Coastercrazy UK mini trip 2018

[mkingy]

Intro

The Coastercrazy (hope to be annual) mini trip round the UK took place over the weekend of the 17th-19th March featuring the 3 main parks ??? Alton Towers, Thorpe Park and Blackpool Pleasure Beach. With The Walking Dead and ICON yet to open the most anticipated day of the long weekend was certainly Alton Towers to check out their new coaster Wicker Man!

Thorpe Park

Trip Report

Thorpe Park was the first park on the trip, we all arrived early and headed into the park. We chuckled at the silver painted plants where nobody had bothered to cover them all whilst repainting and headed towards Colossus. Which was closed. This was not the end of this saga. We headed over to SAW for our first ride of the day.

Saw: The Ride

Saw was running reasonably well, dispatches were pretty standard and the ride didn't have any rough spots aside from the ones that have always been there (hello bottom of the first drop). Nice little bit of airtime before the MCBR ??? only downside was that the swinging axes were non-functional which meant you weren't distracted form the drop, which is a shame.

Nemesis Inferno

We moved onto Nemesis Inferno, which had very few of its effects running ??? however when we returned later all the effects were working including an overabundance of dry ice in the tunnel which meant for a soupy exit to the ride. Great ride, again seemed to be running quite well!

Swarm

We hit up stealth and swarm next (no effects running on Swarm either ??? perhaps first weekend back they forgot to turn them on!) before having lunch and trying Colossus again and hitting up Rush. Colossus had a lift evacuation so we left the queue with some handy exit passes to use later in the day.

Stealth

We rode Nemesis Inferno again and then for our final ride we hit up Stealth. There were mumours of an extended opening time which proved to be true as everyone cycled round Stealth over and over (I think me and Herman managed about 6 rerides) before Jammy heard someone claim Colossus was running. This was the ride that PvM most wanted to ride at the park, so we legged it over there to find a 5 minute queue as the ride had just opened, fantastic! We jumped on at the front / back and almost got a Coastercrazy exclusive train! It was a fantastic way to finish off the day and really impressive that they got the ride running for the last 30 minutes, credit to the Thorpe Park staff!

Colossus

Positive

• Nemesis Inferno with full effects
  
• Getting Colossus back up and running so late in the day

Negative

• Swarm lack of effects
  
• The Walking Dead wasn't ready in time for opening weekend (perhaps not such a negative)

Crew Photos

Turbo & DanSmiler on Stealth

Mkingy and Herman on Colossus

[mkingy]

Alton Towers

Trip Report

We arrived at Alton Towers to an absolutely massive rugby scrum of a main gate ??? with Wickerman not opening the week before and a very hit and miss Saturday there were a lot of people hoping to get their first ride.

Wickerman

With the rest of the people at Alton Towers we headed straight for Wickerman and proceeded to wait until 11:30 (from 9:30 opeining) for it to even open the queue. This was only the start of the reliability problems of the day, whilst in the queue Smiler, Thirteen and Rita all failed to open at their staggered, scheduled time. We could've been elsewhere in the park and easily not ridden much more than we did stood in the line. This turned out to be the right choice as Wickerman proceeded to break down roughly 5 minutes after we got on it. Ride review is below.

Wickerman

We followed this up with a trip over to Fobidden Valley for the (now not so mighty) Nemesis and Galacticair. Nemesis has had a complete repaint of the station which really good, although it's a shame that the not all the track has been repainted. Nemesis is currently runs 1 train which doesn't help capacity, but the bright white lights in the station really kill the mood alongside the awful audio. Somehow even though air's throughput is worse even though they've restricted the number of rows that have VR, the rides itself was as good/bad as usual.

Nemesis

After having lunch next to Wickerman (the Burger Kitchen is closed in Forbidden Valley now!) we headed over to the dark forest for Thirteen and Rita. We failed to get on either of these as they both broke down whilst in the queue, and with us running out of time it was more essential to get over to Smiler. We rode Oblivion (again nothing to report) and then took a ride on Smiler. Unfortunately there is a lot of atmosphere that has been removed with the new baggage system although at least the projectors were working! Smiler rode really really well, and everyone in the group enjoyed it a lot! By this point the park was closed, so we went over to Wickerman to watch it going around before missing the last monorail back to the car park. Lol.

Smiler

Wickerman

Wickerman is the long awaited wooden coaster to finally make its way to Alton Towers, and this in itself is something to be celebrated, whilst we'd have all loved an RMC, or something diving into the valley we have at least gotten a woodie, and hopefully one that leads the way for more further down the line.

Wickerman

There's some concessions to be made for this ride to start out, it's a family coaster and it replaces a family ride. The themeing and story perhaps veer towards teenagers but I felt in the end the themeing matched the ride experience pretty well, so those who aren't put off riding it won't be put off by the light fear of the themeing.

Wickerman

The most important part to me is the ride itself, having ridden Wodan and Troy late last year I have a pretty good recollection of GCI's ability to create a great ride, but it???s perhaps foolish to expect this ride to live up to those expectations, given the well documented constraints at Alton Towers. The ride does not currently provide noteworthy airtime, sure a few pops and some almost but not really floater airtime. Freddie mentioned this should get better, hopefully it does. What it does provide however is a great out of control section through the diving turn and some decent lats here and there. If this ride does speed up as the wood wears in the first diving turn is going to turn out as something pretty special I think. It's possible unfortunate then that the rest of the ride doesn't live up to this second element ??? paced quite slow, relatively speaking forceless and quite uninspiring. I found out the other day this ride from top of lift to hitting brake run is longer than Wodan which seems unbelievable, there's just not enough memorable moments to fill the extended ride time.

Wickerman

The Wickerman is probably the best thing about this ride, a huge themeing piece straight out of a RCT expansion pack, and this plus the queue line snaking around the track create so many awesome angles to see the coaster from, and it looks really pretty. It's great to see wood at Alton Towers and they've done a fantastic job of making it fit in. I'm not big into shop theming etc. Etc. But the entire area feels great ??? hopefully the atmosphere lasts past the first summer season. There are nice details regarding signs and the pre-ride show was well done and added to the ride in my opinion.

Wickerman

Overall I think Alton have a solid coaster here, I think the effects are integral to the coaster at the moment, but if it gains significantly more speed as it gets older it might just stand on its own. I'm looking forward to visiting this later in the season to see how it has changed.

Positive

• Smiler was running really well
  
• Wickerman is a solid addition
  
• Waffles

Negative

• Park feels really neglected in some areas
  
• Single Rider queue & Baggage arrangements aren't great
  
• Wickermamndowntime

Crew Pictures

Wickerman

Coastercrazy crew on Wickerman

Coastercrazy crew on Wickerman

Coastercrazy crew on Wickerman

[mkingy]

<Blackpool Placeholder>

Very cool pics of Wickerman!