Nutter's Camping and Coasting Trip

mophead · Nutter's Camping and Coasting Trip

We planned a week of coaster riding and camping to coincide with the club trip to Oakwood. I'd never been camping before and after last week I might not again! The trip started at Gulivers in Milton Keynes on the 1st August. Unfortunatly I didn't as I couldn't get the day off work so I joined the following day at Drayton Manor.

The new Thomas Land looked superb but was also the busiest area of the park. The weather was largely warm and sunny, all rides were working and we had the perfect start to the trip.

Next we headed to Skegness. The campsite looked lovely in the evening sunshine... unfortunatley some members of the group didn't get to experience this as their sat nav led them a long way off course. The next morning we were joined by Liz and Graham at Bottons Pleasure Beach. Really enjoyed this park - it had lots of nice little rides including an insanely fast Waltzer, some small but interesting coasters and a good atmosphere. After lunch we headed on to Fantasy Island. In comparasion this is a terrible park. It was packed full of people most of whom were trudging round the market. The ride token system was confusing and some of the rides had very long ques in claustophobic conditions. A small blessing was that the two big coasters are still pay extra attractions and thus had no que at all. I finally got to ride Jubilee Odessey (after many visits of turning up to find it closed!) and loved it. The first drop where it dived through the structure was amazing.

Then it was off to another nice campsite opposite Flamingo Land. Despite knowing where Flamingo Land was we had to follow the sat nav into the middle of nowhere and arrived at a pile of rubble in the middle of a field! Flamingo Land is almost a fantastic park. In the last few years it has really been transformed from abit of a dump to what should be the best park in the country, both visually and ride wise. This year saw the addition of a Flip Flop - think Malstrom but abit smaller with more airtime and the old 4d theatre from the American Adventure with a new film, which I really enjoyed. The problem with this park is the staff. Loading on all rides is very slow and the staff seem to spend more time talking amongst themselves than actually doing any work! For the number of people queing for Kumali (the parks very good suspended coaster) the wait should have been about 20mins not 1hr!

Next was Lightwater Valley - one of my favourite parks as it's so nicely laid out. Several rides were experiencing technical problems - the Rat which could only run 2 cars and the big wheel which apparently could only carry 5 people at a time (it's supposed to carry 146!). In the afternoon it started raining which made the Ultimate run insanely fast.

After Lightwater the weather started going down hill. Our day in Blackpool was warm but somewhat damp. Despite the park being packed ques were not to bad and we rode everything we wanted to. After the Ultimate the day before the woodies had lost some of their appeal (I was hurting too much for more than 1 go). After a wet night we mopped out our tents and headed to Alton Towers.

I tried the new Pirate ride and it was great fun. The theming and added water guns, especially around the que line, were great. However it rather wetter than I was expecting. Another suprise was how much better the food at Alton Towers has got this year. We went to the curry shop for lunch and very nice it was too.

Next was West Midlands Safari Park. We were first in line for the safari drive which was pretty good although I found the stop starting of the traffic a bit annoying. Soon we headed into the park. This was where 22 years ago I rode my first coaster (a boomerang). The only original ride still there from that time was the Pirate Ship. They had an unusual spinning rapids ride, afew small coasters, a cracking little ghost train and some good spin and spew rides. As we needed to get off for Oakwood we whizzed around and made good use of the wristbands.

The following two nights were spent at Oakwood and while friday was pretty good saturday was a soggy affair.

Thanks to Robert and Simon for organising everything and doing all that driving but next time can we stay in some B&Bs!