nadroJ
CF Legend
Hey, before I start this I'm just going to let you know that AJ has all the photos so this is going to start off as a written report ;]
So we set off arond 9am from Southampton for Brean Leisure park which is somewhere in Somerset, around a 2 and a half hour drive. I've decided that I hate the M5, there were so many delays and random traffic jams for no reason and had some of the worst driving I've ever seen, I was getting so annoyed with all the sudden braking! GRRR! Anyway, we arrived at Brean just after 12.
You drive through a cute little seaside town, which is full of old people and there's a lighthouse and things, we even saw a church fete! So British <3 Anyway, you turn a corner and suddenly find yourself surrounded by gross caravan and trailer parks full of chavvy British families on their summer holidays, so you can guess who the cilentele would be for the leisure park itself.
Brean Leisure park is actually a sort of complex with a gross looking water park, a wimpy, a pub, a few scattered restauranty type things, a chavvy market and the funfair itself which was called something terribly original like 'fun land' or similar. Anyway, we were comtemplating just buying tokens for the rides we wanted to do (the creds and the ghost train) which would have been around £13, but we couldn't be bothered to figure out how many tokens we needed so we just paid the burdenous £19.99 for a wristband instead </3.
The infamous ghost train, Terror Castle, is right by the ticket stand so we headed over for that first. As soon as we got there the thing broke down and we were told this would not be a quick job and to come back later. So we headed over the the looping Pinfari (urgh) called Shockwave. We wondered if we'd be asked to leave our loose articles in the station but is soon became clear that the ride-ops really couldn't give less of a **** about anything other than pushing the trains through the station. So we rode, AJ has a delightful POV which I'm sure he'll post for you all. So yeah, it was a looping Pinfari, it was dreadful, it was a plus one to our coaster counts, yay!
Next door to Shockwave is 'new' for this season, cred in a shed Astro Storm (which is just Space Invader II relocated from Blackpool). There was no queue, which either meant we were incredibly lucky, or it had broken down. As we got around the corner there were a few maintenance guys working on the ride and wires and things everywhere =[. There was a bored looking girl sat in the ORP booth and we asked her if the ride would be open today, she told us it would be so we instead rode the Big Apple/Tent. Nothing special happened, same old ****, although a small, fat, Chinese kid did lose his hat and we got a lovely aerial view of the pikey market and all of the stolen goods it was selling. Another plus one, nothing to write home about.
Next door to the Big Apple (all the creds are crammed into one end of the park) was another generic cred, a spinning wild mouse called 'Magic Mouse'. We thought we saw Madeline McCann in the queue but it wasn't her =[ Yet another plus one. After this we walked back over to Astro Storm to see if it was open, it wasn't, so we thought we'd try our luck with the Ghost Train. It looked fixed but there was no ride-op in sight. We'd been warned that the ops share shifts between rides so we decided to go and get a gross funfair hotdog instead.
We spent the next 20 minutes or so sat on a grimy white plastic bench judging all the digusting, chavvy people holidaying in Brean. It was getting quite depressing so we walked back over to the ghost train, and it was open, hooray! We queued around 20 minutes, laughing at all the traumatised children coming off of the ride. There is a sign AJ took a photo of telling you you will definitely be scared of this ride. Bit of an understatement, it's just so, so wrong and vile. Everything about this ride is a traumatising rape of the senses. It smells **** gross, the animatronics are vile, things scream in your face and there are strobe lights at the end. I was suitably impressed that it lived up to it's legendary status as the most **** up ghost train ever. If you go to Brean you really can't miss this, it's brilliant.
So it was getting close to 2pm and we wanted to head over to Barry Island soon so we thought we'd try our luck one more time and see if Astro Storm was open, it was, hooray! We queued about half an hour for this and I have to say, for a funfair cred in a shed it's actually really good. It's themed, it has a storyline, it's fairly thrilling, just a much better ride than one would expect from a place like Brean, they've really put in some effort and it has paid odd, good job Brean!
So we hopped in the car and bunged the postcode for Barry Island in the satnav. 3 hours?! What the hell? After much tinkering around and stuff I realised that my satnav has been set to avoid tolls, meaning it was trying to take us around the bridge into Wales rather than over it, hence doubling our journey time. So after faffing with the settings for a bit we eventually got a journey time of an hour and a half, much better. The drive to Barry Island was quite nice, I'm rather fond of driving over bridges and this one was particularly enjoyable. Anyway, before we knew it we'd arrived in Barry Island, which was, disappointingly, a lot cleaner and generally less vile than I expected it to be! I love gross, tacky seasidey places so was a bit let down, but my disappointment was made up for when we saw the Pleasure Park.
You are greeted by an old school looking log flume and two big sets of iron gates, very quaint and nostalgic, AJ and I approached with big smiles on our faces. Unfortunately once inside we realised that all the old school rides were now defunct and had been left to rot. These include an awesome looking, jungle themed log flume, a cute little jungle boat ride and a haunted mine ride. Sadly they're all falling down and neglected, with gross funfair rides plonked in front of them, as I suppose they're protected landmarks or something and can't be torn down. Anyway, we made our way through the flashing lights and wrong-looking Disney characters to the back of the park where the cred is. We bought our tokens (75p each, I paid with a fiver and got £8.50 in change ;]) and rode the cred. Was OK. We then went back over to the abandoned rides to take photos and mourn. It made me very sad, I never understand which they can't spruce these rides up and get them working again, and also why they seem to have abandoned any idea of continuing to build cute little themed seaside funfair rides like this anymore? It's such a shame, I imagine Barry Island Pleasure Park was once a really lovely little place but now it's just full of gross funfair attractions of Gavin and Stacey references </3.
After this, AJ went for a wee under a bridge (the toilets in the Pleasure Park were portaloos </3) and we jumped back in the car and drove onwards to Coney Beach. Again, on pulling up to Coney Beach it actually seems like quite a nice area. The beach/sea was full of people surfing and the park seem well kept, so we headed on inside to get our last cred. This time around it was a Nessi, yay! We got two laps, once again getting a lovely aerial view of the surrounding area and them jumped off, had a quick lap of the park to see if there was anything else worth doing (there wasn't) and jumped back in the car. We then stopped off for a Pizza Hut and then made our way back to Southampton.
I really love doing credit runs around the coastal resorts of this country, but I can't help feeling sad whenever I visit them. They have less and less charm as the years go by, the nostalgic old favourites are left to rot and are replaced with garish, generic rides and there just seems to be no love for them anymore. I don't know if I speak for anyone else but I feel that now more than ever people like to embrace their history and enjoy learning about the past and one way of keeping this fun is to keep the old school rides going. It's just so sad and disheartening to see the lack of effort and care these old rides get when you go to these places, seems like a massive shame and a wasted opportunity =[
Oh well, plus 6 to the coaster count and it's an interesting way to spend a Saturday!
So we set off arond 9am from Southampton for Brean Leisure park which is somewhere in Somerset, around a 2 and a half hour drive. I've decided that I hate the M5, there were so many delays and random traffic jams for no reason and had some of the worst driving I've ever seen, I was getting so annoyed with all the sudden braking! GRRR! Anyway, we arrived at Brean just after 12.
You drive through a cute little seaside town, which is full of old people and there's a lighthouse and things, we even saw a church fete! So British <3 Anyway, you turn a corner and suddenly find yourself surrounded by gross caravan and trailer parks full of chavvy British families on their summer holidays, so you can guess who the cilentele would be for the leisure park itself.
Brean Leisure park is actually a sort of complex with a gross looking water park, a wimpy, a pub, a few scattered restauranty type things, a chavvy market and the funfair itself which was called something terribly original like 'fun land' or similar. Anyway, we were comtemplating just buying tokens for the rides we wanted to do (the creds and the ghost train) which would have been around £13, but we couldn't be bothered to figure out how many tokens we needed so we just paid the burdenous £19.99 for a wristband instead </3.
The infamous ghost train, Terror Castle, is right by the ticket stand so we headed over for that first. As soon as we got there the thing broke down and we were told this would not be a quick job and to come back later. So we headed over the the looping Pinfari (urgh) called Shockwave. We wondered if we'd be asked to leave our loose articles in the station but is soon became clear that the ride-ops really couldn't give less of a **** about anything other than pushing the trains through the station. So we rode, AJ has a delightful POV which I'm sure he'll post for you all. So yeah, it was a looping Pinfari, it was dreadful, it was a plus one to our coaster counts, yay!
Next door to Shockwave is 'new' for this season, cred in a shed Astro Storm (which is just Space Invader II relocated from Blackpool). There was no queue, which either meant we were incredibly lucky, or it had broken down. As we got around the corner there were a few maintenance guys working on the ride and wires and things everywhere =[. There was a bored looking girl sat in the ORP booth and we asked her if the ride would be open today, she told us it would be so we instead rode the Big Apple/Tent. Nothing special happened, same old ****, although a small, fat, Chinese kid did lose his hat and we got a lovely aerial view of the pikey market and all of the stolen goods it was selling. Another plus one, nothing to write home about.
Next door to the Big Apple (all the creds are crammed into one end of the park) was another generic cred, a spinning wild mouse called 'Magic Mouse'. We thought we saw Madeline McCann in the queue but it wasn't her =[ Yet another plus one. After this we walked back over to Astro Storm to see if it was open, it wasn't, so we thought we'd try our luck with the Ghost Train. It looked fixed but there was no ride-op in sight. We'd been warned that the ops share shifts between rides so we decided to go and get a gross funfair hotdog instead.
We spent the next 20 minutes or so sat on a grimy white plastic bench judging all the digusting, chavvy people holidaying in Brean. It was getting quite depressing so we walked back over to the ghost train, and it was open, hooray! We queued around 20 minutes, laughing at all the traumatised children coming off of the ride. There is a sign AJ took a photo of telling you you will definitely be scared of this ride. Bit of an understatement, it's just so, so wrong and vile. Everything about this ride is a traumatising rape of the senses. It smells **** gross, the animatronics are vile, things scream in your face and there are strobe lights at the end. I was suitably impressed that it lived up to it's legendary status as the most **** up ghost train ever. If you go to Brean you really can't miss this, it's brilliant.
So it was getting close to 2pm and we wanted to head over to Barry Island soon so we thought we'd try our luck one more time and see if Astro Storm was open, it was, hooray! We queued about half an hour for this and I have to say, for a funfair cred in a shed it's actually really good. It's themed, it has a storyline, it's fairly thrilling, just a much better ride than one would expect from a place like Brean, they've really put in some effort and it has paid odd, good job Brean!
So we hopped in the car and bunged the postcode for Barry Island in the satnav. 3 hours?! What the hell? After much tinkering around and stuff I realised that my satnav has been set to avoid tolls, meaning it was trying to take us around the bridge into Wales rather than over it, hence doubling our journey time. So after faffing with the settings for a bit we eventually got a journey time of an hour and a half, much better. The drive to Barry Island was quite nice, I'm rather fond of driving over bridges and this one was particularly enjoyable. Anyway, before we knew it we'd arrived in Barry Island, which was, disappointingly, a lot cleaner and generally less vile than I expected it to be! I love gross, tacky seasidey places so was a bit let down, but my disappointment was made up for when we saw the Pleasure Park.
You are greeted by an old school looking log flume and two big sets of iron gates, very quaint and nostalgic, AJ and I approached with big smiles on our faces. Unfortunately once inside we realised that all the old school rides were now defunct and had been left to rot. These include an awesome looking, jungle themed log flume, a cute little jungle boat ride and a haunted mine ride. Sadly they're all falling down and neglected, with gross funfair rides plonked in front of them, as I suppose they're protected landmarks or something and can't be torn down. Anyway, we made our way through the flashing lights and wrong-looking Disney characters to the back of the park where the cred is. We bought our tokens (75p each, I paid with a fiver and got £8.50 in change ;]) and rode the cred. Was OK. We then went back over to the abandoned rides to take photos and mourn. It made me very sad, I never understand which they can't spruce these rides up and get them working again, and also why they seem to have abandoned any idea of continuing to build cute little themed seaside funfair rides like this anymore? It's such a shame, I imagine Barry Island Pleasure Park was once a really lovely little place but now it's just full of gross funfair attractions of Gavin and Stacey references </3.
After this, AJ went for a wee under a bridge (the toilets in the Pleasure Park were portaloos </3) and we jumped back in the car and drove onwards to Coney Beach. Again, on pulling up to Coney Beach it actually seems like quite a nice area. The beach/sea was full of people surfing and the park seem well kept, so we headed on inside to get our last cred. This time around it was a Nessi, yay! We got two laps, once again getting a lovely aerial view of the surrounding area and them jumped off, had a quick lap of the park to see if there was anything else worth doing (there wasn't) and jumped back in the car. We then stopped off for a Pizza Hut and then made our way back to Southampton.
I really love doing credit runs around the coastal resorts of this country, but I can't help feeling sad whenever I visit them. They have less and less charm as the years go by, the nostalgic old favourites are left to rot and are replaced with garish, generic rides and there just seems to be no love for them anymore. I don't know if I speak for anyone else but I feel that now more than ever people like to embrace their history and enjoy learning about the past and one way of keeping this fun is to keep the old school rides going. It's just so sad and disheartening to see the lack of effort and care these old rides get when you go to these places, seems like a massive shame and a wasted opportunity =[
Oh well, plus 6 to the coaster count and it's an interesting way to spend a Saturday!
