My turn for an epic trip report, this time with some photos.
My alarm clock rang at an ungodly hour of 4:50am and I reluctantly got out of my bed! Half an hour later, I was ready and on my way to New Street station in a taxi to catch the 6:04 train to Reading!
I got there and had 25 minutes to wait for the train to come, so rather than freezing my arse off on the platform, stood upstairs.
New Street was actually quite busy for 5:40 in the morning. Mainly with people carrying Global Gathering Bags!
My train came and off I went to Reading. The 1 hour 40 train journey soon passed as I watched The Inbetweeners episode when they went to Thorpe Park!
Got to Reading and had a further 25 minute wait for the next train. Train comes and off I go to Staines.
'We are now approaching Earley' says the train. Tom and Airtime Cadet are supposed to be getting on there. But, there was no sign of them. I worried. 'We are now approaching Winnersh Triangle' I see Tom and Ian (AC) running onto the right train!
Now together, the 40 minute train went quickly!
Got to Staines (URGH) and the charv express had an epically long queue, with one bus already full! So we went and got a taxi to the park and beat the charv express there! Working out that the driver was actually a bloke, we left the taxi and jumped into the queue to get in. Ciall and Martyn then appear so we said hi and hung around with them for a few hours. Nic also then appeared and we all got our hands stamped and anal passes scanned and off we went in.
First stop was Stealth, it wasn't open yet, so we went to Inferno. Nic waited for Sara and the rest of us joined the walk on queue and took over the back two rows. Nice bit of Inferno to start the day. Got back to the station and there was still no one there, so we changed seats and were on again. This was repeated another once, it could've been twice if we really wanted to! We waited for Nic and Sara to have another go and off we went to Det.
Det was fun, but there wasn't enough room for everyone on the first go. Ciall, Martyn and friend went on, leaving me, Nic and Tom to wait for the next go.
Went on Det twice without even having to leave my seat! Yay for major airtime in the morning.
We noticed the brapids had no queue while on Det, so we went over there for some early morning soaking.
Ciall, Martyn + friend had one boat, while the rest of us went in another with a communal poncho and with bag on head for Nic. We got nicely wet, so headed off to Stealth as we saw it testing!
Got to Stealth to be told it wouldn't be opening for another few hours. Which was LIES. So we went and asked Ewan who said, if it makes it over the next couple of laps, it'll open. So we made haste back to the entrance and sure enough, 3 laps later it opened and we had to walk around the entire queue line to get to the station.
The lot of us went for front row which was amazing! Actually, Stealth was running really well yesterday. Everyone apart from Me and Tom went on through SRQ and few more times, while me and Tom headed for Guest Services: The Ride, so I could claim my pass for Saw and so Tom could have a sex change. Racheal from opening day dealt with us, but didn't remember us.
One personalized ticket for me later (it had my name on and they even phoned the Saw team up to tell them to let me on)! we headed back to Stealth and got on again through SRQ before heading over to Queue eater: The Ride.
Six of us headed up the fast track/disabled entrance while Ciall and Martyn headed for the SRQ. Cheers to Ciall and Martyn for understanding the situation.
We were on in about 10 minutes and we asked for the second car, front row. The girl on the dispatch agreed and smiled and let us on!
(Saw review will be in Saw topic in due course)
One amazing ride on Saw, we went to buy photos and syringe pens from the shop! We were glad we didn't have to queue, as the queue was to the Police car. It never really got any longer than that, nor much shorter.
We called lunch then, even though it was only half 11!
We said to Ciall, Martyn and friend that if you want to meet up again, Rush at half 12.
The other 5 of us headed for Rocky Express cause it was queue less and then myself, Tom and Ian rode Loggers as it had become rather warm and the queue was rather short!
Nic stole my camera while we went on and took our own ORP.
We then went for lunch at Burger King and headed for Fish. Nic stole a child as she didn't want to walk around the queue line, so she got on another train, while the other 4 went on another!
We headed to Rush, which had just e-stopped and couldn't find Ciall, Martyn and friend. And with Rush dead as a door knob, we headed to see what Colossus' queue was like. It was long, so didn't bother. Slammer had also just died, so we went on the cho cho train.
We made our way around the park to find something that didn't have a huge queue! The carousel! We encountered the first group of chavs for the day. They kept switching what thing they were sitting on, so the op told them to get off resulting in another ride for us!
We walked around again and got to Rush. It had opened on one swing, so Rush joined that. Nic and Sara headed for Boretex and I was a bag lady!
We head lost Ian, so we seized the oppurtunity to go and quickly ride Saw with Tom's opening day fast track and my special one. We rode front row again and we spotted Nic with my camera again, so we got more another ORP, this time free!
We called Ian and then went to try and find Chris on Loggers. He was in the ops cabin and we tried to grab his attention from outside, but he thought we were usual guests that try and annoy him, so he threw his jacket at the window!
We left and went on Rocky again as there was nothing else really worth riding. Me and Tom decided on trying to buy a Colossus fast track, but they had sold out, so headed to the Banana Boat to refind the others!
While waiting to see if they had any fast track left, we saw one of the chavs from the carousel incident being escorted off park.
We spotted the others in the Banana queue and went to be ice cream and coke from the Inferno shop and then tried to work out how much each of us paid! It didn't really work!
We went to the arcade where Nic and Tom went on the dance mat, Ian wandered around and myself and Sara occupied ourselves with the grab machines. Sara almost won a pony and I actually won a Hello Kitty toy! Yay for Sara telling me to try once more and that once more actually worked!
I spotted a balloon in the sky!
We went on Fish again as again there was nothing else worth riding, and then made our way to the exit. Nic brought the bag on head rapids ORP from the photo collection point and I went to take some pictures from outside.
We left the park and headed back to Staines with Nic! Thanks for the lift, it was really appreciated. On the way to the station, Nic got a call from Sara to say she had lost her car in the car park! Oh how we LOLed at this, she soon found it though and we continued our journey to the station.
Nic dropped us off and we navigated the other platform with having to go the opposite side of the station! The train appeared and we squashed on to an already full train from the Rugby at Twickenham. Someone was sick on the train and a lot of people tried to squash into the vestibule where we were stood! The faces of people in the carriage where the person was sick when everyone got off at Reading was amusing.
I made my way to the platform for my train back to Brum to find it 10 mins late. So it came at 6:20.
It hit some problems on the track just outside Brum International, so we sat for another 10 minutes and it finally moved again. Got back to Brum 15 minutes late (as it made up 5 minutes by doing 120mph from Brum International to New Street).
I got home no earlier than if I would've left the park an hour later!
Thanks to everyone that came along yesterday, it was truly an awesome day!