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 expected as we had planned in to visit later in the summer.
We paid the full gate price of £52.50. We did pre-book online but it was less than 48 hours before our visit as advertised so I have no issue there. I’ll get it out of the way now and say that £52.50 is a bit of a price hike and it does feel like Flamingo Land are going a bit too high with this but I also understand that they have a zoo to run, rides to maintain and we’re all in a cost of living crisis too. All other parks prices have gone up so it’s natural to expect Flamingo Lands to have done so too.
What I do think is a bit of a kicker is the way the park was being run on the day we visited. There were a lot of closed shutters around the park, meaning that a lot of grab n’ go food units were unavailable. It’s not like there wasn’t anywhere to eat or anything of the sort, but any time we thought we’d stop to refill drinks or get something to eat, we found ourselves going to the same 2 units throughout the day, one in The Hub and the other in The Zanzibar restaurant area.
Moving on from the food side of things we head into photography and merchandise. Our first ride was Sik, then Hero and both of these offer on ride photography and their shops were open all day so you could, if you wanted to, buy on ride photos from this two rides. Mumbo Jumbo and Kumali also have cameras but most of the times that I’ve been, they haven’t been functional but they were today. We had a ride on Kumali but didn’t like the photo it took but we noted that Mumbo Jumbos photo unit was open. We had a wander around the back of the park to see if we could see the tigers as that’s another thing we’d like to see (and have missed them every time we’ve been). Still no sign of the tigers today, so we headed back around to Mumbo Jumbo to find that the photo kiosk was closed, and it wouldn’t reopen all day.
This was such a shame as I was planning on buying a photo from there as I’ve only got one other Mumbo photo and that was from 2017! I believe we were at Mumbo Jumbo for around 1pm so the photo kiosk was closed for more than half the day, which was a shame but it didn’t ruin the day or anything of the sort!
As for the rides, Sik was riding vert well once it got going as there was a bit of a breakdown as we boarded but we did eventually get a ride and it was just as good as I remembered from last year! Kumali rode well too, giving one of its signature smoother rides for it’s ride type and Mumbo Jumbo and Hero were still great fun. Velocity was closed so we couldn’t have a go on the motorbike coaster, but we had our first go on Voodoo, a pirate ship ride that I often overlook, as Tracy had her first go on Cliffhanger too.
Once we’d done with the bigger stuff, we moved onto Muddy Duck Farm to slow down a bit and had our first rides on The Tractor Ride and Wacky Racers. Both of these could do with a little attention to make them a bit more fun, but they were decent nonetheless. To finish the day we had a go on Mischief Manor, the parks only dark ride and it was running ok. Most of the scenes were running as intended but it does look a little worse for wears and could possibly do with a refresh in the coming years!
Not only was this our first visit to the park this year, but it was also the park I’ve chosen to star having a go a vlogging. You can find a link to the video here. I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out, especially for our first time doing one of these. There are a few rough spots but I’ve learnt a lot from this one video alone! Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
We had a great day at the park, despite sounding mostly negative earlier. We rode some of our favourite rides and had a great time figuring out the whole Vlogging thing too. I hope to get back to Flamingo Land later ion the year if we can, but for now, this was our first visit and a great day was had by all!
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 a little detail later but to start our season, we’ll be at Blackpool Pleasure Beach! We only had 1 trip there last year so it’ll be nice to get back on Big One, Icon and celebrate Big Dippers centenary. We would have been going to Alton Towers for the opening weekend, however…
Next up will be Alton Towers in April for the Your Experience Guide (Pleasure Beach Experience) event. I’m very much looking forward to meeting like minded enthusiasts as well as getting a few rides on Wickerman before the park opens! I’ve never been to an enthusiast event so this will be my first and something I’m very much looking forward to.
Our big trip this will be in Europe as I mentioned earlier. We’ll be going in mid May and our route will take us to 6 different parks and will take us through 4 countries, starting in France, then Belgium, The Netherlands and finally Germany! Our intention will be to take the Eurotunnel across to France then stop the night before visiting Plopsaland De Panne for the first time. Next will be Bobbejaanland then onto Efteling for 2 days, stopping in the Holiday Village Efteling Loonsche Land.
Then we’ll have a day off to see the surroundings and then onto Toverland! Next stop will be Phantasia Land for 2 days, stopping in their Hotel Charles Lindbergh. Finally we’ll visit Walibi Belgium on the way back to the Euro Tunnel and the UK.
All in, we should have the chance to ride up to 42 new rollercoasters, as well as plenty of flat rides and other attractions.
Not only will we be visiting 6 new parks, seeing new sites, eating different food, but I’ll be driving the whole way too. I’m don’t know whether I’m more excited about the chance to drive new roads, seeing new things or the fact I’ll be doing it all with Tracy too.
Not only will we be making a grand tour of Europe, but we’ve also got annual passes for Drayton Manor this year. This is the first time I’ve ever held a park specific annual pass and it’ll supplement our Merlin annual passes too. We intend to visit Drayton Manor for their new events so the annual pass makes financial sense!
We’ll also be threading in visits to all the Thorpe Park events, not only to compare and contrast to last year, but as part of the competition being run by Thorpe Park to have a chance to be the first to ride Project Exodus when that opens! I won’t be able to visit every day as we live over 220 miles away, but you have to be in it to win it, so event visits will have to do!
In the autumn, we hope to make a final trip across to France to visit Disneyland Paris and Parc Asterix over Halloween as we’ve been to neither park and want to see both! We will definitely make a concerted effort to get to Fantasy Island for Fear Island again as that was a definite highlight of last year!
Finally, we’ll try to get back to Paultons, Chessington for the new Jumanji area as well as my home park, Flamingo Land, to see how Sik is settling in.
There’s so much to be excited for this year, from trying out Taron and F.L.Y, to Baron 1898, Troy, Fury and The Ride to Happiness! Along the way, I’ll be comparing these to their closest UK offerings, such as Icon being our closest thing to Taron etc. I also can’t wait to see all the themed areas, try out the food, trying to speak German and French again and just having an overall great time this year!
I will, of course, be doing blogs for each visit and possibly trying out video logging (Vlogging) for some, starting with the Alton Towers event in April!
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 this year and reflect on the season passed.
The Events
Over the last year we went to the following events:
Alton Towers Opening Weekend
Alton Towers Festival of Thrills
Thorpe Park Mardi Gras
Thorpe Park Carnival
Alton Towers Octoberfest
Chessington Howl’o’ween
Thorpe Park Fright Nights
Legoland Brick or Treat
Alton Towers Scarefest
Fantasy Island Fear Island
Legoland Fireworks Spectacular
Alton Towers Fireworks Spectacular
That list is just in the order we did them, not the order I enjoyed them most. The best event we did this year, at least in my opinion was probably the Alton Towers opening weekend as we saw plenty of other enthusiasts as well as sharing it with a couple of good friends too.
It wasn’t truly an event in the same vein as the others but I included opening weekend as it’s celebrated as such and I enjoyed it!
The most surprising event and probably the second best we did was Fantasy Island’s Fear Island. For such a relatively small park to put on such a good event was staggering and though not everything was a massive hit, the scare mazes definitely were!
The most disappointing event unfortunately goes to Scarefest at Alton Towers. As highlighted in my blog, the event felt a little lacking and missing something special to mark the occasion.
All the other events and visits we had were great, though I did feel that Carnival was just Mardi Gras but with a yellow overlay, but it was still enjoyable none the less!
The Attractions
There wasn’t many new attractions to try this year but we did get around all the ones we could! We managed:
Sik at Flamingo Land
Enso at Blackpool Pleasure Beach
Harrington Flint’s Island Adventure at Fantasy Island
The Guardian at Fantasy Island
Wild River Rapids at Fantasy Island
Farm Yard Flyer at Paultons Park
Vikings at Drayton Manor
Barrel Bailout at Chessington World of Adventures
Trawler Trouble at Chessington World of Adventures
Not a very long list but still plenty to go at!
The best this year, at least in my opinion, was the long overdue Sik at Flamingo Land. Daft name but great ride! Despite it being my home park, we only managed it once and I’ve heard it’s having a few issues as the years gone on but I’ll get back to it next year to see!
The weakest of the new additions is a tie between Enso and The Guardian, a bit of a cop out, however both had issues.
The upcharge and lack of value for money on Enso is what took it away for me. Even then, once you’d paid the fee, I wasn’t blown away by the feeling of free spinning. I followed all the advice people have me such as sitting in the right hand seat and going alone but even still I didn’t get the same levels of enjoyment out of it as other seem to!
Dragons Fury, when sat facing backwards, spins more going into the first break run than Enso did through its whole layout. That ride is probably built with spinning in mind, but it is included in park entry at least.
The Guardian was a good idea that was executed badly. Bad CGI and screen quality hampered an otherwise good idea, especially when you first enter the queue line and see all the theming and effort that’s gone into this attraction.
I’m not sure if it was budget constraints or purposeful decisions that caused the issues but they are somewhat easily rectifiable and should make this attraction live up to the expectation that the queue line builds up!
As for the other new attractions this year, there was Vikings which is a good themed area with a good new ride in Loki. I wasn’t really that blown away by it though. Thor is just another Disk’o Coaster and Jormungandr is still Buffalo Coaster with a new theme. Sleipnir is decent though, especially for younger kids.
The whole area is pleasant to walk through and features a lot of wood and some Viking theming but it could do with a bit of an expansion on the theme in my opinion! It was put together very quickly, especially when compared with some of the other new additions and in the nicest possible way, it shows! Just a bit of fine tuning, a few props here and there and it’ll be spot on.
Another surprise entry was from Fantasy Island with Harrington Flint’s Island Adventure. This was much better than expected. I’m a sucker for interactive dark rides, I think every park should have one and this one stands out from Tomb Blaster, Rootin’ Tootin’ Target Trail, Sheriff’s Showdown, Laser Raiders and Dual because of its use of both screens and physical props. The cars were comfortable and the shooting was fun. It just lacks on ride photos and the physical props adding to your score!
The New Parks
This year we visited a lot of new parks, this includes:
Funland Hayling Island
Crealy
Barry Island
Southport Pleasureland
Joyland
Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach
Pleasurewood Hills
I think the biggest surprise out of all the new parks we visited, for me at least, was Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach. The ride selection was great, there were very few queues throughout the day and we had a great time.
Joyland was also a wonderful little park. Though not even a half day park, it was worth our money and time, and I’ll certainly visit here every time I’m back in Great Yarmouth in future!
Crealy was a nice and tidy park, as was Pleasurewood Hills. Both have good ride line ups but in both cases we weren’t the intended audience of the parks, so it wasn’t quite as fun for us as some of the other parks, such as Barry Island or Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach.
Finally I’d like to mention both the owners of Southport Pleasureland and Barry Island for all their help with regards to filming around their parks and on the attractions!
The New to us Attractions
In this section I’d like to highlight some of the existing attractions that we only experienced for the first time this year. We tried all sorts, ranging from our first scenic railway, a 70 year old virginia reel, weird and wonderful flat rides, all the way up to two different snail attractions!
The biggest standout of the year is most certainly Roller Coaster at Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach. This is our first scenic railway (of the 2 in the UK and 7 worldwide) and is the second fastest wooden rollercoaster in the country only behind Megafobia. Though not as thrilling as Megafobia, or as well themed as Wicker Man, its definitely the smoothest woodie we’ve ridden and was a joy from start to finish.
Other standout attractions of the year include Lightning 360 at Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach, Roller Coaster, The Rocket and Ghost Train all from Southport Pleasureland and just because of the sheer amount of spinning we got, I’ll include (what I believe to be Crow’s) Spinning Coaster from Hull Fair too.
There’s one final attraction that was notable this year too, that being Kite Flyer at Pleasurewood Hills. This was the only ride all year that made me feel genuinely ill afterwards! I’m not sure if I was having an off day, the ride cycle was too long or I moved my head too fast while the ride was spinning but it really knocked me for 6.
Summary
We’ve ridden some great attractions this year. Tried some terrible ones too. Had some ups and downs, rainy days and absolute scorchers along the way. Throughout all the visits we’ve had, we’ve always had fun. Yeah Enso was a bit pricy, Sik took far too long to open and Kite Flyer went a step too far (for me at least), but each day was still fun.
We’ve shared at least 3 visits with friends and family this year, I’ve found that one of my best friends, Pedro, is a secret adrenaline junkie and both he and Tami are welcome to join us anytime they like!
I’m not sure there is too much to be excited for in terms of the UKs new offerings next year, but as this year comes to a close, we’ve started drawing up rough plans for our visit next year, with a blog to follow once we know more.
Hopefully next year will be as fun as this year has been but only time will tell!
The Awards
Best New Attraction
Awarded to the best single attraction opened during this year.
Sik
Harrington Flint’s Island Adventure
Loki
Best Event
Awarded to the events that I felt were the best from this year.
Alton Towers Opening Weekend
Fantasy Island – Fear Island
Thorpe Park Fright Nights
Best New Park
Awarded to the park we visited for the very first time this year.
Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach
Joyland
Crealy
Best New To Us Attraction
Awarded to the attraction that we experienced for the first time this year.
Roller Coaster – Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach
Ghost Train – Southport Pleasureland
Lightning 360 – Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach
Best Rollercoaster Overall
Awarded to the top 3 rollercoasters from my ranking page.
The Smiler
Stealth
Nemesis
Best Flat Ride Overall
Awarded to the attraction that I felt was the most fun and enjoyable flat ride from the last year.
Haunted House Monster Party
Detonator: Bombs Away
Zodiac
Best Onsite Stay
There were only two to pick from, but its awarded to the park with the best onsite stay we had through the year.
Thorpe Shark Cabins
Alton Towers Star Gazing Pods
Best Customer Services
Awarded to the park who’s customer services were needed and how well they handled our issues.
Alton Towers
Pleasurewood Hills
Southport Pleasureland
Best Food
Awarded to the park that I think had the best tasting food from the year.
Chessington World of Adventures (Drop n’ Chicken Nuggets)
Alton Towers (Front Lawns Catering)
Thorpe Park (Pizza Pasta Buffet)
Most Disappointing Visit
These are my least memorable visits from the year. Non were bad, just didn’t fully hit the mark!
Alton Towers – Scarefest (Lacked Ceremony for the 15th anniversary)
Oakwood (Rained off with no rainy day return)
Legoland – Firework Spectacular (Too short!)
Worst Ride of the Year
Grand Canyon – Southport Pleasureland
Kite Flyer
Rootin’ Tootin’ Target Trail
Park of the Year
Awarded to the park that, overall, had the most enjoyable visits.
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
Firstly I’ll get the elephant out of the room and address the name. I don’t really like it.
It was named as such because the owner of Flamingo Land, Gordon Gibb, is good friends with the owners of a local fashion brand called Siksilk. This friendship has brought about a partnership between the park and the brand and with it the name for Flamingo Lands newest attraction.
I understand that it’s an advertisement for the brand, fitting with attractions sometimes making people sick, as well as it being trendy to refer to something that is good as ‘sick’, but it’s really not for me. Inversion was a terrible name but I think I’d have preferred that to Sik. Maybe it’ll grow on me?
Onto the good bits
The ride is an Intamin second generation multi inversion roller coaster, featuring a cable lift hill, 10 inversions and new trains with lap bar restraints. It doesn’t really have much of a theme as the trains are very monochrome in colour, featuring a union flag design on them, as does the station.
From the front of the queue line, until entering the station, there is no theming at all. Interestingly though the start of the queue line takes you through a shop selling Sik branded merchandise and Siksilk clothing. You also leave the attraction through the same building too so in that regard it does feel all encompassing.
One thing I did notice is that the cable lift hills cable returns to the station underneath the queue line, unlike traditional chains that usually loop under themselves. I only mention this as it is quite exposed and I hope that should the cable fail that it doesn’t whip into the queue line at all!
I know Rita and Stealth have very high tension cables that run over the queue lines too and they’ve never had an incident, so it’s probably perfectly safe, I just felt it was quite exposed!
The station continues the minimalist theme, with lots of banners flying above with the Sik logo on them and little else in terms of theming. I’ve seen it described as a bit of a nightclub in the station building, which I can see why as there are event lights and loud pop music being played over the speakers. This ride really does need a theme tune in my opinion!
Kumali and Mumbu Jumbo have music in their stations that fit their theme, even if they’re not the most recognisable, at least compared to Nemesis, Big One or Helix’s soundtracks. Hopefully Sik will get one one day!
The trains are quite roomy and the lap bars offer excellent upper body freedom whilst still feeling safe. Boarding is much easier because of the lap bars as they don’t stick out quite a much as the restraints on Stealth or Colossus where crossing the train on those is quite difficult!
The ride experience
Once you’re strapped in and dispatched, the train rockets up the first hill thanks to that cable. There is quite a lot of noise as the latter part of the train leaves the station though.
Once you crest the top, you fall into a nice smooth steep curve to the left turning 180 degrees as the train enters the first inversion, a vertical loop. The train then flies into an airtime hill, into a mist filled tunnel and into the second and third inversions, a cobra roll.
Next is another misty tunnel, an airtime hill, and then into back to back corkscrews before turning to the left again to enter into a series of 4 back to back heartline rolls, then a long sweeping turn to the left and into one more heartline roll before the final brakes and back into the station.
Thanks to the cable lift, the train carries much more speed around the track than it would have on a first generation coaster. The heartline rolls are still uncomfortable though, but much less so as the lap bar helps and the train navigates them quicker.
Of all the elements on the ride, I think I enjoyed the vertical loop the most, as it gives great force and feels big.
Let me explain.
Nemesis’ loop is quite large in comparison, but it feels smaller, probably due to the proximity to the ground, as the loop is sunk into the terrain. Speed: No limits has a full size loop, but that doesn’t give the same feeling of scale either, I’m not sure why Sik’s loop feels bigger than it actually is. The speed it takes the element maybe?
I still don’t like the heartline rolls at the end though. They feel tacked on purely to get the design up to 10 inversions with minimal effort, but that’s Intamins fault, not Siks.
I’d have preferred to see a zero g stall, cutbacks or a sea serpent roll being added in someway to make up the numbers, rather than the 4 rolls back to back. Once again, I understand that this is Intamins design and not the fault of Flamingo Land or Sik, just passing comments!
It was also nice to see that the fountains at the end of the ride synchronise as the train moves past. If you didn’t notice it, you will now and I appreciate that little detail!
So how does it compare to Colossus?
I wasn’t going to compare the two here, since everyone else is. However the difference is night and day between the two, at least thus far. Colossus is a 20 year old coaster that has seen better days and I feel is in desperate need of refurbishment as it batters you about far too much now.
Sik on the other hand rides incredibly smoothly and just feels better all around. It’s faster, smoother and much, much more comfortable than Colossus is. I do wonder what would happen if Siks train was put on Colossus for a few runs. Would that sort out the issues, or is the second generation coaster just that much better as a whole package?
Colossus still has some redeeming features though, even if they are minor! It’s name and theme are much better, and its queue line is prettier (though I know that wasn’t necessarily the case upon opening). It also runs two trains too, and makes a great sound when it d2isengages the chain at the top of the hill. Sik doesn’t make any noise at all, besides the metallic clunking as it leaves the station.
To summarise then, is Sik any good?
I’d certainly say so. I might have sounded quite negative with a lot of my comments, but besides the name, I do quite like everything else about the coaster. Maybe it needs a theme, or maybe it’s current look with come to mature over time? Maybe it’s lack of soundtrack will give it some identity on its own?
All I can say for certain is it topped Mumbo Jumbo as my favourite ride at Flamingo Land, and found its way to number 6 on my list of favourite coaster that I’ve ridden, so that should say more than enough about my true feelings for this attraction than any paragraph could!
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 as we did last year. we’ll be visiting Crealy, Barry Island, Oakwood Theme Park, Southport Pleasureland, Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Flamingo Land!
A map of our travels!
As well as the parks, we’ll also be stopping off at Tankfest down in Bovington, seeing what the Centre for Alternative Technology can show us at Pantperthog and hopefully going up Mount Snowdon!
I don’t know what I’m looking forward to most, whether it’s seeing the tanks on show at Tankfest, riding Megaphobia and Speed or trying Drenched for the first time, or maybe seeing what Enso has to offer at Blackpool.
As with last year, I’ll have blogs up for each day, and a final conclusion with my thoughts on the attractions, new and old! Can’t wait for the 24th to roll around now!
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 meaning to talk about Flamingo Land a few times now. We visited in July 2021 and I did intend to blog about our day but was kept busy with the holiday blogs so it fell to the wayside. I feel there is a lot to talk about with this park so thought I’d do it here at the same time as discussing changes I’d make if I were in charge!
The good stuff
Flamingo Land has some really decent rides, especially its roller coasters. Velocity, Mumbo Jumbo and Kumali are all fine examples of their respective types, and a couple are quite unique in their own right. Velocity is the only Booster Bike rollercoaster in the UK, Mumbo Jumbo is the steepest, and though people give Hero a lot of negativity, it’s a unique take on flying and the only Zamperla Volare in the UK too.
The spiral lift hill of Hero
The zoo is also good and though it has a lot of different species, it isn’t too spread out and kept to one side of the park, away from the noisier rides. I also like that they do a lot of work for conservation, much like Chessington does in their zoo.
The not so good
The first thing I think needs discussing with Flamingo Land is its dire lack of proper theming and how untidy the park looks!
The park does have named areas such as Metropolis, Dino Stone Park and Lost Kingdom Reserve, but they all feel a little lacking. Dino Stone Park is probably the better area in the park as it has a few dinosaurs scattered about and a bit of theming here and there but not much!
There is also a fair few buildings that are standing but either don’t have a use or have seemingly been left abandoned. Specifically around the side of Velocity. Now this could be an access route for construction traffic to build their new rollercoaster, but if this is the case, couldn’t they close it off from view a little bit? If it’s not the case then they could really utilize it better than leaving it in a state.
Will this new ride open in 2022? Hopefully!
Next is the shocking lack of merchandise on offer at the park. This will be a common complaint from me in many of my future ‘What I’d Do’ blogs.
So what would I do about it?
We’ve seen what Paulton’s Park can do with their theming and I’d love to see Flamingo Land get the same sort of treatment.
Metropolis would look great with some facias put up around Hero, include the new 10 inversion rollercoaster and Velocity in the overall theme and add a shop beside Velocity that sells Metropolis ride themed merchandise.
Velocity is the only Vekoma Booster Bike ride in the UK.
Lost Kingdom Reserve could do with seeing a load more rock work and planting, and a general tidy up, repaint some of the existing theming on Mumbo Jumbo and Kumali and add a bit more static theming here and there. Maybe some tribal huts or a campsite or something like that.
An overview of Splosh, and the River Reserve areas of the park
I’d put some really good quality animatronics in around Dino Stone Park too, and really lean into the prehistoric theme! There’s some decent rockwork surrounding Pterodactyl that I’d love to see extended a bit more around the area, and the plants and green spaces spruced up.
Navigator in action
The entrance to the park could do to see some work too. I feel that the Pirates of Zanzibar show and stage are great to welcome visitors but the area surrounding it hasn’t got the same theme and it feels a bit mismatched!
To the left of the entrance is a large plot of unused land that I feel could be used for a new entrance to the park, with it leading through the lost River Reserve area before Metropolis. To achieve this, I’d swap all the rides in both areas around so that you’d be greeted with a safari themed area, before the other areas of the park.
This is of course a purely hypothetical idea as it would cost far too much to move the rides about! It would mean that you’d see Lost River Reserve, followed by Dino Stone Park and then a Pirate themed area too before Metropolis.
As for the ride line up at Flamingo Land, personally I think its decent. It has a good mix of thrill rides, transportation and gentle rides, as well as rides for younger audiences too. I don’t think much is needed at the park, especially when their 10 inversion rollercoaster opens, but they could maybe do with a few more flat rides here and there, or an interactive dark ride!
A Peahen and her chicks
I’d really like to see an obscure record breaker here again, since Mumbo Jumbo did once hold the record as world’s steepest roller coaster. Something along the lines of that, or maybe a particularly long coaster or an exceptionally themed one would go down well.
I don’t really think anything needs removing as such, since most of the rides seem to fit in the parks overall line up, though I would remove Flip Flop and replace it with something like a Top Spin, heavily themed so it fits in the Splosh area of the park and make sure it interacts properly with water jets.
Another drone shot showing more of the park
I know it used to have a Waikiki Wave called Tidal Wave until 2008, and it would be great to see another one as they’re dying out all over the place and it would fit right at home here.
I’d also do some work on Mischief Mansion and turn it into an interactive shooting ride, along the lines of Laser Raiders at Legoland. Keep the theme and family friendly fun, but add some guns, targets and activatable effects to help it stand out from the others. I know we have a good selection of these in the UK, but only Laser Raiders and Sheriff Showdown have interaction between the targets and animatronics.
I’d leave Muddy Duck Farm mostly untouched as it’s a fine area on its own. The rides suite the area, there isn’t much theming but I don’t feel it needs it.
Other than that, I think the park isn’t bad in its current state, but far from the best. I’ve essentially laid out my hypothetical plans to turn Flamingo Land into Paulton’s of the north. I think Paulton’s is a great park on it’s own but Flamingo Land has much more thrilling rides so could very easily stand on its own, especially since Lightwater Valley seems to be moving towards a younger audience!
Final thoughts
For me, Flamingo Land sits somewhere between Fantasy Island, Oakwood and Drayton Manor. All 3 of those parks do similar things to Flamingo Land, targeting the audiences that Merlin Entertainment and Blackpool Pleasure Beach don’t manage to entice into their properties and Flamingo Land should be doing the same.
Currently it’s probably middle of the table when stacked against the other attractions here in the UK, but with investment and a good plan for the future, it could easily sit on par with Paulton’s Park or even play with the big boys like Alton Towers or Pleasure Beach!
loopsandlapbars.com 