From RITA to Apocalypse
As I mentioned in my previous post, over the weekend was the European Coaster Club trip to Alton Towers and Drayton Manor Park in Staffordshire.
However the fun started on Friday night - meeting up with James at our hotel and discovering that the bed had a “loose leg”. The receptionist provided a solution which made use of the hotels ample supply of Gideons Bibles to replace the broken leg!
The actual days at the park were a lot of fun - making plenty of new friends and seeing lots of familiar faces too. By far the highlight of the Alton day was our night-time exclusive ride session on “Rita - Queen of Speed” - their new coaster - we were the first group to have an exclusive session on the ride, and we were the first people to ever ride it after dark. At the end of the evening, the ride operations and engineering staff took the opportunity to ride in the dark themselves!
Altons hospitality was outstanding, even laying on courtesy coaches back to the car-park following the ERS!
Day Two of the trip was another bright and early start, this time at Drayton Manor for their new coaster “G-Force” - which is the strangest looking ride I’ve seen in many years - with it’s “up and over” lifthill “loop” - however it’s a cracking little ride, and made an excellent finale to the trip as we finished the day with it. Also during the day, James was “introduced” to Apocalypse, and the fun of plummetting 200ft straight down… while standing up - and Drayton server us with the customary lunch, which consited of a full, 3 course Sunday Lunch - no burgers and chips here - this was “proper” food on plates with cutlery!
A good weekend - and I’m now back at work feeling very very tired!
