All the blogs from ‘The Island Like No Other!’
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 the new additions to the…
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! This will be our first…
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 a little detail later but…
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 I were in charge! The…
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 this year and reflect on…
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. This is followed closely by…
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 now, replaced with Survival Games…
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 parks! The parks we’ve decided…
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 storage for your belongings. The…
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 accommodation. That’s not to say…
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 (of many to come) and…
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 Valhalla being regularly rated as…
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 who’s seen my other blog…
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 to voice a few opinions…
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 days at Thorpe Park, two…
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 vertical chain driven lifts, over…
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 there are some excellent scores…
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! Theme Let’s get the big…
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 trip being Paultons Park, with…
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 we gave ourselves plenty of…
2021 Summer holiday
Over the summer Tracy and I did an epic 1600 ish mile trip around some of the UKs best theme parks. Over the course of two weeks, we visited: Blackpool Pleasure Beach Alton Towers Oakwood Paultons Park Thorpe Park Chessington World of Adventures Dreamland Adventure Island Fantasy Island As well as the above, we also…
loopsandlapbars.com 