James Salter

ECC Furious Inferno 2: Chessington World of Adventures

Day 2: Chessington World of Adventures. The weather forecast was for a warm sunny day, although looking outside the rain-splattered window at 6am you wouldn’t have thought so. By 9am, however, the cloud had cleared leaving a nice bright morning. (The reason I was up so early even though the park is only a 10 minute drive from my house: Tom tipped me off about a spectacular episode of Doctor Who which I obviously had to watch as soon as possible.)

This morning started with a 30 minute ERS on Vampire. If Nemesis Inferno makes an excellent evening ride, Vampire is perfect in the morning. As usual, Chessington’s staff were top notch, even sticking a sign up at the ride exit saying “Vampire ♥ The European Coaster Club”. Below, in brackets: “(especially Justin)”.

Chessington have finished “fixing the fun” on Rameses Revenge, giving us the opportunity to ride - my first chance in 2005. I ended up on the end of the front row (I’m not stupid, although see below). It was an OK ride, nothing special, although I don�t remember it wobbling sideways quite so much in previous years.

We had a couple of interesting ride takeovers later in the morning: We proved that Flying Jumbos wasn’t designed to lift a whole load of heavy adults! I expect they’ll be quite a few embarrassing photos hitting the Net over the next few days.

After lunch we watched all three animal shows, which turned out slightly different to normal: You could tell by the slight panic in his voice that the parrot flew slightly further than the handler was expecting during Birds in Flight, the keepers descended into fits of laughter in the Penguin Presentation and the sealions are in season so were rather uncooperative come the Sealion Show. Methinks somebody may have had a rather late night with a few drinkies.

Much like yesterday, I spent most of the day attracting water from all directions. I’m developing a special talent for it - I might even see if somebody in the university wants to experiment on me. Of course, Hywel and the Bubbleworks is a dangerous combination for anybody. I did manage to stay relatively dry on our fully laden Dragon Falls boat (Tom, Hywel, Tom, Chris and me). Alright, so Tom and I cheated by chickening out and ducking into the front of the boat: I still got wet shoes somehow!?! I must definitely talk to somebody about my magnetic water gifts…

Before park close we had time to take in the Dodgems and Runaway Train. Did you know dodgems cars go sideways? Well, if you’re ganged up on by four other people then they do. Don’t worry, I will have my revenge - just watch your backs. There will be other trips.

Our day ended with an hour ERS on Dragon’s Fury. After our preliminary research last year, we’ve perfected the art of loading the cars. Huge thanks must go to the ride ops who let us load cars with three, two, or even one carefully placed people in order to achieve maximum spinning. I’m not sure whether they were winding us up when they told us to lean out to the right for the duration of the ride, but it seemed to work. Hey, it wasn’t exactly the only time during the day I looked a prat, so why worry?!?!

And so the weekend came to an end. Even though it was only my second trip, I already feel right at home. I met a fantastic bunch of people, had a fantastic time and still have a smile on my face (and a strange aching sensation down my left side!). Big hellos to Paul, Margaret, Richard, Owen, Tom, Hywel, Justin, John, Mark, Simon, Mick, Wendy, Chris, Tom, Chris, David, Malcolm, Carl and everybody else I met, talked to and rode with. Lastly, an enormous thank you has to go to John and the rest of the team for working so hard to organise such a brilliant trip - I can’t wait for Alton/Drayton in September!

Photos of today are available here.