Tag: rush

Blog, Reviews

Thorpe Park Carnival

Loops&Lapbars

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 accommodation. That’s not to say it was bad, far from it! Just a little room for improvement!

During our visit, Thorpe Park were hosting their new Carnival event. I had a small feeling that it would be an almost identical event to Mardi Gras but aside from reusing a few assets, it felt like a completely new event from the ground up.

As the carnival events started around 12, and we had 1 hour fastpass bands due to our hotel stay, we went on a few rides first.

First stop of the day was The Swarm, and it gave a good ride and a few of the water effects were working today which was a nice bonus!

Next was Flying Fish and besides it being a very tame ride with not much to mention, there does seem to be a lot of noise coming from the front of the train as it pulls away from the station. Whether this is normal, a sign that maintenance is needed or something bigger is going on I’m not sure. I wouldn’t be too upset if Flying Fish ended up having to be removed as it is quite jerky for a powered coaster.

After Flying Fish we had a go on Stealth and got a fantastic back row ride. Even Tracy, who has been a stern hater of the top hat, had fun this time around, which was pleasing to hear!

Our next stop was supposed to be Rumba Rapids, but for whatever reason, the ride wasn’t operational, and stayed closed throughout the day. This is a shame as the weather was perfect for the light spraying this rapids ride gives you!

Onto Nemesis Inferno and yet another good ride here. Nearer the back of the train this time, and we got very little headbanging at all and a lot of force in the final helix. The more I ride Inferno, the closer it gets to the original at Alton Towers, but I’m fairly adamant that it’ll never take the top spot!

As our fastpass hour was coming to a close, we managed to get onto The Walking Dead. Though lacking any live actors again, the ride was just as enjoyable as it always has been. A really nice solid ride.

Trailers: Breakout at Bozo’s

The biggest thing to talk about with regards to Carnival, has to be their reintroduction of the Trailers scare maze that first opened at Fright Nights 2021. I didn’t experience this the first time around so I can’t compare this iteration to the original but as a standalone event, it was good fun!

Breakout at Bozos follows the story of the SuperSpark cinema that regularly suffers from power surges and these surges open portals into the film’s on-show, only this time the portals work both ways so Bozo and his crew have broken free and are wreaking havoc.

Though the maze was advertised as a scare maze with a twist, it just felt like a standard scare maze to me! There were some funny elements such as being asked to kiss a shark and the Brainsburys shop but because of the rushed nature of the attraction, you don’t get time to pick up on all the scenes.

In terms of fear level, I’d say it was on par with the others I’ve done, probably not as scary as Creak freak massacre but definitely up there with Platform 15. A decent entry level Scare maze!

Carnival

The main carnival event was held behind Colossus’s turnaround, right next to Zodiac and Rush. It featured a stage, a couple of food shops, a stall selling carnival merchandise and a few paid for sideshows.

The stage played host to a few different acts through the day such as fire performances, mime troupes and a plenty of dancing and music!

The performances we managed to see were good, and the actors were very entertaining. I think the highlight for me was the Ringleader show, where he introduced his Circus troupe and faced competition from another group of his ex-colleagues, now working in the Junkyard as a rival group.

There wasn’t many roaming actors outside of the area setup for Carnival like there was with Fright Nights, or the Mardi Gras parade, but they were all in character and fun to watch, even if the mimes were a bit creepy…!

Aside from the main area behind Zodiac, there was also a smaller area called the Junkyard. This was between Nemesis Inferno’s shop and the central arcade, and had a selection of food vendors and a little space for more acts to perform, primarily the rival group to the Ringleader I mentioned earlier.

There were also a few audio tracks added to the bigger coasters. Stealth for example, featured audio about being a human cannonball, Colossus had an acrobat talking about its 10 ‘acrobatic loops’ and Nemesis Inferno played more into is fiery theme by suggesting you walk on fire and brave the heat.

Overall Carnival was good, probably on par with Mardi Gras, definitely not better but certainly not worse either!

The rest of the day

After we’d finished with Carnival, we got on more rides starting with Black Mirror Labyrinth and then Derren Browns Ghost Train. Both were as you’d expect, though Ghost Train was noticeably worse than usual. Black Mirror Labyrinth didn’t have much more to show us than the first time we tried it and really does feel like a one and done attraction already.

I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little excited to talk about Zodiac. Though the ride is nothing special, and doesn’t quite function how it once did, it was my 100th unique flat ride. It wasn’t planned at all until I looked on Logride (an app I use to track what I’ve ridden) and it showed I was up to 99 individual flat rides.

Zodiac and High Roller were showing as the last two attractions I’d yet to ride at Thorpe Park, so I had a go on High Roller before finishing off the list, and achieving my 100th flat with Zodiac! (As a side note, High Roller is classed as a children’s ride)

After we’d had some dinner at the Pizza and Pasta Buffet, we had another ride on Nemesis Inferno which was once again really intense. After Nemesis, I managed a walk-on over at Colossus to see how it rides after it’s been running all day. It wasn’t quite as rough as it has been, but still had an element of roughness to it and with Sik being as good as it is, Colossus needs looking at in my opinion!

Our next rides were a back-to-back on The Swarm, and though the earlier ride was good, these were insane! The ride runs so much better after it’s properly warmed up. It feels so much faster and yet still as smooth as it always has been. Highly recommend a late ride on The Swarm.

After that we had another go on Flying Fish before our final ride of the day on Tidal Wave. Once again we got thoroughly soaked, and even got a second dousing upon leaving the station as the next boat came down the drop! Great ride in hot weather and a perfect end to a packed day.

Conclusion

Thorpe Park Carnival was a great day out, not only for the Carnival event but the park was very quiet for the time of year. Stealth didn’t seem to get longer than 10 minute queues, and even Saw: The Ride managed to stay under 45 for the most part.

Carnival was certainly a good, enjoyable event and hopefully it’ll blossom out into an even better event next year too.

Blog, Reviews

Splash Landings Hotel & Waterpark- Review

Loops&Lapbars

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 spits out both your room number, and asks you whether you want 1 or 2 room keys which is handy! As well as that, it also emails you all the details you need such as you room number. Thoroughly impressed!

After finally finding out which direction to go to find our rooms (really helpful staff again), we dropped our things off and had a wander about.

The hotel itself is really well themed to a wacky caribbean resort, which flows through not only the rooms and public spaces, but the corridors as well, right down to the carpets. Really impressed with the effort here!

Flambo’s Jambo

The hotel offers a bar on the ground floor, and a restaurant, Flambo’s Jambo, on the floor below. We hadn’t booked Flambo’s for tea but they were able to accomodate us anyway as there was plenty of room in the restaurant.

The restaurant itself continues the theme, even down to the food being served. Though for the price of entry, I do feel that the offerings were a little lacking and the food itself wasn’t the best unfortunately!

I would recommend trying somewhere else, at least for your evening meal as there are a few other options either in room service, or in the other Hotel. Breakfast in the mornings is perfectly fine however!

After dinner, we took a walk around the resort, and popped in to see the water park and Alton Towers Hotel along the way.

The following day we had our day in the park for Oktoberfest, which you can read about here!

Waterpark & Extraordinary golf

For our second and final day at the resort, we had a round of minigolf and a few hours in the excellent water park.

The minigolf course they have is quite good fun and each hole is themed to a ride or attraction, either past or present which really adds character. Some of the holes could really do with a little attention though as they do seem to have been put in and forgotten about over time. Oblivions hole comes to mind as well as the Old MacDonalds farm one.

Its certainly worth a visit if you enjoy minigolf as 9 holes come with your stay, and you can then pay £2 for the additional 9 too. This £2 fee is also eligible for Merlin annual pass discount weirdly!

Once we’d had our round of golf, we headed into the water park. The park offers a shop that sells towels and swimwear which was excellent as I managed to put a hole in my swim shorts playing golf.

The changing rooms are fine too, though the double cubicles are a bit on the smaller side as we had trouble getting changed in one and opted for separates on the way out. Lockers are a 20p charge that is refundable which was nice!

Little Leak with Master Blaster running behind it

As for the waterpark itself, it was fantastic! The park offers 3 flumes that require you to ride on rubber rings. The first is Master Blaster, a master blaster powered flume that is the UKs longest at 682ft. This is a good fun, thrill ride that sees you being powered along a flume by jets of water on a rubber ring, traversing both upwards and downward sections, helixes and enclosed parts. The only negative I have with the ride is the camera at the end doesn’t ever seem to photo anyone coming out of the flume!

The second and third flumes come as a pair next to one another allowing for racing of sorts. Called Rush and Rampage, both require rubber rings too, and both ride very similarly with one being enclosed in a dark tunnel (rush) and the other being more light and airy (rampage). Personally, I preferred Rush as it allows you to select a music track to play while you slip and slide down, which was a nice touch.

Moving away from flumes, the water park offers a few different areas of interactivity starting off with Lagoona Bay.

Lagoona Bay is the main central area of the water park and offers a large pool with a giant geyser in the centre, waterfalls and water cannons to play around with, as well as a sectioned off area to play balls games in.

The Look Out looks over Lagoona Bay, Calypso Creek and Little Leak

Next there’s the Wacky Waterworks. Think of a climbing frame but with water jets and a giant tipping bucket. Here there are plenty of interactive elements to mess around with, such as water jets, buckets and troughs to fill, and various wheels that turn effects on and off, allowing you to thoroughly soak other in the area.

At regular intervals, there is a large bucket that drops a huge amount of water down from the top of the structure and this does come down with some great force! Smaller kids could easily be knocked about in the torrent, but there is nothing that can hurt anyone up there.

Then there’s Calypso Creek, a small lazy river that circles around the back section of the park. It’s quite relaxing to float around here but it’s not all too big but there are various waterfalls dotted about to interact with.

Little Leak and Calypso Creek

Finally, there is a small area for younger kids to enjoy called Little Leak. It features lots of interactive elements for young ones to play with and get used to the water, as well as a small slide to play on!

Heading outside you’ll find the Flash flood pools and Bubbly Wubbly, a large outdoor jacuzzi. Flash flood is a series of pools connected by slides which get a little longer between each pool. There are 3 tiers, starting at the top and working your way down, giving you 5 different slides to try out.

The only issue I saw with Flash Flood, was that to go back to the top required you to go back inside and walk all the way back to the top. There isn’t a way up while you’re outside.

You are also encouraged to move down the pools quite quickly as each pool doubles as a splash pool for the slides too, so the lifeguards want you out of the way pretty quickly. It wasn’t rushed or anything, but the temperature of the water was just prefect, not too hot, and a bit cooler than other parts!

Bottom pool of Flash Flood, and Bubbly Wubbly

The best part about our visit was that everyone was there to get wet. Many times were we climbing up a set of stairs, only to have a bucket of water dropped on us, or someone shooting water towards us out of a cannon. That’s not to say we weren’t doing the same! It really did feel like everyone was there to make sure everyone else was enjoying their time, which these days, is a rare thing!

I should also mention that there are two places to grab something to eat inside the waterpark itself. There’s a small cafe that sells drinks and pre packed sandwiches, and a small restaurant selling burgers, hotdogs, jacket potatoes and kids meals. It wasn’t too expensive to eat here and the food was of a good quality too!

I can highly recommend Alton Towers Waterpark to anyone who’s never been to one before. It’s certainly best enjoyed with a group of friends or family who can all take turns trying to soak one another! We stayed in for about 4 hours or so, and after that, we’d certainly had our fill of wacky watery goodness!