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Welcome to Loops and Lapbars! A deep dive into the mind of a theme park enthusiast. Here you’ll find attraction reviews, blogs and opinions on anything and everything theme park related!
About Me
Hello! My name is David, a theme park enthusiast from the North of the UK.
I started this blog in 2021 following an epic road trip around the UK as a way to document and review my travels.
I travel along with my partner Tracy, in the hopes of seeing, photographing and riding as many rollercoasters, rides and attractions as I can!
Latest blog posts
Nemesis Reborn – Review
In 2022, Alton Towers closed Nemesis and launched an exceptional marketing campaign, building anticipation for its reopening in 2024. The park’s attention to detail in revamping the Forbidden Valley area with new features and effects has been praised. Despite some minor issues with the ride, the improvements are evident, solidifying…
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The Loops & Lapbars 2024 Season!
So I feel the blog took a massive back seat last year thanks to YouTube and I hope to get back to writing about our exploits more regularly this year! So what better way to start than by having a brief run through of the season ahead. Starting off, there’s…
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Gullivers Kingdom – The first visit
As part of LoveTwoexplores weekend, on the second day we ended up at Gulliver’s Kingdom in Matlock Bath. The first thing that strikes you when you approach the park is the terrain the park is built on. It’s essentially a mountainside! There’s definitely been some creative uses of the land…
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Gulliver’s Valley – The First visit
The Gullivers family of parks is a group that I wouldn’t normally be able to visit as they have a very strict adult to child ratio which means only adult groups can’t usually go. However, thanks to Love2explore setting up a little event, 29 of us were allowed to visit…
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Saying goodbye to Shockwave (as we know it!)
It wasn’t so long I was writing a post about Shockwave, how it was an under appreciated gem of the UK coaster line up and how I adore it, even with its faults. Now Drayton Manor have announced that Shockwave, in its current stand up form will be no more…
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Uncharted: El Enigma de Penitence Review
While we were at Portaventura we obviously had to try the new Intamin built Uncharted ride. This is a collaboration of my favourite ride manufacturer and favourite game franchise so what’s not to love? I’ll be going into everything that we saw and felt so please don’t read on if…
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Portaventura World
The second post of our Portaventura trip, this time more about Portaventura!
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Portaventura, hotel, getting there and day 1
Once we’d gotten back from our European road trip, I had the travel bug so almost immediately we started talking about our next visit. We eyed up Legoland Billund, Tivoli Gardens and Liseberg but settled on Portaventura World. This is the first time we’ve flown to a park and my…
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Our Eurotrip – Summary
I wanted To write this blog to not only summarise our trip, but also give a bit of advice where I can about travelling around Europe. The highlights Thinking about things that stuck out on our trip, I’d have to say that most of Efteling, Rookburgh and the Charles Lindbergh,…
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Walibi Belgium – The first visit
I’ll preface this blog by saying that the only things I knew of Walibi Belgium was that it was a Six Flags park and featured on Roller Coaster Tycoon, a game I grew up playing (and still play to this day), and Kondaa. That was it! We arrived at the…
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Phantasialand – The first visit
Phantasialand was the park I was looking forward to the most out of all the parks we’d lined up to visit. I’ve heard rave reviews for Taron and F.L.Y. as well as the Rookburgh and Klugheim themed areas, so I was quite excited! Coupled with he fact we were staying…
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Toverland – First visit
Toverland is excellent. I could leave it there, but I’m going to elaborate, in detail, why Toverland is excellent. Our day started at Troy and though it was delayed a little in opening, we eventually got into the queue line and already there’s things to point out. Firstly the queue…
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Efteling – The wonderful Efteling
I’m going to start this blog by being very forward and saying that Efteling is phenomenal. It has some of the best themed rides and experiences I’ve ever had and even Tracy was impressed by the care and attention to detail put into the park, restaurants and, well, everything! We…
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Bobaajaanland – First visit
I knew nothing of Bobbejaanland before we visited. I knew of it and that it was a somewhat notable park, but other than few attractions, I didn’t know what the park was like. This made it quite fun to explore and find attractions that I’d actually heard about but didn’t…
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Plopsaland De Panne – First visit
I hadn’t heard much of Plopsaland De Panne before The Ride to Happiness came into being, but that ride definitely put it on the map for us. In my last blog, I mentioned about the parks we’re visiting on our European road trip and Plopsaland was the first to go…
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Euro Road Trip 2023
This is going to be a very quick blog just to outline our first ever European Road Trip! As I’m writing this I’m sat in Tracy’s front room eager to get on the road, but can’t as I’ll be far too early for our Euro Tunnel connection to Calais tomorrow!…
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Drayton Manor – Coronation Street Party
Another visit to Drayton Manor? So soon after the last? Yep, this year we’re season pass holders and with Drayton Manor doing a good job of turning the park around, I’ve decided to try and visit as many of their events as possible to see how they’re getting on. This…
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Drayton Manor – Thomas Land 15th Anniversary
This year is a year of celebrations, from The Smiler (and Hero’s) 10 birthday, to the coronation of King Charles. It’s also the 15th anniversary of Thomas Land at Drayton Manor, and we went along to see how everyone’s favourite tank engine was doing. Thomas land was subtly decorated with…
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Alton Towers – Festival of Thrills – The Smiler Takeover 2023
This is Alton Tower’s first event this year and the second time we’ve had the Festival of Thrills. In this blog, I’ll compare it to last years event, see what worked and what didn’t and give my verdict. As it’s The Smilers 10th anniversary this year, Alton Towers have branded…
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Flamingo Land April 2023 – First visit of the season
Our first visit to Flamingo Land was an impromptu one. We had a gig on Friday and met up with friends for it and had an airport run on Saturday which left Sunday completely free, which for us is unusual. So we decided on visiting Flamingo Land much earlier than…
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The Curse at Alton Manor – A Review
I’d like to preface this review with two things, firstly I really liked Duel and never rode the original Haunted House. Secondly, I’ve only ridden The Curse at Alton Manor twice, so I might not have seen everything the attraction has to offer. With that being said, The Curse at…
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Alton Towers – The Your Experience Guide Secret Weapon Saturday Enthusiast Event
Such a long title for a blog, and a long day too! This was our first ever theme park enthusiast event and was hosted at Alton Towers and put together by the fine fellows at Your Experience Guide(YEG) (Formally Pleasure Beach Experience). The day started off early at 8am where…
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The Retro Squad. Weighing in my opinions!
Recently I’ve been seeing more and more people voicing their opinions and concerns over the Retro Squad at Alton Towers, and I thought I’d put my thoughts out there too. To be completely blunt, I think they’re good and certainly do their intended job of helping with capacity. Don’t get…
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Blackpool Pleasure Beach – First day of the season
Last year, we officially started our season at Paultons Park, then Alton Towers, so for this year, we decided to try Blackpool Pleasure Beach. They’ve moved their opening day to line up with the other UK parks as they usually open up in February which meant deciding between Alton Towers…
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Wicker Man and the UK Woodies
There are plenty of rides in the UK offering new and exciting ways to thrill you. The smiler can send you upside down 14 times, Stealth can launch you to 80mph in 1.8 seconds and Odyssey can take you to heights no inverted coaster in the UK gets close to.…
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2023 Season plans!
This is quite an exciting blog to write as we’ve somewhat finalised our plans for the coming year This year, as I put down in my 2023 resolutions blog, we were hoping to get across to Europe and thanks to our latest bookings, we now shall be! I’ll go into…
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Thorpe Park – What I’d do if I were in charge
During the course of the 2022 season, we visited Thorpe Park a lot. Coupled with 2021s visits, I believe it makes it our second most visited park after Alton Towers. So, much like the Alton Towers blog, I think it would be fun to break down Thorpe park as though…
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Flight of the Sky Lion – A review
Flight of the Sky Lion is a flying theatre that opened at Legoland in 2021 as part of their Mythica expansion. The idea behind the ride is that you board the ride vehicle and are then taken away on a journey by a magical Sky Lion called Maximus into his…
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Shockwave – The Under Appreciated 3rd
Shockwave. Poor old Shockwave. It lives in a park that has gone through a lot of trouble in the past, had troubles of its own and was even over shadowed (until recently) by another roller coaster in the same area, that being G-Force. The problems Shockwave has faced didn’t start…
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A Thrill seeker’s guide to Alton Towers
Alton Towers is set well into the Staffordshire countryside amongst the ruins of the famous Alton Towers stately home. In this guide, I aim to give my own tips and suggestions of how to get the most out of a day at Alton Towers, from arriving at the park, to…
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2023 resolutions and plans
2023 has come around really fast. The 2022 season only feels like it ended in the past few days but in reality, it’s over a month and a half since we last set foot in a theme park! I thought it might be a good idea to put down some…
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2022 Season review
Though we haven’t had quite as many brand new attractions to ride this year, we’ve visited more parks and done more events than last year. As with last year, I thought it would be fun to look back at the 2022 season, rank the events and new attractions we rode…
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Alton Towers – Fireworks!
Our final visit for the 2022 season was, of course, to the Alton Towers Fireworks Spectacular! I was very excited for this display as I’d read that it was a celebration of the big 7 coasters and though they did a similar thing last year, I really enjoyed it! The…
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Legoland – Fireworks!
For our final weekend of the season we decided on a trip to Legoland and Alton Towers to see both of their fireworks displays. I’ll go into Alton Towers’ display in a following blog but for now, here’s my thoughts on Legoland. The park wasn’t that busy throughout the day,…
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Halloween Holiday 2022 summary
Now that all the individual blogs have been written, I’d like to summarise our holiday and get any last bits out that I may have forgotten! Though each park did a great job of their own respective Halloween events, the standout one for me was Fantasy Island’s Fear Island event.…
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Fantasy Island – Fear Island 2022
Our final visit for this trip was Fantasy Island for their Fear Island event. This event is extremely good value as it includes unlimited rides, a round of 18 hole mini golf, access to 4 scare mazes and a digipass for your ride photos too, all for £35! I’ll start…
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Alton Towers – Scarefest 2022 15th Anniversary
Our next visit was to Alton Towers, stopping on site in one of their Star Gazing Pods for 2 days and nights. We wanted two days to make sure we get the most out of Scarefest as well as ride the great selection of rides! I’ll do a separate little…
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A farewell to Nemesis…
Remember remember the 5th of November, our last ride of Nemesis 1.0. The ride is set to close on the 6/11/22 for a retrack, encompassing everything between the top of the lift hill right up to the final brake run. I’m a relatively recent first time rider of Nemesis, riding…
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Legoland – Brick or Treat Presents Monster Party!
Our fourth stop for this adventure was Legoland to revisit them for their Brick or Treat event. This year presenting the Monster Party! Our visit intially felt very rushed. We’d gotten to the park early enough so we were queuing to get in but by the time we were in…
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Thorpe Park – Fright Nights 2022
Fright Nights is another event that we’ve done before, as we did Fright Nights 20 last year. We really enjoyed last year’s offering so we’re expecting good things from this year! Changes from last year were a lot more noticeable than there were with Chessington. Firstly, Platform 15 has gone…
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Farewell Apocalypse
I feel like I should write this blog about Drayton Manors Apocalypse. The ride is a 177ft Intamin Drop tower, the first of its kind to feature stand-up gondolas when it opened in 2000, a feat it held onto until 2005. 2 years after opening it was converted to have…
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Chessington World of Adventures – Howl’o’ween 2022
Howl’o’ween 2022 will be the first time we’ve been back to a Halloween event for a second year so we can compare it to last year, as well as to other events we’ve been to. Not a lot of big changes have occurred since last year, the same shows in…
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Stop 1 – The Annex and Paultons Park
The Annex As I mentioned in the previous blog, out first stop was at a homestay called The Annex in Totton, just outside Southampton. Very briefly, the property was excellently finished and there was everything we needed and then some! We had a bed and the usual things, but also…
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Halloween Holiday!
This year, we thought it would be a good idea to have a week away visiting various parks for their Halloween events. We were impressed with Alton Towers Scarefest in 2020 and last year’s Fright Nights at Thorpe Park, so it makes sense to have a tour of the big…
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Hull Fair 2022
It’s that time of the year again, Hull fair returns to Walton Street for a vast array of travelling attractions. This will be the first year I’ve gone whilst writing this blog as we couldn’t attend last year. The fair is the largest travelling fair in Europe, according to the…
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Pleasurewood Hills
Our final stop on our weekend away was to Pleasurewood Hills Family Theme Park in nearby Lowestoft. Unlike Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach, we were allowed to record on rides here and simply had to visit reception for them to check out equipment out. This is the first time I’ve had…
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Great Yarmouth Pleasure beach
As our main visit in Great Yarmouth, we were both looking forward to Pleasure Beach! I’ve read some great things about this smaller seaside attraction, and my main focus was on the parks scenic railway, Roller Coaster! The park has shifted from being a token based park to having times…
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Joyland Great Yarmouth
Recently we took a trip to Great Yarmouth for a visit to Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach, followed by Pleasurewood Hills. As we’d booked for a 2 night stay and 3 days off, we had a look at other things to do while we were in Norfolk. There is a Sealife…
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Alton Towers Oktoberfest 2022!
Last year we visited Alton Towers for their Oktoberfest event and thoroughly enjoyed it (you can read about it here), so it was a certainty that we’d visit this year! I’ll go into the actual event elements as I run through how our day went, but first we visited Oblivion!…
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Alton Towers – The future of the Towers!
There’s quite a bit of buzz happening at the moment surrounding Alton Towers. Firstly there’s the closure of Duel, which officially happened on the 6th of September and I’ll go into later. Then there’s a consultation being held on the 19th of September with regards to a new attraction going…
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Top Thill Dragster retires
Yesterday Cedar Point broke the news that Top Thrill Dragster will cease to exist as an experience as we know it. I read this as the attraction is going to be getting some major work or overhauled in some way, not that the ride is being removed entirely! The reason…
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Icon, Enso and controversy
I feel like I’ve got a lot to talk about with regards to Icon and more with regards to Enso. Let me start by saying the ride is good. Great even, and certainly worthy of it’s current 7th place in my own personal rankings. The issue is that I feel…
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Drayton Manor – August 2022 – Vikings!
Our most recent theme park outing was to Drayton Manor! A slightly impromptu visit but since the park is offering 2 visits for the price of one, it makes a lot of sense, especially with their new area, Vikings! Vikings The new area is nicely themed and very pleasant on…
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Thorpe Shark Cabins
Recently we stopped at Thorpe Park in their on site accommodation as mentioned in my Carnival blog post. Here’s my thoughts on the Thorpe Shark Cabins! The cabins themselves are quite small, some might say cosy and comprise a double bed, 2 bunk beds, a wet room and a little…
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Thorpe Park Carnival
For a little weekend getaway we decided on a visit to Thorpe Park, and that we’d stay on site in the Thorpe Shark Cabins. I’ll have a full dedicated blog talking about our experience with them but needless to say it’s the weakest offering of the Merlin Parks on site…
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Oakwood – The first washout
Our first big park would have been Oakwood theme park in Pembrokeshire, but the weather took a turn for the worse and though we had a couple of rides there, we ended up leaving as it was just too wet to enjoy anything. We did still manage a ride on…
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Barry Island first visit
Our second park visit for the holiday was another first time park, Barry Island Pleasure Park. We stayed in a hotel by Cardiff airport the night before and we got there early so headed into Barry to have a look around. First impressions weren’t too good as the area the…
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Sik at Flamingo Land- Review
Since starting this blog we’ve not had many new rollercoasters open, let alone many new thrill rides. When it was first announced and given the placeholder name of Inversion, I quietly looked forward to being part of the community riding something brand new for the first time together. The name…
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Crealy for the first time
For our holiday this year we once again looked at a UK road trip around a few parks and though we started at Tankfest at Bovington, our first park on the trip was Crealy. I don’t feel that there’s much to talk about here in regards to Tankfest but it…
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2022 Holiday Plan!
For our holiday this year, we’ll once again be doing a UK road trip! This time however we won’t be visiting a single Merlin park, instead opting for a few new places! Even though we’re only going away for a week this time, we’ll be covering just as much distance…
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Thorpe Park Mardi Gras!
Mardi Gras is something of a new thing in the UK. In writing this blog I’ve found out that the UK equivalent is Pancake Day which I can’t see Merlin Entertainments hosting in their parks, so Mardi Gras it is! This is our first visit to Thorpe Park this year…
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Ramada By Wyndham at Cobham Services
This is a very different blog to my others, but very relevant to other blogs I’ve made. I’ve mentioned before that we’ve stayed in the Ramada at Cobham services for our trips to Thorpe Park, Chessington and Legoland as its location is great for all 3 parks. Legoland is 30…
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Let’s talk Vekoma Madhouses
As mentioned in a previous blog, I’d like to break down the various Vekoma Madhouse attractions that the UK has, compare and contrast their ride mechanics and themes and finally rank them. It won’t be that hard though as there are only 3 currently in the UK. Firstly I haven’t…
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Drayton Manor April 2022 & Fazeley Inn
After Festival of Thrills, we headed over to Fazeley to stop for the night in Fazeley Inn as it’s right on the doorstep of Drayton Manor! The pub itself was fine, standard UK pub, with very well priced breakfast options! The room however, did leave a lot to be desired.…
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Alton Towers Festival of Thrills!
New for 2022 is Festival of Thrills, where Alton Towers pays homage to their big 7 roller coasters by inviting acts to perform on stages around the resort. Stages were setup in X-Sector, Dark Forest, Mutiny Bay and Forbidden Valley, and hosted a varied range of talent, from 80s rock,…
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Alton Towers – What I’d do if I were in charge
Here’s a big park to tackle with this blog series. Alton Towers. For me, the park doesn’t really do many things wrong, it has some of the UKs premier attractions such as Nemesis and The Smiler. It’s also been a testing ground for many worlds first attractions such as Air,…
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Alton Towers March 2022 – With Others!
Alton Towers’ first day of the season. March 19th 2022. The first time since I started this blog that I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a theme park with more than just Tracy! For this very special visit, I was joined by longtime friends Tami, of The Tami Journal and…
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Hayling Island 2022
While we were down south, we thought we’d visit Funland Hayling Island to see what this park had to offer, and to meet up with some friends for a day out. First thing to note is this isn’t an all day park. You can spend a lot of time here,…
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Paultons Park – first visit for 2022
Due to work schedules we couldn’t make it to Blackpool Pleasure Beach for the start of the 2022 season, so the season started at Paultons Park for us! We went on Friday 4th March and it was a really quiet day. There were no crowds at all through the day,…
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First stop of 2022 – Macdonald Botley Park Hotel & Spa
For our first trip (and to start the 2022 season), we headed down south to Paultons Park and to see some friends while we were down there. As It’s a 290 mile drive down there, we stopped at the Macdonald Botley Park Hotel and Spa. I touched on hotel reviews…
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2022 season
This year, there isn’t as much to be excited about as there was last year in terms of new rides, but there are still plenty of new attractions coming to look forward to! Valhalla and Enso at Blackpool Pleasure Beach are probably the best that we have this year, with…
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Nemesis: Inferno or The Original?
This is a pretty big discussion within the theme park community. Which is better, the original Nemesis, or its newer younger sibling, Nemesis Inferno? In this blog I’ll weigh up the pros and cons of both rides, and see which one I think is better overall! To start with, anyone…
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10 Rollercoasters I’d like to ride
Here is a list of 10 of the rides I’d most like to experience as soon as I possibly can! They are all from abroad so hopefully I’ll get my passport renewed and get to them soon! Helix- Liseberg Helix looks to be Icons bigger brother. I know simply by…
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Planet Coaster Review
Like many other enthusiasts out there, I love to play computer games! In particularly theme park simulators of which there have been many great (and not so great ones) over the years, including the Rollercoaster Tycoon series, Parkitect and the Thrillville series. At the time of writing this though, I…
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Legoland – What I’d do if I were in charge
Following on from my recent post about Flamingo Land, I thought it would be fun to tackle one of the UKs bigger parks this time around, Legoland Windsor! My first ever visit was only last year and I remember being underwhelmed with the overall experience. A subsequent second visit for…
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Flamingo Land – What I’d do if I were in charge
Welcome to a new series of blogs I’d like to introduce. In these blogs I intend to talk about many of the UK’s parks, what I like and what I don’t. These are purely from a fantasy point of view and more so, just a bit of fun! I’ve been…
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UK Parks I’d most like to visit
In this blog I’d like to talk about some of the UK parks that I’ve yet to get to. Firstly, we have: In recent years, Lightwater Valley seems to be going down the route of only appealing to younger audiences, which is a shame as they’ve had some decent attractions…
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2021 Season Review
What a season this has been! Starting all the way back in April at Drayton Manor, and finishing at Alton Towers for their incredible fireworks! I thought for this blog I’d do a mock awards ceremony, giving me chance to talk about highlights of specific parks, rides and attractions, and…
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Fireworks Spectacular – Alton Towers
Our final visit for the 2021 season was Alton Towers for their Firework Spectacular event. Our intention was to ride as many rides as we could before the fireworks closed most of them at 5pm, then head to the lawns for a good spot. Our day started like most at…
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Brick or Treat – Legoland
A bit late, but here’s my blog on Brick or Treat at Legoland Windsor! This was only our second visit to Legoland, as we’d visited earlier in the year and initially we weren’t that impressed overall. However after another visit, my opinion of Legoland has vastly changed for the better,…
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Vampire – The review
Vampire is an Arrow Dynamics steel suspended rollercoaster opened in April of 1990 at Chessington World of Adventures. The design allows the cars to freely swing below the track and originally had enclosed cars, but was later modified to accept new Vekoma floorless trains in 2001. The ride has a…
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Howl’o’ween – Chessington World of Adventures
Our third day of Halloween park visits was to Chessington World of Adventures to see what their Howl’o’ween event had to offer! Park entry was a smooth affair this time, no lengthy queues as we’d arrived early so we had plenty of time to do all the things we wanted…
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Fright Nights – Thorpe Park
Having tried Scarefest for the first time at Alton Towers in 2020, we made an effort to see what Thorpe Park, Chessington and Legolands events were like, starting with Thorpe Park. We once again stopped at the Ramada at Cobham services for four nights, meaning we could initially do two…
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Eurofighter showdown – Saw: The Ride, Speed: No Limits & Rage
Similarly to my blog comparing The Smiler to Stealth, I’d like to breakdown 3 very similar yet ultimately different rides. 3 Gerstlauer Eurofighters here in the UK, Speed: No Limits, Saw: The Ride and Rage. The facts All 3 rollercoasters feature similar elements, all have beyond vertical drops, all have…
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The fate of Galactica….?
When Galactica opened in 2002 it opened as Air, the world’s first Bolliger and Mabillard flying rollercoaster and Alton Towers’ secret weapon number 5. It features 2 inversions, a top speed of 47mph (75km/h), climbs to 66ft (20m) and is 2760ft (840m) long. It seems to have been a well…
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Drayton Manor Hotel and Zoo – Review
After we’d finished at Alton Towers for Oktoberfest, we headed to Drayton Manor Hotel for an overnight stay before our visit to the park the following day The Hotel The hotel itself is right at the front of the resort with ample parking for plenty of vehicles. On the subject…
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Drayton Manor Review – September 2021
This will be my first full resort review of Drayton Manor, my thoughts of the park and what I’d like to see moving forward. Drayton Manor is a large theme park located near Drayton Bassett, Staffordshire, UK. The park has a hotel, zoo and a theme park with over 40…
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Splash Landings Hotel & Waterpark- Review
Splash Landings As mentioned in my Oktoberfest Review, we stopped for two nights at the Splash Landings hotel. The check in process was excellent! You can either do it the conventional way by talking to a receptionist, or by using a touchscreen machine. It was easy to use and it…
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Alton Towers – Oktoberfest 2021
Last year, Alton Towers launched a new event, Oktoberfest. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get to it, but heard great things afterwards so this year, we made sure to go and visit and see what the event was all about. We made a small break of it by stopping in…
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Attraction soundtracks
One of the things I rarely ever hear anyone talk about are attraction soundtracks. The music that plays in the queue line, station building or themed area. Something that adds ambiance to an area, or builds up excitement for the ride you face! I don’t know why this is as…
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Chessington World of Adventures – Wilderfest – August 2021
Our visit to Chessington for Wilderfest was a pretty quick decision. I’d thought about it, Tracy mentioned it, and within minutes we’d booked the hotel at Cobham services (again) and prebooked our passholder tickets. We hadn’t planned in for another Chessington until Howl’o’ween later this year but they announced Wilderfest,…
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Battle of the two top tier thrill machines – The Smiler and Stealth
I’d really like to get to the bottom of which is the best, in my opinion, out these two excellent roller coasters. I’d like to break them down into component parts and decide overall which one will finally take the top spot for me, as it’s so close between them!…
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Holiday 2021 in Summary
As I stated in my previous blog, I’d like to summarise our trip away and add any advice to others planning on the same sort of trip. The Parks Over the course of the holiday we visited 8 very different parks around the country with our standout favorite of the…
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Ingoldmells & Fantasy Island – Stop 10
Our final stop on our epic trip was The Villager Hotel just outside Fantasy Island at Ingoldmells. The hotel was once again really nice, quiet too considering it had a bar below and to the side of it. The rooms were nice and had everything we needed, a lovely place…
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Margate, Southend & Adventure Island – Stop 9
From Chessington we drove to Margate and the Hussar Inn which is a pub with rooms above it, and quite a nice one at that too. The rooms were good sized, and the bathroom was massive, and yet the telly was tiny! The barman was excellent, helped us with any…
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Chessington World of Adventures & Margate – Stop 8
Following on from Thorpe Park, we stopped in The Ramada at Cobham services on the M25. This hotel was very cheap, and my exceptions were low because of this but I was pleasantly surprised at how good the hotel actually is. We paid £29 for the night, and it easily…
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Cobham & Thorpe Park – Stop 7
After our final night in Southampton Holiday inn, we once again packed the car up and left for our next stop, Thorpe Park! We’ve visited Thorpe Park twice before and both times we’ve enjoyed it but felt that it wasn’t as good as it should have been, so this time…
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Southampton & Paultons Park – Stop 6
Once we’d fought our way through traffic to Southampton, we arrived at the Holiday Inn Southampton West. We had 3 nights booked here, and this was a nice place to stay, with ample sized rooms, and we had a decent view from ours as we were further up in the…
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Bristol, Blandford Forum & Bovington – Stops 4 & 5
For day 5 and 6, we had a visit to Bristol, staying in The Coach House just outside Bristol. A Lovely little hotel tucked away from the road, lovely rooms and reception from the staff! In the morning we had a go on a driving range, whacking golf balls all…
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Hereford & Oakwood – Stop 3
Once we’d finished with Alton, we hit the road, heading to Hereford and the Three Horseshoes Inn. On the way, we got caught up in some heavy traffic following an accident, which made us quite late to the Inn, but the staff were fantastic. They kept the kitchen open for…
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