Tayto Park "Coaster Craic" trip reports August 2015

[Hixee]

Going to be mostly pictures from me, as I'm out of energy to write a lengthy text post.

We were ready and waiting at 09:15 as instructed, without an IanFromCoasterForce in sight...

Cú Chulainn was looking amazing in the sun in the morning:

And it was riding even better, as proven by CF!

This picture is possible my favourite from the trip. It's Ian, Jordan and Owain having an absolute blast in the front of the coaster - having just suffered through the awful overbank. I think it sums up everything CF is about for me - just goofing around with your friends, riding coasters (especially those with crazy zero cars) and having fun. I love it!

Jordan looking glam:

After the ERT, we did the zipline and the high-ropes, and then I think we just faffed for a bit - I really can't remember. Some of us then rode the Rotator, which looked (and sounded) vile. I think we faffed some more, ate some lunch and then just pottered around the rest of the park for a while.

The factory tour was a let down, lunch was nice, Air Race was okay and the 5D cinema was bland. We really just wanted to go re-ride the coaster! Here, have some more pictures:

Here are my thoughts on things:
Cú Chulainn: Wow! What a coaster. This would be a great ride in any park, but for some reason Tayto decided to build it and it's bonkers. The layout is nice, a little let down by the overbank (which wasn't painful, just a bit... uncomfortable), but on the whole it was good. It was long, had a really nice amount of airtime and some nice headchoppers. Overall, I think it's great. Definitely the best woodie in the UK (although that'd hardly be hard) and definitely holds its own against some of the best in Europe/USA.

Tayto Park: An odd place. The giant Mr. Tayto mascot, the abundance of crisps (including the free crisp collection on exit), the factory tour, the coaster (!), just the whole thing was odd. Thankfully, in a charming and hopefully promising way. The park was rammed, but to my mind that's only a good thing. If their first proper thrill ride was that coaster, what the **** are they going to put in next?! I can't wait to see it. A busy park means more money, means more development, means more awesome coasters. Considering I can get to Tayto Park faster than I can to Alton Towers (without a car), it's great to have it so close.

Thanks for arranging everything Ian (and Charles), it was a fantastic Live!

We then rocked out on the party bus on the way back into Dublin, and went for a Mongolian meal - which had plenty of comedic value as Ben and Nic have already alluded to. We then had many pints, and I took a picture:

On Sunday we just minced around Dublin on Plod's amazing walking tour of Dublin. I can't put into words quite how entertaining this was - especially with the excellent quote "Her low-cut dress and large breasts were justified on the grounds that as "women breastfed publicly in Molly's time, breasts were popped out all over the place."". :lol:

Finally we headed out the airport and all caught our respective flights home.

It was great to finally come to a CF-Live again. My last formal CF meet-up was the Vampire 21st event back in 2011, nearly four years ago! It was nice to see so many CFers, some of whom I knew already, but many I met in person for the first time. So to all, thanks for making it an excellent weekend - I hope it wont' be as long until the next one!

 

[Ian]

^ Lovely report and photos, Hix!

Here's the POV I filmed. IMO, it's the best POV of CuCu out there (but I would say that!).

At the end you can hear us all going "ooh!" followed by laughter when the brakes kicked in. And Stone Cold shouting "They need a 'broms' sign!"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyp9Dh2EjjY[/youtube]

 

[Serena]

Aww this looks like it was such a fab trip! I wish I could have been there. Here's hoping for a Helix clone at Tayto in the future!

 

[Jordanovichy]

Ian, nadroJ, belfast_conor, Stone Cold and myself had flown into Belfast the night before and we stayed at Conor's ma's. I love flying at this time of night, it looks so pretty, plus I had a window seat .

To get to the park for the 9:15 Ian had insisted on meant we had to be up and out by 7:30 which was fun. We made the near-100 mile journey south to Ireland's biggest theme park, playing a 'guess the CFer' playlist on the way, the highlight was 'Milk' by in reference to Ploddish's love of the white stuff. The woodie looked beautiful in the early morning sun.

Small faff with paying in €s for the tickets and we were soon into the park and made a bee-line for Cú Chulainn (which I shall now refer to as CuCu) for our morning ERT.

I took my seat and the excitement of getting a new cred, and it looking phenomenal overtook me. I couldn't wait. I sat towards the back on my first go, the first drop had plenty of airtime and down into the tunnel before whooshing through the distant corner, some weaving around (which really reminded me of skiing, just the way you move your body) and into the overbanked turn. It's rough, yes, but I don't think it deserves the hate it receives, it doesn't feel as if it kills as much speed when you're in the back but it feels like it oddly slides left to right on the track, not my favourite element in the coaster!

The rest of the coaster spends itself racing over and under itself, up airtime hills offering plenty of it, shooting around tight corners. I was cheering it along, loving every second. The ERT then offered a further 9 rides, where I managed to get a front row and back row ride in. This coaster is phenomenal. It's just excellent. I prefer it back row, the airtime over the first hill is sensational and the overbanked turn isn't as unforgiving, at the front, whilst I enjoy being able to see the track right in front of me, doesn't offer as much airtime and the overbanked turn is...well reasonably disgusting. I applaud Tayto Park for having the balls to build this thing. It's amazing <3

The burdens who had decided to catch a delayed flight still hadn't arrived so we went over to the zip line.

We got suited and booted in our harnesses and helmets and walked to the other end of the zipline and up all of the stairs to the top. We chatted to Ben about his recent American trip before we took our places to jump. The hardest thing with this sort of attraction (absailing is the same) is that initial leap over the edge, once you manage that it's great...craic. I jumped and whooshed down to the other side. Ahh such fun.

Thanks to Peep for the photo

After that we headed over to the high ropes course.

I got chatting to Hixee who I hadn't met before, great to meet you bud! Because we're manly(ish) men, Ben and I opted for the top course so had to negotiate the obstacles higher up. It was alright, I really liked how you could chop and change and decide which obstacle you wanted (one was easier, more rigid, others were less so...). Everyone below was laughing at my...erm...bulge.

Bulge. I would say zoom in but you really don't need to

By now the burdens who had the delayed flight had arrived so we headed over to Rotator.

[i}Excuse the massive pole ruining the pic[/i]

I'd never ridden one before so thought I'd give it a go. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting but the swing just before it goes upside down for the first time, and just after the time it goes upside down for the last time it leaves you hanging upside down for 5 seconds and that's just vile. No one needs that in their life.

We looked at the queue for the Air Race, realised we'd be there until Christmas and moved on to find lunch. We found a fab lodge place at the back of the part with anti-theme park food, it was great, I had a wonderful beef CARvery, it was so nice to be at a park with good food. Good job Tayto! The had a great chandelier...:

...and an odd bear scene...:

Next we headed into the Tayto Factory Tour.

I have no idea what I was expecting but I think I thought we'd get up close and personal with the crisps, as others have said, instead it was trying to squeeze in a small box and look out of grimy windows. Disappointing!

I think next we headed back over to the Air Race and decided the queue was still longer than Italy, so went to look at some animals instead. Ugh zoos. I stroked a goat...

You could hear them snore...it was quite sweet. Also saw a tiger.

But the best part was being able to see this beauty, also held in captivity, over the fields...

You could almost hear it call out for us to go and re-ride, so that's exactly what we did! We had to queue this time obviously :sadface:, but that's life!

I sat back row with DubaiDave I think and now it had warmed up it was even better! It felt pacier and was less burdenous through the overbank, I genuinely had to consider that it might be a top 10, but you just don't get as good a kick at the front, for me my top 10 isn't about one seat...if it was one seat on Swarm would be up there but the rest of the seats are meh (front outside right if you're interested), so it has settled at 14th. So ridiculously good though that we had another ride before checking the queue for Air Race, decided we'd be here until Chessington get a new cred, and headed to the 5D Cinema of tedium instead.

I always like to give these a go purely to watch the video. Ian broke out the cable ties and chaos ensued with tying invariable people to things and things to people. We entered a room which was hot and stuffy. We entered another room which was cold and chilly. (That's 1 D of the 5 right there!). Yeah the show was meh, lots of water-in-face, not enough fire-in-face...and by 'not enough fire-in-face, I mean 'no fire-in-face'. The film had NO mention of crisps or potato which was just a waste. THEY COULD HAVE THROWN CRISPS INTO THE AUDIENCE. UGH. There were bubbles though so it wasn't all bad.

We had a wander over to the Air Race but the queue was still slightly larger than my considerable bulge so headed to the Tiny Tater's Maze.

It was a lot of 'walking through bush', similar to a night out in continental Europe but we had fun all the same.

A photo of Nic and talking about 'bush' is purely coincidental

After that we were going to ride the porn ponies but gave up when there was another BURDENSOME queue. We headed back over to the Air Race and decided to just suck up the queue. The whole park was busy, we wouldn't be riding anything if we didn't wanna queue.

Christ knows why I rode it, I hated the one on Brighton Pier when I rode it last year...that flung me upside down 33 times so I was very grateful when this only did it 11 times, it made it much more bearable.

It was nearly time to meat the beautiful Mr. Coyle, so we had another ride on le CuChu, and waited patiently. There was some drama on the Air Race when we came off the woodie, someone had collapsed and there were paramedics and Mr. Coyle, whilst harassed by the whole charade, still looked mmmm. Only Ian spoke to him, I suppose he didn't want 25 enthusiasts, who were already drooling, harassing him further.

And that was that! Ah Tayto, you have a fab theme park in the making here, Cú Chulainn is world class, so so so good, there's a nice collection of flat rides, especially in the kids area, and a few filler things like the high ropes, zip line and climbing wall. I can't wait to see what this park is like in 5 years time, it will be fab.

I went to the tat shop whilst everyone left by a different exit and got free **** crisps. I was not overjoyed when everyone was stuffing their faces with cheese and onion whilst I just had a hole in my pocket. But there, my own fault for being a mong. Ben felt sorry for me (it's true guys, he has a heart), and shared his with me...he said he didn't like them but we all know what was going on .

We said our goodbyes to everyone else who was travelling back into Dublin via party bus. Stone Cold, Ian, nadroJ, Belfast_Conor and I headed into a town-of-class, Bettystown, to visit Funtasia which features Ireland's only 'cred-on-a-roof'!

To say it was bleak would be an impressive understatement. It was probably the bleakest place I've ever been to to get a cred...and the rain didn't help.

There were loads of caravans around as well...why the hell would you come here on your summer holiday? Unlucky sods :/

After that we drove up to Belfast, ordered some food before heading out and hitting the town. Conor took us to a couple of fab, traditionally Irish pubs. I had my first pint of Guinness, it was so smooth and tasty, I'm looking forward to seeing how Guinness over here compares. A great evening was had by all!

I'd like to express my thanks to Tayto Park for the ERT and discounted tickets, and to Ian especially for arranging it all and for doing all the driving for me, not just on this day but for the rest of the weekend which I'll get around to writing...eventually. You're fab <3

Also thanks to everyone who came for making the day great as you always do, I always get back from a Live and think how lucky I am to have gotten into this hobby (with thanks to ATTACKHAMMER, so blame him! ).

Thanks for reading, I'll post the rest of my trip in a separate thread when I can be arsed.

 

[ThomVD]

^ Still can't believe how Cú didn't even beat Krake! How can one drop be better than such an excellent long woodie. You silly person.

 

[jayjay]

Alright, trip report time. My journey begins in Birmingham on a very early Friday morning. After splashing out on an airport Spoons breakfast, I caught my flight to Dublin, then the airport bus to the city centre.

Ireland is not a country that is afraid of stereotypes

Walking around Dublin and looking at bridges got boring after a while, so I retreated to a cafe to look up things to do and eat a brownie. I've been to Dublin with my high school band before, so I'd done a few of the attractions already. Instead of staying in the city, I opted to take a train over to Howth, a small peninsular just north of the city. If you ever find yourself in Dublin and like hillwalking and picturesque views, it's a good afternoon on a nice day.

Pretty rock pictures for the geology nerds <3

Howth's new Merlin attraction

Important advice for tourists

I was thinking of meeting up with the couple of other guys in Dublin, but having had 5 hours sleep and traipsing around hills all afternoon, I opted instead to crash into my hostel.

On Saturday morning, a group of us met up to get taxis from the city centre over to Tayto Park.

Ireland is not a country that is afraid of stereotypes

Our theme park gives you free crisps. Does yours?

Time for what everyone (not including the Saturday Ryanair flyers) was waiting for: Cú Chulainn ERT. I loved it! The floater down the first drop immediately followed by insane ejector through the tunnel is exhilarating. If the pace didn't start dying towards the end of the ride, I'd be tempted to put it to the top, but I decided it was still worth 4th on my list.

Next, we moved on to the zipline, which was far too much faff. This also afforded some nice views of Cú Chulainn at the top of the tower.

Mmmm, Gravity Group Goodness

The ropes course was much more my thing. We all opted to take the top course because we're all adrenaline junkies here.

Say hi to Mr Tayto

Now for the Rotator. I usually like pendulum style rides, but this one was very controlled and had a horribly unpleasant amount of hangtime at the top (Submission flashbacks, aaagh). Deciding, that we needed a break from big rides for the moment, the inevitable crisp factory was on the agenda. Not a huge amount to see, and lots of massive, unnerving pictures of Mr Tayto's huge CGI face.

Mr Tayto is far too emotionally invested in Beatrice

Near the end of the tour were signs saying "this way to the vortex tunnel." The attraction listed in the park guide as "A mystifying, turning, tilting, crazy experience." Boy, Tayto really wanted to big this thing up. I can't wait!

The Vortex Tunnel: Sponsored by Merlin

Yeah, the Vortex Tunnel was mystifying alright. As in, "I've just looked around a crisp factory, time to walk through a rotating passage and get some vague motion sickness. I'm mystified as to what this is."

Back through to the park proper now via the zoo. I can't remember whether it was Air Race or He-Man rerides now. Air Race wasn't vile like everybody else seemed to think, but was good fun instead. But Cú Chullainn was the real star. Two fantastic rerides that were as good as the ones in the morning. There was a 5D cinema at some point too, the most noteworthy moment of which was when I got zip-tied to a queue fence.

Sue also got to feel the pain of the zip-tie

A party bus came to take us back to Dublin. We enjoyed an evening of drinking, eating at a Mongolian restaurant, and then more drinking. All good fun. Finally, I crashed into bed again, took a brief walk around with people in the morning, and headed back home.

Great weekend guys! Thanks to Tayto Park for the ERT and Ian for the organisation. Hope to see everyone again at Thorpe for Ghosterforce.

 

[davidm]

So not the usual, multi-stop, picture festooned TR from me afraid, some random ramblings and a few of the relatively poor snaps I took...

Was staying out at the University ('cos it was silly cheap compared to anywhere in the central Dublin) - en-suite student rooms, never had them in my student days I'll have you know - anyway was fine enough for somewhere to crash, which is all I was doing on the Friday since I got there just after 10.

Bright and early Saturday morning made my way to the park (via McDonalds, the hire car being very useful for that), peeps started turning up fairly swiftly and soon we were just waiting for the Ian-mobile to turn up, which to my amusement they managed to do approximately 20 seconds after the mandated meet-up time.

After a little admissions-faff, we headed in and strolled on into The Cú Chulainn Coaster (which since everyone seems to be calling it CuCu, just to be awkward I'll refer to it as the CCC).

Seven or eight rides later (I lost count) I'd happily ridden front/middle/back and a few points inbetween, and what a very nice thing it was too - great fun in whatever seat you chose. Back row edged it, but there was still airtime and fun to be had all over the train - thats a pretty good sign I think.

The downsides have been mentioned ; the stuttering overbank and horrible brakes in the station (but you gotta think these things are covered under a 12 month warranty and will be dealt with in the off-season).

Some zip-line-faff and high-ropes-course-faff then happened whilst the park started to fill up (and fill up it did, perhaps they weren't quite prepared for this level of custom given the Qs at the ticket windows/toilets etc?)

The Ryanair-disadvantaged stragglers turned up and we made them all "wait for the cred" by riding the Rotator ride then deciding it was lunchtime. Secretly I wondered how long we could keep denying them before they snapped.

After lunch we experienced the factory-tour, it was faff-tastically unexciting and ended with two spinning cardboard tubes in a couple of cast off shipping containers - aka the Vortex Tunnel - awesome.

We managed to further deny the latecomers the cred by wandering around the zoo areas for a while - I'm not a great fan of zoos, and zoo-exhibits combined with theme-parks even less, but in fairness this wasn't too bad, some big enclosures (for the buffalo) and I didn't see any obviously distressed animals.

Probably the reason that all this is here then;

Eventually we had to let the latecomers get their cred, so headed back to the rides

But this time had to endure the silly many-switch-backed-queue (silly because it had no short-cut points, so once in, you were in for the whole
trip)

Airrace was done, I'd never done one of these and so I probably never had to do one again now...

Cable-tie-faff;

Few more rides on CCC, bit more faff and the day was done - all in all a very nice day despite the park being heaving, I expect if I'd turned up that day without the power of ERT or the big group of goons to chat with I might have had a rubbish time, but I didn't so that was good.

I didn't indulge in the free packet of crisps either (crisps are evil anyway)

and after some leaving-faff and some taxi-faff (on my behalf) about half of us met up for food-and-beer in Dublin in the evening. Which was nice. Even if all traditional Irish music does sound exactly the same.

I was never going to make the ridiculously early (10-ish) meet-up time in the morning to wander around Dublin doing "culture", so since I'd spent most of the preceding evening tasting Guinness I went to the Guinness Storehouse (Ireland's #1 Tourist Attraction dontchaknow) when I had managed to become almost human the next day. So you can have a few snaps of that - was OK, pretty busy but pretty interesting all the same.

Just about to go into a tasting room - I struggled a bit with tasting the Guinness at that point.

At the end of the "tour" you get a pint of Guinness in a rooftop bar overlooking the city - which was nice enough but heaving with people. I couldn't face that free pint either though. Lightweight.

Exit through the gift shop...

So all in all a very nice little weekend away and very nice coaster in CCC - cheers all!



--

EDIT : one of them there faked shots - wasn't even trying to take this at the time...

 

[MouseAT]

Well that was a pretty epic day out.

After Mushroom pointed out that there were conveniently timed flights from Leeds/Bradford airport just over an hour down the road from me, I decided it was feasible to make this a day trip, albeit with an overnight stop at Mushroom's place to save me the hour long drive at 3am the following morning. After an early morning flight with Mushroom as cabin crew we arrived in Dublin, probably putting a hole in the runway on touch-down, and I headed for arrivals.

Upon taking my phone out of airplane mode, the text messages started arriving, informing me that the flight from Stansted had been delayed, and hence my designated driver (Peter) would be very late arriving. What followed was a fairly stressful 45 minutes or so, as I found a taxi rank, a taxi driver who didn't know where Tayto Park was, and spent most of the taxi journey switching back and forth between the Tayto Park website and Google Maps trying to figure out where we needed to go. Eventually, we managed to find the place, leaving me at the park roughly an hour before meet-up and some 50 euros out of pocket. Thanks a bunch, Ryanair.

<Insert much swearing here>

Ahem.

Any morning inconvenience was soon forgotten as CFers began arriving. It was great to catch up with some old faces I hadn't seen in a while, and meet Thom in person for the first time.

On to ERT and the woodie then. In short, it's fab. Fast paced, a good length, and loads of airtime in the first half. I'll echo what most people have already said - the overbank isn't really unpleasant, just mildly uncomfortable and more amusing than anything else, but the ride does seem to lose some pace after that point, which is a shame because I'm sure if the train maintained speed through the rest of the ride it'd be a truly world class ride rather than just a very very good one. That said, it's nothing that couldn't be fixed with some TLC during the off season.

As for the rest of the park, I'm fairly impressed. It was busy, many of the rides and attractions are low capacity, and most of the park is aimed at younger kids, but that's to be expected from a park that seems to be experiencing massive growth in visitor numbers, so that's not a complaint. The zip wires are absolutely fab, and strongly recommended for anyone who visits the park. There's probably enough other stuff to occupy someone for most of the day as long as the park was moderately busy, and Cú Chulainn is awesome enough to warrant a whole lot of re-rides over the course of a day.

The buffet food available was pretty decent too. That gets a definite thumbs up from me.

The factory tour definitely needs some work though. The "Mr Tayto" song aside, the whole thing felt very bland and half-assed. They really need to try to do something to make the walkthrough a bit livelier if they're going to hold people's interest. I'd be tempted to put in some sort of dark ride next to the factory, increase the number of windows into the factory so that people can actually see what's going on, and turn the factory walk-through corridor into the ride queue, but I'm not sure how feasible this would be in practice.

Once we were finished with Tayto Park, some of us had a few hours to kill before our flights home, so decided to make a quick cred run over to nearby Bettystown for a +1. Wet and windy weather on the exposed rooftop led to Ian complaining how he "should have worn a fleece" as we were treated to a bonus fourth lap of the wacky worm as the train full of CFers slid through the wet brakes, leading to the ride op having to call over about three of his colleagues in order to stop the train. Oh the joys of being a coaster goon.

After that, it was back to Dublin airport to grab a bite to eat before flying back home to Yorkshire, and dealing with the wonders of night closures on the A1 en-route home. I eventually arrived back home a few minutes before midnight, and after around 20 hours on the go it was literally a case of dumping everything on the floor, cleaning my teeth and then collapsing straight into bed, ready to sleep the sleep of ages.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Photos are here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 11be56e16c

 

[gavin]

Re: Tayto Park "Coaster Craic" trip reports August 2015

After an early morning flight with Mushroom as cabin crew we arrived in Dublin, probably putting a hole in the runway on touch-down, and I headed for arrivals.

That's a horrible thing to say; Mushroom's not that fat.

 

[peep]

Finally getting around to writing up my report...

Saturday 8th

After checking into our Dublin hostel at like midnight Thom, Nic, Ben and I were greeted at breakfast with a Plod. Shortly after we got in a pre-booked cab to Tayto park! After a 20-30 minute drive into the middle of nowhere we arrived!



It was great to see so many familiar faces again. Shortly after the designated meeting time Ian & Co. arrived which meant we could go inside. Some wristband faff later and we were making our way over to their big woodie Cú Chulainn. It was very imposing on the surrounding area but it is a bit sad that it mainly overlooks the car park.







It was nice that they had made the effort to theme the queueline entrance. We then battled with the cattlepen queue to get to the station for our 30 mins ERT. Excellent. I managed seven goes on the coaster. I'm going to state now that I'm not the biggest fan of wooden rollercoasters, I find I either love them or hate them, very rarely in the middle. I love the first drop, it provides a slightly different experience depending on the front or back of the train, I found both to be equally great. Then it speeds through that little tunnel and into a really boring, drawn out corner of nothing. Then it finally goes up a bit to go down an ok drop and up into one of the best bits of the ride, a crazy sort of triple down that throws you around - caught me off guard a couple of times. I love the speed it creates and the silly way it dives around. It then makes its way up and around the highly banked turn which should be quite fun and instead it has two very random jolts in it when the train doesn't seem happy with what the track is trying to achieve which isn't painful but it totally detracts from the moment. There's then a mix of some interesting hills, another long boring turn and the final dive into a tunnel to pull up into the brakes at the end. It's a good finale but it did need some more speed going into it.




This couple enjoyed ERT before our ERT (the owners?)



Overall I thought it was ok but I was intrigued to see what it rode later in the day after warming up a bit. Sue, Rach, Peter and Dan's flight was delayed so they still weren't with us (and missed out on getting evil glares while we got ERT) so we faffed around on some of the other contraptions the park has to offer. First up half the group gave the zipwire a go. It's quite a big set up but doesn't stop it from being a faffy attraction. This gave those of us that didn't bother a good chance to chat and watch the others speed down the line...







We then wandered over to the high ropes course where yet again there was a pretty even split of people participating and chatting.











The others finally arrived so we decided to queue up for the Rotator. I usually quite like these attractions (unless they go on for too long, yep, I'm looking at you Flip Flop at 'Mingerland). However this one was just vile, the motion was so controlled it killed any joyful airtime and provided way too much hangtime (it's the worst type of time). Now with a bunch of us feeling nauseous we went to grab food. Fortunately Ian, Jordan and Conor had been to the park before so knew where to go and they delivered the goods with 'The Lodge'. Oh they did well, this place was awesome, it had a great selection of food and nearly every time of potato you could want. (clicky)



Now full of some taters cooked in various ways so we went for a relaxing look around the Tayto factory.



I'm not sure what I was expecting but this was like a massive let down. It was just a small corridor with the history of the company on one wall and occasional little windows peering into the factory on the other. Thought it'd be like other factory tours with information boards about what you're looking at etc. Still it led us out into the Vortex tunnels! These tunnels of mystery were so randomly plonked outside the factory and the origins of why they exist still baffle me. Essentially they're those spinning tunnels you get in fun houses but the second one had an additional fun element, part of the lining was falling off causing some of us to have to duck underneath it.



Feeling a bit odd about what we just encountered we decided to have a wander through the zoo. It was a bizarre zoo with mainly lots of enclosures with various types of chicken. There were other animals including a goat petting area and some Tigers and other smaller cats too. After the zoo we ended up in the dinosaur area which was yet more randomness and it felt really out of place.






Oh look, a cred



We'd now left it long enough for us to head back over to the woodie. It had gained quite the queue (park was pretty busy shortly after opening, would love to know how many people were in the park) but with two trains and lots of entertaining banter the queue went by rather quickly.





It had definitely gained some speed since we rode it in the morning but the latter half still didn't feel right and those two large corners were still really detracting a lot of enjoyment from the experience. After our ride we headed over to the 5D cinema. While we waited in the exterior queue we caught part of the complimentary live show. The 5D cinema had two very brightly coloured waiting rooms which had nothing exciting for those waiting to look at. The show was ok, a standard package film which is a shame because I would have loved to have seen a 5D show featuring Mr Tayto.

We then headed over to the kids area where we proceeded to take a detour through the hedge maze. It was very overgrown which was cool but it didn't seem like much of a maze (maybe because we were a huge 20+ line of adults).



We then proceeded to faff around a bit before deciding that those who want to do the air race should just accept that it has a long queue and suck it up. I had some ice cream and a sit down.





Some more faff occurred and as we still had a while before the arranged meeting time with Mr Coyle we went for another ride on Cú Chulainn. It was even faster now but instead of improving the ride for me I found it gained that famous woodie rattle and my brain loathes that. Sad face.



As we got off there was an incident at the entrance of the air race which resulted in Mr Coyle having to run around like he was on Baywatch and help deal with the situation. Still Mr Bell had a little chinwag with him. We then called it a day so headed off into the tat shop and then collected our free Tayto crisps at the exit.



This is when the large group of 20+ peeps started to split off so lots of goodbyes were had and then a bunch of us got into a minibus organised by the park staff to take us into the city centre. There was a blue box above the driver's head and Dubai Dave points to it and asks "Is that a laser?", it was indeed a laser and Dave got him to turn it on. The driver played lots of dance tunes too so we were a proper party bus...





After some initial choas we had a drink in a bar, said goodbye to Benin and Nicky, went to another bar. Ended up in an all-you-can eat Korean BBQ place which was freakin' awesome. Laughed so much during this meal, the banter was top notch. We then went from bar to bar until we ended up at Merchant's arch bar which had some live music. We had lost a few more people by this point. It was very crowded which was a bit of a pain. Still the night went on and I had an awesome time. The bands were fantastic but I was pretty gone just after midnight so Ben and I headed back to the hostel before it got too messy.







Sunday 9th

We got up a semi-decent time. I was slightly hungover. We proceeded to meet up with a Plod, Hixee and JayJay. We then began our adventure on Plod's amazing walking tour of Dublin - a city he knew very little about. We had a great laugh wandering around the city looking at the sights and either making up facts or just listing things off the internets. Have an assortment of photos...






An old university


Parliament or a bank or something




Accidental tour info board


They went and turned their castle into something from Balarmory





One Cathedral ahhaha...


Two Cathedral ah haha...





Fun Fact: This spike is taller than most creds





We then caught the bus to the airport and flew home.



It was a brilliant weekend filled with awesome people. I really enjoyed myself and although I may not be Tayto park's biggest fan I look forward to seeing how they develop in the future.


Thanks for reading!

 

[Ian]

I really need to open my eyes when I go to parks, I never noticed the woman statue!