milst1 Posted April 14, 2010 Share Posted April 14, 2010 (edited) I'd rather do a crappy Photo TR than work on grading or making up an exam (that's due tomorrow). This past weekend, Cheryl, Leon (from TPR's Tokyo 2008 Tour), and I flew from AMS to BHX and had some great weather, though it was a bit chilly in the mornings. As we found out today, one of the parks we visited is now closed(!), and Alton Towers, our first park, has had two power outages since we visited! Weird. Anyway, enjoy while we whore our way across northern England! On the way to Alton Towers, guy in van basically runs me off the road! Tire hits rock, ack! Driving on the wrong side of the road with the steering wheel and stick shift on the wrong side of the car is hard! Hertz sends new tire directly to Alton Towers parking lot. Yay! Sonic Spinball, first credit. In case you don't have a dictionary handy... 2nd credit: Oblivion, first dive coaster evah. Third credit! I purposely didn't read anything about it, so I was pleasantly surprised, but I have been led to believe that there are additional effects that were not running. Fourth credit, my new favorite B&M inverted. Nemesis has some pretty cool and unusual theming. Credit Five: Rita, an Intamin launch. Credit Six: Air, the first B&M flying coaster Credit 7: Beastie, a Pinfari dragon Next park: Camelot! Leon counts off this older Maurer Sohne spinner, a surprise favorite of the trip. It looks like I was preparing to eat my air guitar. Credit 9: Knightmare, crazy Schwarzkopf. Credit 10: First of many Pinfari wacky worms Then after finding that Gulliver's doesn't allow adults without kids, we drove all the way up to Lightwater Valley so that Leon could ride "The Ultimate". This insane monstrosity has to be ridden to be believed. It really is a white knuckle ride. And, btw, new Raptor theming on old Sewer Rat coaster is cool. Do remember to brace yourself for final brake run. Third park was Pleasure Island. This was Sunday morning. Just found out that the park did not re-open on Wednesday...closed down!!!!! Cheryl and Leon count Credit 11: A Vekoma junior. Our first skyscraper. And no upcharge! Credit 12: A Vekoma Boomerang. Not so much fun after skyscraper. Incidentally, the new dark ride at PI was pretty cool. Hopefully will reopen soon! Next park, Fantasy Island in Ingoldmells. Sorry for the crappy photos. We couldn't recharge our camera batteries because of our stupid UK adapter, which was unusable with the camera battery charger. Credit 13: Fantasy Mouse, a Reverchon spinning mouse. The original Millennium coaster (1999) was a surprisingly smooth Vekoma sitdown steel looper. Now we're at Botton's Pleasure Beach in Skegness. Credit 15: a spinning mouse Credit 16: Another Big Apple/Wacky Worm Credit 17: A Pinfari family inverted. You should have heard the groan when the op started us on a 4th circuit. Credit 18: A seriously crappy little family mine coaster. This is some serious whoring. Coming up soon: Drayton Manor! Edited April 19, 2010 by milst1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larrygator Posted April 15, 2010 Share Posted April 15, 2010 Wow, you sure did break a lot of stuff during your trip to the UK! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragon2000 Posted April 15, 2010 Share Posted April 15, 2010 Nice tour! Loved your report & looking at your photos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milst1 Posted April 19, 2010 Author Share Posted April 19, 2010 Wow, I missed the follow-up comments...thanks for checking out the report! Â We also broke UK airspace. We left on Monday and I think all flights had ceased by Wednesday/Thursday? Good news is that Amsterdam let three flights out tonight so I might get home on Thursday. Â Anywho, on with the rest of the pics! Last day, Drayton Manor! G Force is a Maurer-Sohne X-Coaster with a really long and slow queue. Troublesome Trucks is a Gerstlauer junior coaster in the Thomas Town themed area. The Shockwave is an Intamin stand-up that looks like a B&M standup because B&M did it while they were working for Intamin. Last park of the trip: West Midland Safari & Leisure Park. First you pay a lot to get in and do the safari drive-through, then you have to pay more to ride the rides! We saw furries eating children, and statuary eating adults. Not sure if there was an extra charge for this. Giant croc inflatable! Unfortunately, we only got one coaster photo of the three credits here. Gorgeous park, but the ops were notably bad. The Wacky Worm hadn't stationed correctly, so when the new op came on, he managed to valley the train when he put the brakes on! Valley'd a wacky worm big apple!!! Thanks to the slow ops, we had to miss this dark ride. We had to floor it back to BHX, especially considering that we hit traffic. Thank you, Garmin GPS unit. Rhino coaster was number 24!!!! Very cool trip. Currently we're planning a mini-Scandi tour for next month. Stay tuned and thanks for visiting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 Wow you were extremely lucky with the timing of your trip! Well done for getting lots of credits in!  With regards to Cleethorpe's Pleasure Island: http://www.in2town.co.uk/Cleethorpes-Pleasure-Island-to-reopen-within-weeks  It 'should' re-open once negotiations with contracts are in place.. Although why it had to close during this period of transition is beyond me. I blame UK law! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharkTums Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 ^I blame Iceland! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milst1 Posted April 20, 2010 Author Share Posted April 20, 2010 Iceland is bad! Holland told them to send "cash", and they sent "ash"! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noxegon Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 The letter 'C' doesn't exist in the Icelandic alphabet (seriously!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milst1 Posted April 20, 2010 Author Share Posted April 20, 2010 Hey super RB! How the hell does someone get 180 wood credits? Â Well, the lack of "c" does explain a lot. The volcano name looks like their alphabet exploded. Maybe that's when they lost the "c". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nynehalem Posted April 21, 2010 Share Posted April 21, 2010 Wow. I haven't seen that new all silver color scheme on Oblivion. Sure is SEXY Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CCJared Posted April 21, 2010 Share Posted April 21, 2010 Wow. I haven't seen that new all silver color scheme on Oblivion. Sure is SEXY Â It's not painted... Just really faded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tiger01 Posted April 23, 2010 Share Posted April 23, 2010 Nice Stuff. Oblivion looks really faded. I'm sure it used to be black. Anyways nice photos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milst1 Posted April 23, 2010 Author Share Posted April 23, 2010 I would have guessed Oblivion's earliest paint job would be orange, given the piles of orange Oblivion merchandise that are still taking up space in the shops. By comparison, there was very little "Th13teen" merch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larrygator Posted April 23, 2010 Share Posted April 23, 2010 European parks do not sell nearly as much coaster branded merchandise as US parks. Many parks have little variety at all in their park merchandise for that matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts