It’s only a few hundred miles.

…with some ups and downs along the way

Well, it’s been an inter­est­ing week or so. Driv­ing the best part of 900 miles in 5 days, vis­it­ing 5 themeparks, 1 snow-dome, and spend­ing time with some friends. Over­all it was a good week, although there were a few moments when things didn’t go quite to plan, and the strain of the jour­ney took it’s toll… But any­way, on to the trip reports… I’ve already men­tioned the tobog­gan­ing and the snow­dome in an earlier post, so will resume at the next morn­ing, at nearby Drayton Manor Park, where we were met by John P. James has beaten me to make most of the points (link to his post here), the park appears to be suf­fer­ing towards the end of the sea­son, with many rides not oper­at­ing at their best (the tilts on Apo­ca­lypse and Drunken Bar­rels, James already men­tioned) with many rides clearly in need of a little TLC. Excalibur was closed, with all the boats removed from the cable, so I sus­pect that won’t open again soon…

The even­ing saw a 2 hour drive to York, a bit of mess­ing about try­ing to park and get into town for a meal, and our Travelodge which was get­ting some TLC, and as such looked rather like a build­ing site. Appar­ently this hotel was affected by the floods earlier in the year and was get­ting it’s ground floor rooms refit­ted, how­ever this wasn’t a prob­lem as we were upstairs, and the res­taur­ant next door (used for break­fast) had either already been sor­ted out, or was unaffected.

Now we come to the first of the new-to-me parks on this trip — with Tom B join­ing us, we went to Flamin­go­land Park and Zoo. Formerly the home of two large steel coast­ers from Schwar­zkopf, both have been removed — how­ever the park was very well presen­ted, clean, tidy, with friendly chatty staff and a really good mix of attrac­tions, ran­ging from animal shows, one of which provided Tom B with the chance to have a pretty bird on his arm, to launched roller­coast­ers. This is clearly a park that a fam­ily will likely enjoy with areas and attrac­tions for everyone.

Their cur­rent sig­na­ture attrac­tion is the “Velo­city” launched motorbike-themed coaster, very remin­is­cent of the sim­ilar ride at Tover­land (link/pic), with a nice punchy launch and a series of turns and swoop­ing drops to make the most of the space. This is a park which seems to have a great future ahead of it, if the rumours are true, and the areas which have been developed recently are all very smart, even at this late stage in the season.

This is prob­ably as good a time as any to men­tion the biggest prob­lem on this trip, as a some­what heavy indi­vidual, not used to walk­ing for hours at a time, my feet took a pound­ing dur­ing this week — and I now have more blisters on my feet than I could get blister-plasters for (the chem­ist shop near the hotel only had one packet)

Any­way, our next (and by far the longest) drive took us across from York to the enter­tain­ment cap­ital of the North West — yes, it’s time for Black­pool. As we arrived early enough, we decided to take a tram ride down to the Pleas­ure Beach, and view the fam­ous Illu­min­a­tions. It’s been quite a few years since I last vis­ited Black­pool at this time of year, and whilst not cold, you know you’re on a west­erly facing coast.

The illu­min­a­tions were pretty spec­tac­u­lar (as far as anim­ated light shows can be) with the usual dec­or­ated trams mak­ing their way up and down the promenade.

Of course, no trip to Black­pool would be com­plete without some time at the Pleas­ure Beach — it still amazes me how they can cram so many rides into such a small space — but that’s half the char­ac­ter of the place. Even with the Grand National unavail­able, everything else was run­ning, allow­ing us to ride everything we wanted eas­ily, and make a nice relaxed day of things.

Val­halla is still as wet as ever, Roller­coaster has now aquired new seat-belts. This puzzles me as it’s run without seat­belts since 1933, and now, after 74 years, they add them!

The 2007 Inter­na­tional Fire­works Cham­pi­on­ships took place that even­ing on the cent­ral prom­en­ade, with the Cana­dian team show­cas­ing a superb dis­play of pyro­tech­ncial mas­tery. It was a bit cold sit­ting there in just a T-Shirt (not hav­ing had time to go back the hotel) but the show was spec­tac­u­lar. Rather than join­ing the huge queues for the trams right after the show, we went and spent some time check­ing out the “New” ride in Coral Island — a “shoot­ing” par­tial dark-ride loc­ated in the amuse­ment arcade. It was a little odd to say the least, some of it being on a mono­rail run­ning over the games area, and other sec­tions being enclosed in tun­nels with vari­ous Pir­ate themed show-scene, all with dinner-plate sized targets!

The next park on our sched­ule also marked the our join­ing the ECC trip “Knights and Legends”, tak­ing us first to Cam­elot, and what is by far the most inter­est­ing new ride in the UK for 2007 — Knight­mare yes another Schwar­zkopf machine gets a men­tion in this post — this one is 20 years old, and still packs a punch rare for a ride in the UK.

Camelot’s other high­lights included a very good Joust­ing Tour­na­ment show — a bit silly at times — but enter­tain­ing, and far above the stand­ards expec­ted of a park this small!

Our fifth and final stop was Alton Towers — a park that needs little intro­duc­tion here — and it’s main rides and attrac­tions are very well known. Gen­er­ally the park looks tidier and smarter than before, and the hos­pit­al­ity shown to the club was the usual high-standards.

Thanks espe­cially to James, John and Tom for their com­pany over the week (put­ting up with me for 5 days solidly can­not be easy!), and to every­one who we met up with along the way!

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