Richard

^ now theres a frood who really knows where his towel is!

Well considering all I've been on Steel - Raging Bull back row or Oblivion, arms and legs out. Greeaaat dropping feeling, both pretty similar. I think I prefer Oblivion's though because you get that back row feeling, yet have a fantastic veiw of the whole ride and beautiful surroundings. Wood...considering I've only ever been on 2 woodies! (I know!) The Grand National. That double dip is insane, you really do fly.

I wander if the drop sensation will be much different from Oblivion or G5. I hope so, I love Oblivion.. This is probably my favourite (looking) coaster for 2005. As I said, I love Oblivion, so this is like that..plus 2 other rides. It's like 3 different rides in one! yaay...shame I'm probably never ever gonna get to ride it. I'm downloading the testing video now though...I hope I'm not dissapointed.

I've got some pictures of Rita here My Photo Album I've got more, I'll upload em tomorrow.

Theres an on-ride video here. I haven't seen it yet, I'm downloading it now. Click Here for Video I'm one of the lucky few who got to ride Rita!! I couldn't beleive I actually got to ride. It was due to luckily meeting someone very special the night before who offered me a room in the Alton Towers hotel, along with tickets to ride Rita. I managed 3 rides on it. One at the front-ish, one at the back and one in the middle. The back was the best, the air-time was...really powerful lol you get throw out of your seat. It's a shame you dont feel it for long enough though. Well firstly, we arrived at Rita with our passes from the hotel, we got to the entrance and walked straight to the station. I was there the day before when the ride was closed and..weel Ug Land rocks!! it's like my fav place now, the whole race meet idea is great and the thing that MAKES this area is the ride music, in the style of a radio similar to Tidal Wave, it has comical commentry and interviews as well, which are cool. Anyway, we got on the station and a ray of sunlight shined through the clouds onto the train (well...it wasnt that dramatic, but it did happen). Yeh anyway I was really excited and I was gazing in awe at the ride, telling myself I would FINALLY get to ride his she devil. I boarded the train and my heart was beating fast. The seats were not cramped at all, infact theres enough room for even the tallest people I know. the Ride assistants check your restraints and a straight peice of track lyes ahead of you. A voice shouts "This is the final countdown, the race is about to begin". The train edges forwards. One red light appears on the light thingy "The tension is mounting" by this time 2 lights have gone on. The train moves backwards slightly. "3". 3 lights ."2". 4 lights ."1" all the red lights are on. "go go go!!". The lights turn green, you hear your car screeching and smoke comes out the back and in an instant you fly out of the station. The force is intense! and it pushes you back, and you feel the urge to scream! And your breath is taken. You fly round the first corner and whip over the first hill, which sends you flying out your seat, the restraints really have to do their jobs. You dive back down towards Corkie's station and behind the photo booth at some serious speed and force before rising up again into another hill with a similar effect as the first. You then dive back down into the final helix, in which you get an amazing feeling of speed as the trees fly past and the wind moves your hair, this feeling lasts right into you jump up into the brakes where you get a chance to wipe your eyes and calm down. You make it round the final corner (which is taken pretty quick actually) and you hit the unload station to..unload of course. The on-ride booth is then directly opposite you. Anyway, a great addition to the park. It's fast, short and sweet. It was my first ever launch coaster, and it was an intense launch. I can't even imagine what Kingda Ka's would be like!. I'm on the right and Daniel is on the left

I love me B&Ms. I love the way they move, if that makes sense. They're really gracefull and cool looking, ok some of the new ones may be too smooth and forceless. But they are so pretty and well presented. Also the old-school B&Ms have great forcefull layouts..and that roar also!! *melts* I really do love so many things about B&M coasters. I also do love Intamin, they're way more adventurous, they take risks...buut that can lead to a crappy ride sometimes. I also dont like their OTSR (not rocket ones) like on Colossus, which are so chunky. I love some of their layous and concepts though! It actually hard to choose between the 2 companies. I'm going B&M though coz they're so perfect.. (some would say too perfect).

We arrived in the park around 10:20am, I would've liked to have gotten there early, but dad was being slow . Anyway, I came with 2 of my friends, Bethan and Loren and also my cousin, Leslie, from Singapore decided to tag along. I felt sorry for him really coz he was used to the temperture being around 30*C every single day of the year, and it was berly 8*C in Alton...He had also never ever ever been on a ride in his life, I dont even think he knew what they were, oh well! So he had an excuse to blouse out of a few rides. Firstly we went off to Spinball because we thought it would gain huge queues all day. I think this was our longest queue of being 20 minutes, which wasn't bad as the music and games kept us entertained. Leslie seemed to enjoy his ride. The ride wasn't brilliant, but wasn't bad at all. Also hearing Bethan and Loren singing on the other side of the car kept me laughing all the way round. Next we planned to go to Hex as Leslie looked cold and felt abit giddy after Spinball...buuut after walking past Oblivion and seeing there was no queue we couldn't resist having a ride. Leslie, suprisingly came into the queue line but he decided not to ride when we got to the station. All the 5 trains were running which was cool. lol Loren really panicked when we got on the ride, she'd been on it before, but she was perified. I was actually quite nervous as well, I honestly dont know why though, Oblivion just seems to scare me . Anyway, we got to the edge of the drop and Loren swore her arse off, I just looked down and felt the adrenaline go through me. We dropped and it felt amazing as usual, we hit the breaks and Loren was laughing and so was Bethan, both wanting another ride. So off to Hex we went, I told Leslie it would be warmer in there...but I lied it was still cold. The ride was running beautifully, every effect was working and Bethan, Loren and Leslie were very impressed with the presentation of the ride. After that ride I went off to see Rita, a crowd of enthusiasts were looking and talking round there, probably waiting for a test run, I couldn't be arsed to wait with them so we all headed off to Sky Ride to go ride Nemesis. The view of Rita from Sky Ride was amazing, the ride was really looking good. Loren panicked when the aky ride stopped over the valley, she swore alot of wanted to get off, we all comforted her and made her feel better, and she was laughing by the time she came off. By this time I had noticed how amazingly clean the whole park was, the new management had really done a good job. We headed for Nemesis, the ride was looking good with a newly painted station and all the blood rivers running..whch actually looked like blood insted of Ribena lol. I noticed in the queue (which was very short) that one of the trains didnt have any wheel covers and the other train didnt have any on the back row. It turns out the tech staff didn't check them properly and they fell off round the first inversion during morning testing! lol . It looked abit weird. We all rode on the back and it was a really good intense ride as usual, loved it. Leslie enjoyed it as well, which was cool. After that we went off to Air, it had a tiny tiny queue, but it wasn't moving as fast as it should because they only had 2 trains running, it was about a 10minute queue though, which was good. Leslie didn't like the lying down idea so he waited for us at the exit. The ride was runnig well, not as fast as the end of last year, but it was enjoyable. We went off and rode Nemesis on the back again and headed off to Duel. All the effects were working, it was a funny ride thanks to Bethan and Loren. Bethan won in the end. We went off to Katanga Canyon to get some munch before heading pff to The Flume. The tunnel effects wern't working though which was a huge shame as the ride was pretty boring other wise, but we had some on-ride photo fun on it. We then did another circuit of the park, getting a re-rides on Oblivion, seeing Rita testing! And more rides on Nemesis, Air, Rapids, Runawaymine Train and The Flume. After that dad called me to tell me he'd be late picking me up, he would be abuot an hour late, we were all tired so Bethan Loren and Leslie went to the play-area near Spinball and I went off to see if I could get some better pictures of Rita tesing, I got to speak to some builders about the ride, but I didn't get to see it testing again. So I met up with the others in he play-area to play with the worm before heading to the hotel to get some more food and a few games on the arcades....Loren is a dance machine queen!!! I've never seen anyone move so fast on those machines. Anyway, it was a great day, great atmosphere, great weather, great rides, very very clean, Rita is looking great and all the staff were helpful and happy. Photos - Click HERE

I think Robb was commenting on the first video that was put up, the one you saw with the views from the sky ride was filmed and put up on saturday. It isn't brilliantly done, but it does it's job of showing you Rita is action. Anyway, I can't wait to ride! I got to see it testing, which was cool, the ride is actually really quiet.

I think Silver Bullet has an amazing looking layout. Six inversions, groovy corners and tight helixes with no MCBR. I thought this would be B&M's come back! What happened? I don't understand. I haven't ridden it, but I get the idea from the reviews I've read. I just keep thinking, if this ride was built at the same time as all the old school B&Ms (Batman, Nemesis, Kumba, DD etc) would it be anymore intense. I've spoken to loads of non-enthusiasts who enjoy riding coasters and infact most of them think Air is amazing, a lot of them even consider it their favourite coaster. I really do like Air though, if the single rider queue is working it's great for re-rides, and it's actually sped up LOADS since it opened in 2002, I think they've stopped using those useless trim brakes now. I love the feeling of flying so close to the ground. I actually found S:UF in SFGAm so boring after the prezal loop, and the area had no atmosphere and there was quite abit of vibration at the bottom of the first drop, but I probably just got it on a bad day.

I rode Air 19 times in a day once, which is pretty good considering how ridiculus the queues can get! It started hurting my neck after 9 times though and at around my 11 times some stupid ride op (the other one had gone to lunch) banned me from using the single rider queue because she did beleive there was such thing as a single rider queue, and I was some teenage queue skipper!!! But the other dude came back so I could finish off my riding. Yeh, it was a good way to cheer me up as I had just split up with my hoyfriend teh day before.