Went to the opening on Saturday, wasn’t planning to but FL randomly did an afternoon ticket for £10.
Felt slightly guilty for the people who’d paid the inflated gate price for the full day for all of about 10 seconds.
If they actually did this a regular thing, I’d maybe consider paying up to £25 depending upon closing times. I only live 30mins from the park but never really go as, well its Flamingo Land, even if I was to overlook that, its really expensive and the scarce discounts are only ever the 3-for-2.
I felt sorry for the staff as Flamingo Land just struggles to cope as a professional theme park and doesn’t provide them with the necessary training, support and equipment to do their best.
I worked at FL back in the olden days of 2003, sadly I can see not much has improved for the staff who were all working hard and doing their best.
For example we got to Flip Flop just before the official main closing time of 5pm (the big 6 rides were open until 7pm) and the ride op was having to basically shout at anybody attempting to join the queue that the ride had closed and the people there were already in the queue.
Just buy a chain or a piece of rope, or lets go crazy and install a gate! - so at least there’s a visual signal this is closed and avoids the unnecessary confrontations, how hard is it?
There was an issue with a height check on Velocity. Essentially the parents had a photo of small child on ride as they’d shouted loudly and been unpleasant to an earlier ride op, who’d let them ride to avoid the conflict.
My heart goes out to the staff as I know exactly what its like to be in that position. When I went on to work for Tussauds (and later Merlin) we were given great training in having those difficult conversations, with effective ways to defuse conflict and keep everybody safe.
There was a lot of faff with loading Sik, they seemed to be mostly waiting for the train to park before they started loading the air gates, however sometimes they would load it whilst it was cycling. So not sure if it’s a safety thing, that they don’t want people in the air gates whilst the train comes in and parks?
It been the opening day there was a steady stream of influencer luvvies coming in from the exit side of the platform. Who were mostly being put in the back car, but seemingly could request an alternative row if they fancied it.
There wasn’t great communication between each side of the platform of how many seats needed to be saved, or where on the train they needed to be saved, so 9/10 times the train was loaded short with empty rows left.
Which was causing visible frustration between the team members on the platform and usually resulted with a load of single riders being put in to fill the gaps.
Of course it’s the first day, I’m not having a dig at the staff, this beef is squarely at FL for not providing the right resources to support properly, for example some row numbers so the batcher could assign people down and fill the rows - I believe colossus even had a makeshift washing line with laminated numbers at one point, so it can be done Blue Peter style.
Having said this the queue did move up surprisingly quickly with the single train and mild faffy operations, it seemed on average to be about half an hour from level with the vertical loop which is really not bad at all.
The ride is okay. Inlines and lapbars are cool combination and there was so much mist, it was like been on an episode of Stars In Their Eyes .. tonight Matthew I’m going to be “Meat Processing Plant 2”
A front row ride left us looking like participants of a wet t-shirt competition, I’m actually surprised Flamingo Land hasn’t tried to open a Hooters as it seems on brand for them.
So overall its fine, actually it might be good, just everything ‘Flamingo Land’ about it makes it frustrating and a chore to actually visit.