Not so hot trip to the Pier

[Nic]

Male Jordan was down for a Uni open day, and had a spare hour, so we popped to the Pier.

If you look closely, you can see the impact the recent storms have had on the beach

Jordan wanted to ride Turbo, so we went to check how many tokens it is, and realised it was closed.

Don't beast yourself up, you've already got the cred

Spot the man with the angle grinder

Seeing as neither of us had done one before, we decided to ride the Air Race.

We had to wait for one ride cycle. Then the op had to manually release all the restraints, so we had to wait some more while he faffed around fixing/testing them.

Schmexy!

We did eventually get on it. The ride cycle was just about the right length, if not just slightly too long. Any more and I probably would've vommed. That wasn't helped by the fact that my, already stapled, restraint decided to tighten further mid-ride. Eugh. It's a good little ride, and nice to see something a bit different from a spin 'n' spew.

We had a quick wander round the rest of the pier.

Jordan gooned out at the decapitated wild mice

Very quickly, it was time for him to bugger off again. But, hoorah! First park of the year!

 

[DelPiero]

First time I've seen Jordan without shorts on. Must have been bitterly cold!
Nice report Nic, looking forward to getting on an air race this year.

 

[Jordanovichy]

I was only in jeans because I had a uni open day which I thought dressing slightly more formally would be best

Here is a PTR from not so hot me. It's basically the same as Nic's cause we did the same things:

I was planning on spending the whole day looking round the University of Brighton and its campuses. Alas, I had finished everything I wanted by 13:30 so decided to head on down to the seafront, I hadn't ridden Turbo since 2010 and, as it was my first time upside down on a coaster I wanted to have another go. Texted Nic to ask if she was busy, she wasn't so we met outside the front of the pier.

We headed towards the rides when I realised I had no money so needed a cashpoint. I was NOT about to pay £1.59 for the privilege either. Nic guided me to a nearby(ish) Sainsbury's. On the way she gave me a mini guided tour of some of Brighton.

Money withdrawn we headed onto the pier, second time lucky. We had a little wander around first to see how many tokens we needed to buy. Headed for Turbo:

Ahhh 4 tokens. Ahhh, it's shut. I was rather peeved.

^the train was going no where and in the centre left you can see someone working on the track. I did have the cred so it wasn't the end of the world.

I also had the wild mouse cred so I didn't really fancy that either,

Neither Nic nor myself had ridden an air race before so decided to try the new one there. It was open and only needed four tokens. Money spent, Nic was buzzing for the off

There was a bit of a faf with the automatic restraints having to be opened manually on the cycle before ours, I was getting fidgety that it was going to shut down but thankfully it didn't. It was actually rather good, as Nic said it did go on a bit, I believe it went upside down 19 times, any more and I think both of us would have chugged, it hangs you upside down for over a second each time too, it is nauseating but that's all the fun of the fair. Have some more pics of the air race:

We didn't really fancy spending any more money so just had a gander around the rest of the rides just to have a look and take some 'Goonographs'. I remember riding this back in 2010 and being so bored, it had 2(?) people jump out at you and that was it

In hindsight I perhaps would have liked to have ridden the 'Booster', it goes right over the sea and that has got to be better than Midsummer Common in Cambridge which is the only other place I'd ridden one

I had a goon over some dismantled 'Wild Mouse' cars, so awesome

After that my Dad wanted to leave so I had to walk up to the old pier to meet him, have some generic Brighton Pier pictures:

This is the Brighton Wheel. It was built in 2011 and I'd never seen it apart from in photographs to which I would always say 'where's that? I've never seen that!'

This one shows how bad the recent storms in Brighton have been, further up the beach, a fish and chip bar has been half buried.

This is the old pier, destroyed by storms and fires over the year this is all that remains, the gap on it's left side was caused by the recent storms. It is slowly being reclaimed by the sea.

I said goodbye to Nic, and headed off to meet ma daddy. Had a great hour, thanks Nic.

 

[insanecoastervids]

Nice report guys, seems like you had a very nice short time.

 

[gavin]

That Air Race looks vile.

I get that it's just a funfair shoved on a pier, so you wouldn't expect a Disney level of theming, but they could've done something with it. It looks like it's made out of Meccano.

 

[Jordanovichy]

Yeah it is very 'square'. According to Nic the lights on it are exactly the same as most of the other things on the pier so it doesn't stick out and looks even worse.

 

[Nic]

Yeah it is very 'square'. According to Nic the lights on it are exactly the same as most of the other things on the pier so it doesn't stick out and looks even worse.

That's the exact OPPOSITE of what I said!!! As nearly all the other lights are "white" (read: Orange) and these are yellow, they clash horribly. *voms*

 

[Jordanovichy]

Well I knew it was something along those lines, sorry

Why would you have white lights anyway? I know white technically contains every colour but it is rather bland, no?