Photo TR: Dons Epic Europe Trip

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 1:51 pm Post subject:

Oh man, the wild mouse...Let me just say that that ride has hit the top of my wood coasters list. Our second day I believe I rode it 6 times in a row. It helped that queues for it woern't more than a few minutes.

I have some more Blackpool pics I'm going to post later. All in all I took just over 2150 pictures so it take a while to sort through them. Plus I just flew in yesterday so it's also my first time seeing them as well.

I also rode the crap out of Steeplechase. Having grown up at Knotts I have a great respect for this ride. It was great waking up every morning to Big Ones midcourse and all the little horseys going around the track.

Oh, and some of the employees looked like they walked right out of the industrial revolution! All cockney'd and what what. Plus they had some great homemade cockney dock worker tattoos. Nice buch of blokes though.

More pictures in a few minutes..

-Don

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 2:13 pm Post subject:

Fantastic Pictures! about the skyway.. it closed in about 2001 i think but they didnt take down the cable down till 2003! also if you went on the monorail you would have seen a side friction water coaster (vikingar) that has been closed since about 2003 i think. Blackpool is a pretty good park and one of the best in our little country (along with alton towers!) the wild mouse is ok but the grand national is alot better Taiko Really Happy Red

!

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 2:53 pm Post subject:

It looks as if they are working on that water coaster/shoot the chutes in the back of the park. It closed in 2003 huh? From the looks of it I would have guessed it'd been closed since 1903! Taiko Really Happy Red

As for the wild mouse, I don't know if you've ridden any american mice but there all pretty much braked to death. Wild Mouse OTOH HAS no brakes! plus there are several points where you can reach out and touch other parts of the course while cars are running.

Once I started to learn how to ride it I was able to do Motocross tricks on some of the hills! For pure fun Wild Mouse and Rollercoaster topped the list for me, but then again I'm not used to coasters with no restraints! :o

Day 3:

Origionally we had planned on doing some rides at Blackpool in the morning then spending the rest of the day at Southport Pleasureland. However, given the amout of sheer joy we were having we decided to spend another complete day at Blackpool!

I know for an absolute fact that we'll be going back to BPB so well get to Southport eventually. In the mean time, more pics!

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 2:55 pm Post subject:

I posted the wrong picture for the one 4 pics up. For now, enjoy the strange Elephant Statue!

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 3:22 pm Post subject:

Looks Like You Had Fun! It was unfortunate that you missed Southport its actually the closest park to me and quite a nice park. it has a pretty insane wild mouse there too! (king solomons mines) but blackpool is definatley a better park than it!

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 3:40 pm Post subject:

Day 4, Alton Towers

This was probably the park I was looking forward to the most. We stayed at a Hotel pretty close to the park on the a50 but even then it is still a drive to reach the park.

You have to drive through these small villages with very narrow streets to get there. Imagine driving down international street in the USH backlot with two way traffic. I don't know how the busses make it.

We got to the park way before opening because I knew being july that alot of schools take end of the term trips here. The gates opened about 45 minutes before the rides so we got a good spot in the Rita queue and waited until 10am for the rides to open.

Rita being new was a huge draw so I'm glad we went there first. We waited about 15 minutes once it opened and then got a quick one train wait on corkscrew (In the front).

As for my Rita review, well...it sucked. The ride itself was pretty fun but I would't recommend a special trip just for it. The launce is just as intense as the others just very short, only 60mph. The course is essentially an elaborate figure 8 into the breaks. What really kills the ride is the restraints. Instead of really enjoying the yummy intamin transitions I kept hitting my neck on those stupid flat bar shoulder straps. grrrr.

If ever a ride needed lapbars only its this one. Now I only rode once due to crowds and it was near the back. But I have ridden Stormrunner in the rear or the train and don't remember it being quite that uncomfortable. I'll definately give it another chance but I really wanted it to be good.

We walked right onto Hex after that and we were both really shocked to see how much of the queue is in the actual castle itself. After Hex we took a quick trip through the castle itself on the way to Oblivion.

The school kids were out in full force so I was trying to get the low capacity rides first but we finally caught up with them at Oblivion. And it only got worse from there.

Hears the story: after wainting an hour in the oblivion queue (with a posted 10 min wait time) we finally make it into the station. I'm at the gate for the front as my train pulls in, stops, unloads, then nothing. The unload area emptied, the trains left the station empty, the trains on the brake run emptied, and the ride op turned to us and said they now have to empty the entire queue.

Evidently, some a$$hat had left a bag unnattended at or near the exit ramp and due to the recent London Bombings they weren't taking any chances and cleared out the entire X-Sector of the park.

I completely understand why they cleared out the area. I'd rather miss acredit than be blowned-up. But it just seemed so unfortunate that I happened to be at the load gate, for the front, after waiting an hour that this had to happen.

Luckily the rest of the park was still open, but after the time wasted at Oblivion it was getting to be 1pm and the park closed at 5 (damn tussaud hours) so I was becoming a little concerned about the rest of the day.

We decided to just go for the coasters we most wanted to do and headed for Nemisis next. After a single rider wait of about 40 minutes Monica and I actually rode together in the back row.

Wow Nemises kicks total A$$. If you've see video you know what this ride does. And it does it really good. I had high expectations for nemesis and it totally lived up to them.

We went over to queue for Air and the op at the front said it had been having problems and the queue right now was massive. He also said that the park hours had been extended untill 630 (YES) because of the massive crowds/bombs in the park. He told us that as long as we queued by 6:29 we would get to ride so we went off and rode the mack powered train (15 min) and Spinball Wizzer (40 min) and the kiddie (0 min)

Lo and behold after Spinny I noticed Oblivion was open! It was about 445 and most of the kids had left so the queue only took about 15 min. We also got front row (YAY)

I'll just say real quick that I liked Obli as much as SheiKra. It doesn't do as much but what it does do it does much better than shakira.

After that we had just enough time to walk onto Air and Nemisis one more time. We ended up having a really good day and we were able to ride all the coasters, but we were really fighting all day in order to do it.

I've gotta run real quick but I'll put up the pictures in about 30 min for those of you playing along in real time.

-Don "Ignore any typos, I'm trying to do this as quick as I can" Garrison

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 4:34 pm Post subject:

Here are the Alton Towers pics:

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 4:38 pm Post subject:

I see this is going to be a running gag

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 4:39 pm Post subject:

I'm really looking forward to seeing your psycho Eastern Europe parks!

but these are good too!

Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 5:06 pm Post subject:

Here are some pictures leaving england and arriving in Budapest

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