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Blogs

Matt’s Moderate Adventures

Farewell To The Fairground- Carters Steam Fair

2022, we’ve seen many hellos and goodbyes this year especially the latter.  Carters Steam Fair, as we know it is another which will end in 2022. Although it won’t disappear completely, the current owners (The Carter family) intend to sell the collection to a permanent site. Making this year their final tour.  I was thankful to get a chance to visit them in Croxley Green (near Watford), where they have stopped for a number of years.    The last time I visited may be as far
Matt N’s Musings

Thorpe Park 10th September 2022

Hi guys. Today was, interestingly, my first visit to Thorpe Park of the season; by my usual standards, September is quite late in the season for me to be visiting Thorpe for the first time! Today was also the return of my solo theme park tripping; as with last September, my parents’ love of professional golf was greatly useful, as they were going to watch the championship at Wentworth and offered to drop me at Thorpe for the day.   We left early and made very good time; entry was very
Matt N’s Musings

Alton Towers 7th/8th August 2022 (8th August 2022: Alton Towers Day 2)

8th August 2022: Alton Towers Day 2 We had our second day at the park today! Staying in the hotel naturally gave us an advantage, and I had a particular advantage this morning as I headed in alone at about 9:15, therefore I had plenty of time to get to my first ride of the day. That hotel entrance remained a phenomenal secret weapon as it had been the previous day: If you’ve read many of my Alton Towers trip reports before, you’ll know that a common strategy of mine when greeted
Matt N’s Musings

Alton Towers 7th/8th August 2022 (7th August 2022: Alton Towers Day 1)

7th August 2022: Alton Towers Day 1 Hi guys. Today was the first day of my latest 2 day Alton Towers trip, which is always an exciting day, particularly when your break entails a stay in the Alton Towers Hotel! I know it’s only been two months since my last trip to Alton Towers, but I got offered a theme park trip of my choice for my birthday this year by my parents, and as I had a nice time at Alton in June, I thought “why not go back there?”!   We left home at about 7:15am this
Matt N’s Musings

Alton Towers 19th/20th June 2022 (20th June 2022: Alton Towers Day 2)

20th June 2022 (Alton Towers Day 2) We had Day 2 in the park today! We got up fairly early and as we were staying in the Alton Towers Hotel, we had somewhat of a head-start (or I did, anyway; my mum and Nan joined me later); even though Early Ride Time is no longer offered, the park opens its gates early to allow you to get to your first ride and queue for it before opening time, and staying in the hotel will naturally allow you to get here ahead of the regular day guests, which is always a
Matt N’s Musings

Alton Towers 19th/20th June 2022 (19th June 2022: Alton Towers Day 1)

19th June 2022 (Alton Towers Day 1) Hi guys. After having started 2022 with some slightly more unusual (compared to what I usually visit, anyway) parks, I today returned to slightly more familiar turf; Alton Towers, my most visited theme park of all time! My mum found a very good deal on an Alton Towers Hotel stay, with 1 night in a standard room with park tickets only costing £107pp, so we thought it would be an absolute no brainer to go and spend 2 days at Alton Towers! Interestingly, my
The C. View

JoshC. goes to America - Hersheypark

I finally did it: I finally went to America for some creds. Before my trip at the start of June, I'd only done European parks, so it was hugely exciting. Before getting to it, here's a setting the scene sorta dealy. This trip had been a long time in the works. Early plans can be traced back to March 2021, which was going to be a Cedar Point + others trip. But that fell through. Still wanting to go out to the States for some creds, I looked at other possible ideas. I could do Orlando /
Matt N’s Musings

Drayton Manor 9th June 2022

Hi guys. Today was a rather exciting day; my first visit to Drayton Manor in 4 years, and my first ever solo train trip to a theme park! I was keen to do this after noticing that my university train route (Lydney-Cheltenham Spa) had trains running directly to Drayton Manor’s nearest station, and I’m so glad I did it! It was one heck of a day, so let me kick off right from the beginning!   Today started quite early, with a 7:24am train from Lydney, my local train station, to Wilnecote,
Take me to Disneyland

Californias Great America - Invest now

I wouldn't say that Californias Great America is a park that anyone has a huge itch to get to. Unlike some others in the Cedar Fair group, its investments are on the lower end of the scale. Flat rides are the name of the game and even its planned hyper that it was rumoured to get was given to another park instead (Orion).   Eight years ago, it was either this or Discovery Kingdom and bizarrely I chose DK. I thought that was a great little park, but this time it was CGA's turn. It's rel
Matt N’s Musings

A quantitative analysis of North America's major coaster selections (Part 2: Strongest top ends)

Right then; it's about time I did part 2 of my North American investigation! And in part 2, I'll be working out... what coaster selections in North America have the strongest top end?   Yes, I'll be focusing solely upon the parks' most highly rated coasters in this question! As I got a few comments about the slightly weird results in part 1, I'm thinking that this question should hopefully correct that and produce results more akin to what you might typically expect, as I'm focusing on
Matt’s Moderate Adventures

Riding Solo: A Danish Adventure Part 2 Tivoli Gardens

Hello and welcome to part two of my solo holiday trip report.   After feeling somewhat underwhelmed following my 90 minute trip to Bakken, it would now be time to revisit Tivoli Gardens.    I visited here back in 2019, so it felt nice to be back. Even if on my own.    The thing I love about Tivoli Gardens is their dedication and preservation to their history and character. The Rutschebanen (sp) at over 108 years old and such a phenomenal attraction! The way it
Matt’s Moderate Adventures

Riding Solo: A Danish Adventure Part 1 Bakken

Life, the last number of years have been something of a disappointment to many for a number reasons. Mostly Covid.    Now having, an outstanding flight voucher following many cancelled trips, an idea came to me. A solo holiday/adventure. After much debate, I decided to return to Copenhagen. Whilst not the cheapest, it’s a city I had liked previously and also felt reasonably safe from what I remembered.    The flight from Gatwick was a little bumpy. From the hideously long security
Matt N’s Musings

A quantitative analysis of North America's major coaster selections (Part 1: Most consistently strong coaster selection)

Disclaimer: This post is extremely long, and if you don't like data analysis and geeky maths talk, I'd suggest you run for the hills and don't look back, because this post has quite a bit of it! Hi guys. Some of you might remember that I recently did a multi-part data analysis investigation on Europe's major coaster selections; the topic is here if you don't know what I'm on about:  In that thread, I asked numerous different questions about Europe's major coaster selections. So I thou
Matt N’s Musings

Matt N's Ode to Europa Park: A Review from my First Ever Visit

Matt N's Ode To Europa Park: A Review from my First Ever Visit For those of you that don't know, I recently returned from my first ever visit to Europa Park in Germany. I wrote a trip report series which can be viewed in earlier entries in this blog.   Now I know that I did a brief summary of my thoughts on Europa Park at the end of my recent trip report series. However... now I've been back for a couple of days, I'm finding myself wanting to say a lot more than I said in that sum
Matt N’s Musings

Matt N’s Europa Park Initiation 26th-30th April 2022 (30th April 2022: Europa Park Hotel Resort, Travel Home and Trip Summary)

30th April 2022 (Europa Park Hotel Resort, Travel Home and Trip Summary) Today was considerably less busy than the last 3 days, so as such, my report of our actual day will be far briefer. We had no 4th day on our entry tickets to Europa Park, but our flight out of Baden-Airpark was not until 7pm, so after checking out of our room at 11am, we had time to kill. And as we were on a huge resort and hadn’t explored too much of the other hotels aside from our own (Castillo Alcazar), we decided t
Matt N’s Musings

Matt N’s Europa Park Initiation 26th-30th April 2022 (29th April 2022: Europa Park Day 3)

29th April 2022: Europa Park Day 3 Today was the final day of Europa Park awesomeness! We started a bit earlier today, opting to head in for ERT, and my mum had actually looked at the map and jotted down a plan of action for today, so we certainly had no shortage of things to do!   My mum and I headed on into Europa at slightly after 8:30am this morning, with my dad joining us a touch later. As with both of the previous days, we used the hotel entrance, accessed via El Andaluz:
Matt N’s Musings

Matt N’s Europa Park Initiation 26th-30th April 2022 (28th April 2022: Europa Park Day 2)

28th April 2022 (Europa Park Day 2) Day 2 today! I know I said that we were planning to have a more relaxed day today, but we had more left to do rides-wise than we’d previously anticipated, and if I’m being honest, I am quite naturally drawn to rides compared to Europa’s other stuff, so I’ll digress that that did go out of the window somewhat as the day went on. It wasn’t quite as intense as yesterday, however; there were less coasters involved, and my parents said it felt more relaxed tha
Matt N’s Musings

Matt N’s Europa Park Initiation 26th-30th April 2022 (27th April 2022: Europa Park Day 1)

27th April 2022 (Europa Park Day 1) Today, our first day in the park finally arrived! It’s a day I had dreamed about for ages, and quite literally dreamed about within the last few months… although unlike in my dreams, no vloggers stopping me from boarding rides or university staff with cricket bats were here to ruin it for me (if you don’t know what I mean, check out the theme park dreams thread)! And it was a very exciting day for sure… let me get straight to the good stuff!   W
Matt N’s Musings

Matt N’s Europa Park Initiation 26th-30th April 2022 (26th April 2022: Travel)

26th April 2022 (Travel) Hi guys. Today was a very exciting day; the start of my first ever trip to Europa Park! This might possibly be my most significant theme park trip in some time, and it’s quite a significant change in tune compared to the bulk of my recent trips, with a number of new experiences in store for me; my first time travelling abroad post-COVID, my first time at Europa Park, my first time in Germany full stop… I could go on, as there are so many firsts for me this trip! So
The C. View

Storm Clouds Over Hamburg - Day 2, Hansa Park

Lo and behold, Day 2 of 2 is here! After staying the night in Lubeck (in what was apparently a non-smoking hotel, but in a room which smelt strongly of cigarette smoke), I was energised for another day. The weather was cold and windy, but no rain. The journey from my hotel to Hansa Park was much simpler than the previous day: a direct train from Lubeck to Sierksdorf, and then a walk to the park. The walk was again very straightforward - pretty much a straight path which takes about 10-15 m
The C. View

Storm Clouds Over Hamburg - Day 1, Heide Park

Rewinding just over two years ago, I and a few friends had booked a trip out to Hamburg, which would include one and a half days at Heide Park - plus a stay in their hotel - and a day at Hansa Park. It would coincide with two of our birthdays too. What better way than to spend a birthday at a new park?   At the time, this Covid-19 thing had just turned up on the British doorstep, and concerns were growing. But the idea of a lockdown was a far away thought. Obviously, come March, that a
Blogisis Blogferno

Remembering 'Brave it Alone' in Cabin in the Woods at Thorpe Park

As we approach the start of the 2022 season, I thought I'd do a few blog post ramblings on some nostalgic Thorpe memories I have.   I started off with Dr Pepper Sun Scream, now it's time for Brave it Alone back when it opened in 2013...   I have hazy memories about this, but recently I found an old post I made after I experienced it and thought I'd spruce it up a bit and share!   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   We did Cabin in the Woods way bac
Take me to Disneyland

GOAT - Rise of the Resistance

Back in 2010 the first Harry Potter attraction opened at Universal Orlando and a single ride changed themed attractions forever. No longer were theme park fans really satisfied with cookie cutter themes with a hint of a story, immersion was now the name of the game. The area of Hogsmeade increased Islands of Adventure's attendance by 1.5 million guests, an astounding figure by any standard. Since the Harry Potter franchise has given birth to two further expansions and is now home in California a

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