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 to do this, and I wish more parks would do this to make it easier for us! (looking at you Merlin…)
After we’d gotten sorted and we got our wristbands, we headed straight for the parks biggest attraction, Wipeout.
The Vekoma Boomerang
Wipeout used to belong to The American Adventure park before it closed down. A park I wish I’d had the chance to try in its heyday. Now all I can do is follow the attractions that used to be at the park to at least ride them in some form! Wipeout is one of these.
This is the first full size Vekoma Boomerang we’ve both tried, as all the others have been smaller junior boomerangs without inversions.
The ride does feel as old as it is, but that’s to its credit as it makes some really excellent noises as the motors and parts clunk and bang into action.
Though quite small in terms of footprint and height, the ride has plenty to offer for an aspiring thrill seeker. There’s plenty of force and through the entire layout, you’ll be inverted 6 times. 3 on the forward run and 3 on the return journey.
There is a bit of roughness to the attraction but it’s not unbearable like some of Vekomas other offerings!
Egg-Spress, is it Egg-scellent?
After Wipeout, we headed down to try out Egg-Spress, a Zierer Tivoli Large with a standard layout. It’s identical to Treetops at Oakwood. The ride is good for younger enthusiasts and is certainly better when you’ve got two of you in the car together as you can get thrown about a bit! Not one of the more enjoyable ones for me, but not terrible either!
While we were down this end of the park, we had a go on one the parks two dogems. This one is called Bumpercar Garage and had brightly coloured cars themed to 1920 model cars. The ride was alright, nothing sparkling but it was the more fun of the two dodgem rides the park has, I’ll elaborate later!
After the dodgems, we headed up to the top section of the park and were intending to go on Wavebreaker, the parks dinghy slide, but it stipulates that both of us would have to go in a boat together and with our bag, it wouldn’t have been comfortable so we instead boarded the Pleasurewood Hills express.
The Express takes you around the whole park in a big loop which was great to get our bearings and find some of the bigger named attractions, as well as have a nice sit down!
After we’d had a ride around the full park, we had a go on Safari, a tracked ride that takes you passed wildlife scenes. I don’t like to be too negative on things but this ride is in desperate need of some attention! Many of the scenes are looking very dated and worn and other than a few static scenes, there not much more to see on this. Shame as it occupys a good plot of land and has a nice layout. It could be quite good given some investment.
Zamperla finally made me ill.
Next up was a Zamperla Kite Flyer called, Kite Flyer, very inventive! This attraction can be best described as a wave swinger that you ride laying down. The gondolas feel very similar to Hero at Flamingo Land, and given that they’re the same manufacturer, it wouldn’t surprise me if Kite Flyers were a test bed to see if their version of a flying coaster would work.
Anyway back to Kite Flyer. The ride started of ok, if a little awkward to get into, but very soon into the ride, I started to feel quite ill. I’m not really one for massive spinning rides anyway, but this is the first time since starting this blog that I’ve gotten off a ride and felt really ill from it. I would assume it’s the laying down position or something but I didn’t enjoy it at all unfortunately!
After Kite Flyer, I needed a bit of a breather so we had a sit down at a near by picnic area and had a drink. While we were here we both remarked on how there are plenty of places to sit and you can pretty much see a toilet block from anywhere in the park as they’re that numerous!
We had a wander up passed the arcade and noticed Rootin’ Tootin’ Gun Trail, which is an interactive dark ride so we headed in for a go.
This ride is very similar to Sheriff’s Showdown at Drayton Manor, but with the ride system of Tomb Blaster. This was a great ride and has so much potential that is let down by the scoring system.
To be blunt, it didn’t work! When we got off, we were both eager to see who had won, as we have a good laugh with the completion on these attractions, but we were disappointed to find it doesn’t work.
The cars don’t feature scoreboards so the only way you’ll see your score is outside as you exit the ride. We watched the board and it didn’t change no matter how many people went through, which is a shame!
From Marble Madness to Hyper Drive….
After I’d started feeling better, we had some dinner that we’d brought along and then went on Marble Madness. I was quite looking forward to this as it used to be at Flamingo Land, until it was replaced by Hero.
The ride is decent, not quite as violent as other wild mouse coasters, but definitely not as fun as Gerstlauer bobsleds. Though Hero is a completely different ride, and garners quite a bit of hate, I would definitely say I prefer that to Marble Madness. Neither can top Cobra at Paultons Park though and that is a modern version of Marble Madness!
There isn’t much theming about the coaster, something that it shares with Wipeout and Cannonball Express, but it was fun enough, just not quite as fun as I’d have liked!
Speaking of Cannonball Express, that was our next stop. Despite knowing in advance that this ride was down for maintenance, I still wanted to go and see it as there aren’t many Schwartzkopf coasters left, let alone unique ones like this one.
I will get back down here to have a ride on this as it looks like a great attraction, just a mess of track, twists and turns and thrills. I hope it doesn’t disappoint!
After we’d taken some photos, we wandered back up to the food plaza and had a go on the parks second dodgems ride, Hyper Drive. This was a bit disappointing too as there were only 4 cars actually functional out of around 10 so throughput was quite low. Plus the cars didn’t really have any gusto about them and felt very old, very tired and slow. Hyper Drive this is not!
Next we headed back over towards Kite Flyer and a ride on the parks Chairlift Attraction that takes you from one side of the park to the other which takes around 15 minutes in total!
Though very slow, the views are good and it’s quite pleasant to sit for a good amount of time and just take in the views of the park. There are only two stations, one by Kite Flyer as mentioned and the other is down by Egg-Spress, so it takes you over a lot of the kids rides and past Wipeout too.
After wandering around and taking some more photos down by Egg-Spress and Wipeout, we called it a day and started our trip back home.
My thoughts on Pleasurewood Hills
The park is owned by Looping Group, the same as Drayton Manor. Now Drayton is seeing a lot of investment at their property so I’d hope that Pleasurewood Hills eventually gets the same.
That’s not to say the park is bad at all, but it does have some issues that could do with addressing. Primarily, it needs some investment into proper theming for some of its attractions. Rides like Wipeout don’t have any theming at all, and others, like Egg-Spress have some but it feels like it’s had to be done on a budget.
I also noticed large parts of the park that were fenced off and had old attractions just left there being unused along with ride vehicles and other props too. I believe the was a go kart track at one point and surely this area is big enough for a decent new ride?
Marble Madness also seems to overlook a storage area full of old props and caravans and the area is quite untidy too. This could be easily remedied by putting up themed boards around Marble Madness, so not only does it hide the maintenance areas, but also themes up a ride at the same time!
I’ve been quite negative so far with my thoughts, but there is plenty to be positive about too! The park has so much space it can use, and a lot of it is quite nicely landscaped too. There’s a decent mix of coasters too, especially since the parks main focus is families with younger kids. Wipeout is probably a little out of place in the line-up, but it gave me a good reason to visit!
All the staff we spoke to were pleasant ad there are a great selection of rides for a younger audience. As I mentioned at the start, the process of having equipment checked was professional and handled well too!
There were certainly the makings of some good themed areas too, especially around the log flume. The bright colours are very reminiscent of Adventure Cove at Drayton Manor, I would love to see more of this around the park.
There’s a lot of potential with this park, very much like Flamingo Land so hopefully Looping Group invest some time and care into Pleasurewood Hills and bring it right up to the forefront of family parks in the UK.
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