Fallen Heretic

Awwww....thats quite cute. When they go on sale I should pick one up at some point as a little desk ornament.

I just had a not-very-pleasant experience with webuyanycar.com Now, Its a great idea. Last car we sold there, all was fine, the guy at the local branch was friendly and fair, and gave us as decent a price as could be expected from a 'come and sell your car in ten minutes flat' type organisation. When I went today? That nice chap wasnt there. Some other nugget was. This other guy was a 'typical' second hand car salesman. Like the ones from the cartoons. He had a really fake, untrustworthy feeling, sleazy kind of 'friendly personality' and way too much hair product on his slimey looking head. I got the distinct feeling he was probably a sleaqze to women as well. You do have to expect that when selling a car to a 'trade professional' from time to time. But this was something else. If I didnt care about being arrested, I would have smacked him just for the pleasure of it. He was that awful. And then he offeres a price way below what I was expecting. And thats bottom rung expecting, not hoping. Like hundreds less that the evaluation that the company gave me. I talked him up a few hundred, but then he started pulling one of my pet hates. The favour tactic. This is where they take alot away with one hand, and give a tiny amount back with the other, acting as though they are doing you a favour. Lots of things like "No-one pays the ticket price when they buy a car, and thats all Im doing now". And "Well, i know its lower than you wanted, but what I will do is add on £30 so you dont have to cover the Chaps charge to get you the money tomorrow." Or the best one "I will give you £1700 but I will only put £1650 in your bank because you can get the other £50 from claiming your tax disc." Now that last one is REALLY cheeky. Some second hand dealers do keep the tax disc and claim it themselves, others give it to you, but Ive never seen one take the money for it off their offer price. I had to mentally restrain myself from hitting him just for that. And Im not normaly a violent man. Im almost surprised he didnt also try to take off money that the insurance company owes me. If I wasnt needing to do a fast on-the-day sale, then I would have just got up and left. Maybe thats the price I pay for the convenience. They bank on people needing to sell quickly. They try to get you to feel that you want to sell it more than they want to buy it. And that puts the power in their hands. Even though the first car we sold to them all went well and was quite easy and pleasant, This experience just about put me off the company all together. I dont know who trains second hand car dealers to be like that, but damn, they need to be hurt. Do you think they have a special class in the training program which teaches them how to over-use hair gel?

My mums name is Isabella. Shes not that fond of it. The popular baby names in Scotland are really normal in comparison. Jack and Sophie. You do get alot of 'Chav chic' names around here though. Maybe it should be Ned chic in Scotland. I knew a girl at school called Senga Blade. Honestly. Its common to hear some overweight, badly dressed woman, with bad skin smelling of smoke, shouting "Haw, Chantelle, git yer bum o'or here!", or "Pit that doon, Chardonnay!". It sounds so very wrong. And while Im at it, whats with the trend of sensitive vampires since that Buffy show? Vampires are meant to be scheming killers, hunters of humans. Vampires falling for human girls and turning good? Being all angsty and emo? What the hell? Thats not how it goes. That does for Vampires what Alien v Predator did for the Xenomorph. i.e. a tremendous diservice! Anyway...yeah, some parents give kids really silly names these days. I read in a newspaper that some woman named her kid Pikachu.

When it was in glasgow, there were differences between the alien they are using and the one in the film, but its similar enough that in the dark with flashing lights, you don't really notice that its not a xenomorph unless you get very close. It wont be colonial marines, but instead some other organisation with guns and flak jackets. But not from the 20th century fox movie of which they dont have the rights at the moment. If you catch the drift. The show actually could run very well in glasgow with minimal staff, to the point you never really knew just how many people were working it. And they sometimes put on special, extra-scary shows for repeat visitors or special groups.

Its not like me to revive an old dead thread like this, but its relevant, promise! Alien War had a run in liverpool which was rather short lived. The good news is it has a new location. Golden mile centre in blackpool. Right on central prom. Its now called Alien Attack and is expected to open this month. The live website should be opening soon as well. Anyone here on the UK trip while its open might like to give it a go.

Im tremendously sorry I missed Steve going through the Dungeon. Steve in a scary place is like the funnest thing ever.

This is so true. If your looking for someone to 'make you happy' you probably wont find it. Your partner is not someone who makes you happy, your partner is someone who you can share your own happiness with. Happiness comes from within. As my mum always said, you cant really love anyone if you dont love yourself first.

TPR is a constant education.

Your on hold with a call centre for 45 minutes...every two minutes you get the "your call is important to us". Between which they play the same two minute section of the same crappy elevator music. You dont even get a whole tune out of it. Then there is a click. Silence. You heart rises as you think your finally getting through. There is no voice. There is nothing, not even Zuul. Disconnected. Dammit! Its an important call. Something urgent has come up and it needs dealt with. You call back immediately. The call centre is now closed. It may not be wise to teach me how to use a gun.

Whatever happened to white dog poo? Used to see it all the time as a kid. Now its all just poo coloured. What changed in the last 20 years? Better dog food?

First time back on TPR for ages, and I just wanna say first that some people need to get out to the bar more. Anyway... Incidents are always unfortunate, but Im really impressed actually. A failure like that on a ride with those speeds and forces, with a safe stop, no real derailment and no proper injuries? Says good things about the safety of the ride in my opinion.

That Fear maze sounds brilliant. I didnt make it to Orlando this time, but I had heard about those and was going to go as an extention to the main trip. I love the Silent Hill games. Im also pretty imune to the conga line scares at the big events. So I love these smaller events which have a more personal feel. Works much better. There are quite a few small independant scare attractions popping up in the UK this season, seems to be getting more popular here. A good thing I reckon.

This is idiotic, and at the time was also hilarious. So Im at M&Ds near Glasgow. We had just climbed into Tornado as one of us didnt have this particular credit (which was spawned from the depths of hell). Ok the ride isnt quite that bad, but it is pretty awful. Very uncomfortable. Its a Pinfari death machine. To put this in perspective, be aware that there have been several ratchet failures on badly maintained pinfari trains. We pull the OTSRs down, and we clip the seatbelts to the bottom of them. I Notice Steves belt (he is sitting beside me) is looking very loose. "you want to tighten that up, mate." I say to him. He proceeds to attemp just this, pulling on the strap to find the part which adjusts. He keeps pulling til he has the other loose end in his hand. Thats right. The other end of the belt wasnt attached to anything. After an initial outburst of hilarity, we call the ride op to draw attention to the fact. He comes over and we all have a good laugh about it. Probably very inappropriate considering its a huge safety violation. There is even a photo somewhere (where is it steve?) of the ride op posing with the loose belt held up in his hands. What I expected to happen next was for the restraints to be unlocked, and Steve to get out and wait for the next train. But oh-no. No sir. this is Glasgow you see, and that wouldnt be the glasgow way. This is the idiotic bit. The ride op reaches down between Steves legs and finds a strut under the seat. He then proceeds to tie the loose end to the strut with a knot. "Dont worry, if you fall out it will be quick, you wont feel a thing." he says to Steve, then sends the train on its way. We survived of course (only just), but that was probably one of the scariest rides poor Steve ever had. We can look back and laugh now, but it really was quite dumb.

^^ I think thats exactly the sort of thing that isnt really in the spirit of what this thread was meant to be. They probably, like all textbooks do, just used a random picture of a rollercoaster to illustrate a physics problem, enabling the student to better visualise whats going on. I dont see anything weird about it. The values and details would be changed to make the mathematics a little bit simpler I imagine. On the subject of weird things said, someone told me just today that Tornado at M&Ds (in Scotland) is an awesome ride. Now that in itself is really messed up. If youve ridden it, you will know. Everyone Ive spoken to, even non-coaster literate folks, hate it. They only ride it cos its the biggest one within easy reach. Its either that or they are just be drunk.

The 4th is when I was last there (on honeymoon, so only spent half the day in the park)! Off topic, but when I was eating lunch, I saw some guys in the river caves had slowed their boat mid-ride so their friends in the next one caught up, and were transfering people from one boat to the next, for fun. Really dumb thing to do I think, but apparently its quite popular with some people in the UK enthusiast groups. Ok, back on topic... They have been running Rollercoaster whenever either the Dipper or Nash has been down this season. Gold Mine I think is having a big refurb, but it has been running this year. We all know Ark and TT are having renovations too. As for the accident, Im keeping an eye on the HSE site to see if they release any results of the investigation. I assume since its a public body carrying out an investigation for the interest of public safety, the report will be made public too. Unless any criminal charges are brough, which I hope doesnt have to be the case.

Has anyone noticed if the Deo they have in the stations are all the same brand? Or are there small brand markings in the corner of the signs? They might just be stealth (not the ride) sponsorship. Like some Malls are doing now with hand sanitisers. What if someone doesnt have BO, but is just wearing Sex Panther instead? can you get escorted off for that too?

Yeah, but trying to look on a positive side, at least it means they will likely run Rollercoaster regularly until things are sorted..

Im much more interested in Hydrogen cells, rather than hybrids. I think the issue with hybrids is that if you drive them any way other than super-eco, then they really arent that much more efficient than a regular petrol engine. Mostly it seems down to them often having smaller engines, so you really have to work it hard on a motorway, which ends up using more fuel than a bigger engine going the same speed. I really dont have much faith in hybrids. And battery powered cars will always struggle with range, even though they are now capable of the performance. In the future though, I just know Im going to miss the noise of going through a tunnel at 8k revs.

It could be just as simple as a loose peice of wood or nail causing the train to slow just enough to get stuck. Right now we just dont know. All I know is they were paying alot of attention to the track at the bottom of that dip a week ago. There are two issues they need to sort out really. First one is how did the train stop out on the track in the first place. The second (and most serious) is how was the second train allowed to get onto the out and back when the other train wasnt on the way back? The second issue screams human error to me. The first could easily be a mechanical issue.

Wow, hope everyone recovers quickly. There are two sets of brakes in the station, and the dual lift chain effectively makes another two brakes. But once a train leaves the lift hill, there are no brakes till it reaches the unload area. If a car binds or stops some way out on the track, there is nothing the ops can can do about it if the other train is already off the lift. There is an alarm that sounds to alert the ops that a train is approaching the first set of brakes. However, they usually release the train thats in the station before the second one arrives. You then hear it go down the first drop above you as the second train moves the the loading station. Occationaly you hear the second train go off the drop just as the first one arrives at the first breaks, which I always thought was cutting it a bit close. I imagine that if they had realised the first train was stuck, they could have stopped the second train on the lift, but I dont think they would have any way of knowing it was still out there. Probably only realised the alarm didnt go off until after the second train had left the lift. If that makes sense. Looks like the crash may have happened near the turning drop at the big blue, as one train is on the crest, the other at the bottom of the dip. When I was at big Blue on the 2nd and 3rd, every morning the track walkers woke me up hammering on the track right at the bottom of that curve. they seemed to spend a good while there. Maybe they were having problems with it? I didnt see if they were working on the crest as well. On a rather off topic note, on the same trip, Jen caught a picture which looks like it shows something falling off the Big One train as it passed the MCBR. I think it was something on the track, but she thinks it was from the train. She says it fell and bounced on the grass, too solid to be a bird or something.

Its great being a guy. All those important thoughts and brain functions completely disappear when the 'special little appendage' takes notice of something. Looks like a fun movie.

Wow, looks like I missed a good one. Im jealous of you all. I bet you missed random dancing though. Actually, I am very impressed with the sheer amount of sweat in the beer update.

As I understand it from a previous post, the MAPO overide has to be held in order to move. Perhaps the reason the guy didnt reverse is because he saw the other train comming late, and in his rush to react, forgot to hold down the overide? As well as looking weak, the shape of the front of the monorails doesnt help. It encourages one to ride up the nose of the other and come through the windscreen. Another thing to remember is monorails are big and heavy. Even at 15mph, they are going to put alot of force into a collision.

Thought and prayers to the poor driver and his family. Does anyone know if there is any physical impact safety feratures on the monorails? Looks like the whole cab became the crumple zone, leading me to think that it doesnt have any deformation zones or safety cells built into it. Perhaps everyone figured with the safety systems that none would ever be needed. Thats the thing with these systems though. Any safety system, whether its a human watching a screen or completely automatic, can go wrong for many reasons. Whether its component failure, bugs in the system which hadnt been picked up, someone not paying attention, or even just a peculiar situation that the system wasnt designed to handle. More usualy, its a combination of several factors.

Blackpool Pleasure beach, in a months time. Its the honeymoon. My sister bought it for us. I thought Eurodisney (still cant get out of the habit of calling it that) might be more romantic, but we only have two days to spend on Honeymoon before I go back to work, so Blackpool it is.