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Your Pre-enthusiast Days

furie

furie

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Just an idle thought here.

Just how much of an "enthusiast" where you before you became an actual enthusiast?

So, before discovering CF, ECC, RCCGB, ACE, TPR or whatever compelled you to go out and hunt coasters - just how much did you visit parks and ride coasters?

I think for everyone there's a point where you know that you've made that change due to external sourced (for me I found CF and then found out about places like Fantasy Island - at that point I knew I had to get to these parks).

I suppose the easiest way of quantifying it is by looking at the count you had before and after. Though it may be through the number of extra (and out of the way) parks you've been too deliberately because of the hobby.

Parks wise, before 2004, I'd been to Blackpool, Southport, Alton, Thorpe, Camelot, Rhyl, Belle Vue, DLRP, Drayton, Oakwood, Gulliver's Warrington, Legoland and West Midland Safari Park. Most of these visits are with family_furie (and extended-family_furie). Though I'm the only one who falls into the "enthusiast" bracket. It's just something we enjoy and I took it to the next level of geek :p

I think it gave me a count of well over 50 before I started here - but that means in four years I've quadrupled the number of coasters I've been on!

I think it's interesting to see how some people become enthusiasts without a great ride/park history (like Pokemaniac), but for others they can have a huge amount of experience, but never become enthusiasts - they ride for fun :)
 
I'd have a random stab at about 20 before I got into coasters. I would have never visited all the parks I have since if people from here were ****ing goons when I met them 6 years ago.
 
Hadn't you already been to the states and been on coasters there beforehand Ian?
 
Now... let me think... Before I became an enthusiast, I've been to:

TusenFryd (Rode Dragon and Teeny-Weeny)
Fårup Sommerland (Rode MineExpressen)
Legoland Billund (Rode Dragen and Timber Ride)
Djurs Sommerland (rode nothing) (Note: very vague memory. I might have been five at the time)
Kristiansand Dyrepark (No coasters/rides. Does it count then?)
Hunderfossen Familiepark (No coasters)

So yeah, a CC of five, and a park count of six. Not too bad, I guess.
 
My count was probably about 100, so I have added 175 most of which were last year hense being skint this year lol

The places I have added since joining CF have been:

Germany
Denmark
Sweden
Portaventura but I knew about this park anyway just never went.
California
Drayton Manor
Lightwater
Flamingo Land for the new coasters.
Plopsland but that was just Mark and I on a day out before the park was spoken about on CF. I knew it was there as I went before it was re named as a kid.

I probably would have gone to California anyway, as I wanted to visit disney parks.

I used to go to a lot of places around the UK on holidays with my mum and dad so we used to go to the parks then.

What CF has shown me is the number of parks in the USA and around the world, the smaller parks as well that I probably would not have been able to find.
 
Hard to say as I have always been enthusiastic to them since I started riding aged 9. So going by that, 0!

Suppose I only really started abusing forums since 2006. Pre that it was just casual looking around for new rides and info like other people may do. So going by that time, had done Alton, Thorpe, Chessie, LegoLand, Blackpool and thats it. I started riding the looping/extreme coasters in 2004. Going by that then, a count of around 19/20 coasters.
 
Being from Northeast Ohio and having nothing else to do, I had visited Cedar Point/Geauga Lake quite often, nearly every year, from when I was younger.

My family was also pretty big on going down to Florida together and visiting Disney and all the parks down there when I was younger, but I didn't like coasters then. I have been to every park in the Orlando/Tampa area that existed before 2000.. but I have little memory of it all.

Around 2004, I became a megauber CP Fanboy.. and then I joined here in 2006 with a coaster count around 35-40.. and the rest is history.
 
Hmmmm, I am in a similar boat to A-Kid. Being an Essex child I grew up for the first six years and lived in a tower block alongside a field that housed a funfair every year and as long as I can remember I was obsessed with rides. I used to sit watching them put it all together and so on. My parents also used to take us to Chessington and Thorpe (Back when it was a family park) and a lot of seaside parks.

I remember getting the park maps and spending forever looking at them, just studying the map (I have no idea what for mind...)

By the age of 15 I had visited Orlando aswell as a number of seaside parks and AT, CWoA and TP. Shortly after that the internet happened and voila, instant access to look at countless parks and formulate many more dream visits and so on.
Then at the age of 20 I found CF.... and we all know what a spiral (downward or otherwise :p) it has been since then!
 
Before I became an enthusiast I probably had ridden 3-4 coasters. Although I'm on 82 as of now, thats probably because I'm in financial situations & transport is somewhat of an issue.

I used to be a huge fan of sports, athletics & football mostly. Both these past times have faded massively infact I hate football as of now.
 
furie said:
Hadn't you already been to the states and been on coasters there beforehand Ian?
Click to expand...

I didn't make it to the US until late-September '04, a week after the Wardley Weekend. During that visit, I only did Cedar Point and Busch Gardens in FL.

Before WW, I had only been to Paultons, Thorpe, CWoA, Alton and Clarence Pier.
 
Before I became an enthusiast, I had been on very few large coasters. I rarely go to parks though just to get credits, and I hardly go to parks that often, so my count hasn't really been affected by becoming an enthusiast.
 
Oh god lets see.. I discovered this site by the age of 12 and became enthusiastic by the age of 14 I suppose, learning from the other members on the site back then :razz:

Beforehand I had only been to:

Drayton Manor x2
Alton Towers x2
American Adventure x1
Thorpe Park x1
West Midlands Safari Park x3/4
Disneyland Resort Paris x1

Now I have been to in total:

Drayton Manor x4
Alton Towers x6
American Adventure x1
Thorpe Park x3
West Midlands Safari Park x4/5
Disneyland Resort Paris x2
Pleasure Beach x1
PortAventura x1 (entire week there)
Siam Park City x1

Just upped my park counts mainly.
 
I've always loved amusement parks. I'd consider myself a pre-enthusiast in the past, in that I loved going to parks, had been to a fair few, but didn't really know much about them.

Before I joined Coasterforce (sometime around 2004?), I'd probably ridden around 50 coasters, including those at Alton, Blackpool, Rhyl, Flamingoland, Camelot, Oakwood, Drayton, Magic Kingdom, and the parks in and around Seoul.

If there was a moment that things changed from just liking coasters to them actually being a hobby, it would probably be my visit to Space World. That was the first time I went to a park alone, the first time I'd searched a specific area for a park I could go to, and the first time I took pictures and paid attention to the place.

I need to update my coaster count, but it's now somewhere between 265-270 in about 80 parks.
 
Being older I can say it was fair ground rides for me as the Theme Parks were not developed when I was younger.
We used to do swing boats and carosells, helta skelta rides as kids Ghost trains etc, we did Chessie when it was only a zoo, used to love going on swings in parks and jumping off when they swung high. I did Dreamland at Great Yarmouth aged 10 and the big wheel at Southsea, small rides and whatever they had at Brighton at the time.
When I met Phill we started going to places like Margate(Benbon Bros as it was then) so did Scenic Railway, Isle of Wight.
We did fairgrounds when Leigh was young but decided to wait until he was 1.4m to go to Blackpool, Alton, Legoland, Thorpe and Chessie all in one week that October 2001. At first I was a wimp and only did the Flumes and small rides, I was terribly afraid of heights so this was an issue at first, but gradually increased to bigger rides and did Colossus in 2002 when it opened. Not that keen on it at first but by 2004 I was well away having conquered Oblivion that October when we did Alton Fireworks event. From then on there was no stopping me, although we had a 6 month break for Leighs back to heal after his op, then straight back into doing Stealth, my biggest challenge was to go on Pepsi Max which I had wimped out on but Phill said if you don't do it you cannot go to the US and Cedar Point, so we made a trip to Blackpool and I loved Pepsi Max and all its roughness.

So on merit I have become a gradual Addict, I originally join Coasterforce before Leigh back in 2006, but because I looked and didn't post my profile go deleted several times, and then finally plucked up the courage to join in, haven't looked back since and although I don't post much still enjoy the company on lives.
It has been Phill that got us into Rollercoasters, and it is a shame he cannot keep up the pace so much now since getting diabetes but he still loved Cedar Point and his one mission whilst watching it being built was always to go and ride TTD which we have now done.
 
I have only been properly interested in coasters for about a year and a half and I had a coaster count of about 30 but that was mostly school trips. But now I have gone to other parks and still have a couple more this year.
 
I went on the flying fish at 2 or 3 or something low and screamed MOAR! Then I got RCT and I still wanted more and then we got the Internet.

There! :D
 
I've had two spells as being an enthusiast - I massively got into theme-parks back in 1994/5, on the back of the Big one, Nemesis and the Ultimate, then started work and gradually forgot about them, as the opportunity presented itself less and less.

Then four years ago, my kids became big enough to go to parks, and I gradually got into them more and more up to the point that as the TV was progressively getting annexed more and more of an evening, I found myself guiltily visiting sites like CF more and more, to the point i now can't go on the internet, without dipping in...
 
I became an enthusiast at the end on 2007, but I had only really been to a few parks before hand:

Gullivers MK x2
Legoland x2
Wicksteed Park x1
Alton x1 (I was only 6 or 7 so no big rides and my first ever coaster - RMT)

The moment I became slightly into coasters was a trip to Alton in 2007 with Martyn H and heading straight for Nemesis and loving it, the first 'big ride' I'd been on and the first time I'd been upside down on a coaster.

Oh the days when my CC didn't matter to me...
 
Before joining CF and accepting the title of 'enthusiast' I'd been to:

Thorpe Park
Chessington
Alton Towers
Florida Parks
Adventure Island

These are that I can remember, however I know I've been to Blackpool/Southport, Great Yarmouth and Isle of Wight, though I was too young to remember them.

When I joined I think my CC was just under 70.
 
Hmm let's see. I started browsing CF around 2004 as I was interested in coasters and theme parks alot then and liked looking at pictures of coasters that I wanted to do and liked knowing the facts of them and stuff. I joined CF late August 2007 which I think was right before I went to PortAventura for the second time. I think as soon as I joined CF I fully became an enthusiast by now as I didn't know anything about credits before I joined but I do still ride coasters for fun aswell as credits and I always will ride for fun as I did before I knew about counting them as credits.

Ermm before I joined CF, the parks I went to were:

DLP once
Legoland many times
Fantasy Island many times
Pleasure Island many times
Drayton Manor three times
Alton Towers twice
Flamingoland once
Twinlakes once
American Adventure (RIP) 2 or 3 times
Botton's Pleasure Beach many times
Lightwater Valley once
Thorpe Park once
PortAventura once
BPB twice

So yeah quite alot lol.
 
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