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. However sometimes you have to look to the past for something new to thrill you.
Step in Wicker Man. At the time of writing, this is Alton Towers newest attraction. A wooden rollercoaster manufactured by Great Coasters International, themed to a cult worshipping a Wicker Man and sending you as sacrifices to feed the flames!
It stands at 22m (72.2ft) tall, has 795m (2608ft) of track and reaches speeds of 43 mph (70.2km/h) and replaced the much loved Flume attraction. It is marketed as the first wooden rollercoaster to incorporate fire into its theming and the first wooden rollercoaster in the UK in 20 years. The last being Megafobia at Oakwood.
Now I love Wicker Man. I like the theme, I love the ride experience and I particularly enjoy the scent pods they use in the preshow, but there are some much older woodies in the UK that can give the new comer a run for its money! So how does the newest major woodie stack up against its older compadres?
The first I’d like to compare it to is Roller Coaster at Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach. This is one of 2 scenic railways in the country (the other is at Dreamland Margate) and despite it being over 70 years older than Wicker Man, it still manages to top it’s top speed, reaching 45 miles an hour! Though the ride isn’t quite as thrilling as Wicker Mans’, Roller Coaster is still a great ride and comes in just behind Wicker Man’s biggest competitor, Megafobia.
Megafobia is a Custom Coasters wooden coaster located at Oakwood and is very well received as woodies go. This is the UKs fastest woodie, reaching 48mph (77km/h), reaches heights of 85ft and is 2956ft long. So Megafobia edges out Wicker Man in all categories, though it has no theming at all. When I first started writing this blog in mid 2022, I’d have said that Megafobia was the top woodie in the UK, but Wicker Man is bedding in and feels like it’s getting better and better with every passing season. There is little to split these two in my eyes, but Megafobia does give the more uncomfortable ride, not too harsh at all, but because of that small factor, and the theme difference, I’ve put Wicker Man above Megafobia. Atleast for now!
The next contenders for best UK woodie (that I’ve ridden) are all at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Nickelodeon Streak, Grand National, Blue Flier and Big Dipper. Blue Flyer is a good little kids ride but not quite in the big leagues and I’d say the same is true for Nickelodeon Streak too. Though Nick Streak has a great layout with loads of hills, I feel it takes them a little too slowly and doesn’t give as much airtime as the layout might suggest! It does slightly edge out the next competitor though.
Next up is Big Dipper. Turning 100 years old this year, this is a classic wooden rollercoaster built by William Strickler. It cost £25,000 in 1922, which would be over £1.9 million today, not bad when compared to Wicker Man’s £16 million!
The ride itself has age related roughness to it, though certainly not the hardest ride at Pleasure Beach. It will throw you into unbanked corners and drop you into the dips with a lot of force. The same can be said of Grand National which is arguably the most hardcore of the UK wooden coasters. If Big Dipper throws you into corners and dips, then Grand National launches you into them. It’s certainly not for the faint hearted and it can feel very intimidating, especially if you’ve ridden Wicker Man first!
I feel that Grand National gives the truest wooden rollercoaster experience as it feels raw and untamed, it’s noisy and rough and good fun to boot. Tracy will tell you it’s horrible, which is somewhat understandable as the ride can assault you as much as it thrills! I do enjoy Grand National, but if Wicker Man is a nice and velvety smooth wooden coaster, then Grand National is a slap in the face followed by a stiff drink. Brutal and yet fun.
There are a few other wooden roller coasters in the UK that I’ve yet to ride, such as Scenic Railway at Dreamland Margate and Antelope at Gullivers Warrington. There’s also Tyrolean Tubtwist at Joyland but I don’t think Tubtwist is of the same type as all the other woodies here. It does have wooden side panelling along the sides of the layout that are needed to help the cars spin and though it is classed as a wooden coaster, but that’s all there is, it hasn’t got a wooden structure or anything else, where all the others I’ve mentioned have.
Antelope looks like great fun and has a decent layout so I’d expect that to rank quite well but since I’ve not ridden it, I can’t rate it unfortunately!
So to summarise, here is the list of how I currently rank all the UK wooden coasters!
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.
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 sessions, and though we only had 4 hours to do as much as we could, we ended up fitting in loads in the given time.
Roller Coaster
Our first stop, was of course, Roller Coaster. This ride is very unlike any that I’ve ridden before. Firstly, there is a brakeman sitting mid-train as the only means of slowing the train down, since the track features no brakes at all.
Secondly theres the train itself which was quite spacious in seat width (though could do to have slightly more legroom), and very comfy too.
Finally there’s the ride quality itself. It wouldn’t be entirely fair to compare it to the two bigger woodies at Blackpool Pleasure Beach but they are all a similar age and yet Roller Coaster was so comfortable and much smoother than any other woodie I’ve ridden. That even includes Wicker Man. Though Roller Coaster doesn’t take it’s turns with much speed at all as it’s a side friction coaster and lacks upstop wheels.
So the ride is primarily an up and down hill machine, a job it does very well! It’s fair to say I was very impressed with Roller coaster and I’d rank it very highly amongst the UKs wooden coasters!
Whirlwind, Twister and Monorail
Our next stop was Whirlwind, an SBF Visa spinning coaster. There wasn’t much to say about this one besides it being a decent little spinner. We got a good amount of spin on it, and if I remember correctly, we went around the layout about 4 times too. It certainly won’t blow you away by any means, but it was a good time, especially for its size.
While we were down this end of the park we visited their Twister ride, which was a very standard affair, aside it being very slightly at an angle. Fun ride, good cycle but still just a Twister ride. The same can be said for Floaty Boaty, the parks Rockin’ Tug! A decent tame ride but very similar to all the others out there.
Next up was a ride on the parks monorail, which weaves its way into the supports of Roller Coaster and gives good views over the bottom section of the park. A good sit down if nothing else!
The Snails!
After the Monorail, we had a go on one of the parks more cherished attractions, the Snails and Fairy Tales ride. This sees you riding past various fairy tale scenes on board a powered snail vehicle. These are quite roomy and the ride is of a good quality. It doesn’t feature the small drops that Joylands’ Snails ride does as the vehicle remains powered throughout but the scenes are much better here.
There are some artistic liberties taken with some of the scenes as they are very clearly based on Disney’s versions of the fairy tales but it was still a good time!
After we’d done on the Snails, we stopped for a look around the arcade, and then onto something to eat. Prices weren’t over the top expensive, but not the cheapest park I’ve visited. About average really!
Dinner, a Fabbri spin and a Wacky Worm
After dinner, I wandered around and took some photos while Tracy played on the arcade for a bit before we reconvened for a ride on The Big Apple, the parks wacky worm ride. There really isn’t anything to say here besides this model features the large apple structure at least!
Next stop was Family Star, a Fabbri Spinning wild mouse with a standard layout. This was quite a comfortable ride, especially for a wild mouse, but there wasn’t all that much spinning and the ride was quite tame.
Following Family Star, we had a ride on the dodgems, which were everything you’d expect of dodgems, after which we had a go on The Haunted House ride. This is listed as being called Haunted House but the ride displays Haunted Hotel and is themed more to look like a hotel than a standard house.
Anyway, the ride itself was good, not particularly scary but it did have a few good jumps. One thing to note is how low the cars are to the floor, and the lack of a back rest too. There weren’t uncomfortable by any means but we’re certainly different!
The Haunted House or Hotel?
Next up Tracy insisted we had a go in the fun house, here called Fun Factory. Now these are not normally something I’d even consider as they’re usually far too small for adults but this one definitely catered for all ages!
It does feature a lot of moving floors, and some of them are quite violent to say the least! We both had a lot of fun in here but do take your time as there were plenty of others falling over!
Lightning 360 and the Disk’O
Our next ride was on Lightning 360, another one of the parks unique attractions. This is an SBF Visa Lightning 360 model and feels like a cross between Red Arrows Sky Force and Air Race.
The seats have a joystick between them that allows riders to rotate the vehicle, allowing you to fully rotate upside down as many times as you’d like. I really enjoyed this one as the restraints meant that you weren’t held in by your shoulders, but instead by your thighs which was much more comfortable than other inverting flat rides I’ve been on.
Our final few rides were on the parks Disk’O, 4D cinema and a few rerides on Roller Coaster and Snails.
Interestingly, the 4D cinema was playing a show that Mack Rides had produced and featured Europa Park towards the end. This was quite unexpected and was one of the better shows I’ve seen in a 4D cinema. The effects were decent too but it was nice to see a 4D show that didn’t lean heavily on an IP like Thomas the Tank Engine or Angry Birds.
As daft as it might sound, watching that presentation really makes me want to get to Europa Park now, especially after reading about their ride line up! Next year hopefully!
After our final ride on Roller Coaster and our photos purchased (from Snails and Roller Coaster), we headed off back into Great Yarmouth for the rest of the evening.
So what is there to say about Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach?
The park is a really good fun time. Leagues ahead of the likes of Clarence Pier and Funland Hayling Island, but not quite up in the big leagues with Fantasy Island or Blackpool. The admission price reflects this though as we only paid £15 each for the 4 hour session we had.
There’s not much that I’d like to see done differently either, as operations were good and staff were all very pleasant and welcoming. The only thing I would like to see changed is the way photos are handled and pricing for those.
They offer photos at £6 each or 2 for £10 which isn’t that bad, however there is no facility to mix and match. You can only take up the 2 for £10 offer at one photo booth, and there are two in the park. So we ended up paying £12 for a photo from Roller Coaster and one from The Snails as they’re different photo booths.
I think buying a band or something that has tokens on it would help this, or even just a stamp on a receipt or something to show other photo booths what you’ve purchased and how many remaining photos you have left to claim.
Overall, the park has a good mix of flat rides and roller coasters, though it could possibly do with another thrill coaster in my opinion! There looks to be a decent log flume here but we missed it as it dropped a bit cooler towards the end of the day when we planned on trying it out.
Definitely worth the price of entry and worth our 4 hour drive down to visit it. Next up is Pleasurewood Hills!
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 over the years. Most notable being The Ultimate, a Big Country Motioneering/British Rail steel rollercoaster. At present, this is the only reason I’d like to go to Lightwater Valley, as it’s the UK longest rollercoaster, and second longest in the world! I’ve heard a lot of things about this coaster and I’d love to give it a go before the park inevitably closes it for good.
I missed out on Raptor Attack though as that has closed subsequently and now removed, which is a shame!
Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach is an amusement park situated on the coast and is home to the one of the UK’s oldest rollercoasters, simply called Roller Coaster. Though there are older rollercoasters in the UK, this one stands out to me with it being a ‘Scenic Railway’ and requiring a brakeman to slow the train down. There is also a great selection of flats ride here too, and Great Yarmouth is somewhere I’d like to visit for the weekend. Which leads onto:
Not far from Great Yarmouth is Pleasurewood Hills, a family theme park home to 4 rollercoasters and plenty of flat rides too. Once again, the coasters are the main appeal here as it has the UK’s only Vekoma Boomerang, a ride that used to be at The American Adventure before its closure. Both American Adventure and Camelot would have made this list had they still been around!
Flambards is home to one rollercoaster, multiple flat rides and a few walkthrough exhibitions, which are the main draw for me. Though their rollercoaster is unique to the UK and certainly a reason to visit, it’s more the exhibitions that they have here the are the curiosity. Featuring Britain in the Blitz, and The Victorian Village Experience, it seemingly combines a theme park and museum into one admission, which is quite a rare thing!
These are only a few of the parks I’d like to do as soon as I can next year, but there is still M&Ds, Codonas, Crealy, Southport Pleasureland, Twinlakes, Barry Island and Brean to name a few!
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