Last year I went on a trip to Oakwood, probably the least accessible of all the UK’s parks for the majority of the population (unless you are a sheep).
With it being positioned in such a remote location, you’d have thought it unlikely that a London boy like me would be making a repeat visit for a few years. Wrong. I’d have been back this year purely because it is a brilliant park with a fantastic atmosphere. And it has Megafobia. Good enough reason then for me to go back down to Wales last weekend to visit Tom and Oakwood.
This year Oakwood has another new addition: Speed, a Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter. Speed is one of the craziest coasters I’ve encountered. Take a vertical lift, add a 97 degree (yes, that’s beyond vertical) first drop immediately followed by an airtime hill barely half the height of the lift and a near-circular loop and you’ll get the idea. Physics and instinct tell you this ride shouldn’t be possible, Oakwood proves it is.
Continue reading ‘Now the Rabbit Place is Really Crazy’
Oakwood is possibly the most remote major theme park in the UK, sitting in a field near the south-western tip of Wales. For such a location, you�d have expected a rather tacky, low-budget park, run by a couple of simpletons who think riding their hay cart down the farm track is a major thrill ride.
The reality of Oakwood is somewhat different. It may not yet have as many major attractions as, say Alton or Thorpe, but the ones it has easily outclass the competition. Plus it�s cheaper. And it�s not covered in chewing gum. And Tussauds don�t have a warped fascination with rabbits, but I�m getting ahead of myself…
Wet is one of those English words that describe a basic concept but are actually far too vague to be much use. If I say something is wet, it could be just a bit moist or it could be saturated. Describing the morning of my trip to Oakwood this weekend with Tom as �a bit wet� therefore needs a little more clarification.
Rain is certainly one form of wetness, and boy did it rain. Even before we got to Oakwood I�m sure more had fallen than the 11mm Metcheck predicted. We though are not normal. We�re coaster enthusiasts, so we continued our journey towards the park regardless.
The first thing you see when you turn into the entrance is a gargantuan structure dominating the landscape. Hoping that wasn�t what I thought it was, but knowing it inevitably was, I realised I�d just caught my first glimpse of Hydro in all its verticalness. Since it was raining so hard, I managed to convince Tom to leave it until later. That seemed a good idea at the time, but then came the rabbits.
After taking the train along an incomprehensibly circuitous route to the main entrance of the park, we took our first proper ride of the day. Well, to be more precise, we weren�t exactly the ones doing the riding. Brer Rabbit had very kindly invited us to his party in his burrow, along with all his other rabbit friends.
This is a dark ride like no other, probably because whatever warped individual dreamt it up has changed careers and is now testing straight jackets in a small but comfortably padded room somewhere just outside Wincanton.
You see, Brer Rabbit�s celebration ain�t no kiddy party. He�s obviously a swinger, and not in the monkey sense. We all know what rabbits are famed for, but usually they get on with it quietly and out of sight rather than inviting an audience to watch them from a train riding each other (no, unfortunately those words really are in the right order). Brer Rabbit�s friends aren�t nearly as shy. In fact they�re quite open about their activities, making no attempt to hide exactly what they�re getting up to under the bath water. It would probably be better not to mention washing machines, but that�s an image that has been burnt onto my retina for eternity. Brer Rabbit is one sick bunny.
Barely escaping the bunny burrow with any sanity intact, Tom suggested we try out Oakwood�s other dark ride, Spooky 3D. At the outset this seems very similar to Chessington�s Hocus Pocus Hall, but the park supplies the transit system (cars to sit in) rather than the guest (legs to walk with). There are the same cutesy painted walls that look 3D when you wear your magic spectacles. Incidentally, Oakwood�s magic specs aren�t covered in water like Chessington�s, with the upshot that you can actually see through them.
Clearly though, the twisted soul that was let loose on Brer Rabbit�s Burrow didn�t change career, but had far too much influence over Spooky 3D too. Besides the cute 3D pictures, we�re treated to a man being eaten alive by rats, a chicken being beheaded, an extremely loud car horn (thanks for the warning Tom � oh no wait � Tom was too busy sticking his fingers in his ears to bother to tell me) and an embarrassingly terrifying encounter with a colossal snake.
By this point, my sanity was in tatters and we�d only been on the park for about 15 minutes. There was however a good reason I�d been convinced spending a wet Saturday morning in a Welsh field would be a good idea, and it hadn�t involved bonking bunnies or cacophonous car horns.
Mr Psychotic and his certifiable mates reign of terror continued. Consequently Oakwood is the proud owner Megafobia, rated as one of the best wooden coasters in the world. It�s good. Very good. People sometimes describe coasters as �airtime machines�. I�m struggling to work out what they would call Megafobia. While it�s classed as a sit down, I don�t know why they bothered putting seats in the cars. It isn�t like you spend any time sitting in them. And then Tom tells me it was running slow on Saturday. In that case, I can�t wait to come back when its properly warmed up. It�ll be insane!
Remember the rain? By the time Megafobia had finished trying to eject me from the park, it had eased off. If you�re thinking logically, you�ll understand the logic in the choice of the next ride. If you�re a clone of Douglas Adams, you won�t lie like those people, but you�ll greatly appreciate the transgalactic leap in the thought process that led us to Hydro. I say us, but I mean me. I�m sure Tom had a good excuse which he gave me after the ride. In a few weeks when I�ve got all the water out of my ears, I�ll try to find out what he said. Let me explain:
You see, Hydro is one of those rides with one of those obnoxious signs outside the entrance saying �you will get wet on this ride� that send slightly dim riders into a blind panic and unconsciously reaching for their wallets to hand over their �5 to purchase a poncho which they then proceed to place over their heads laughing at how unfashionably attired they all now are and how stupid everybody else was for not taking the opportunity because they�re about to get soaked only realising after they�ve come off the ride that what the sign actually means is there�s a slight possibility of a water droplet landing within ten feet of a passenger once a year and the real reason for it being there is just to extract an incomprehensible wad of cash in exchange for a giant plastic bag.
The difference with Hydro though is the sign actually means what it says and by the time you pass it it�s too late to buy a poncho. I�d seen the picture of the splash on the park�s website and already worked out it must be as big as Tidal Wave�s at Thorpe (how wrong can one guy be?). Then again, any ride with the words �Water�s Revenge� next to its title should probably give you a clue this is no log flume anyway.
I only realised when I was sitting in the boat and had my seatbelt and OTSR restraint locked in place that I hadn�t actually seen Hydro in operation. Due to the rain, it was an exceptionally quiet day at Oakwood (maybe 500 people on park) so Hydro�s boat wasn�t being sent around that often. I�d seen just exactly how vertical the drop was, but I figured it wasn�t that much of a big deal. Come on, this is a water ride, not a coaster.
Oh.
When Tidal Wave�s boat comes off the lift, it slowly trundles along the turn around, then plunges down the drop and splashdown in the pool below. Clearly increasingly unhinged, Mr Warped Ride Designer From Hell had obviously decided that there was no need for faffing about at the top. If Tidal Wave were a tortoise, Hydro would be the equivalent of bits of a tortoise being shot out after being sucked into the engine of a high speed power boat. That�s before the drop.
There�s a few moments of fantastic floaty airtime as your seat is ripped from under you, but only until the boat reaches the inevitable lake below which quickly empties into the sky above. The ride is magnetically braked to slow the boat at the bottom of the drop. They must be very powerful magnets, because as well as slowing the boat they attract all the water in southern Wales towards it too. If only the water companies could harness that kind of power, we�d never have any hosepipe bans again. We could just steal all our water from the French.
Hydro is wet. But I�ve already established that wet isn�t actually a very descriptive word, so I�ve had a look through the thesaurus to try to come up with something better: aqueous, drenched, dripping, pouring, saturate, saturated, soaked, soaking, sodden, soggy, sopping, teeming, water-logged, watery, wringing-wet. Nope, no good. It needs a new term. Hydro is Hydro. And that�s the best I can do.
There ended a rather wet morning. After lunch we went over to the top left hand corner of the park. If you�ve read a few of my past trip reports, you�ll know about me and drop towers. We don�t get on too well. Tom knows about my hatred of the things and, being the supportive guy he is, introduced me to Bounce, Oakwood�s shot �n� drop.
Kinda nervous, I made it onto the ride with a bit of �gentle� persuasion. Zooming to the top we go, as a rather good view of Megafobia revealed itself. If I hadn�t been on (what would soon turn into) a drop tower at the time, I�d have been pretty pleased with the view. Down we come again, but rather than bouncing back up as I�d seen happen on the previous run, we just stopped dead about a third of the way up the tower. Not good. �It�s perfectly normal,� says Tom. �And that�s supposed to help me?� says James. (Ok, it may not have been those exact words, but they had a similar meaning even if they weren�t quite so PG-rated).
�Don�t worry folks, we�ll just bring you down and then after we�ve brought up the restraints we�ll start the drop sequence,� says Mr Ride-Op. Not exactly comforting since he didn�t actually mention anything about locking the restraints again after bringing them up.
Post-drop, (and especially now I�m 200 miles away from it so can�t be dragged back screaming until at least next year) I think I can say that � for a drop tower � Bounce isn�t actually too bad. At least there�s no waiting at the top, which is the bit I really hate.
In addition to the famous Megafobia, Oakwood has another coaster called Treetops, which is just a fairly average junior coaster. Or at least it would be, but for that �only at Oakwood� dimension. When you see coaster planning applications, they often include details about how many trees will need to be removed to make way for the track. The Oakwood folks are obviously very environmentally conscious, because I don�t think they removed any trees but just built Treetops around them instead. Very closely around them. Whatever H&S inspector allowed the ride to open obviously never heard of the term �safety envelope�, resulting in a coaster where you literally have to duck and dive through the trees. This has all made Treetops into a fantastically fun, extremely perverted junior coaster.
Next to Treetops is Snake River Falls, a dingy ride comprising two open slides and two enclosed beasts named Python and Cobra. 
Let�s just say I didn�t quite get the hang of it on the first go, resulting in my dingy barely making it out of the tunnel before grinding to a halt I was going so slow. Quite an achievement considering everybody else was speeding out towards the end fence. I did slightly better the second time. Just.
Oakwood possesses one other freaky fun machine dressed up as a kiddie ride: Plane Crazy. Queuing through the airport, the ride proper begins seated in a small plane hanging from a spinning circular support structure (think Flying Machines at Blackpool). Attached to the plane is a rudder which you use to control how high you fly. Never before have I ever been so scared on a “kid�s” ride: Not only does the rudder control your height, but also your direction of flight, resulting in me facing the sky with no sight of ground for the whole ride. There I was thinking drop towers were frightening :p
Tucked away in a corner of the park is a pirate ship. There�s not much to say … apart from stupendous! I love pirate ships, and this is up there with the best of them. I find that sometimes the smaller ones can give a better ride than the bigger ones, but Oakwood�s monster has just as much airtime than its tiny cousins. That, and Irish people. Lots of Irish people. No rabbits though.
Leaving the pricey Vertigo for another day, the last ride to try out was Bobsleigh. This is another example of a brilliant ride which parks would probably never get permission to build these days. If you�ve never had the experience of one of these before, think of sliding down a metal chute on a tea tray. Riders control the bobsleigh�s brakes, with the caveat that if you don�t control your speed you stand a high chance of flipping over. Wahoo!
With the weather still not too good, the park so quiet, and the time barely half way through the afternoon, we took a final ride on Megafobia before calling it a day, realising it would be totally unrealistic to find enough to last us through until the evening show. Next year, next year…
I think Oakwood should seriously consider legal action against McDonalds, who�ve nicked the �I�m lovin� it� slogan that so clearly belongs to the park (Hey, Lewis compared Oakwood to a peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwich so I don’t think talking about stealing slogans is that ridiculous). With its heady mix of rabbit reproduction and twisted thrill rides, it�s a place I want to be even if my mind is being screwed (as opposed to the rabbits). While you can�t help the slight feeling of being ripped off even at family friendly Chessington, there�s none of that at Oakwood. Even on a wet August Saturday with a dismal turnout, the whole place had a friendly welcoming atmosphere.
I’ll be fighting to be back early next year! It�s a fantastic place, with a couple of world class rides. I�m lovin‘ it, but not in a bunny lovin’ sense.