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This is the battery I wish to charge on this garbage ride.

For the years I've put off visiting, I apologise. For the jokes I've made with no reasoning behind them, I apologise. For ever believing the rubbish the enthusiast community spits out about you, I apologise. PortAventura, I'm on my knees, I beg you, please forgive me. This weekend just gone, me and my friend made our first ever trip to PA, a trip that's been years in the making, that kept getting put off, in part due to lack of interest but also due to reading lots of negative things online, well those people were doing it wrong and here's why.... Day 1 Saturday morning started with an extremely early Easyjet flight from Gatwick to Barcelona, a flight which sadly went by without any significant comedy. We arrived in Barcelona and it was time to try out a new car hire company, for those keeping track at home our relationship with car hire companies is patchy at best. A charming cheap little purple car was our chariot for this trip and it was too cute for even a miserable bastard like me to insult. As we set off for Tibidabo (the first park of our trip) it was pouring it down with rain, but this isn't Asia, surely this won't matter? After driving for 20 minutes up the insanely tight mountain roads to the brave boy car park (you can park at the bottom and take a bus or be brave and drive up the mountain and park at the entrance), the car park attendant informs us, "park's closed but I'll let you in the car park". Without really thinking we took the parking ticket and proceeded to drive into the empty car park, as we left he told us to pay at the ticket office before leaving. For a few moments we sat in the car thinking to ourselves, is this seriously happening? Why is it becoming so hard these days, we seem to be getting spited everywhere at the moment. Right, fair enough, time to grow up, let's walk to the ticket office, pay for this parking ticket we didn't use and ask the staff are they going to be open tomorrow. However, the ticket offices (located outside the park) were closed and the entry gate to the park was bolted shut, I guess we aren't paying for anything. Thankfully we had a friendly bloke working the barriers, who upon seeing we were English deemed it easier to just let us go rather than try to talk it out, top bloke. To be fair, the rain was quite heavy... Right, OK, we will try to come back tomorrow but for now let's head to PortAventura. The one and a half hour drive to PA went by without much to report, apart from the tolls which were a nasty surprise. We were staying onsite in Hotel Caribe, which can be best described as a collection of many 4 star Butlin's chalets. The room was clean, the bed was comfy, the bathroom was great and the noise was minimal, no complaints at all here. Upon entering the hotel car park, security give the car a once over, which in my eyes is absolutely fine, I'll happily put up with having to open the boot for a friendly security guard if it means everyone is safe. This was my view from the hotel car park, ugly isn't it? After checking in at the hotel, you are given your room key, which also doubles as your park entrance pass, so there's no more faffing about after the initial wait, you don't even need to check out, too easy. A short walk from the hotel later and we were now standing in one of the most universally moaned about parks in this hobby, let's go test those claims shall we. What a lovely view. Not going to lie we spent the first hour in the park well and truly lost. During this time we got a nice tasting toastie (I swear I've read the food isn't good here, I guess that's wrong) from Camila Cabello, who now apparently works in the China area of PA, small World eh. After this we tried to go ride the mine train, but got lost again and somehow ended up at the park's 3 woodies. Stampida After reading online that Stampida is either rough or crap, I went in thinking the worst and prepared for a beating, a beating that never came. Stampida is great! This racing woodie is damn good fun, has great pops of air time (sometimes taking me by surprise and putting a huge grin on my face), tons of fun laterals and the racing and duelling is fantastic! Easily the best CCI I've ridden, yes better than Zeus and Megafobia and not miles behind the outstanding racing GCI (Draak) at Efteling. This coaster just has so much character to it and was the sleeper hit of the trip, I just love it. Tomahawk While obviously not as good as it's big brother, this baby woodie is very well done and it's interactions with Stampida are genius, fantastic stuff. Right next to Tomahawk is a singing vulture, it was about this time I decided I like this park. El Diablo After what felt like forever we finally found the entrance to the mine train! This was my first ever Arrow mine train coaster and I can't wait to hunt down more, this thing is brilliant. This coaster just has something for everyone, 3 lifts, a mince through a shed, a drop out of the station like Helix, a long ride time to rest your legs, hilarious transitions and some genuinely forceful moments, amazing. Dragon Khan What a bitter disappointment this old school B&M was. It's not easy for me to say this because I've idolised this coaster for years and there's no denying it looks outstanding but honestly, what a waste this thing is. A force less first drop, followed by inversion after inversion with no attempt to shake things up is just lazy in my opinion. Some air time moments or some fun twisty bits really would have shaken up the layout but instead, it's just inversion after inversion, which bores me. A boring coaster is 1 thing but DK adds insult to injury with the fact if you are sitting in the outside seats things get quite rattly and unpleasant. I'm sorry Khan, but nah, not for me. Yes that queue board says Shambhala has a 10 minute queue, I hope that hurts the Shambhala fanboys that read this. Khan gave me a headache so I slithered into Sesame to buy something sugary and while there rode the Vekoma Junior. Tami-Tami +1 Shambhala Now full of coke and donuts we headed to Shambhala, a coaster many rave about and some even call their number 1, I'm sorry for what's about to happen. Even with low expectations going in, I still managed to walk away disappointed. Shambhala is good but it certainly isn't great and there's no way it's a top 10 ride in my eyes. The first drop is completely void of any forces and it just sort of happens, then every air time hill tries but ultimately fails to do anything exciting and the trim brake trimming an already mincing ride is hilarious. Shambhala's speed hill is the only part of the coaster that gives any sort of good air and you're trimmed by the aforementioned trim brake as you enter it! We rode Shambhala at least twice a day, in different seats, in the sun, in the rain, in the wind, in the morning, in the evening, in the afternoon and always the same result. Trust me I really wanted to love it but it's honestly so lacklustre. As with Khan it does look beautiful though. This crushing disappointment sent me to the toilet with crushing bowel movements, unlike Phantasialand, PortAventura let you deal with that in peace. After another lap on Stampida, El Diablo and Shambala we ended our day with Furius Baco. Furius Baco Countless time I've read Baco is one of the worst coasters out there and that it's so rough it's going to break my spine, well did it? Of course it didn't... Firstly credit to the park, they got this open after a lengthy breakdown with just an hour till close, worst operations in the World? I think not. Furius Baco isn't good, but it isn't rough either, it's just hilarious. Something about monkeys happens, then you launch, everything starts bouncing, you're flying around too fast to even see what's happening, you do an inline, it bounces round some water into the brakes, the end. That evening after a very pleasant day on park, I thought to myself, how can my experience with PA be so much different than everyone elses? The park looks fantastic, operations are good, the staff are very friendly, Baco didn't kill me, Shambhala and Khan are bit crap, the hotel is nice, the food is good and Stampida is brilliant. What's going on guys? Join me next time for Tibidabo and more PA goodness.

Animatronic?? Ok....! P.J: the train in the second scene had a mind of its own. It’s not coming back...

Is it just me who remembers the little exit walkthrough after It’s A Small World? It seems to have been demolished in the last 10 years, but I remember it always felt quite iconic as you walked round the little houses and buildings with screens inside that showed little videos. You had to go through it to exit the ride so it couldn’t be missed, and it left an extra sprinkle of magic to the experience (the large Hogwarts model in WBST London actually still reminds me of this scenic walkthrough). I’m not mortified that it’s gone but I don’t think it’s been replaced with anything else... last time I rode, the exit was just another outdoor pathway with railings. What ever became of it (why was it removed)? And what stands in its place now? *UPDATE* I found an old photo of this room, attached. So it definitely existed! You can see people looking into the little windows at the screens in the houses.

It may be a legit concept and exist but it won't even feature on the ride when it opens. I think Thorpe Park just think up a headline then make up the story behind it afterwards. Laughable really. Shame because I thought it looked pretty decent from the entrance facade and watchtower when on park on Saturday - like Josh said, if they actually just sold the ride on it's real life strengths and qualities, instead of these dodgy "fake news" stories, I'd have more respect from them and be more bothered. 15/10 on the nonsense scale.

Harvesting screams, dear god! Monsters Inc: The Ride Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

And here lies my biggest issue. They've got a roller coaster themed to one of the biggest TV shows in the world (even if it is a bit past its best). It's not a major investment, sure, but it doesn't mean that they can't push it and milk it. But instead of focusing on the attraction, even if it is the 15/10 scare rating claim thing, they're just tacking on rubbish like this. They have a whole scope of potential for things they could do to get people talking, yet they scrape the bottom of the barrel. But I guess all publicity is good publicity, and this is getting a fair few people talking, so they'll be happy...

What? I thought they’d got away from all this nonsense? Surely the ride should be good enough / exciting enough to advertise on its own merits? Things like this make the place look like a joke.

After a brief period of downtime on Saturday, Stealth was back up and running two trains like a dream - fair play to the ride team as they were always dispatching in the 40 second window, and the queue was moving quickly. There's a 2 second gap between "go go go!" and the green lights currently but I can forgive that for now. For all you fans out there, the two trains running are No. 2 and No. 3 #truefacts

With a decent GCI and a fab looking Mack opening this year..

My “ride” today on DBGT was absolutely awful. Lots of standing around, some of the headsets were broken meaning two of my friends couldn’t use them (why they couldn’t have just taken them from the riders per train count is beyond me) as well as mine breaking mid way through the first section. The fact that headsets seem to break so easily just gives me no faith in VR for theme parks. Also, the new section completely destroyed the flow of the experience, it just left everyone else confused and was a bad move. Frankly I thought this was a complete embarrassment for the park, this is their 3rd season with it and they still haven’t sorted it out. Granted it’s a very complex ride system, but it’s a theme park attraction so they should know how to handle it. People are queuing hours for it so it just doesn’t really seem justified to make them wait ages for a pile of s***.

The future of theme park theming consists of labelling what buildings are supposed to be (e.g. "Safe Zone") rather than actually theming them