More bites of Big Apples: 2023 - Gull & Hull

[HeartlineCoaster]

This thread has gone a little dry. With all the big, glamourous trips going on, there's been nothing else to report on in the gaps, aside from a fun first time visit to IAAPA with DRdb and getting to watch @Coaster Hipster ask Intamin about Juvelen just one more time. Sadly no one brought a big apple there though.

Oh and I went to Old Macdonald’s Farm out of nothing but tactical desperation. #1399.

It was time to get back to basics in October.

Fantasy Island

Always forget how grim the drive up here is. The reason for the visit (aside from one of the group needing the creds) – two new dark rides. One that nobody knows what it is and the other that I followed religiously on their website for months on end only for them to never actually update said website when it eventually opened late.

A.k.a. Harrington Flint’s Island Adventure. A second hand ride system from Dubai rehashed into an explorative romp of shooting screens with evil explorers and the tribal masses.
It’s clever what they’ve done with the space and there’s some physicality to the interactive part, which is always nice. Most of it is already broken however and the graphics lag pretty badly in places. S’alright.

I now know what the other one is, The Guardian, but it wasn’t running so that’s no good at all. Instead the staff member that was sending people away all morning went for a lunch break (someone needs to be here) and we ended up joining a few other confused guests on a journey into a completely unmanned, but switched on ride.

The queue was massive and well decorated, for what is just a 4 person simulator arm. Clearly there’s some sort of pre-show going on here. Something wasn’t right though.

Didn’t need the worm, but I’m shameless enough to lap it again if someone else does and it is the thread title after all. This one has picked up an injury.

I can talk about many things in this shot. Most strikingly the colour of that water splash.

Millennium has lost the title of smoothest Vekoma, it now has a bit of jostle to it. The wind was up and it was super slow through most of the inversions, providing a weird, crunchy bit of flop time and then nearly stalling into the last section.

Rhombus wasn’t hauling as much as previously, clearly a back row only ride for that evil twisted hill.

Did the shot tower because nothing better to do. It’s a thing.

After somehow re-convincing myself it was for scientific research, I did dare to re-ride Odyssey after hating it several years prior. We arrived to the station just as it closed down for wind however so we’ll never know how that would have gone down. Gives it a 1 out of 4 success rate on my visits.

Feel like I’ve been to this park too many times already. It’s not the greatest. Stuff like Seaquarium has charm but it’s really not a revisit kinda place. Too much faff.

Never too much faff if it’s something new though. We headed up over the Humber bridge (another new bridge cred) and into central York, through castle walls and all. Why?

Jorvik Viking Centre

Dark ride, that’s why. 10% museum and 90% ride, I had stories of this attraction from my parents riding it back in the ‘80s. It’s all changed since then, receiving a new ride system in 2001 and new scenery from 2015. It’s long, slow and all rather impressive.

The new(er) vehicles have on-board audio and screens to teach you all about what’s going on in each scene.

Scenes include this guy, a man selling a cabbage to a woman who doesn’t want one and someone on the toilet. York, 948 A.D.
Would recommend.

Up next - creds

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

The Yorkshire coaster scene ain’t what it used to be since the death of the Ultimate. Someone went and got a Colossus clone though, so…

Day 2 – Flamingo Land

And what a clone. Due to the fact that it’s still fairly substantial and I had no immediate plans to go somewhere better for a while it earned a nice round #1400 from me.

They have presented it slightly better than I had expected them to, in parts. Being able to look down on the layout from certain spots is pretty rare, there’s some solid plaza type interaction and that little fountain effect in the turnaround at the end.

The mist is a bit much though, I’d rather it was fog like on the very end brakes. Smells better, less like a wet slap in the face.
The theme? Not for me. Words on a screen in the station to the effect of ‘a modern twist on urban clothing’ amused me. Tracksuits.
Having the shop as both the ride entrance and exit was also a step too far, along with everything from there feeling rather ‘discount Icon’.
The one thing I can kinda get into was the station rave. Bring back X.

I’ve already done the Rev. B of this as well, so didn’t have much of interest to take away from the actual ride experience. There’s a hilariously prominent rattle already going on, which was thankfully comedic rather than jarring. The re-profiling of the airtime hill is worse than the original because it’s more pronounced.

Without having to worry about head banging and all that you can appreciate a bit more just how relentless the pacing of the ride is at least. It’s very anti-B&M when it comes to that early multi-looper style – no faff, just keeps on hitting. The endless heartlines feel more dominating as well, which is a good thing this time with the lap bar. It changes the effect from slow, disorientating hangtime into trying to hurl you outwards from your seat multiple times.
S’alright.

Well that’s £37.50 spent. Are we leaving?

It honestly feels like that with Flamingo Land. I just don’t care at all for anything they have, which is rather impressive considering how much they have of it now. Let's remind ourselves at least.

Dark ride for the courtesy. It ain’t very good and even the operator tells you that before it begins. Spot the Bubbleworks ‘inspired’ scene.

They have donkeys, no hats. It should be a fulfilling day out, but it manages not to be.

Halloween, get excited.

Didn’t ride.

Did ride. Better than Fantasy Island’s.

Didn’t ride.

Did just wanna ride the motorbikes. Regretted.

Did ride, no regrets.

Think that just about covers admission, next?

Our legend of a contact at Gulliver’s Milton Keynes had set us up with a couple more visits in the vicinity.

Gulliver’s Valley Resort

First was their newest park. For the third time in a row, having been told to meet someone and be escorted around the park, we arrived to just be let in and roam free. They had on a piece of paper that ‘the roller coaster club’ was coming. Not quite, but we’ll take it.

Never done one of these from SBF before. Don’t worry, they’ve managed to shift nine of them in under 5 years, I'm sure we'll all find one somewhere. Builds up a bit of speed for a nasty crunch in that one valley, so top quality as always.

Have done a few of these from Zamperla before. One of the bigger stretches in the coaster counting world, but just sit back and admire those subtle undulations.

Token dark ride. Same as one of the other parks but with no guns. Had a bit of a Halloween overlay, pretty scary for a kids park, but could well take the record for world’s shortest.

Done.

Gulliver’s Matlock Bath

With their previous parks all being in fields, it was a surprise to find that this one has all the terrain and views of the delightful Derbyshire Dales. Bit of a hidden gem in the chain.

The streak was broken on arrival, as the admissions staff picked up the phone to someone who was going to come and take us to the Log Coaster.

And take us he did, with the VIP privileges of going up the exit path to skip the queue. Except there was no queue and we had the ride to ourselves anyway.

The guy had obviously dealt with some dirties before as he expected us to want to also ride a piece of children’s play equipment, in the guise of a zipline, in the guise of a ‘rollercoaster’. We declined and had a brief discussion about the silly nuances of this hobby before I asked if we could try their dark ride instead. I do count those. In a different way.

And thus he became the second legend of the Gulliver’s universe. The (yet another) Silver Mine had already closed for the day but although he wasn’t working on rides that particular week, baby-sitting and operating were amongst his many talents. He even had the keys to just open the thing up for us and run it himself.
This one does have guns again, not for points, for effects.

As one final bonus, because it had been one hell of an uphill climb through the whole park until that point, we were invited to take the chairlifts back down to the entrance.

The scary ski type ones that come in behind you at great speed. Cracking views though. Definitely the nicest of the Gulliver’s.
Set complete, but there's already a new cred at Milton Keynes now, so the circle of life continues.

We bade several farewells both to the staff and the lightweights of our group at this point, who wanted to head home because ‘work tomorrow’.

I had my eye on more creds for the journey back, however. Work can wait.

Nottingham Goose Fair

And what an adventure it was. No on-site parking because, to put it lightly, it’s a right mess. We used a nearby park and ride and hopped on a tram for a few stops which was a novel experience in itself. Never knew Nottingham had them.

Coaster Count was so useful at this point, but also such a tease. They had 6, six! creds on site in a jumbled maze of fairground nightmares. I only needed two though and the above pictured wasn’t one of them. That’s Ice Mountain in disguise, from that Mellors lot. Skip.

Fear not though, at the other end of it all, after much searching, we found the other identical spinning mouse that was needed. Cheaper than the other too, the cheek. I don’t think it’s a Reverchon because it was even more jank and was one of those that’s missing the double up and the final speed bump.

And they had two identical ones of these, again one of which I had ridden and one I hadn’t. You can tell because it has Mario on it. It did about 50 laps too many and then we got the hell out of the place.

What I didn’t preface any of that with is that this was by far the worst fairground I’ve ever been to. If you’ve ever seen Winter Wonderland at capacity, picture that, but 10x busier, 10x louder and 10x narrower.

Maybe it’s my inner old man kicking in but I couldn’t understand how anyone seemed to be having a genuine good time here. I was on a mission, I had reason to put up with it all and that’s fine, but stand between any two rides or stalls for a single moment and get two ear-splitting, out of sync dance tracks battling your brains out.

To make the crowd flow even worse, what must have been nearing 50% of all visiting groups had toddlers in pushchairs, unable to move, constantly bashing ankles and moving at 0.1Mph in all directions. Why anyone would want to bring children of that age to such a hostile environment eludes me.

There were police everywhere, people sitting on the floor crying, guests being accosted by other guests on drugs, at least two fights and it wasn’t even dark yet. Barry Island eat your heart out.

Oh, and not a single goose.

 

[Howie]

Always appreciate the donkey pics, with or without hat. Thanks man.

I've got a pretty cool Humber Bridge cred that I bet you don't got, having flown over it in a light plane, driven across it in a car and sailed under it on a boat... all on the same day.
I know, right?
Excluse.

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

Who needs new discoveries in far away lands when you can just go to Hull for an afternoon.

To break up the journey we got in touch with our old mate at Gullivers though, because new cred.

Gulliver's Milton Keynes

Halloween eyes and all, they're vary lax about their opening fanfare. They were a good 15 minutes late in bringing up the shutters. Apparently we're trusted enough now to not need an escort, even though 1 out of 4 of the establishments ever had someone to spare anyway. An excruciating opening ceremony followed - should have stayed in the car for that but efficiency and/or goon points.

Powered straight to the new coaster. It's another one of these SBF things they've taken a fancy to, sitting exactly in the spot of their old EOS Rides spinner, which is now residing at Hayling Island.

It wasn't to be however. The train was parked in the wrong place and though the man sweeping leaves told absolutely everyone to 'give it 30 minutes' no matter what the situation was, the man who attempted to come and operate the ride, along with the engineers that followed, couldn't get it to budge or engage the drive tyres. With them all powering away from the ride after pushing every button, using the phrase 'run away!', it was decided we should cut our losses. Can't go anywhere any more.

Hull Funfair

Never mind, this place had a whole seven! creds on offer. There's not many places in the world I can get that number any more. It's a weird setup, literally taking over a residential street and a large gravel pit, smothering houses and businesses in the process for a limited time only. A waltzer blocked the public library and it was absolute carnage in the vicinity. Half of the residents directly outside the area were enterprising by charging visitors for extortionate all day parking rates, which we circumvented with free street parking on the wrong side of the train tracks and a simple 10 minute walk.
Much better atmosphere and access than the Goose though.

First up was the big apple, for the thread title. It had an apple too.

Then there was one of these runaway mine train things. You can tell by the man's mobile number on the sign.

Another wacky worm? Yes please. This one didn't have an apple, but was cheaper.

This was the standout of the visit, just look at those hills. These little old Chance things are pretty cool amongst a sea of nothingness.

Got quite the spin on 'Crash Test', but was otherwise unphased.

Hmmm... I had my doubts as to whether this was new to me. Something wasn't sitting right. The coaster count app didn't have me in the list as riding it though, so off we go.

Upon returning home it turns out this was a spite. The app doesn't list duplicates, of which this has several listings on the website version. It was previously owned by someone else and sure enough I'm in there against one of those, from a cold and wet night in Swansea, 2018. All they do is switch the sign out for Christmas. Bah.

Oh well, one more to go, another runaway mine train. You can tell by it having Lego Indiana Jones.

'Run away!'

We went for a bit of redemption at the stupid beach coaster in Grimsby, sorry, Cleethorpes, on the way home, but it's proper cooked now. Half buried in sand, completely abandoned and with no train on track. Interestingly the pods on the adjacent ferris wheel are also missing, so the only thing remaining is a death slide and a smell of defeat in the air.

Never mind, we tried. Still a +6.
Bye for now.