga Poster
Nice report Martyn, and I would go along with your ratings of the rides. Velocity is miles ahead of anything else at the park.

I agree with you about the ride op's they were so slow when I visited and they didn't seem to give a **** about getting the queues moving.

Its a good park if you can get there on a very quiet day but when its extremely busy the park can be a nightmare.
 
Martyn B

Martyn B

CF Legend
Its a good park if you can get there on a very quiet day but when its extremely busy the park can be a nightmare.
Click to expand...

That sums it to be honest. I was debating on wether to go on the Sunday, or Monday, I'm so glad I choose the Monday, even though everything was a walk on, I still had to wait about 10 mins! So god knows what its like on busy days.

And I guess because the park was so quiet, I did enjoy it, we had a good fun day. I think beyond the big 4 parks in the UK, FL is definitely one of the better small parks.

Our highlights would be Velocity and Cliff Hanger, and lowlights would be the atittude of the staff, and Mumbo.
 
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