2004
Coaster Trips: 2004: Alton Towers, American Adventure
Thursday September 16th
Alton Towers
My visit to two parks today was once again due to the ridiculously low fares available from Ryanair. I had booked a weekend in Belgium with the European Coaster Club, which involved joining a coach leaving London on Friday morning. However, the cheapest flight I could find to London on Friday was in fact marginally more expensive than flying to East Midlands, spending a day at Alton Towers, and a nights accomodation. Since my friend George was happy to meet up for the day, it seemed the logical thing to do, and since American Adventure was nearby, we decided to throw that into the mix too.
An on time arrival at East Midlands and very little traffic brought us to Alton Towers just after 9:10am. To our delight, there was no wait whatsoever for our tickets, and we were able to enter the park immediately. One of the first things you see as you pass through the gates is a sign, pictured opposite. Given that the park has recently lost a lawsuit brought by local residents over noise, I think they must have decided to play hardball. Good luck to them.
Anyway, my first priority in the park was the coaster added since my previous visit in 2002, Spinball Whizzer. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, the ride was closed and did not open at all during our time in the park. There was no sign of activity beside the coaster at all, so we were not able to find out what the problem was. Apparently it is not as good a ride as its brother at Chessington, but nevertheless I would still have liked to try it.
Research on the internet when I got home showed me that both coasters had been closed at the same time. The culprit turned out to be a manufacturer-mandated replacement to some components on the ride vehicles to correct a potential safety issue which had arisen. This did improve my outlook on the situation somewhat, as my automatic conclusion had been that the ride had been closed due to staffing issues. There can be no shortcuts in the pursuit of safety.
I had forgotten how spaced out Alton Towers actually is. It is a good ten minute walk through forest to get to the Forbidden Valley section of the park, home of Nemesis. I had also managed somehow to forget how intense Nemesis was. Gloriously intense. Nemesis is proof that creativity and careful design can produce a much better coaster than one simply built to gain world records. We followed this up with two back to back rides on Air. The layout is uninspired compared to the other flying coasters I have ridden, but the restraint design is infinitely better, resulting in a ride that gets far closer to the sensation of flying than the Vekoma version. (The less said about the Zamperla version, the better). We caught a second circuit on Nemesis, this time in the back row, before moving across to the X-Sector area.
One of the Oblivion vehicles was stuck at the top of the ride as we approached, so while they were sorting it out we took a spin on the Black Hole. This ride, oddly enough, had the longest wait of the morning, at a little over a quarter of an hour. This was substantially due to the fact that very few people were paying attention to the sign requesting two people per seat, and the ride operators were not enforcing it. With a fifteen minute wait it hardly matters, but I hope that the rule is used when the wait gets longer.
By the time we emerged, Oblivion was running again. I had been wondering how I would cope with riding this again, as it was, a little over two years ago, the last coaster to really frighten me. Since then, I have managed to clear my fear of giant drops, and as such I figured Oblivion would not be a problem. What I hadn't anticipated was how much I'd enjoy the ride, and in fact on disembarking I insisted we go around a second time. Following the wonderful example set by Chris Simon, I spent some time taking my own collection of sadistic Oblivion photographs, but due to poor lighting conditions almost none of them came out properly. At some point in the future I'll have to have another go at this.
Our final ride of the morning was a circuit on Corkscrew. At the time of writing, there are rumours circulating on the internet that this ride has had its last season. For this reason, we decided to get one circuit in just in case it was our last opportunity. About two thirds of the way up the lift hill, the train stopped dead. The engineers did manage to get things going again a few minutes later, but not for long. A few minutes after our ride, we walked past it again to find it closed with several staff members examining a section of track in the brake run. As a little aside, when I was entering the ride name into my mobile phone to store the ride length, I missed a key, and the phone spell checker suggested Crap Screw. No comment.
On the way out, I played what was my first game of Dance Dance Revolution for a few weeks. I was out of practice, but I still managed to do okay. We ended up departing at 1:00pm for the short drive to American Adventure.
American Adventure
I think it is fair to say that I have never visited a park as deserted as American Adventure was today. There were at most thirty cars in the car park, putting even Walibi Lorraine a few weeks ago to shame. Though overcast, it wasn't raining, and all the rides in the park were operating as normal - at least when there were any guests nearby to board them. It should be noted at this point that American Adventure actually has a fairly good selection of rides. There was just nobody there to ride them!
George and I were the only people in the train for our first circuit on Twin Looper (#358), a roller coaster with a serious identity crisis. It has had four names (Soopa Loopa, Iron Wolf, Twin Looper, and JCB Twin Looper), three of which have been at this park. After the excruciatingly slow lift hill, the train drops into the two loops that give it its name, followed by a hill and some helixes. Unfortunately, the train runs out of speed after the loops, and the rest of the ride is disappointly slow, though not as bad as the Bat Coaster at Nigloland. On disembarking, the ride operator asked us if we'd like to ride again, so we relocated towards the back of the train for a second circuit. Sadly, we were not able to try the back car, as it had sand bags loaded in it, presumably because the train requires a minimum weight to complete the course successfully. Unfortunately these bags had been positioned in the two backward-facing seats on the train, which would have been interesting to try.
After a brief food stop, we tried the powered Runaway Mine Train. This was not at all bad for a powered coaster, though it did have one particularly violent turn that sent me slamming into the side of the car. The one thing I did notice was that the train passes very close to a platform in the lowest section of the ride, and someone with their hand out the side could easily lose a finger. The advice to keep arms inside the car at all times is probably the most disregarded in the amusement park industry, and most rides are designed accordingly, though this seems to be the exception. It should be noted that once again we were the only people on the train!
Missile (#359) was my ninth regular Vekoma Boomerang. We were invited to stay on after one circuit (are you seeing a pattern here?), so we did a second. However, I got a rather severe knock on my second circuit which resulted in my first Vekoma Headache in a while, so we decided not to stay for a third go.
Instead, therefore, we went over to the Rapids ride. Water rides in cold weather (when wearing Jeans and a Fleece jacket) are not a particularly good idea, but George said this one was fairly dry, so we joined the queue. We had a five minute wait, not because there were any people in front of us; rather, there were only three boats on the course and we had to wait for one to reach the station (empty!). The boats, incidentally, were twelve seater models; I have never seen any this big before; does anyone know if they can be found elsewhere? As luck would have it, I managed to escape almost completely dry.
We decided to stop for food at the park donut shop, which has a rather clever looking machine to make perfect (hot!) donuts in front of you. However, this device, the Donut Robot Mark II, was not behaving itself today, resulting in a profoundly apologetic staff member and some very strangely shaped donuts. They still tasted good though! With hunger satisfied, we caught a second ride on the Runaway Mine Train before heading over to the other powered coaster in the park, the Buffalo Coaster. This is a straight clone of the one at Drayton Manor, but lacks the section of track over water. A final circuit on Twin Looper finished the day.
We had a very good dinner in the China House restaurant. Tomorrow we have a long drive to meet up with the ECC coaches at Folkestone for the trip over to Belgium.