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Matt N’s Musings

A blog by Matt N in General

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Entries in this blog

Matt N’s Solo South East Jaunt 9th/10th June 2024

Matt N’s Solo South East Jaunt 9th/10th June 2024 (9th June 2024: LEGOLAND Windsor)

9th June 2024: LEGOLAND Windsor Hi guys. Today was an exciting, albeit also somewhat nerve-wracking, day for me; it was the first day of my first ever solo stay away from home. For my first solo stay away, I decided to go for a trip to LEGOLAND Windsor and Thorpe Park, two of the London area Merlin parks. This was because I felt that I should try this with something that wasn’t ridiculously far from home what with it being my first time, and even putting aside my anxieties about doing my fi
Alton Towers

Alton Towers 28th July 2024

28th July 2024: Alton Towers Hi guys. Today, I returned to Alton Towers for a revisit after receiving a free return ticket following our weak visit to Alton After Dark back in March. Another visit to Alton Towers is not exactly anything new for me (today was my 43rd day at the park in total and my 3rd day this year), but one aspect was new for me… despite having visited Alton Towers so much over the years, today was my first time ever spending a solo day alone at the park! With my dad atten
PortAventura

Matt N’s Excursion to España 9th-12th September 2024 (11th September 2024: PortAventura Park Day 2 and Ferrari Land)

11th September 2024: PortAventura Park Day 2 and Ferrari Land We had our second day today! Today, we headed back into PortAventura Park for another day of fun, and also headed into Ferrari Land to get on Red Force for the first time!   Similarly to yesterday, we entered via the Gold River hotel entrance at a bit before 10am. It looked a little busier here today, and I did have some trepidation about whether it could be busy due to it apparently being a public holiday in Catalonia
PortAventura

Matt N’s Excursion to España 9th-12th September 2024 (PortAventura Overall Review and Trip Summary)

PortAventura: An Overall Review and Trip Summary Right, then; I’ve now landed back in the UK, done all of my post-trip spreadsheet stuff, and just about recovered from the journey home! Spending 4 hours waiting in Barcelona Airport and arriving back in Bristol Airport at 1am to temperatures of 6 degrees when used to (and dressed for) the beautiful climate of Salou was certainly a rude awakening from that trip bubble, but the journey mostly went well, and now I’m back, I’m in the mood to wri
Blackpool Pleasure Beach

Blackpool Pleasure Beach 30th April 2025

30th April 2025: Blackpool Pleasure Beach Hi guys. I haven’t been the most active on here lately, but I’ve been back on this evening, and I realise that I forgot to upload my trip report from a park visit I did a month ago. So hello again TPM, and apologies for the inactivity!   30th April was an exciting day; my first park visit of 2025 had arrived! And the park in question that started off my year this year was Blackpool Pleasure Beach, “the world’s most ride intensive amusement
Alton Towers

Alton Towers 26th/27th July 2025 (26th July 2025: Day 1)

26th July 2025: Alton Towers Day 1 Hi guys. Today was an exciting day; it was the first day of my annual Alton Towers visit for 2025! After a rather light season so far, comprised mainly of my MSc course aside from two visits to Blackpool and Paultons Park, I was looking forward to returning to some more familiar turf and getting on some of my favourite rides in the UK, as well as checking out the new for 2025 addition: Toxicator! As an added bonus, I also have two days on park and an overn
Alton Towers

Alton Towers 27th/28th March 2026 (27th March 2026: Alton Towers Day 1)

27th March 2026: Alton Towers Day 1 After what has felt like a pretty long closed season (for me, anyway), March is upon us! And with me having purchased an Essential Merlin Pass back in November, what better way for me to start the season than with a trip to Alton Towers? With Alton After Dark being on for the first 3 weeks of the season and me now having the flexibility to come on a weekday, me and my mum decided to give the event another whirl following our less-than-stellar first go at it in
Alton Towers

Alton Towers 27th/28th March 2026 (28th March 2026: Alton Towers Day 2)

28th March 2026: Alton Towers Day 2 We (well, I for most of the day) had a second day on park today! Although the plan wasn’t to stay until dark today, I was still looking forward to another day on park getting some more rides in! Now before I get into the meat of today, I should preface that today was also the opening day of Bluey in CBeebies Land, which I hadn’t realised prior to booking. If you’re expecting a review, I’m afraid you will be disappointed; each to their own, but as Alton Towers
Matt N’s Solo South East Jaunt 12th/13th April 2026

Matt N’s Solo South East Jaunt Mk2 12th/13th April 2026 (Adventure Island/Thorpe Park) - (12th April 2026: Adventure Island)

12th April 2026: Adventure Island With me having worked for the last 6 months and now being out of work for a period, I thought it might be nice to do a park trip. And seeing as I had such a dry year last year in terms of new creds, I thought I’d redo my Solo South East Jaunt from June 2024, but instead combine a Merlin visit on my pass with a new park and do a double bill of Adventure Island and Thorpe Park! I always love a Thorpe visit, but I was also excited to try something new in the UK, wi
Matt N’s Solo South East Jaunt 12th/13th April 2026

Matt N’s Solo South East Jaunt Mk2 12th/13th April 2026 (Adventure Island/Thorpe Park) - (13th April 2026: Thorpe Park)

13th April 2026: Thorpe Park Today, I had my second and final day of the trip, with my first visit of the season to Thorpe Park! New though it may not be, I always love a Thorpe visit, and I couldn’t wait to get back on Hyperia, Stealth and some of my other favourite coasters in the country for my first time in 2026! As always with a hotel stay, I ended up peaking quite early, so I caught an Uber to Thorpe from Staines that got me there at a lovely early 9:10am, meaning that I got through the t
Matt N’s Midlands Meander 23rd/24th April 2026

Matt N’s Midlands Meander 23rd/24th April 2026 (Fantasy Island/Alton Towers) - (23rd April 2026: Fantasy Island)

Prelude After a successful solo trip to Adventure Island and Thorpe Park the other week, I decided to make the most of my time off work before starting my new job and go on another trip away. And given that I only had one real semi-major park left to visit in the UK, I thought; what better park to do than that? So as a result, I strategised quite a spur-of-the-moment trip to the Midlands, consisting of both a first time visit to Fantasy Island in Lincolnshire after talking about going for a coup
Matt N’s Midlands Meander 23rd/24th April 2026

Matt N’s Midlands Meander 23rd/24th April 2026 (Fantasy Island/Alton Towers) - (24th April 2026: Alton Towers)

24th April 2026: Alton Towers I had my second day of the trip today, with a visit to Alton Towers! While it was the less exciting day of the trip in terms of new things and I was last at the park only 4 weeks ago, it has some of my favourite rides in the country, entry is free with my Merlin pass, and I always love a day there, so I frankly thought; why not? Once again, I started my day early, getting up at 6am, getting down to breakfast for 6:30am, and leaving for the railway station at just a
Alton Towers

Alton Towers 21st/22nd September 2026 (21st September 2026: Alton Towers Day 1)

21st September 2026: Alton Towers Day 1 With me having been back at work for over 2 months and it having been close to 3 months since I last visited a theme park (DLP was all the way back at the start of July!), I fancied a trip. And with me still holding a Merlin pass until the end of November and me not having done a Merlin visit since Thorpe Park in May, what better than a trip back to Alton Towers, which I last visited in April? Having noticed that I could get a bed and breakfast hotel room
Alton Towers

Alton Towers 21st/22nd September 2026 (22nd September 2026: Alton Towers Day 2)

22nd September 2026: Alton Towers Day 2 I had another day in the park today! I was looking forward to getting back in and doing some rerides on my favourites, as well as maybe 1 or 2 things I didn’t do yesterday! After my night in the Alton Towers Hotel, I checked out and left the hotel at 8:30am or so, making my way to the turnstiles for just before 9am. I had forgotten that the turnstiles now don’t open until 9:30am, but even still, I entered in plenty of time to get to my first ride early:
Thorpe Park

Matt N’s South Parks Saunter 24th/25th September 2026 (24th September 2026: Thorpe Park)

24th September 2026: Thorpe Park After my trip to Alton Towers earlier in the week, I headed out for my second trip of the week today, heading out to the London area to visit Thorpe Park and Chessington! Today, I spent the day in Thorpe Park; I couldn’t wait to get back to the UK’s most thrilling theme park for the first time since May and get back on some of my favourite attractions, particularly Hyperia! My day started early, with me leaving home at before 6:30am to make an early train from B
Chessington

Matt N’s South Parks Saunter 24th/25th September 2026 (25th September 2026: Chessington)

25th September 2026: Chessington Today was the second day of this trip down South; after a night in the hotel, I spent the day in Chessington! I was interested to get back to Chessington, as my last visit there was in 2023 and before that, my last visit was all the way back in 2014; it’s a park I’ve seldom been to compared to Towers and Thorpe, so it packs a lot more mystery and is likely a lot more interesting to read a report from me about! I had stayed in the Safari Hotel, and previously unb
Europa Park

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
Europa Park

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
Data Analysis

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
Data Analysis

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
Drayton Manor

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,
Alton Towers

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
Alton Towers

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
Thorpe Park

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
Alton Towers

Alton Towers 25th/26th March 2023 (25th March 2023: Alton Towers Day 1)

25th March 2023: Alton Towers Day 1 Hi guys. Today was an exciting day; it was my first visit to Alton Towers of the season! But this visit was particularly exciting for a different reason… my parents and I brought my grandad along with us for what was not just his first ever visit to Alton Towers, but his first ever visit to a theme park full stop! Yes, he’d never set foot into a theme park or ridden a roller coaster prior to this morning, but after seeing Oblivion on the TV, he expressed

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