NemesisRider's Grand Days Out (Various UK Parks) - Part 3, Legoland Windsor

[NemesisRider]

As much as I love to be off in a foreign country visiting new and exciting parks, financial experts have unfortunately informed me that "you can't just keep spending all of your money on flights and hotels". So, inevitably, I have to look for a theme park fix closer to home. This thread will be gradually updated with shorter trip reports for UK parks, including reviews for cool new additions and inevitable gripes about areas where I think they could do better.

Without further ado:
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Part 1 - Blackpool Pleasure Beach (August 2024)

I recently realised that in nearly a decade of visiting Pleasure Beach I had never actually bothered to get the Blue Flyer credit and finish the set (an impressive oversight). I ended up going with a friend who hadn't been back since pre-COVID, so took the visit at a slightly less breakneck pace than I usually might. I hadn't been back since 2021, and with an excess of spare time before starting work post-degree, it seemed as good a time as ever to revisit.



Oh, Pleasure Beach... you are not holding up too well nowadays. But let's start with the good stuff.

I rode Valhalla for the first time since it's reimagining, and it's really fun. I still find it a bit too wet for my personal tastes, especially considering that Blackpool's weather is often wet, windy, cold, or some combination of the three. But the upgrades look great, the fire finale remains awesome, and I think it's reasonable to say it's still the UK's best water ride.

The Wallet & Gromit Thrill-o-Matic remains thoroughly charming and a necessary component in a day at Pleasure Beach. I grew up watching W&G and it's a perfect property for a dark ride. Bonus points for the costumed Wallace character chasing a child around the plaza at one point.

ICON was sadly packing less of a punch than I remembered, but remains easily my favourite ride in the park. It looks just as slick as when it was brand new, it's refreshingly smooth amongst Blackpool's mostly jank coaster hardware, and there's a handful of world class moments (the top hat, the barrel roll, the immelmann). However, the second half was definitely less intense than I recalled, and ended up feeling a bit toothless. Probably more importantly, since 2021 I've travelled more broadly and ticked off rides like Helix and Hyperia, which I find to be much stronger showcases for this type of hardware. I didn't experience Enso as my friend was unsure about it, though I think £15 is a very steep of a price tag for a single ride. Most guests seem to agree with this - I'd bet the spinning seats were empty for at minimum on 3/4 of the trains I saw, which was surprising given ICON's steady 20-30 minute queue throughout the day. I think a cheaper base rate or dynamic pricing would be a better idea if BPB want these spinning seats to get used.

Finally, the Blue Flyer +1 was indeed obtained. I was particularly amused by uncomfortable restraints, which open with a buzzing noise so aggressive it sounds like someone in the queueline has just received the electric chair.



So, hopefully you are now convinced that I do not, in fact, hate the place. Now for a quick fire round of "WTF BPB?":
- Ride availability left something to be desired. The Big One spent the whole day down due to high winds (annoying, but not the park's fault) and Ice Blast was in pieces.
- More frustratingly, key rides in the park have staggered openings and closes now. Most notably, Valhalla opened at 1pm and ICON closed at 5:30pm (an hour before park close). The latter caught me off guard and ruined my plans of a final reride to end the day, which was even more frustrating given that the queue was fully emptied by 6pm. Especially with their signature ride shut all day, I found this cheap. Why bother opening later if you won't run your big "new" coaster til then?
- The QR code system is noticeably less convenient than the wristbands were.
- The park feels increasingly split between modern attractions (ICON, Valhalla, Skyforce, etc) and classic amusements with variable quality. Of course, rides like the Grand National, Flying Machines and Derby Racer are fan favourites - and rightly so. However, our ride on the Ghost Train in particular left us with the feeling that it was dated, cheap looking and not even worth a 10 minute queue. At least there's the gyro swing to look forward to soon...
- There's just a general vibe of "eh, it'll do" at BPB which leads to it feeling, frankly, cheap. Examples of this include the mediocre operations on most rides, smelly toilets, and the Infusion water level being low enough to see big slabs of bare concrete. I appreciate BPB are not exactly flush for cash, but they need to do better if they want to be a destination park.



I think the ending of the Thrill-o-Matic puts it best: "well, that went as well as could be expected, Gromit". A fun day at Blackpool for sure, but one leaving me in no rush to be back especially soon.

 

[NemesisRider]

Part 2 - Alton Towers (August 2024)

As you can probably tell from the username, Alton Towers is my home park. I used to visit about once a month for the good half-decade when I was a Merlin passholder before COVID - at that point, university more or less took over my life so there was little point in me having one. With that said, I've managed a visit or two a year since 2020. With university finally over and Hyperia finally getting me excited about something in the chain, I decided to opt for a Merlin pass once again. Where better to restart my time with the chain than where it began?



Unfortunately, this visit was one of the less fun trips to Towers I've had in recent years. Summer holidays had (admittedly, predictably) packed the park out despite it being midweek, and queues were exacerbated by subpar ride availability. The technical services seemed to be playing a parkwide game of "whack-a-mole", where every time they got one coaster back up and running, another one broke down. As I've been plenty of times before, a single digit ride count isn't exactly the end of the world for me personally, although I do strongly dislike spending the vast majority of my day at a park queuing. Most annoyingly, Nemesis decided to break down at the end of the day when I'd been planning to lap it, giving me only two rides with which to reform my opinion on it. I left the park frustrated and wishing I'd played my cards differently.

For the most part, Towers is basically as I'd remembered and expected. The Smiler continues to be a ride of contrasts, offering a fantastically disorienting layout that tracks like a shopping cart being pushed down a cobbled lane. Rita continues to offer a real gut-punch of a launch which is becoming all too rare nowadays, fast becoming a "must-do" on my visits in recent years as I've found the shakiness more tolerable. Galactica continues to appear in dire need of a repaint and a retheme - despite offering a fun ride, it looks increasingly like it'll be the park's next coaster on the chopping block. The park has a lot to offer and I wish it was open longer for me to enjoy it all!



I do particularly want to commend Towers for the state of Wicker Man. Now back open after the whole "being on fire" fiasco last month, I feel that the ride only seems to be improving as the years go by. It's developed some characterful (but not excessive) roughness which gives it some of the bite it severely lacked in it's early years. Sure, it's not exactly Wodan, but it's well-themed, super rerideable, and just pure fun.



More importantly, my forum namesake was finally back open! Nemesis Reborn is visually a nice refresh in my books, paying homage to the slightly campy 90s horror elements of the original whilst opting for a more industrial, menacing look. The main queue reroute, whilst annoyingly long for rerides, reopens several areas with great offride views. The station is much improved, now feeling more like the heart of the beast than an inexplicable shed in Nemesis' belly. More importantly, it keeps a unique ride running for a new generation, which is the most important thing in my books.



Equally, I do miss bits of the old Nemesis. I did prefer the old track paintjob, which made Nemesis look more ancient and feel more distinct to the similarly militaristic tones of X-Sector. I seem to recall the original being more intense to ride, although this may be my memory tricking me or a consequence of failing to get back row. Finally, I miss the sense of mystery on the original. Take The Nemesis "gun", for example. To me, it was weird and inexplicable and maybe even slightly creepy? The s****y helicopter replacing it is just a really neat visual and provokes no further questions. Reborn seems to be a more black-and-white (or red?) version of the story than Nemesis '94 gave us.



It's clear that the Nemesis refurb has been an undertaking of love, and I think the unfortunate circumstances of my first rides left me with a slightly more negative opinion than it deserves. At the same time, I think that the original may well have been lightning in a bottle which any refresh could not expect to replicate. I will doubtless return to Towers in the near future to get more rides and better inform my view, but for now Hyperia looks set to remain my favourite UK coaster.



Well, that's two English parks in one week leaving me somewhat cold. Might have to go back to continental Europe to console myself...

 

[NemesisRider]

Part 3 - Legoland Windsor (August 2024)

I, a 22-year-old man, went to Legoland Windsor on a sunny Friday in the school holidays. It was not a wise decision.

The main reason for my visit was Legoland's new duelling coaster, Minifigure Speedway. Might as well get some use out of my new pass! For Zierer's first attempt at a family boomerang, it's pretty decent. The 2nd lift hill makes the return trip less sluggish than I'm accustomed to with the Vekoma family boomerangs; the first few twisty manoeuvres on the backwards part were my highlight of the ride. There are some cool bits of interaction between the two trains, particularly on the main hill (which provides zero airtime, of course). Minifigure Speedway offers another well-needed coaster for Legoland's growing line-up, and it certainly seems to be going down well with the public.



With that said... why is Minifigure Speedway the way it is? First off, Zierer is an odd choice when Vekoma are far more experienced with this model. The Vekoma Famarangs offer better trains with much more freedom, seem better on the reliability front and visually look much slicker than the mess of supports Zierer gave us. Furthermore, Legoland is a very busy park and broadly lacks high-capacity rides. I think a pair of shuttle coasters capped at 1 train each is an interesting choice in light of this. Finally, the ride just feels lower quality than I'd expect from a very well-attended (and profitable) park like Legoland Windsor. The theming is minimal aside from 1 massive minifigure, there are few places where guests can get a good view of the coasters racing, and it just feels a bit cheap. I wish they'd given the designers more money and space to really go wild with, as a duelling Lego racing coaster is an awesome idea.



It’d been over a decade since I last ventured to Legoland, so there were a few other new rides I wanted to try. Unfortunately for me, this included one more credit in need of collecting. The Duplo Dino Coaster is a teeny kiddie coaster that does precisely nothing. Due to the day’s large crowds and the ride’s p***-poor capacity, I queued a soul-destroying 50 minutes to acquire this cred. I for one hope that the park official who signed off on a ride with a throughput of under 200pph at a park with multiple millions of visitors every year has since been executed. To top it all off, the extent of theming is a big rotating disk of dinosaurs in the middle, which looks s***. Additional negative points for the annoying laughing noises played every time the ride cycles, presumably to 100% ensure you wish to die in the glacial paced queue.



On the subject of Not Great, Lego Ninjago was the first new dark ride addition since my last visit. After enduring the hour-long queue and witnessing several arguments between parents in the queueline, I was on. I completely failed to master the unusual shooting system; it felt clunky and confusing, but this may well just have been a skill issue. I also felt like the ride lacked flow, shifting from screen to screen with no real narrative and few physical props. Finally, as a kid who grew up loving Lego Ninjago, I can’t help but feel that a mostly static shooting dark ride is an subpar choice of medium for such a kinetic franchise. A Mack spinning “Spinjitsu” family coaster would have been an absolute smash hit and perfect for the park’s lineup. In summary, it’s fine I guess, but feels like a waste of potential.



At least Flight of the Skylion is genuinely very good. Aside from the utterly baffling one at Fuji-Q, I’m yet to ride a flying theatre that I didn’t at least enjoy. Legoland’s version is a nice change of pace from the usual “fly over several real-life landmarks”, instead soaring through lush fantasy landscapes and interacting with various funky creatures. I think the design of the titular Maximus is quite inspired too; 7 year old me would have bugged my parents non-stop for that exclusive Lego Mythica set. Skylion seems to be arguably the most popular attraction in the park right now, and I understand why. Although the ride itself is great, the queue is just one plain, miserable cattlepen, albeit one with the decency to offer plenty of shade.



Last but not least was the Haunted House Monster Party madhouse. As seems to be common for Legoland, they seem not to have been bothered with hiding most of the ride building, and the queue is mostly unshaded cattlepen. Unlike most of its madhouse brethren, this ride has zero interest in actually scaring you, and so feels comparatively novel compared to the standard “cursed room is spinning!!!” schtick that most employ. In spite of this, most of the children onboard spent the ride screaming bloody murder. Definitely for kids but good fun all in all and, mercifully, the shortest queue of the whole day.



It was nearly 4pm by this point and, having a fairly early bus to catch back to London, I chose to have a quick wander through Miniland before going home. It was as charming as ever, albeit smaller than I recalled.



As I left Legoland, my first thought was about how miserable a day at this park could turn out if you visited with small children and didn’t invest in Reserve & Ride. The long, often hot queues somewhat tested my patience as an adult with a phone – I imagine that gets much worse with an easily tired little person throughout the day. My second thought was to wonder why so many of the park’s new rides feel, honestly, cheaply finished. Again, Legoland Windsor is hugely popular, and probably Merlin’s biggest money maker in the UK. Can they not afford better? Most of their new additions feel like they're using the absolute smallest footprint possible; is a lack of space responsible for what I think to be sub-optimal attraction choices? Either way, a cred is a cred, but I don’t think I’ll be back to Legoland any time soon.

I must seem like an absolutely miserable sod in this thread but fear not: I'm currently working on a trip report from the Benelux where I went to some actually good theme parks. Stay tuned!