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… Read more
It’s Snow Joke
For a ‘warm up’ to a 5 day tour of some UK theme parks. James and I started with a session tobogganing at the Tamworth Snowdome.
This was a lot of fun. if utterly exhausting. Toboggans were almost impossible to control, and I ended up face down in the snow on more than one occasion. Highly recommended if you’re in Tamworth.
Funderland Dublin
This weekend (eventually) saw a small group of friends meet up in the Irish capital for some fairground fun, thanks to the great people at Funderland.
Due to unforseeable circumstances, the expected showpiece ride was unable to attend, however it’s place was taken at short notice with with Goetzke’s FreeFall (actually a Huss Shot-n-Drop) tower, which was giving excellent rides, as was the case with all the rides I tried throughout the event. The core list of rides was much the same as last year, including the superbly presented “Power Wave” Schwarzkopf Polyp (shown here), and the regular 2 large-ish coasters, Wild Mouse (Reverchon) and Speed Loop (Pinfari ZL42), and for the spinner fans, Extreme and TakeOff.
Speed Loop was it’s usual self - far smoother than most examples of this type of ride, but the most fun was to be had on the mouse. A huge “thank you” has to go to John and Brian at Funderland for allowing us to experience the Mouse with the “spin pin” reset in the station, to allow spinning over the entire length of the ride, rather than just on the lower half of the coaster, as it is normally operated.
Now, having had this special ride, it’s very clear to me that, in general terms, this type of generic spinning-mouse coaster could be improved if the cars unlocked on the first straight at the top after the lift, rather than on the level below - taking the bigger drops spinning was a lot of fun, and is probably the biggest single improvement that could be made to this design of ride. However I don’t know what impact (if any) it would have on the wear-and-tear on the ride, but the forces the riders are subjected to are certainly not uncomfortable, although the end result is a little more like a tracked waltzer than a coaster!
Maybe Reverchon/Zamperla should offer options on the design as to exactly where the spinning gets unlocked…
Just to say, if you seen one of these Mouse coasters at your local fair, please do not annoy the operators by requesting such a ride.
As has been the case in previous years, the hospitality shown to us by Funderland is incredible, and if things come to pass, next year could be even better…
(thanks to Richard Bannister for organising our trip again, and for the photo gallery of this years fair on themeparks.ie - I didn’t have my camera with me this time, so there’s a lot of links to his gallery!)
A tale of four airports
This is the first of a couple of posts relating to the Funderland Dublin trip. We’d been planning this weekend in Dublin, pretty much since the last one - however this is not the post about the fair… that will come later.
This post relates to the fact that our schedule had us (well, James and myself anyway) flying from Bristol to Dublin on Friday 5th and returning today…
Unfortunately, there appears to be a problem with Bristol’s runway in wet weather… this problem resulted in our outbound Aer Lingus flight being cancelled. After we’d already checked in. And gone “airside”…
We only knew this ‘cos we spotted it on one of the screens, there was no announcement about it, no-one from Aer Lingus attempted to inform us - we had to go hunting for information.
Eventually our 1445 flight from Bristol was confirmed as being replaced by an 1845 flight. From Heathrow. About 150 miles away. So 3 hours on a coach later (including a frankly brilliant announcement from the driver, who very much got into the spirit of the event), we are promptly de-coached at Arrivals…
This is your captain speaking, thank you for joining this service travelling to London Heathrow today. We will be cruising at an average speed of 62 miles per hour at an altitude of approximately 6 and a half feet. Once we’re outside the 3 mile perimiter, I’ll be turning the autopilot on, and will come round with the duty free
Having muddled our way round to Departures, with noone from Aer Lingus at all around to tell us where to go and exactly what to do with our useless Bristol Airport boarding passes, we finally checked in for our flight.
Of course, the stories of planes “skating across” Bristol’s runway did not leave us feeling confident about our return journey either - however that was also cancelled (which when we went to the Aer Lingus information desk at Dublin airport this morning came as a surprise to them - they didn’t know the big departures display said that!) - it was not cancelled, despite what the screens were saying - it had been rerouted. To Cardiff. Where I live. So we flew to Cardiff, got a chartered coach to Bristol, I then collected my car, and drove back again.
Eye Eye!
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The last couple of days, have seen me spending some time “being a tourist” in London… a fairly packed trip, including Madame Tussauds, the London Eye, a somewhat waterlogged fair in Hyde Park, and the excellent Game On exhibit at the Science Museum.
The queues for the eye were phenomenal, however my Tussauds Annual Pass quickly put paid to that - I only had to queue up for my actual flight, not join the huge queue to buy a ticket!
Great fun, always good to see friends in the off-season and catch up, and spend some time exploring and seeing the sights in a city I visit for work, but never have time to actually enjoy…
Cardiff Indoor Fair
Today James and I went down to the Cardiff Fair, an indoor event which as it was located in the Millennium stadium still had room for the Big Ben tower ride, and the usual Reverchon Spinning mouse coaster!
All in all a fun day, spent wandering around Cardiff, chatting, catching up, and riding stuff!
2 Weeks till the next fair… and only 3 weeks until the promised return to Dublin for Funderland!
Up and Over
[thumb:433:r]Now, what’s the quickest accellerating sports car you can think of, well, I thought of a Formula One car (having just finished watching this weekends race) and according to FaqFarm they accellerate from 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds (pulling 1.2G in the process)
I spent today being repeatedly accellerated from 0 to 80mph in 2.8 seconds. I still can’t imagine what it must be like to drive at those kind of extremes for an hour and a half in an F1 car - 5 rides on Thorpe Parks “Stealth” were enough for me, and all I had to do was hang on…
However it’s an excellent ride - and comparisons with the only other Intamin Rocket Coaster I’ve ridden are inevitable. To put it simply, Stealth is far and away better than Rita Queen of Speed at Alton Towers - the launch is even more insane, the “top hat” manouver is stunning (as is the view from the top) - yes it may be very short, but it packs a lot of punch into that…
All in all, an enjoyable ride, and a great day seeing some friends I’ve not seen for a while…
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