Xophe

Try going in October - that's when I went and the park was almost empty. All the rides were walk-ons and I even got to go on Shockwave about 5 times in the front row without getting off! Although I think that was because the Scottish October holiday isn't at the same time as the English one so there weren't any kiddies crowding the park.

Valhalla at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Because you get absolutely drenched and there are funny little animatronic vikings with glowing red eyes.

The Coney Island Cyclone, just over a week ago.... http://www.rcdb.com/ig222.htm?picture=1

My sister and I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain a few weeks ago, so here is a quick TR. We were staying in the Hilton garden inn just opposite the park so it was nice and handy, and I could see Tatsu out the window which was very exciting as I'd read all the great reviews of it. Our parents dropped us off outside the gates before the park opened so we had to stand listening to some irritating women trying unsuccessfully to get everyone to dance to the music that was blasting out over the entrance plaza in 100 degree heat. As soon as the gates opened, we rushed over to X which we had not ridden on our only other visit (2003) because the queue was over 2 hours long. Surprisingly, the ride was a walk-on so I'm glad we didn't waste our time on our last trip. It was a pretty good coaster - I liked the teasing predrop and the drop itself was a very strange sensation. The main thing I disliked was that I kept banging the backs of my legs against the edge of the seat which was quite painful. After X, we went over to Tatsu. It looks superb, towering over all the other coasters. The sign said the queue would be an hour long so we decided just to wait, but it turned out to be only about 20 mins so that was very good. The views you get from the ride are awesome - especially from the top of the lift and the egg turn. The pretzel loop was fun but I didn't find it nearly as intense as people seemed to be making it out to be. I think Goliath's helix is much more forceful. Overall the ride was good, but not as great as I thought it was going to be - to be honest I think it's a bit over-rated. Next, we walked down the hill to cyclone bay, to find out to my surprise that Deja Vu was actually open! This was very unexpected since I'd heard that it's nearly always closed. I thought it was great! It doesn't look that tall from the midway, but when you're going up that tower, getting higher and higher, it's quite nerve-racking. It goes so fast as well. The only bad point is that there's a bit of ear-bashing on the slightly violent cobra roll. I was very pleased at this point as we'd done 3 new (for us) rides in less than an hour! After that, we went back up the hill and went on Superman. This is one of my favourite rides (mainly because you get to stand in the dark and cold for a while!). It's really fun getting launched suddenly into the heat, and I realised that if you lift your feet up off the floor of the car you do actually experience quite a lot of airtime (which I didn't notice last time I rode it). By now we were far too hot so we decided to go on Tidal Wave. The ride isn't very interesting: it goes up the lift extremely slowly and I hardly got wet at all. We went and stood on the bridge after the drop instead and got soaked, although we were completely dry again in 5 mins. Since we were right beside it, we rode Riddler's Revenge which was really fun. I particularly like the banked bunny hop before the turn up into the MCBR. It's also a nice long coaster so it's not too bad waiting for it. Next, we went on Goliath which is my favourite ride at the park. It was a near walk-on as well! I love the first drop into the tunnel and the helix of doom where you get crushed into the seat and grey out. Yay! The whole ride is just really good fun. We then rode Buccaneer's Swashbuckler or whatever it's called, the swinging pirate ship ride. We were the only people on it except a group of annoying girls on the opposite side that shrieked at the top of every swing the boat made. I said 'aargh!' very quietly and pathetically at the top of one of the swings and apparantly I 'won'. The ride op seemed to have been holding some sort of contest! After that, we were again too hot so we went on Jetstream, the log flume, which had one of the longest queues of the day. It was OK but again not wet enough! Then we went up the hill again and rode Superman a few more times. We also went on Ninja. We'd ridden it last time and weren't very impressed, but this time the queue was much shorter so we rode in the front row which made the ride much more enjoyable because we could see all the stuff whizzing past. We also went up the Sky Tower which was closed last time, and got some great aerial views of the park. By this point we both had throbbing headaches and were exhausted so we walked back to the hotel to recover. Then we went to Wendy's (I wish they had these in the UK! It's my favourite fast food restaurant). A bit later, we went back to the park and rode Colossus (which is fun but quite rough), Scream (which is getting rough at the bottoms of the drops), Batman (which is awesome in the dark!), Tatsu again (which is also fun in the dark), Revolution (which is agony - on every turn my head got smashed into the stupid unnecessary OTSR's) and Goliath again (which is still great fun in the dark). The queues were much longer in the evening which was a bit disappointing since nearly all the rides were about 20 mins max waiting time during the day. Overall, we had a fantastic day. I don't understand what everyone has against this park. The theming is pretty good - areas like High Sierra Territory are quite well themed in my opinion, and there are plenty of decorative features like the big fountain, flower beds etc. The staff and guests were also perfectly nice contrary to what people say about them. I took lots of video footage at the park, and I've edited it into this 4.5-minute-long film of our day at the park. You can download it from the video forum here: * http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27402 * or alternatively, I put a lower quality version on YouTube here: * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YImesdT5_iI * Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the TR and the video!