| Archive for RCCGB FORUM Message Board for Members of the Roller Coaster Club of Great Britain to discuss club events and all things theme park related. |
| Coaster Police |
Funland, Dublin - 10th January 2008Hi all!Just returned home from an excellent day in Dublin! I'll try and keep this brief (although i know it won't be), but it was an excellent day! Started off at 07:00, by car from Poole to Bristol airport. Crappy roads through Dorset and Somerset, but we got there OK. Met up with Harvey at the airport. Caught the 10:50 Ryanair flight to Dublin. It was ontime, and looking at the departrues board, about the only plane to be ontime due to hideous winds and rain, leading to numerous delays and cancellations. Good flight was had, and we lost all the crappy weather once we'd cleared Wales, to land in bright Sunshine in Dublin 45 mins later. Caught the aircoach bus from the airport to the RDS complex where the fair is held. Arrived just before 1pm and the fair didn't open until 2pm, so filled the time doing what most sensible people would do in Dublin.... Guiness! Arrived at Funland just after 2pm. Good news! Sun is still shining and all coasters are working! Woohoo! Started the session with a ride on the Shockwave looping coaster. (At this point we discovered all rides were half price!!! BARGAIN!) Very good coaster, very smooth! We then went to do the Wild Mouse.... again very good, and very spinny mouse coaster. The third coaster was indoors, the Goldmine Coaster. This is basically a wacky worm/big apple coaster themed up as a Goldmine type coaster with trucks and an engine instead of the regular caterpillar type design. As if the half price offer wasn't enough, the bargains now started to flow in!!! We paid our 1 Euro for the Goldmine coaster, then this bloke came up to us and said (having spyed the RCCGB Jackets).... oh no.. coaster enthusiasts don't have to pay, and demanded the cashier gave us the money back... BARGAIN!!! So we thanked him and did the coaster. To get to the indoor part of the fair there is a €2 entry fee, with no re-entry - so we looked about at all the other rides for a while whilst in there. Actually, this is a very good idea, as funland can run in bad weather with only 4 outdoor rides (Shockwave Coaster, Wild Mouse, Top Scan Space Roller & Big Wheel) being weather effected. Once leaving the indoor area, with all 3 coasters (and the Roller Ghoster ghost train) done, we headed over for another go on the Shockwave. Again, excellent ride, this time at the front. We now decided, that all is done, and we'll head into Dublin in search of more real Guiness.... only to be stopped by Security who were looking for us. The guy apologised for not having found us before, and then handed us each a book of complimentary ride vouchers (10 each!).... BARGAIN! Then let us back to the indoor park via a side entrance (free) to start using them. We had a go on the Snow Jet (Spinny Hanging Car thing that goes round real fast), Waltzer which was in mega spin mood, Take Off - which i'd never seen before, but was awesome with Mega G's when it really went into top speed spin mode, The Goldmine coaster, The Magic Carpet and the Top Scan Space Roller. After this we ventured outside again to use our remaining vouchers on the coasters and big wheel (for photo's).... as the light was starting to go, we thought we'd do the big wheel first..... this was again a BARGAIN! The guy would not accept the free ride vouchers, and insisted we went on for nothing at all.... so with a free ride voucher not used, this was even free-er than free!!! We did the wheel and then did the mouse again, and used the remaining vouchers on Shockwave (Front, Back, Middle)... where Mark was nearly ejected from the ride at the back over the kick of the first drop!! (Funny as hell to watch). That's it all done! Time for the bus back to the airport. We were going to go find more Guiness, but luckily decided to take the bus straight back incase rush hour proved to be chaos.... it was... 98 minutes for a 8 mile journey. I have NEVER seen so many busses in one city... the bus lanes were wedged with like 30+ busses all going nowhere! Crazy! Apparantly, on 1st April, they are going open new Car Lanes to speed things up!!!! Anyway, back at airport, we attacked the bar, then caught the flight home, which was 20 late leaving Dublin, but ontime into Bristol doing it in only 35 minutes! Now i'm home, knackered, but satisfied with an awsome day out which is highly reccommended to anyone for next year. The cost is ludicrously cheap.... here's a quick breakdown of my costs for the whole day..... Petrol Poole-Bristol £9, Airport Car Park £8.50, Flight £12.00, bus in Dublin €12, Rides (we paid for) €10, Guiness €4.50, Lunch €10.95, Irish Coffee €5.50, other snacks for the day about £6. Using an exchange rate of 1.35 for the Euro's, thats a total cost for the whole thing in GBP of £67.31. Not bad considering thats technically an overseas foreign country  16 rides, 12 of which were free.... top place, made to feel very welcome and some awsome rides (all used at full power, not throttled back to make them last longer).
What a great start to 2008! Anyway... i'll add the URL when i get the pictures up! Have fun all!! Matt Coaster Police |
| Bunnie |
Sounds like an absolutely brilliant day 
Great trip report, can't wait to see the photos 
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| coastergraham |
Great trip report
I look forward to your photos. Nice to see nothing has changed regards traffic in Dublin. |
| Coaster Police |
I have just added the photo's to my site now. Once they have been approved, you can access them directly at :-
http://mdw.fotopic.net/c1439620.html Hopefully Mark will sort himself out and put some of his pictures up if he can quit playing World of Warcraft for a while!!!
Matt Coaster Police RCCGB : 2153 |
| WildMouse |
Great trip report. Sounds and looks as though you had a fantastic day out.
I'm really impressed with the ride line up, especially the Looping Star (of course). Beats the standard fare of Spinning Mouse coasters we normally get over here (if we are lucky). I think I know where I'll be heading next January to alleviate those closed season blues 
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| USfriends |
Freer than free ! It doesn't get any better than that
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