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Archive for the ‘Thorpe Park’ Category

Halloween’s a’comin’

October 8th, 2008

Halloweens a’comin’ chaps and the UK’s theme parks are gearing up to get their scary on. Not content with employing people to jump out from behind shrubbery and shout “boo” the major parks are all laying on Halloween themed events.
Alton Towers have Scarefest, Chessington are treating guests to Halloween Hocus Pocus and Thorpe Park are running Fright Nights.

All of the park’s spooky events look pretty tempting but it’s the live action horror mazes at Thorpe Park that intrigue me most of all. Combining mazes (scary) and people in costumes paid to do nothing other than to make you scream like a lady (really scary) they are certain to be a big hit this year.

Thorpe Park have a new maze this year, ‘The Curse’. It looks decidedly spooky (and possibly influenced a teeny tiny bit by The Ring) and I fully intend to go up there and have a wander around. Currently, I am working on a dastardly plan to counter-scare the mazes inhabitants. I’m thinking sherbet under my tongue and a fake nosebleed so I can convince the staff that they’ve scared me to death. After they have freaked out a little and felt suitably remorseful I’ll let them i on my hilarious gag, ingenious plan yeah?

My own diabolical machinations aside, there’s some trailers out for each of the mazes now. Being the dutiful blogger I am I’ve popped them all on here for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy.

Project Dylan Video – Very Impressive

October 3rd, 2008

You know what’s cool? Youtube’s cool. That wonderful little website is responsible for a noteworthy proportion of my daily smiles. It has brought us such gems as ‘fat kid stuck on rollercoaster’ ,’lady falls down hole’ and ‘star wars kid’. It turns out that lovely, wonderful youtube is also a hotbed of ‘Project Dylan’ titbits.

There’s the Thorpe Park youtube channel of course, but there is also a small group of people who somehow are making simulations of what a lap of Project Dylan might look like. What programme they are using or how long it takes I have no idea but what I do know is that the simulations look pretty credible. The video is not 100% accurate of course but it’s the closest thing to a full lap of the new ride you’re going to get until next year when it opens.

If any of you clever clever readers know what technological wizardry is used to make these little videos please let me know, I’m intrigued.

Good is’nt it?! We owe our thanks to the mysterious ‘leighhills’. I’ll be keeping my eye out for her/his future youtube offerings.

Thorpe Park New Ride Construction Progressing Rapidly

September 25th, 2008

Our Thorpe Park insider, Agent Stealthy Squirrel, has sent a communiqué by carrier pigeon to the Play and Stay® offices this afternoon. Written in biro on the back of an acorn it simply said,

“Second inversion nearly finished, big frame going up. Send more nibbles.”

Not being above bribing woodland critters to carry out my espionage dirty-work, I promptly sent back some twiglets and got a’blogging. After investigating Agent Stealthy Squirrel’s claims it would seem that the second of Project Dylan’s three proposed inversions is indeed pretty much done. Not content with just building a roller-coaster really really fast, those busy builders have also constructed the beginnings of the frame that will become the scary sawmill.

The fact that the coaster’s track is being built so quickly suggests to me that Thorpe Park will be putting a great deal of effort into the area surrounding the coaster. Surely this means that Thorpe Park have big plans for the sawmill and its super-scary inhabitants. Interesting…….very interesting.

Project Dylan News

September 24th, 2008

Dylan
Ok chaps, I’ve done some maths to try and work out roughly how fast ‘Project Dylan’ will be. When I say roughly I mean ROUGHLY. My maths is notoriously poor and I’m working with little more than guesstimates here so please, bear with me.

The nearest comparable coaster to Project Dylan is (in my opinion) Dollywood’s Mystery Mine which has 1811 feet of track with a ride duration of 2 minutes and 30 seconds. This equates to 12.07 feet per second average speed. Project Dylan has 2362 feet of track with a ride duration of just one minute forty seconds which is around 23.62 feet per second.

From this we can very clearly see that Thorpe Park‘s new ride’s average speed will be almost double that of Mystery Mine. Unfortunately looking at the average speed of the ride does not reveal too much, the slow lift hills and the rapid vertical drops obviously affect the average quite a bit.

To put these highly ambiguous figures into some kind of perspective here is a list of a few of my favourite coasters and their respective feet per second counts.

Nemesis: 29 fps
Rita: Queen of Speed: 43 fps
Stealth: 50 fps
Project Dylan: 23.62 fps

So, from that we can see that Project Dylan is unlikely to break any records for speed, the drop remains the main draw of the attraction. At 97 degrees it will be one of the steepest the UK has to offer. All things considered I think it is fair to assume that Project Dylan will have a similar overall pace to Nemesis (which just so happens to be our very favourite coaster here at Play and Stay®). These numbers taken into account I’m expecting top speeds of between 50 and 60 mph and I’m pretty confidant that I’m right.

This last bit is purely conjecture, nothing more than my humble opinion on this thrilling new ride at Thorpe Park. I have a bit of a theory, Project Dylan is going to lean even more heavily on the horror theme that I originally anticipated. I predict that Thorpe Park’s new ride will be as much a grown up ghost train as a roller coaster. It will be heavily themed, there will be sections inside the planned sawmill that will probably employ animatronics or even just convincing models to give passengers a fright on their way to the beyond vertical drop. In short, this ride is going to be A for amazing.

Thorpe Park New Ride

September 18th, 2008

In addition to Jonathan Dudley’s recent post entitled Project Dylan – Thorpe Park’s New Ride. I don’t have much to add, other than this tantalising video of the new ride at Thorpe Park.

Project Dylan – Thorpe Park’s New Ride

September 16th, 2008

As I’m sure you’re all aware, Thorpe Park is in the process of building a new roller-coaster. Facts are still a little thin on the ground but being the google super-sleuths that we are, Play and Stay® have managed to polish the various rumours, blogs and outright fibs into a few nuggets of almost-news gold for you. Of course nothing is official just yet so this “gold” really is just our best guess at what’s going on. There are some pretty convincing facts and figures to work with so I’m feeling confidant that our guesswork will turn out to be pretty accurate. Before we get to the newsy part of the blog I feel the need to point out what a superb job the builders of this new coaster have. Rather than putting up dreary tower blocks or trendy town centre flats, these guys get to play with what is essentially, giant mechano!

The prospect of such a fun day’s work is almost tempting to me. Unfortunately I’m not very good at the following: digging, lifting, sweating, wearing neon vests, operating machines more complicated than my X-box, wolf-whistling and reading The Sun. My list of handicaps does not make me a particularly attractive employee for a builder, so I blog.

Fortunately for me I get to blog about fun stuff; LEGO®, Halloween at theme parks (watch this space for a hyperblog all about me at Alton Towers’ Scarefest) and the new ride at Thorpe Park. I like not being a builder. Anyway, enough about my career choices, time to have a look at “Project Dylan” – Thorpe Park’s new coaster.

First things first, thankfully ‘Project Dylan’ is just a working title. For a little while I was worried that this very exciting new coaster may have been going down the same route as the terribly named but very fun “Rita: Queen of Speed” at Alton Towers. The name of the new coaster is still unknown, considering it is themed in the style of a disused sawmill with a strong horror element I’m expecting something like “Buzzsaw” or “Lumberjacks Revenge”.

We know that Project Dylan is being built by Gerslauer, the German company behind the Euro-Fighter design which commonly features greater than 90 degree drops. We also know that Gerstlauer have built quite a few coasters, most of them heavily themed. Having had a trawl through their previous work, one coaster stands out as particularly similar to what Thorpe Park have planned and it’s located in a very surprising place indeed. ‘Mystery Mine’ is a Euro-Fighter coaster with a 95 degree drop (Project Dylan will reportedly have a 100 degree drop) themed around a haunted mine. This thoroughly fun sounding coaster is in Dollywood, yes, Dolly Parton’s theme park. Here’s a video so you can get yourself aquatinted.

Just like Project Dylan, Mystery Mine has several dark sections, what seems to be the the promised low scenery to create the so-called “head chopper” effect and the Euro-Fighter’s trademark massive drop. The themes are obviously similar so I imagine Thorpe Park’s new coaster will be quite similar but according to the specs, considerably more hardcore. Project Dylan will have four inversions, Mystery Mine only has two. Mystery Mine has a track length of 1811 feet with a total ride time of two and a half minutes, Project Dylan has 2362 feet of track with a total ride time of one minute forty seconds. This obviously implies that Project Dylan will be considerably faster than Mystery Mine which has a respectable top speed of nearly 50mph. Obviously, these figures are largely based on online rumour so nothing is concrete yet but presuming at least some of these numbers are correct we are in for a real treat when Project Dylan opens.

For those of you who are simply desperate to see Project Dylan here is a collection of construction photos. See if you can spot something I missed and let us know!

All I can say for sure is that Thorpe Park’s new coaster will be located in Canada Creek, it’s brown/black, it opens in 2009 and it’s going to be scary. Thorpe Park are making no secret of Project Dylan’s horror theme. The ever questionable wikipedia even suggests that the coaster will have themes similar to excessive gore flick, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Whatever it is that those lucky lucky builders are putting up over at Thorpe Park all I know is, I want a go.

Family Fun at LEGOLAND Windsor

July 7th, 2008

So they say that LEGOLAND is aimed at children aged between three and 12 years old. I am 26 years old and quite clearly out of the targeted age range but I still loved it. But then I feel that I should let you in on a little secret: Roller coasters terrify me. One of my earliest memories was climbing out of a carriage after being on Disney World’s most extreme ride at the time, Space Mountain in floods of tears. The hysteric kind. That’s right, I absolutely hated it and I was damned if I was ever going on another one.

Fast forward ten years and here I am on a school business studies trip to Disneyland Paris. And here is Space Mountain, staring at me and my friends, egging us on and mocking my terror. Of course, at the age of 15, you have to go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing. If not, you face complete mockery and possible disowning from your piers. So I embarked, and soon realised as we began ascending the first lift hill, that I still wasn’t cured of my fear of rides. Needless to say, I chose the constant ripping that I got from my colleagues instead of going back on Space Mountain.

A little more history: In 2007, I started as a copywriter for Holiday Extras and one of their sister companies, Play and Stay. This means I have to have a certain amount of knowledge about what I am writing about and inevitably, after six months my first educational came up. It was only Thorpe Park, the home of the UK’s most extreme roller coasters… “Oh great,” I thought (Well, it’s not exactly what I thought, but I shouldn’t really be swearing whilst writing for work).

Luckily, my companion on the trip was a lovely man, who never once poked fun at me for being scared and was ever so understanding when I told him I didn’t want to go on the Slammer…. pause… NOT! (Have any of you ever met James Carson? He’s the man that was on Graham Norton’s show with the “McBeautiful” chat-up line. His ambition is to go on Channel 4′s Shipwrecked and he is obsessed with munging.) He completely destroyed me and practically forced me to go on every single ride that was likely to leave a brown stain in my underpants. Starting with Stealth, then Colossus, then Rush… Tidal Wave, Slammer, colossus again, X: No Way Out, Nemesis and finally back on Stealth one last time. I have to admit though, as much as I disliked the man for doing this to me, he did cure me of my fears, and enabled me to make the trip to LEGOLAND for my stepson’s fourth birthday. (Oh and did I forget to mention the look on his face after getting off of Nemesis? “That one made me feel a little sick” he quietly whispered in my ear. What a picture.)

But anyway, history lesson over, this blog is about my trip to LEGOLAND Windsor, not about my good friend, Carson. We have a replacement now, anyway. We call him Carson 2.0 and he is much more jovial and forgiving. And he likes Poetry.

So we left home at 8 o’ clock in the morning, hoping to beat the rush hour traffic and get to the park for its opening time of 10 o’ clock. For his birthday, Stan got a Sportacus outfit (The main guy from Lazy Town) complete with hugely annoying sound effects which he insisted on pressing all the way out of town and along the first part of the M20. After a brief stop at our local services to fill up and buy some travel sweets, we continued to make our way along the M20 with the music turned up a little louder than Sportacus in the back.

In between bouts of Lazy Town sound effects, we managed to squeeze in a game of ‘I Spy’ which involved Stanley giving the answer away every time (“I Spy with my little eye, something beginning with car”). We arrived at the park five minutes before it opened and the weather wasn’t looking great for the day. We had already been through a few showers on the way up (“I Spy with my little eye, something beginning with rain”) so we loaded the buggy up with jackets, cagouls and spare shoes just in case. Of course, it turns out that the weather was glorious all day and I actually ended up getting burnt in places.

Joanna is six months pregnant and as a result, was unable to go on many of the rides. This didn’t dampen her day though, she had a great time snapping us on the rides and making various films on her phone. I think the longest we had to queue was half an hour to get on Pirate Falls, so she wasn’t left alone for too long.

One of the best things about many of the rides is the entertainment along the way. There are work stations with literally hundreds of blocks of DUPLO to play with. We had great fun making the world’s longest skateboard ramp while waiting in line for Boating School and The Dragon is decorated with LEGO models of witches and wizards set in the heart of a medieval castle backdrop. These activities and pieces of eye candy are essential when aiming your theme park at the younger audience.

Queues are long and boring places to be, and to be completely honest, you spend way more time waiting to go on the ride than you actually spend riding the damn thing. Two things I did notice whilst queuing was 1) how well behaved our little boy was, and b) how grumpy parents get when they are forced to stand in an orderly queue for more than five minutes. So many times, I caught poor kids being threatened with “we’re never coming back” and/or “we’ll be leaving in a minute if you keep that up!” Maybe the creators of LEGOLAND should take note, and provide the adults with something to do while they queue – this way, there would be a lot less arguments and bad tempers.

The rides themselves were absolutely fantastic, if a little too light heart hearted for the more experienced theme park go-er. The Dragon was great fun; the first part (where you slowly navigate through the castle’s tunnels) was a little bit scary for Stan with its flashing lights and loud sound effects but as soon as we got outside and the ride began in earnest, he absolutely loved it. His description to Joanna straight afterwards went something along the lines of “mummy, mummy, we went on a ride up a big hill then down a big hill and round a corner and it went vrrrrooommmmmmm!!!” before looking round at me and saying “can we do it again?” Haha, it was quality, and to be honest, a relief that he enjoyed it so much.

After a bite to eat and a tasty ice cream, we decided to tackle The Dragon’s sidekick, Dragon’s Apprentice. This one went round the short track twice and the little man proudly pronounced that he was “going to scream REALLY LOUD” on this ride. We then navigated round to LEGO City and took part in the Digger Challenge, Boating School, and the fairly tame Orient Expedition. Boating School was great fun. We let him take control of the steering as we happily smashed, crashed and splashed our way around the short track. (Apologies to anyone who we bumped on our way round).

Joanna took him on the slower rides, the carousel and the Digger Challenge. I had, after all, played the proud father figure all day and thought that maybe she was missing out on the fun. So the two of them happily played on the smaller rides while I took the time to check out some shops and grab a ridiculously expensive drink or two.

It’s at this point that I feel Ishould pipe up about the price of the place. We did get our tickets for free (I have just written the copy for the LEGOLAND Holidays redesign) but the cost of food and drink once inside is ludicrous. I definitely recommend packing a picnic and taking advantage of the many grassy areas. We must have paid out more than £40 on drinks and snacks and we didn’t even sit down in a restaurant to eat.

One of the last rides we went on that day was the Dino Dipper. The gentleman who operated this ride (Mike, I think it said on his name tag) was the most cheerful chappy I had met all day and did a fantastic job of getting the crowd going. Was this because it was nearly home time and he knew he was nearly at the end of his shift? No – I genuinely believe this guy loves his job. Shouts of “Do you wanna go faster?” and “have you had enough yet?” came echoing out of the small arena and literally pulled the crowds in. If you are going down to LEGOLAND any time soon, check him out, he really did make the ride that much better.

So the park closed at six, and hoards of people headed towards the park exit. Luckily, the cafe and shops were still open long enough to grab a bite to eat and get a couple of souvenirs from the day’s events. We ended up leaving the park at gone seven and we headed back home to the not-so-sunny Folkestone and the pikey seagulls that live on the roof opposite our house. After obtaining his driving license at Learner Drivers, Stanley proudly declared that he was driving us home and that I was to spend the journey in the boot. If only. He was actually asleep within 5 minutes of leaving the park allowing Mummy and Papa a peaceful journey home with no Sportacus sound effects. Job done.

Would I go again? Definitely. Would I recommend it to friends? Oh yes. Even if I didn’t do this for a job? Even more so. LEGOLAND was great fun and there was so much to see and do there. We didn’t even make it to Land of the Vikings, and we briskly walked through Miniland without stopping to show Stan what Amsterdam looked like. I would definitely recommend getting a two day pass and staying overnight and maybe even hiring a Q-Bot. I think it would take two days just get around and enjoy the full majesty of the park. Everything, and I mean everything is superbly sculpted in the LEGO style and offers something for all ages. My wife and I may be 26 years old, but we got just as much out of LEGOLAND as our four year old boy.

Next up I’m on the hunt for some free Alton Towers tickets, although I will settle for Drayton Manor and Thomas Land. Watch this space…

Start in the middle – A Trip to Thorpe Park and Chessington World of Adventures and Zoo

March 26th, 2008

Like a Tarantino film the following blog posts start in the middle before reaching the end and then showing you the start. If you’re reading this post before Pickard’s account of our Legoland experience then there is a small chance you’ll understand what I’m on about. Chronologically this is second but by nature of the way that blog posts are arranged on the page this will be nearer the top and I would imagine more likely to be read first. If you’d like to experience our theme trip account in the correct order of events I suggest skipping down to Pickard’s post and then returning here. If you’d like the Pulp Fiction experience then read on…

So after an early start we packed into the car and headed out for Thorpe Park. The trip from the Marriott to Thorpe wasn’t too bad at all. Short drive along the M4 to the M25 and then a couple of junctions south, coming off at Staines (massive). The route off the motorway couldn’t have been easier really. I’d never driven to Thorpe from this direction before, I’d always come from the south but the journey from Windsor was not a problem. Coming off at junction 13 we went towards Staines, missing the busy bridge and taking the road heading for Chertsey and Laleham. Took just under half an hour from hotel to park, can’t complain really!

I guess one of the major advantages of working for Play and Stay is the opportunity to visit the theme parks for free! Upon arrival at Thorpe Park we presented our passes and carried straight on into the park, dodging the large queue for tickets. I was surprised at the size of the queue to enter, even at 10am, given how few people there were at Legoland on our previous day. Most of the guests were teenagers though, so I guess the local schools were on holiday for the week. Judging by the amount of people I guess it really shows how Thorpe has captured the teenage audience well, the difference was quite noticeable from Legoland, and again at Chessington later in the day.

Once you enter the park you’re confronted with the dominating sight of Stealth looming in the background. The height difference between it and the other rides really is glaringly obvious. Given the growing number of people entering the park we decided to ride Stealth first of all, before the queue grew too long! I must say, waiting 15 minutes in a queue for the ride was really great after my last visit, where I had to wait nearly two hours. Going on Stealth I knew exactly what to expect and how the ride is, but still nothing can really prepare you for the shock of the speed and acceleration. It’s really quite breathtaking. What I had forgotten about however was the drop once you’re over the peak. Looking down into essentially nothing, you really do feel like you’re dropping out of the sky towards the ground. Of all the rides at all the parks over the week Stealth still provides the ultimate thrill, I wouldn’t really recommend it to the weak willed or those unsure on rollercoasters, but the young crowd at Thorpe Park were lapping it up. I saw many people instantly rejoin the queue for another ride once theirs was over.

After starting the day on Stealth we tried to fit in as many rides as we could before we had to leave for Chessington. Two hours at Thorpe Park just isn’t enough! We went on Nemesis first of all, the queue here was slightly longer and I could really see the park starting to fill up. Still, the ride delivered and even seemed quite peaceful after riding stealth. I do like the hanging style coasters though, makes things a lot more interesting through the loops and corkscews as you can really see the sky for a brief moment.

Once off Nemesis I wanted to head over to try out X as it had been closed on my previous visits. Once through the darkness of the queue line we were on the unique backwards coaster. I have to say, I was disappointed. The ride has a lot of potential to be really good but just doesn’t quite deliver. The dark is used well in the queue line, and builds the atmosphere and theme very well, making the whole experience seem quite sinister and shrouded in mystery. The ride itself is just pitch black the whole way, and while disconcerting given the speed you’re going at there isn’t really any references to see the speed and directions. Some more theming on the inside of the ride would really improve the experience I think. Also, they run a couple of trains at once on the ride, and it stops every now and again. I think that stops can be used very effectively on coasters to build tension, especially before a large drop or series of loops. However on X because you’re in the dark and facing backwards you can’t really see what’s coming so the effect of having stops in the rides feels rather lost and just ends up feeling like you’re stopping so you don’t catch up to the other trains. Perhaps the feeling of X was tempered by riding the more modern Nemesis and Stealth before it. I can’t fault Thorpe for trying something different but I would recommend trying all the other rides before X if you’re limited for time like we were.

Sadly we were running out of time already and the queue for Colossus had grown to over half an hour long by the time we were done with X, so we didn’t have enough time to ride it. Knowing we were missing out on Colossus we went round some of the smaller rides without queues before leaving. The rest of the team seemed to really enjoy the water slides. I figured I’d give them a miss having been soaked the previous day at Legoland, and didn’t fancy getting my only pair of jeans wet again. Still managed to get wet watching the ride though! With that our brief Thorpe Park visit was over and we were back in the car heading for Chessington World of Adventures and Zoo and Sea Life Centre and Kitchen Sink.

Three junctions round the M25, and just 20 minutes in the car and we were at Chessington. I never really appreciated just how close the parks were until I’d driven it myself. Picking a central hotel means that you really can visit all three parks in a weekend. Could make a pretty nice holiday I think. Anyway, after parking up at Chessington we were due a lunch appointment at the newly built Chessington Holiday Inn Hotel.

We met two members of staff, Saskia and Lee, at the Holiday Inn who were kind enough to give us an introduction to the hotel and a tour round the rooms and facilities. The hotel hasn’t even been open a year at the time of writing yet seems to be doing very well, with all the family rooms sold out during the Easter holidays. The hotel itself is decorated in an African safari theme, which seems fitting given it’s proximity to the zoo. In fact, next year there will be zebras and giraffes grazing in the fields surrounding the hotel, all visible from the business conference rooms (aptly named Serengeti Rooms 1, 2 & 3) and many hotel rooms. I guess that’s something that no other hotel can offer you! The rooms themselves were immaculately presented and cleaned, I can’t really fault the hotel on anything at all. They had top notch facilities, including an indoor heated swimming pool and a gym which was just going through the final stages of installation as we were looking round. After thanking Lee and Saskia for our tour we ate and headed out to the park.

Again time and the elements were our enemy. With only a couple of hours to view Chessington we had to pack in as much as possible. And of course in true British fashion the heavens opened as we walked through the gates. Having left the Legoland ponchos in the car we quickly dived into the Sea Life centre to avoid the rain and yet another drenching. I’d like to point out at this stage how the British weather always seems to conspire against me. I can go outside into theme parks and get nothing but rain and cold weather and yet as I sit here typing this, it’s a warm(ish) sunny day outside, and not a drop of rain. Still, what can you do. I’d also like to point out the irony of entering a Sea Life centre to avoid water.

I was quite impressed with the Sea Life centre. For what is essentially a giant tent they’ve constructed somethin
g that feels very permanent. The genius of the Sea Life centre really is in the design. There are parts where the fish are literally swimming around and over you, and you can see them at all angles as they glide gracefully though the water. For me the highlights were seeing rays and small sharks. Although they can’t keep anything too large at the centre there was still no shortage of interesting creatures, complete with facts and figures all about them on the walls next to the viewing glass. Once the rain dried up we were out into the rest of the park.

Again, I was actually quite impressed at how much Chessington had to offer. For what is billed as a family park it actually has quite a lot of thrill rides and options for older guests, as well as the full range of childrens rides and attractions. I would say that Chessington does a far better job of satisfying the whole family than Legoland does, which seems to be far more suited to young children. If your family is a mix of older and younger children I would definitely recommend Chessington over Legoland. Of course, if your children are all under ten then Legoland is the place for you. And conversely if you don’t have children then Thorpe Park is where you want to go! The rides we experienced at Chessington were for the most part pretty good. The Vampire was a relatively relaxing coaster and a good median point between kids ride and adult thrill ride. I can remember going on this ride when I was ten years old and being terrified, and here I am now describing it as relaxing! We went on the Dragons Fury, which was an instant hit with the Play and Stay team. Akin to the Pinball Wizard at Alton Towers the ride spins round and round as it careers down the track, and gives some genuinely unsettling moments as you’re not quite sure what direction you’re supposed to be going in. One ride I do recommend you give a miss however is the Rattlesnake. It’s very jerky and stop start and can be quite uncomfortable at times. However despite this and the fact that we didn’t get to see the zoo or even all the rides I enjoyed our time at Chessington and I would definitely recommend it. I would say it really is the one park that has something to offer everyone.

I’d like to end this blog post with a word of advice. We were advised at the Holiday Inn that we shouldn’t leave any later than 15:30 as we’d get caught up in holiday traffic. Well it can’t be that bad can it? Another hour in the park can’t hurt surely… How wrong we were. Due to a fatal accident on the M25 it took us three and a half hours to get home when it should take around 90 minutes. Five people in a Ford Fiesta isn’t the most comfortable experience in the world, particularly if you’re in the back! So my word of advice is this; whatever you do don’t drive home at rush hour on Easter weekend like we did, although I guess given the circumstances I’m glad we got home safely. Once home I collapsed and fell asleep for eleven straight hours, knackered after the trip. I have to say that after having done one, I would recommend a theme park break to anyone. Just make sure you pick the right attractions.

New Ride for Thorpe Park in 2009

December 4th, 2007

There’s a lot of interest and speculation around the new roller coaster coming to Thorpe Park in 2009. Planning permission has been submitted for the Gertstlauer Euro Fighter which will be located in Canada Creek alongside such favourites as Logger’s Leap and Slammer!

You can take a look at the plans for this exciting new ride at the unofficial Thorpe Park Guide where there are extensive plans, designs and images to whet your appetite.

Riders will begin with a drop down before two turns and a zero-gravity roll. The ride will be similar to Speed at Oakwood theme park in Wales, with a vertical climb of about 30 metres before a chilling 97 degree drop into another loop. The ride sounds as if it’s going to be a good new addition to Thorpe Park’s already-impressive selection.

Take a look at the advertisement for Oakwood’s Speed to see what could be in store at Thorpe Park from 2009. Just remember that Thorpe Park’s version should be better going by the quality of their other rides!!