The Saturday of the ECC Knights and Legends trip saw us meet up with a load of folk at Camelot and beginning the day with an ERS on Knightmare, their new coaster for 2007.
The ride was originally in Japan but, when the park closed, was bought together with the rest of the rides by a business consortium. Various rides were bought and can now be seen all around the world, but no buyer could be found for BRMX and it was left in an expensive storage facility at a dockyard in the UK. Camelot’s owners were able to do a deal to allow the ride to be “stored” at the park instead.
It rides very smoothly apart from a few kinks in the track. The highlight is definitely the “psycho drop” which pulls 5G as it twists downwards.
Continue reading ‘Camelot - It’s Only a Model’
Wow, look - James has written a post!
That’s not all I’ve been writing. Take look at the trip reports from last weekend’s ECC AGM and a Sunday morning trip to Chessington.
I�ve been to Adventure Island a few times in the past, notably both in the warmth of summer and in the bitter cold of late January. The park is one of those places that seems to guarantee a nice day out regardless of temperature, but even so I set off on Saturday around the M25 (after what happened last time I thought it a safer bet than attempting the more usual �three trains and the underground South West Trains would like to apologise for the delay to this service and any inconvenience this may cause but don�t blame us because we�re really a bus company and we never wanted to run a train service anyway� approach) with trepidation after seeing the BBC forecasting rain, possible thunderstorms and cold winds.
It was a nice surprise then to arrive on the seafront in blazing sunshine. I do like surprises.
It was not a nice surprise to leave my car and find a ticket machine that demanded more than the contents of my wallet coinage in exchange for a ticket. I do not like surprises.
After considerable rummaging around the doors, the back seat and all those little drawers dotted around my car to find the correct volume of fiscal objects, I was able to buy off the money munching monster without having to walk along the beach selling Kiss-Me-Quick hats hastily made out of pages torn from the AA�s 1987 Road Atlas.
Various club members had already arrived at one of the multitude of Adventure Island entrances and were discussing the various amounts they had paid to park in various locations around Southend. It seems the best deal was �5 for the day. Pah! My parking space had a beautiful sea view for just �2 extra.
Continue reading ‘Fish and Dips and the Mystery of the Missing Wheel’
I took a trip to France over the Bank Holiday weekend with the ECC to visit the Foire du Tr�ne in Paris, Parc Ast�rix, Le Jardin d’Acclimatation and Parc Saint Paul in the space of two and a half days.
The trip report and photos are now complete and online.
I visited Wales this past weekend to see Tom. We went down to Oakwood to try out Speed - a trip report for that will follow in a few days if I get a chance.
Having spent the previous day at Flamingo Land on the ECC trip, before returning down South yesterday we visited Lightwater Valley.
When I visit a theme park, I�ll comment on the bad but I try to look for the good things too. Unfortunately that�s harder than normal with Lightwater Valley. The rude word in the middle of its name is sadly not out of place.
It�s very much an un-theme park, with mostly rides which wouldn�t look that out of place at a rundown fairground being operated by generally rude and disinterested staff who paid more attention to texting their mates and reading the paper than actually working.
The choice of music was interesting to say the least, with a song about a bloke smoking crack and wanting to f**k his girlfriend playing so loudly you could hardly hear through the distortion on the Enterprise. Not really appropriate for a place which calls itself �the family sized theme park�.
Ride-wise, Lightwater has an interesting collection of small coasters. Richard pointed out that it looked like they bought up old rides from seaside resorts and just plonked them in a field.
Lightwater�s star attraction is The Ultimate, which held the record as the longest rollercoaster in the world for most of the 1990s. At 7442 feet, it is still the longest in Europe and is only beaten by two coasters (one standing but not operating) in Japan. Bigger isn�t always better though.
Construction of The Ultimate was overseen by British Rail engineers, and it shows. I�ve never seen coaster track supported on sleepers before. They were clearly not experts in forces either. On some parts of the second half of the ride, the front of the train is pushed around the track by the back far too fast to be anything other than brutal. The less said about banking the better (how do you manage to bank a bit of track 90� the wrong way?).
With little else to offer, we didn�t stay more than a few hours. I feel I�m being a bit harsh on the place, but it really wasn�t a fun theme park, either in rides or in atmosphere. Whereas Flamingo Land’s guests were mostly well behaved, most of Lightwater’s were horrible rowdy chavs spitting off rides at every opportunity.
Unless they build something amazing (and considering their new ride for 2005 was The Octopus Ride, an ex-fair ride that they hadn�t even bothered to remove the token price sign or old name from, I doubt they will be any time soon), I doubt I�ll be visiting again. Certainly not at �15.50 a ticket.
Photos coming soon
Flamingo Land, one of the most northerly theme parks in England, played host to the final ECC trip of the season on Saturday. It was to be the first of two new parks for me over the weekend and, as it turned out, the much more pleasant of the two.
Our day began with an ERS on Velocity, the park�s new Vekoma Motorbike coaster. It�s a pretty comfortable ride with some nice elements, but lacks a punchy launch like Rita�s. Late on in the ERS, one of the ride ops told us to put our heads down on the �handlebars� and close our eyes. Apparently that made it feel like you were going upside down. I sort of felt the effect, but not enough for it to have been worth looking as stupid as we must have.
After riding their Wild Mouse (minus the usual sign at the back) we wandered over to Corkscrew, which turned out to be the same model as Corkscrew at Alton Towers. There is a huge difference between the rides though. While Alton�s has become a very rough uncomfortable ride, Flamingo Land�s is smooth and extremely enjoyable. Apparently this is down to them keeping the original trains with some decent wheels.
Next to Corkscrew is Dragon Coaster, a small kiddie coaster themed as a dragon. Obviously it was the perfect candidate for a ride takeover, but not before waiting for ages because the ride op had to wait for the key (I say ride op, but he was actually one of the park�s security men who complained that he had never operated a roller coaster before). With a train load of adults, the coaster did seem to struggle a bit and came very close to stalling as the track passed over the station roof.
The Cycle Monorail is something I�ve never ridden before, but does exactly what it says on the tin: Two people sitting side by side ride bikes which drive a Heath Robinson contraption around a monorail track. It�s all human power, which means that it is extremely hard work if one person stops pedalling (Richard).
After invading all the kiddie rides, we went to take the park�s cable car. At the ride entrance is a large sign saying �Maximum 2 Adults and 2 Children Per Car�. That didn�t stop psycho-ride-op-man from loading Richard, Paul and me into one, telling us it was OK because the cars were �his babies�.
Having just about survived the cable car journey, Richard and I rode the Lost River ride, following a detour to ride the pirate ship next to Thorpe�s old Hudson River Rafters (sadly not in operation that day). Apparently the park ran out of budget to theme it last year, so floating around the animal enclosures was new. We did fear our safety at a couple of points where there didn�t seem to be much of a barrier between us and the Rhinos and Giraffes. I�m sure we were safe though?
I decided to pass on Flamingo Land�s drop tower, which looked a bit too high for me to cope with considering how long it was waiting at the top. Anyway, somebody had to look after the bags. Ok, ok, I know. Call me a chicken all you want, but I did conquer Apocalypse the other weekend and I rode the cable cars so I�ve been quite brave recently.
Circulator is a mad ride: similar to a cross between an Enterprise and a KMG Afterburner which can do complete 360� revolutions. So good we did it three times in a row. Thankfully, before lunch.
Lunch was a buffet provided by the park, featuring all sorts of quiches, sandwiches, crisps, chicken, pork pies and chips. A few managers and senior technical bods were available to answer questions and tell us more about next year�s Vekoma SLC coaster and a possible out-and-back woodie down the centre of the park for 2007.
We spent the rest of the afternoon taking in the rest of the park, re-riding and of course experiencing the mighty Magnum Force.
The triple looping coaster was also the venue for our evening ERS. Magnum leaves the park in the next few weeks, with its rumoured return to the German fair circuit. It is an incredible ride: intense in all the right places, fast and rough but not uncomfortable. I�m sure it will be missed by many. I took my final ride on the front, but that didn�t mean I could see the track stretching down the seemingly near-vertical drop (a bit like on The Big One) any better!
To top off a superb day, while some were taking the last ride of the night on Magnum, the rest of us gathered around one of the park�s maintenance carts and were given an old wheel from the coaster: a unique park souvenir. Just as well, because the stuff they had in their gift shop was complete tat.
Flamingo Land turned out to be a very impressive park. There was a great atmosphere with generally very friendly staff and a lack of rowdy kids. It should be a very exciting time watching it grow over the next few years.
Photos coming soon