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Craving an Average Park

Serena

Serena

Miss CoasterForce 2016
Staff member
Social Media Team
Been having a bit of a weird thing lately.

I see all the major impressive parks with their major impressive new additions: Velocicoaster gleaming in the Florida sun, Kondaa towering over Walibi Belgium, Jersey Devil Coaster looking, quite frankly, INSANE...

...and yet, all I am craving is a trip to a bang average park. One with no new coasters. One where the headline attraction is probably an SLC. One that is nothing to write home about.

Today, for example, I caught myself actually fantasizing about a trip to Fantasy Island! And not a week goes by where I don't dream of revisiting Tayto Park to ride the one good attraction they have. Why is this happening?!

Maybe a year of lockdown, trip cancellations and no long haul flights has permanently lowered my expectations. Maybe I simply cannot bear to get my hopes up about ever visiting Cedar Point or Tokyo DisneySea again right now..

Either way, it's odd! So as the UK opening season approaches, I thought I'd ask: has anyone else been feeling disproportionately excited to visit a solid 5/10 park or ride a totally average ride?
 
I'm not planning on a trip back there any time soon, but I recently found myself fondly remembering my trip to Bagatelle.

An Inverted Boomerang is their headliner (which I will gladly not re-ride). But I liked their two Soquet creds, they had a decent Rapids and Flume, a surprisingly good car ride, and some quirky 'only in Europe' bits and bobs. This fond recollection event went as far as watching POVs of their Rapids and Flume.

As I say, not planning a visit any time soon, and I'm sure lack of park trips over the past months is playing a role here, but I'd be more than happy to spend a few relaxed hours at Bagatelle right now.
 
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I'm finding myself super excited about the prospect of getting to Weston Super Mare over the Summer to ride yet another Reverchon spinning mouse on the site of the former "Dismaland", which is actually an old filled-in Lido.
Not sure that's even a 5/10, more like 2, but it shows how low my expectations are!

I've been pondering Bagatelle as a possible day trip actually, once travel to/from France is allowed. Should be around 4 hours travel each way using Le Shuttle and I could get some respectable new creds without having to spend a night away from the baby. And inkeeping with this topic, I'm unduly excited about the idea!
 
To be brutally honest, I’m kind of craving a visit to any theme park at the moment!

Thankfully, my cravings are to be fulfilled next Friday with a visit to Alton Towers!
 
I can understand wanting to appreciate the basics and get a little variety going, with or without a large gap year.

However just having a nice day out would hit the spot more than usual right now.
 
It’s the “great reset”. After a year of limited (if any) theme parking, there’s finally the promise that parks will operate at some capacity. Understandably people are cautious about making exotic plans, so perhaps our expectations have lowered?

My plans this year are simple. I very much doubt I’ll go abroad, and having not ridden a coaster since November 2019, I’m quite happy to settle for a few days trips to my local parks, Paultons, Clarence Pier and Hayling Island! With the exception of Paultons, it’s hardly worth “writing home about”. Perhaps a visit to Thorpe and Blackpool, too. But nowhere obscure, exotic or adventurous.

It all got a bit crazy didn’t it? Dashing about all over the place in search of that magical new cred. But for me, the past year has made me realise what I have on my doorstep is great. I just want to ride and have a break for the monotony of lockdown life. With expectations now lower than before, even a Pinfari is something to look forward to!
 
I know what you mean. I've got a trip to Skegness lined up and it's genuinely getting me excited.

I'd still rather be on Kondaa or Velocicoaster, though. ;)
 
No.
Bollocks to the "great reset", I refuse to be conditioned/coerced into lowering my expectations on what life should be. Kondaa, Velocicoaster, Pantheon... as soon as one of those bad boys becomes 'accessible' I'm off, before that monumental prick BloJo finds another excuse to lock us down again.
 
Being located in a remote corner of nowhere, I usually manage to keep the cravings in check - I'd be lucky to visit one park once over the course of a normal season anyway, so not having been to any parks since September 2019 doesn't feel that far out of the ordinary. I'm pretty sure I've had longer breaks than that in the past anyway.
 
I quite crave the idea of going to a park with less of note coasters, a park I know very little about to just have a day at a park. Take the day at a very chilled pace and just enjoy being there rather than rushing around trying to squeeze as much as I can into the day which is normally what I would try and do. Something like a Bagatelle or a Bellewaerde would be a nice way to ease myself back into going to Parks.

But I do also get what @Howie is saying and it's the big parks and big coasters that I seem to continuingly obsess over. Just feel like I need a quick fix of anything right now but would not be long after that that I would want a bigger trip on the horizon.
 
I don't seem to visit parks as much as most other people on the forums (on average usually around five or so a year, but trying to step up my game). Since I'm already used to not visiting many parks, I don't find myself craving a Funtown Splashtown USA or anything like that lol.

I was able to get to a few parks last year though, otherwise I'd probably be more desperate.
 
Howie said:
No.
Bollocks to the "great reset", I refuse to be conditioned/coerced into lowering my expectations on what life should be. Kondaa, Velocicoaster, Pantheon... as soon as one of those bad boys becomes 'accessible' I'm off, before that monumental prick BloJo finds another excuse to lock us down again.
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Get your point, but just think how special those rides you mentioned will be when do you eventually get to ride them. A crappy Pinfari is going to be a cheap thrill for me next week, but when I do get my now lockdown-toned arse to Florida, Velociraptor will block my socks off more than I ever expected. Could argue there’s a “conditioning” by always seeking out big impressive creds...a rest by riding turd ones for a while will only help you appreciate the bigger ones more!
 
I think I get it. Sure, part of me is looking forward to eventually riding loads of the really exciting stuff, when I get to travel abroad again and ride actual bucket list stuff at headline parks, but one surprising thing that lockdown has taught me is how little I'm missing that stuff when I'm unable to do it. At the end of the day, the bucket list will still be there once things start moving again. I guess the excitement will kick in again once that sort of trip becomes possible, and I'll immediately start jumping on opportunities as soon as they're available.

On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for visiting lower tier parks that are just plain fun. Places where there's no cred anxiety, no aggravation with 90+ minute queues for the major attractions, just a bunch of entertaining stuff to ride. Combine that with the right bunch of people, and you've got a recipe for a laugh a minute. In the aftermath of the Wales, South West, and West Midlands trips back in August, I remember standing by the cars at the end of the West Midlands Safari Park and Treasure Island Stourport day, talking to SilverArrow and Fi, and explaining how I'd missed those sorts of days a lot more than I had any of the the big stuff.
 
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I so much miss big parks. Luckily I got in SFMM, Hansa and Phantasialand last year so I might be able to resist for some time. But this lockdown has made me realise that my local zoo has one of the best coasters in the world. Who can say that about their zoo? I never appreciated Wildfire enough before this year.

Somehow I have been craving Liseberg the whole year, don't know why but I really want to go to that specific park, even if I know the park by heart. Haven't been craving any other park, just Liseberg.
 
Last year certainly made me appreciate what the UK has to offer a lot more than I had done previously. Before there was definitely a focus of getting abroad at every given opportunity but last year I finally managed to mop up a load of UK bucket list things that I'd been meaning to do for years, perhaps even a decade for some things! Knowing there was no way to get to certain places meant that it was a case of coming up with something interesting to do domestically or have nothing to do at all so that was certainly an incentive to get out and about and think creatively. I had a good time doing the things I did do even if they weren't what I had originally planned and I feel prepped to do that all again this year now. (I did manage to get to France/Belgium and Germany so it wasn't all UK stuff but that was much more conservative than what I had originally planned.)

Funnily enough, my first parks of the year last year were Bagatelle, Dennlys Parc and Bellewaerde (a revisit) and it was a great little trip! Would recommend!
 
ive started daydreaming about a weekend road trip up to the gold coast to hit the aussie parks once they're all finished construction. and they're not even good parks and they cost a million bucks to go to. I'll lock in an incredible ~8 new credits over 4 parks (big).

i feel like getting to 100 creds was way easier than 200 is shaping up to be. maybe its just my life circumstances have changed
 
Never thought I'd say this, but weirdly I'm in no rush at all to get to any park.

I'm sure I'll get some trips planned in for later this year for a few UK parks, or do a last minute visit on a day off, but I've written off any travel plans abroad I may have been harbouring until 2022 at the earliest. I think when I do go back to one, the floodgates will suddenly open and I'll get the bug back and spend whole evenings trawling through Skyscanner again.

Whatever parks people do manage to get to, I hope everyone has an awesome time, whether it's Phantasialand or Fantasy Island.
 
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