Photo TR: [Study] Abroad - The world and its coasters

[televisedconfessionCounselor Neil]

Awesome pictures, and a great Trip Report! Thanks so much for sharing!!!!

[RoCoBonafide Donkey Expert]

Dude, seriously mad props for having the stones to make this trip when you did. As Danny Glover would say, "I'm getting too old for that sh*t."

On the other hand, your report and POV footage are filling my mouth with want-bile. That does look like one super-fun little coaster.

[wesley815Can I park my donkey here?]

Amazing trip!! Thanks so much for posting all the cool pics/info... look forward to every update!

[ChroniqTPR's nicest person EVAR!!!]

Two things I wanted to quickly mention with these reports.

1. This is one of the best TR's I've ever seen on TPR. You really were able to capture an important moment in history through words and photos.As one previous poster said, we all lived vicariously through you on these reports. Thanks for taking the time to share this with us. Dodging civil unrest to get us personal tour of a themepark while also being sensitive to the local culture and current situation is just impressive.

2. Your POV easily wins the awards for strangest personal sound effects of 2012.



Chris "TRs like this are the reason I'm a TPR member" Connolly

[NoxegonI'm a culture ho]

I wonder what it was like riding in the back seat going down those hairpin drops?

Pretty damn scary. The concept of ejector-seat airtime is completely redefined by Jungle Storm.

You know a ride is insane when coaster enthusiasts are hanging on for dear life...

[FLIPDUDEI prefer to mate with donkeys over humans!]

Fantastic TR! Really made me want to ride all that stuff! =D
The way you described Formula Rossa and the Burj really put me in your shoes

[coastererI think Intamin should make a donkey!]

Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you all so much for the comments and feedback. It's so nice to hear back about this stuff, and you guys are always so appreciative, it really makes me love being a part of this community and putting the time in to these TRs.

This next update is gonna be pretty brief I think. I know the UK has been done time and time again, so I won't belabor the issue. I had a long layover in London after the middle east trip, and was able to visit a friend from school who was studying abroad at Oxford at the time. We did a short *most-touristy-of-tourist-spots* tour in the morning, then headed over to Thorpe for the afternoon, before heading up to Oxford for the evening, where I didn't get any pictures, but I can assure you that wizards live there.

London I don't love. I visited a long time ago, so I didn't feel like there was much I neeeeeeded to see, and granted we did very little in venturing outside the main places, but it's just not my type of place. Outside of the city is much much more enjoyable and beautiful in my opinion, and I really enjoyed the night we had in Oxford. It was quaint and quiet and interesting and clean and we had a good night, hanging out with a few of her English friends.

Thorpe park I also didn't care for too much to be honest. It was definitely decent, but it didn't have a ride that really stood out in my opinion. We did our lap, hit all the major rides, and really didn't feel too compelled to go back and reride anything. Stealth I actually ended up enjoying less than Rita, Nemesis Inferno was tame and forgettable, and Colossos was a little rough. Saw actually impressed me, I usually don't love the Eurofighters, but this was a pretty good one.

Later on I went back for a short trip into Manchester, and visited Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Alton Towers. It was a little bit of a rough trip getting in, our flight was delayed around 10 hours. This meant we got free meal vouchers at the airport, and a bunch of us on the flight grabbed a pretty fun meal together. But it also meant that we didn't get in til around 2:30 am. So it was a rushed cat nap in the airport, before grabbing the first train to Blackpool, rolling in sometime before 7 and holing up for a couple hours in a coffee shop. The strip down the shore was really wild, and a bit sketchy for sure, but it was a cool atmosphere. Both of these, BPB and AT, have been parks I've been drooling over for a looooong long time, and it was really surreal to be there. BPB is a really cool park in regards to the fact that there is hardly any conception of a 'ground'. Everything's just suspended and built on top of everything else and wraps all over the place and it's all brilliant and gritty, and I loved it. I tried to emphasis this in the pictures I chose, the fact there's never any ground. It's a really neat place, and that mouse is SO much fun. I met a couple enthusiasts here, including Simon, who showed me around a little bit, and who I'm very thankful to for meeting up with me. There were a few rides closed for a while which made getting to them a little tougher - Pepsi Big One was down all morning, and so was Grand National. But they both opened eventually and were both pretty fun. Grand National is a blast, but I still preferred the mouse.

The next day I made it to Alton Towers, and made my way around the park counter clockwise, starting with Oblivion and ending up with Nemesis. The rides here were just about as good as I've always expected them to be - which was pretty darn good, if not a little on the shorter side. Nemesis blows everything else out of the water though. This was my 300th credit, and was just so good. B&M inverts are my favorite, and with as much hype as this ride gets, it definitely didn't disappoint. I grabbed a dozen or so laps on it, loving every second of it, and then headed out around closing and headed to the airport for another early morning flight.

Thanks for reading guys, and I hope you enjoy this next batch: I know these parks have been done to death so I just included my favorites. Enjoy!
-Danny

[giscoStarbucks Enthusiast]

I like your improvised 300! Much better than paper!

[coastererI think Intamin should make a donkey!]

Slow and steady on putting this thread together – I’ll be getting around to the rest of it eventually though, no worries. Thanks for hanging in there with me. This report features a little snippet of mainland Greece, some remarkably hobo-esque backpack stories, and a quick stop at Allou Fun Park in Athens amidst a few old temples on some hills I found.

I made my way hastily through Greece on my way to west Turkey, after catching an overnight ferry from Ancona. The ferry got in sometime around six at Igoumenitsa on the West Coast, the dawn barely starting to peak over the fog covered mountains inland. I moseyed on over to the bus station, and caught the 6:20 bus to Kalambaka, with only myself and one other tightly made up woman, who was from somewhere like Russia, and admittedly not wearing very much clothing. She nervously approached me a half-hour into the ride, and pulled out a long list of English words, with which I got to help her work on her pronunciation. To be honest and maybe a little unfair, I was relieved that that was all she pulled out. In exchange, she offered me a few oranges and a couple kiwis, and from then on we watched the morning mist roll over the hills in silence, as the sun continued to rise.

Kalambaka is a little town at the base of Meteora, possibly one of the most underappreciated sites in all of Europe. It’s essentially an old series of hermit monasteries built 500-700 years ago on top of enormous sheer-sided natural stone pillars. It’s easily been one of the coolest places I’ve ever been, if not most of all for the fact that it seemed fairly undiscovered. I mean, it’s not, but it’s no Eiffel Tower. I got a start out of Kalambaka at about 10 in the morning and started walking the few miles up to the monasteries, breaking off to follow unmarked, unpopulated trails around the base of the stone cliffs and up in between them, climbing over walks and around ancient remains of cliff dwellings, passing sheep herders and wild dogs, and generally backpacking my way all over one of the most beautiful, unimaginable places there is, almost entirely alone.

I didn’t get back down to the village til around 5 and from there, after a nice rest in the central plaza, I made my way to the train station and hopped on a little guy making its way to Athens. Now, in most of my traveling, whenever it’s possible, I take advantage of late night/early morning transits to spend the night in the station or airport or whatever and save a few bucks. But when we rolled in to Athens at about 11 at night and I tried to pick out a nice bench, me and the rest of the bums were all kicked out within the hour as the station closed down, where I was left on my own to wander around downtown Athens at midnight, looking for a hostel.

I wouldn’t ever recommend doing this. Needless to say Athens isn’t the safest city. Nor were they experiencing what we like to call “economic stability”. But, thankfully, things all worked out within twenty loooong scary minutes.

Greece I’ve heard is wonderful, and from what I saw, it was. But I’ve also heard that it’s not recommended to spend any time at all in its capital, if you can avoid it. But with the Acropolis providing one of the most tempting lures in all of mainland Europe, it was tempting to pass up, so I did what I would soon come to find I was very good at, and crashed my way through the city in less than a day, taking what I wanted and nothing more. I’m not gonna say it isn’t an exhausting way to travel, but boy is it satisfying. Backpack strapped on and ready for another long day of walking, I made my way through downtown Athens and a few of the markets and up to the parks around the Parthenon, where students can enter for free (what a pleasant surprise!). From there, it was only a 3-4 mile walk to Allou Fun City, which is least easily gotten to by following (roughly) the path across and down the mountain park toward the distant harbor, following the road diagonally in the same direction until you went about 40 minutes, cutting vaguely right when you sense a highway is near, walking the half mile through the trucking station, up and over the crossing highway and then follow that left shoulder right until you see the ferris wheel. All for the love of the adventure.

It was a nice small little park with three credits, a mouse, a Tivoli and a wacky worm, a few stray dogs and a surprisingly large amount of students just out from school. The park didn’t open til 5 or so, so I spent an hour or so chilling in an arcade next door with wifi and airconditioning (HalleLUjah), then got back and hit em all quickly before running to catch a ferry out of Piraeus by way of the metro, which took me out into the port. Exhausted and famished, I finally ambled on board the liner to Izmir via Chios with a half hour to spare, and watched the sun set over Athens as we pulled out into the Mediterranean. I ended up meeting a few Greeks in their early twenties and spending the 8 hour ride playing cards and laughing between the 20 mutually distinguishable words we could understand from one other. We crashed around 2, to be waken up and dropped off at around 3:30 in the morning at Chios, a hop skip and a jump from mainland West Asia.

Pictures below, more to come soon(ish?), thanks SO much for reading and feel free to leave comments, I’d love to hear back from you!

Your trip reports are always easily some of the most amazing I've ever read. Keep it up and thanks for sharing!