MattC

Knex coasters have the tendancy to go quite fast don't they? You'll wanna make sure it goes slow enough to give it time to rotate at a sensible speed me thinks.

West Midlands Safari Park Trip Report Post Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 20:08 I headed down to WMSP with my cousin and sister, as well as my mum and auntie. The first ride we headed for was Black Fly. I've no idea what ride this is, I'm presuming it's Vekoma or Intamin but essentially, it's a pendulum while a spinning disc at the centre. It's like Maelstrom at Drayton, except it's smaller and the seats are facing inwards. I was dreading this as I don't usually like flats and I tend to get slightly motion sick from spinning things. Despite all of this I had promised myself to try it. I loved it. The feeling was similar to a pirate ship and the Gs at the bottom of the swing as epic. I came off feeling slightly sick but went around for another go After a second go we headed up to the Swinging Chairs ride. Obviously one for the younger folk, offering very little excitement. Then we headed to The Tarantula. It was a scrambler but on arms that lifted you towards the sky for quite minimal air time and nowhere near as fast as it's fairground cousins. Then we meandered over towards the ghost train. It was very below average, and I'm sure H&S wouldn't be too happy with all the bars within arms reach that you could shove your hand in. After that we headed to the HUSS pirate ship next door. It was alright at best, nothing too good and offering OK airtime at the very back rows. Then we headed to the Log Flume. A travelling model, built permenantly it was quite good especially when you pushed all the weight in the boat to the front for the final drop After a go on that we walked over towards the Wall's Twister ride. Built by a company called Reverchon I wasn't expecting much but it fulfilled my roller coaster cravings for the moment. Then we headed to the rapids, also a travelling model that had been permenantly installed. We go soaked on them and we're very pleased with the outcome from them After that we got some average food before heading back to the pirate ship for another go. Following that we went back on the log flume. We noted how much the queues had grown although it only meant a 5 minute wait for the log flume. After that we went to try the Rhino Rollercoaster. A Vekome Junior Rollercoaster it was OK but was really a junior rollercoaster. We then headed back for another few cycles on Black Fly. One thing that was obvious was that as it warmed up it got a lot better. It felt a lot more intense and they also made the cycle longer with a spin direction change midway through the ride. My cousin and sister had 3 straight times on the ride whereas I hopped off for the 2nd and came back on for the 3rd as I probably would've been sick. Overall, very fun day especially for such a small park. Just before I go just a word on the new attraction. 'Shark Island' is currently in the form of a concrete section, and looks to be ready for the installation of the ride. It bears the notice 'coming soon' so I wouldn't hope for it this year. Also a note on the price. It was a joke as if you wanted to visit the fair part you had to pay full entry. As my auntie and mum tagged along too it ended up costing as much as all of us to go to Alton Towers. An absolute joke in my opinion and they should seriously look into making it so there is a car park for people who just want to visit the fair so they only have to pay for wristbands. Anyway, the ride count Black fly x4 Pirate Ship x 2 Ghost Train x 1 Chair Swings x 1 The Tarantula x 1 Log Flume x 1 Rhino Rollercoaster x 1 Wall's Twister Ride x 1 River Rapids x 1

I find the best technique is if I'm scared is to adopt a kamikaze approach. I just don't give myself a chance to be worried by watching the coaster go round and round. I find that's the worst thing for me. I just line up and talk for the whole line. Makes time pass real quick.

Considering the red side is supposed to be more family orientated (or has that changed now) it's very long :S

It's very early and I highly doubt it but could this be being sent to Alton Towers for their 2010 coaster? It's unlikely but that's the only possibility I can think of.

28th May Speed at Oakwood

I took a surprise trip to a park that I thought I'd never have a chance to get to. I've been down in Wales for the past week with a friend who loathes rollercoasters. To my surprise he suggested we took a trip down, as he knew I loved rollercoasters. Pretty good friend I'd say. Anyway after the hours drive from Aberystwyth, we arrived at a miniscule car park in comparison to the usual view of AT mammouth lot. We entered the park and began browsing the rides. My friend told he he'd been on a standing pirate ship, so he thought a sitting one would be no sweat. Even though we sat on the row closest to the centre, he nearly ended up bringing up the sandwich he'd eaten just before. That kind of set the tone for the rides he was prepared to go on. After this we went on Snake River Falls, which my friend ended up chickening out of After this I managed to blag a ride on Megafobia while they rode Spooky 3D. On a leaflet I picked up prior to visiting Oakwood it branded Megafobia as 'one of the best rollercoasters in the world'. This lead me to be expecting great things from it. It was ok, the first drop felt good, but although I haven't rode many woodies, I found it quite rough. It was a good coaster, but it must be one of the worst, best rollercoasters. Although I didn't ride Spooky 3D, from what my friend told me, it was one of the worst rides he had ever ridden. He thought that at least, the glasses would be glasses, but no you had to hold them up to your eyes. As well as this he didn't see the need for the 3D glasses, as there were no visible effects. He queued for 20 minutes to be very disappointed, and this made him avoid rides at Oakwood that were 'themed' just because of Spooky 3D. He said 'it should be torn down, a burning car wreck would be more fun than that'. I think that pretty much sums up his opinion. Next, my friends dad, who was with us, plucked up the courage and rode 'The Bounce'. Apparently it's 'the first shot and drop tower in the UK' and you could tell. The speed on the launch was pretty shocking as it was very gradual. He enjoyed the ride even though it did appear that he let bodily fluids into his underwear during the ride. As we were looking at finishing up, I made sure that I was going to get on Speed. Although I didn't mention it earlier in the TR, I had queued for Speed but it had broken down, only to restart 2 minutes after I left the queue. I was adamant I was going to get on a Eurofighter as I didn't know when I would next get a chance to ride one. I was positively pooing my pants in the queue but new I would love it. As I sat down I began questioning my reasoning for wanting to ride. As we began the incline up the vertical hill, those thoughts began to scream out in my head. As we dropped, I wouldn't have known it was more than vertical. Then came the best part of the ride by far. The airtime hill after the drop definately provided airtime. I was out of my seat for what felt like an age before heading into the overbanked turn. THere was some hangtime on the loop which was good. The barrel roll was also very fun and I felt my head being pulled to the floor in the final helix. I loved how intense the whole ride was, and couldn't believe the airtime hill. Overall it was a very fun day even though the ride count was tiny. Hi's Speed Lo's Queue for Speed Lack of rides Very few credits D:

It already has rolled back, someone posted a video on here a couple of pages back.

^ He* really wasn't. Genuinely thought he'd ridden it when it used to go 60mph all the way around.

It's not a full launch coaster. It has a chain lift hill at the beginning with a supposed backward launch and 2 thirds of the way through.

One of my friends told me that the Squirrel Nutty ride at Alton Towers used to go as fast as Rita but they had to slow it down so it didn't compete with Rita. FYI This is Squirrel Nutty

^ It's a coaster on RCT3 that is like a Eurofighter but has a drop of 270 degrees. It's basically a eurofigher with a really ridiculous drop.

It's an American thing?!

They have the Sweeney Todd thing too, aswell as the drop tower.

^ I need to get more on the ball, I didn't even notice the link

I was gonna say when I first saw the topic title, your about 20 years late arent you? Theme parks are gonna capitalise on any oppourtunity where they can make a little more money.

Great park but what makes it better is the quality of the screen shots. What settings do you have it on?

But it doesn't make sense. Greggs is a bakers in the UK not a name I'm sad. I'm confused. What makes my post, post of the week anyway? I'm confused

Robb why do you spell you name with 2 Bs, I'm wondering because all the Rob's I know spell their names with 1 B

Seeing this makes me wanna get NoLimits so much now Good job man.

I don't feel it made that much of a difference, as all of the rides had a consistently long queue. Some rides looked like they had long queues i.e. big dipper, but thanks to the ride ops the queue moved really fast. Another thing I did notice was lots of queue jumping, mainly from Chavs.

The trip looks fun, good to see you had a nice time. Your Titan on ride photo makes me chuckle

Not sure how many of you are interested in this particular park, but I figured I'd make my first worthy contribution to this site with a big, juicy trip report Today my family and me headed down to Blackpool for a nice little day out. It was a little blustery out, with the odd bit of drizzle but you wouldn't have known it with the amount of people at BPB. We arrived at around 12 noon, and began browsing the queues immediately. Queues in what appeared to be excess of an hour and a half for Valhalla indicated that this was going to be a very busy day. Our first ride was Derby Racer, as we noticed it had a very small queue. Quite thrilling for what it is, but not exactly great. The second ride was a biggy for me. I'd never ridden PMBO before, but I was determined to get on it, before the credit crunch bits on BPB. Our train was stopped halfway up the hill, whilst they carried on a 'routine' safety check on the wheels of the train on the end break run. After around 5 minutes, our ride resumed. Going over the drop was a great feeling, and something I'll never forget. I know this ride gets criticised a lot for being a mediocre hyper coaster, but I don't have anything else to compare it to. After that it was around 2:30pm (prior PMBO we spent a lot of time dawdling deciding which ride to go on) so we decided to go and have some lunch. We picked the little row of fast food bars beside Infusion (which I sadly didn't get on although I've ridden it before). I don't know whether it was the timing or the location but it took just under 45 minutes to get 3 portions of chips and 2 hot dogs. The food was alright, but what angered me more was the fact that they had 3 or 4 staff standing behind one of the bars, opening buns very slowly, the next adding the sausage etc. Customer satisfaction obviously wasn't on the forefront of these staff member's minds. After lunch we headed over to Grand National. It had opened late, although I'm not sure why, I did see the trains stuck on the lift hill with no one on them. It was roughly a half an hour queue, which was alright but I would've rather waited a little less time. One thing that did annoy me was that how long it took to load and send off a train. The people sat in the cars for 2 or 3 minutes while the staff stood there handing people bags from the shelves. Surely they could be sending off the trains that are waiting? Next we decided to have a wander and see which rides had short queue. We approached Big Dipper and Infusion, only to see that Infusion had a (guesstimation) line of 1 and half hours. Whilst the ride's fun, I'd rather not wait that long. So of course, we headed to Big Dipper. The queue was 10 minutes which I felt was very reasonable, as I also got the front seat . I'd forgotten how much I like this ride, and the small pops of airtime it offers (something which I felt PMBO lacked). After doing all the woodies we could, we headed for Steeplechase, for new credit #2. This ride is very quirky, but the quirkiness is matched by the roughness. My hips were aching quite a bit after getting off this ride, although I did enjoy it. Something to note after leaving Steeplechase, Iron Bru was broken down, and the car was on the opposite side to the station. This was around 4:30pm, although I believe it was up and running again within the hour. The second to last ride of the day was a complete waste of time. In a complete vain and naive attempt to try and replace Valhalla, we rode...River Caves. The queue looked a lot shorter than it was. At first glimpse it appeared to be around 5, 10 minutes maximum. We ended up waiting 20 minutes, and I swear I fell asleep listening to that bloke rambling on about the beginning of time in some love tunnels or something. I'm surprised no-body has committed suicide on this ride, because the theming and music is very depressing. We also had to queue for the last drop. Yes we had to queue in the boats, to go down this measly drop which gets you as wet as a lemon wipe from a restaurant. As we were leaving, we meandered past the wild mouse. I love this ride and hadn't had a chance to ride it today, due to the massive queue it had. Due to it being so late in the day (5:30pm) the queue was around 20 minutes. I was more than happy to hop into the queue, to get my fill of airtime and out of control danger Overall a fantastic day was had by all, and there is no sign of BPB going down the pan yet. The credit crunch hadn't put a stop to the religious outings of the many locals and foreingers a like. The queues were frustrating, but I felt we got on enough rides to allow me to have my fill till I go to Florida in the Summer (and Alton Towers before then). Apologies about the lack of photos, but my mobile doesn't take good quality pictures and I don't have a digital camera.

I'm someone that goes 'wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo' until I run out of breath, then when I catch my breath I go 'yeahhh' and that pattern repeats itself

It most certainly is. Great video, the music suits the ride so well.