Lightwater Valley
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