Shockwave

Even though I have been delayed by stupid steam trains in Holland, stupid cones and stupid cars (lots of them) in England, Robb and Elissa will still be patiently waiting for when we meet up! Thanks for putting up with me! Next time I'm gonna leave 12 hours early cos I'm fed up of being screwed over just trying to get places. By the way, the journey home took half the time that it took me to get down to Chessington - that's how bad it was. :shock:

I was really suprised about the airtime on this ride, for something pretty short it's much better than the Big One at Blackpool, and that's over 50ft taller. Goliath at Walibi World is definetly the best coaster for airtime I've ever been on - until I ride Expedition GeForce!

I was sitting in a queue in roadworks for 2 hours, and no one was even working on the road! Stupid cones! When I finally got down there, I had a really good day out. Best one I've had at Thorpe. No overly long queues, coming off Tidal Wave still pretty dry, Nemesis Inferno was running well, Slammer was pretty awesome if a little uncomfortable, Rush was just ok, Vortex was better, Quantum was running a pretty crazy setting, Colossus hurt a little, but not too much, Detonator was good as always, Samurai wasn't bad at all, and Rumba Rapids was short and sweet. I'll post photos later after I finish work!

In a word, no. You could probably do the whole park in 2 hours. There's not much there at all. I wold suggest going to Loudoun Castle in Ayrshire. It's just off the A71 as you travel towards Ayr. Much better rides, and cheaper to get in. Loudoun is £10.95, M&Ds is £14.50

I didn't realise how steep that track is! :shock: Even with Vekoma's new track, I wonder how long it'll take before it gets really rough?

You used to be able to grab the plantlife underneath the last heartline roll on Colossus (Thorpe Park), but since I last went I think they've cut it back to stop people lacerating their hands on the reeds.

Woah, the hotel and the food look awesome there! But it'll be down to earth with a bump come Thursday night! Non-German Tom

I gotta protest a little here. It's true that the UK is lacking lots of wooden coasters, but the Big Dipper and the Grand National at Blackpool are both awesome rides. The Wild Mouse is the best wild mouse in the world. There's also the scenic railway at Great Yarmouth which is a barrel of laughs. Megaphobia isn't the biggest woodie. but it's much better than a lot of the bigger wooden coasters around. It's still considered one of the best in the world. As for it being a little short - just ride it again! I do agree that the Big One is rubbish. It's only worth riding for the first drop in the back seat, which is nuts. When it was built in 94, Arrow were the only people making hypercoasters, and Blackpool wanted the tallest, fastest coaster in the world. Ergo, they didn't have a lot of choice. With hindsight, maybe they should have added more airtime hills, but they were also working within the constraints of the track design, and the location. Like everything else at Blackpool, it was shoehorned in. A lot of the reason that large woodies like Colossus aren't built is down to British planning law. It's much more difficult for our parks to get huge coasters than say, the US. There's cost as well. With the exception of Tussauds and Blackpool Pleasure Beach, no park can really justify paying for a ride like that yet. The woodies in Cedar Point and Kings Island aren't supposed to be all that great (Racer and Blue Streak are expections). OF course that's open for debate, so I won't knock them till I try them. But the stories of how bad a ride Mean Streak is, how Son of Beast is even worse, how the Beast is considered overrated by a lot of people, makes me wonder - quality, not quantity. That said, the US has got Raven, Legend, Boulder Dash, Shivering Timbers, etc etc etc. Thorpe Park and wooden coaster don't really go in the same sentence. A wooden coaster wouldn't fit in well at the moment, because they're pursuing the most state-of-the-art thrills going, hence next year's Accelerator. Maybe a few years down the line when the park has developed somewhat it would be a consideration. In fact, Canda Creek would be the best place to put a woodie, but we'll just have to see how the development plan turns out. Alton Towers' woodie is on a back burner at the moment because of the aforementioned planning laws. But Flamingoland would be a good potential site for a woodie, as they have plenty of space and are theming more of the park each year.

Couldn't have picked a worse time to visit London next week! Fortunately my car will skirt the worst of the delays.

Yeah, it would take ages to fill it if it was an upcharge ride. Thorpe's 32-seater swing is free with admission, and the program on it should be extended soon, if it hasn't been done already.

Nice - The last home of upper limb freedom... Good to hear that not all the old loopers got given the mandatory shoulders restraints - how does Montezooma manage to stay clear of the jurisdiction that governs all the other looping coasters then?

Thanks for sorting the photos above, Robb. I haven't a clue what's up with them! Here's the M&Ds update. Nadia & myself had bought our tickets online to get a small discount, but the others got a huge discount because they posed as a family of four! The park isn't a theme park at all - it's just a load of fairground rides placed on asphalt! Tsunami/Vortex was broken, and could be for some time according the park staff. The Magic Carpet was out of action, as was the Bungee Ball for long periods - we did that in the end though. Tornado is the worst rollercoaster I have ever been on. It's actually on a par with Goudurix in terms of roughness, but at least the Vekoma monster had some ambition with its inversions! All this Pinfari P.O.S. has to do is two loops and one corkscrew, and a few turns. It can't even do those smoothly. The whole park was being run by a bad fairground, which is what it is to be fair. Bad queuing systems, unmarked staff, vending machines that don't work how they should, it all drove me crazy! My dying wish is that Loudoun Castle runs this place into the gound so that someone with a bit of common sense can run this excuse for a theme park, which is located on a prime site next to the motorway. Photos: Last shot of the day. And those people in that green train are doomed for the next minute or so. Chris just wanted to take that big ice cream back! Nadia & Andy get ready to be launched! This was the best ride of the day, priced at £7.50 upcharge. And worth all the whiplash... So good in fact, this kiddy ride got a 20 minute plus queue... Peter is loving it a little too much! The best working coaster in the park, and that's no lie. Lucky for us, we had Lene from Aqua to calm us down after our ordeal! No joke. This ride can damage your health. This element nearly knocked me out cold. I still can't believe I did this hunk-o-junk twice! We had to double check this height limit as we're all short! It seemed huge at the time, but after riding I can see why they have it! And here's the real killer. Not much tact being shown here! But I'm glad that this artwork is still up. Tsunami is a perfectly acceptable name for the ride, and in this day and age I'm amazed that parks have changed good names just to keep the PC brigade happy. Tsunami's name was changed to Vortex as a reaction to the big wave which wiped out a lot of the Asian coastline. Onto some coasters now. And this one is broken too! The clowns were as shocked as I with how the place was being run! Not open. This ejecto-carpet will have to wait another year... Kamikaze (Skyflyer ride) was great fun. I narrowly escaped a showering of vomit after a Greek schoolgirl threw up halfway around. U2 are now sponsoring simulators. God help us all... Why are these people looking at me? Because I (like the eejit I am) sat on the wrong side of the twist, so I ended up getting nasty bruising...oops. Andy & Nadia got pretty soaked as well - lucky for Nads, she was sporting the latest edition to my wardrobe. Peter, Chris and Bev all got rather wet! The ride has screen to stop water splashing over the side, but they actually also deflect the water back into the path of the boat! First ride of the day was the portable log flume. New York, Paris, Strathclyde Park. Why couldn't Del Boy stay in Peckham? Not a good sign when you see the van from Only Fools and Horses outside a park. Little did we know how right we were!

Argh!!! All the photos just turned to stupid red crosses!! I'll try and sort that out when I come back later and do the M&Ds section. The whole park is like a retirement home for ides on their last legs, with a few new attractions to keep upto date. So in that repsect, it's a lot like Astroworld!

I took a trip up to Scotland with a few friends last weekend. We went to Loudoun Castle on the 16th (Saturday) and M&D's on the Sunday. The short version is this - one park has a great Schwarzkopf coaster and some good little rides, the other park has the worst rollercoaster I've ever been on. Even topping Goudurix, and that's a mean feat! Loudoun Castle is first, M&Ds will follow tonight when the photos are ready. The photos tell a better story than I could, so look on and see what you think! I didn't take as many as I normally would as I was testing the new handycam this weekend. But anyhow, enjoy! Here's our group for the weekend! LTR - Andy, Nadia, Rory the park mascot, Chris (below Rory), Me and Peter. Final credit of the day was the Wacky Worm. A Pinfari Big Apple. Minus the apple. It's a looping rollercoaster, with ony a lap bar to hold you in. Haha, Californians can't do this! And, for European Tradition, they ran it without any brakes! Another cast-off. The park's Maurer Sohne Wild Mouse used to be at Dreamland. I dunno what this crazy flat ride is called, but it was serious fun! This park has such a good sense of humour, their dodgems were called French Taxis! This has gotta be the smallest swinging ship in existence! And this was awesome! Only the second lighthouse themed drop tower. And the cladding still goes higher than Flamingoland's one! At least the Inverting Pirate Ship was a bit better. ...and look what it did to my arm! Stupid friction burn! They had an old-fashioned helter-skelter... Talking of cast-offs, this strange chair swinger was at Lightwater Valley last year as the Orbiter. It's now called the Plough. You make the link with theming... Well, not quite. It's the other Silverarrow Schwarzkopf of Dreamland and Camelot Fame. It's a guest appearance from BGT's Scorpion!

If Thorpe Park is involved, of course it won't be that good! But it's still two credits more for the count! Non-German Tom certainly can show up - I just did a shift swap at work so I'll come down on the Thursday after work and meet Robb on Friday. I've still not been on Slammer or Rush so that'll be something to look forward to. They've replaced Fastrack with an upcharge Q-jump ticket. As said above You pay about £4 for the privilege of jumping the queue once. Disgusting.

The forums are running at light speed now!

^You're gonna have a lot of tour guides in the UK next year! Damn, Oh My ------- God from "City" would have been awesome set to a Vekoma ride! -Non-German Tom

Here's the latest news: http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1188265,00.html At least 33 dead, upto 1,000 injured.

Apparently several bombs have gone off in London, causing chaos in the city. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4659093.stm

When you've got back to the States, please could you change my member title to "Non-German Tom"?

Well, I gotta echo Robb on this one. I remember saying at Walibi World that Zeus was fantastic when I went on it in May, and that's some real praise coming from you guys. It's gonna take a lot to move that woodie from my No.1 spot - having said that, that four other coasters you've mentioned (which I haven't been on yet) probably would! I can't believe how quiet Parc Asterix was in your TR. Not only was it completely devoid of any other human life, but the rain probably made the rides run a little faster! Next time I go, it'll be on a weekday! 8) I'm really glad you all had such a good time in Europe, and with the exception of Gardaland (which was incredibly unfortunate) you've done everything and more, and had a damn good time doing it. I can honestly say that Walibi World was the best day I've ever had at a park, and believe me, I've had a few of those. It was a pleasure to meet you all, and to meet all the people who came out. Thankyou for sharing it with us, and roll on your next trip! -Non-German Tom

Sorry to hear you had an awful time at Gardaland, it looks like it's gone very much downhill since I went last year. I've been saying all along how rubbish the Screamin' Squirrel looks, and I can't say I'm surprised by your comments. I hope you got to ride Fuga D'Atlantide, because the park really put a lot into that ride, and it really impressed me with the airtime it gave at the back. The Intamin drop tower was also really good, especially as it takes your photo while you are dropping. I can't believe I missed out on going to Movie Studios Park! That place looks awesome! Did you get to visit the water park with the ejector slides?

That would be "The Launch", I think it's by DJ Jean. Now that I've finally got some free time, I can get back upto speed since meeting up at Walibi World last weekend. That was a great day and I'm really glad I went - it worth every penny!

It's a strange ride. One minute it's very slow and cumbersome (sp?) but the next it's flying around at the speed of light! It's also quite rough as well - it shakes quite a lot when the motors bring it to a stop. It's not half as good as the Mondial TopScan (which does a very similar action, but TopScans are a lot more forceful than this. Bling is well wotrh a ride though, it's not a bad flat ride, it just could be a lot better.

To cut a long story short, no. The rumoured Rocket Coaster has been put on hold indefinetly. Other future developments haven't been disclosed yet. Also, Coaster Force hasn't been saying that BPB might be get such a ride for several months, so don't go slandering saying that it still is. It's been talked about on the forums for a while, but that is most hearsay from the newbies who don't have a clue what they're talking about (touche!). Any rumours that went about about have been quelled because of the decision by the park's management to put the next coaster back until they are satisfied that it should go ahead, and by some exploratory work from a couple of site members.