Ben

Herewards be videos and photos from the trip: Dusseldorf Kermis: http://ben.someaddress.net/stuff/dusskermis06.wmv Phantasialand: http://ben.someaddress.net/stuff/phantasialand.wmv (Achtung Baby! There's naughty words on the soundtrack!) Enjoy Spinning Racers. A Maurer Sohne spinning coaster. All round good fun. High Energy - Zierer Starshape. A cross between a Mondial Top Scan and a Mondial Ultra Max. All round Mondial-Hybrid without actually being Mondial. Mondial Madness! Huss Frisbee Power Tower 2, it's Tower of Terror in disguise. Shhh. Two of the others in our group managed to get cars, whilst we failed. The sign alone beats any other fair I've ever been to, for quality. Eurostar. This travels?!?! Airwolf. A Top Scan on steroids. Shake, operated by the most awesome guy ever Giant Giant GIANT Wheel Alpina Bahn, a Schwarzkopf classic A final shot from the huge road bridge beside the fair Up the lift hill. The building you go through is probably the only disappointing part of this ride where theming is concerned. It looks a bit unfinished with bare concrete and just a couple of plastic bones for theming. Black Mamba's rather lovely drop Black Mamba's second, or is it fourth, or is it...erm, it's some inversion along the line. I lost count. Black Mamba, from the Condor River Quest Mystery Castle to the left. Mystery River Quest element to the right. Nice little family boa...argh, Monster! View of the Hotel PhantASIA swimming pool and generally awesome theming all round, from one of our balconies. Hotel PhantASIA Fo Shizzle My Pand-izzle I have no idea what it was called, but it was a fun little ride and great for catching some photos of Wuze Town and Winjas. Winjas! Amazing little duelling Maurer spinners with some awesome trick-track sections. Colorado Adventure, The Michael Jackson Thrill Ride

You won't as a school group, but if you were going seperately you could complain that as they are showing Stealth adverts on TV even more than before now, while it's actually unavailable, and seeing that advert and coming to ride Stealth was your main reason for visiting, Guest Services would probably sort you out with exit passes, or free tickets if you were really lucky.

lol at the difference in Topic Views between this and all the others!

Driving on the 'wrong' side of the road is bad, but driving on the 'wrong' side of the road on the M6? Ouch. It was bad enough for me driving it for six hours on the 'right' side. Nasty bit of road. Hope you're having a good time over here, PBB is an awesome park.

He's likely to get that a few times tomorrow. Thorpe has a fair few enthusiasty staff members.

Ah, sorry about that. Having them on one site was an attempt to try and combat the different types of BBCode that different forums use. So going around posting the report over and over on phpBB, Invision, vBulletin etc... usually took ages because of different codes for images. Although I think they try and make themselves more compatible with each other now. I haven't tried in a while. Either way yeah, I'll bear it in mind in future There are a lot of rumours about Bling at the moment. I have heard that it is down a lot, and one rumour (although lots of people are obviously sceptical) is that it will leave next year. On the day it was open two of the pods were out of action because one was having restraint problems and so another had to be taken out in order to balance the cross correctly. Either way, if its closed you would be better off heading to Fantasy Island and trying out their Top Scan "The Beast". It's name is supposed to be very fitting.

A trip report from the European Coaster Club's 8th White Knuckle Weekend can be found in this general direction: http://ben.someaddress.net/parks/reports.php?subaction=showfull&id=1120604614&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&

Front Row of Colossus at Thorpe Park on Saturday morning.

I loves my iBook

*Cries* It was supposed to be open at the staff social on Tuesday night, but is still down so we had to settle for Vortex and Nemesis Inferno. I'll have been trained how to attend on it before I've actually ridden the flipping thing (Ha, flipping thing...get it, cos' it fli...erm, yeah) at this rate. *Cries more*

Mini DV actually records to tape where as that is saving the footage you record as MPEG video and storing it to a hard-drive built into your camera. When going for camcorders, in my opinion, the best two options are Sony and Canon. With Sony you get the long history of camcorders, they are a good brand and have been doing them for a long time, plus generally have the best features for their price ranges - such as nightvision, image stabiliser, touchscreen LCD, memory stick image storage. With Canon the camcorders are cheaper and you get the benefit of a company with good photographic history, and as such you'll get top quality lenses, although the Carl Zeiss lenses on the Sony models certainly aren't bad! The best choice really is MiniDV. I'd say stay away from Digital8, they're just really an attempt to get people who previously owned Hi8 camcorders to switch to digital - as D8 camcorders can play Hi8 tapes, which means you can transfer Hi8 footage to your PC via Firewire. MicroMV is alright, but the tapes are limited to 60 minutes in any mode I believe (MiniDV can go up to 120mins in SQ Mode) and you are paying for the gimmick of a small camcorder, whereas similarly priced MiniDV models would give you more features. The DVD ones again are just Sony's way of trying to widen the market and target people who think that digital camcorders are too much hassle or don't really have much techy knowledge so want something they can just take out of their camcorder and stick straight into a DVD player, and so they are very basic. So if your still awake after that, and in the event you plan on taking your JVC one back for a refund. A Sony or Canon MiniDV camcorder is your best bet.

Kind of halfway between Southampton and London in the UK. Local major park (as opposed to Paultons Park which nobody has heard of) is either Thorpe Park or Legoland Windsor.

I can drive now, so all over the UK as well as hopefully the ECC Dutch trip to Walibi World (Ex-SFH:Holland), Efteling and Toverland. God knows where else.

Flying Fish at Thorpe Park

X:/ No Way Out for me. Although darkness is the theme, so they did sort of get it 100% spot on.