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I've had the intention of hitting up West Midland Safari Park, a zoo/drive through safari/amusement park hybrid, for quite a while now but due to both the cost and time required I've never gotten around to it, until now... After doing a bit of planning, I discovered if you book a week in advance, visit on the Sunday and combine the amusement park wristbands with the entrance tickets you can get the price down to a rather reasonable £26, which really isn't that bad at all, as I shall explain. With that I set off for the park on the Sunday just gone and other than the last 10 miles or so of the drive, things seemed to go quite well, I know right, I can't quite believe it either. For the last leg of the journey, from my direction at least, you have to drive through Kidderminster, which despite it being 10am on a Sunday morning, was absolutely heaving, couple that with many multilane roundabouts and it made for both an irritating and stressful end to the journey. Much like Farup Sommerland, you buy/redeem your entry tickets from your car on the way in, which is fine in my eyes because I'm a lazy bastard. It turns out, everyone gets a FREE return ticket just for showing up at the moment, so my £26 from earlier is now granting me 2 entries, not bad! After paying/redeeming you get the option of either going straight into the 4 mile long safari or turning off into a car park to do the on foot zoo/amusement park bit. As I was in actual pain from needing the toilet and was there for the creds mostly, I knew where I was heading. Toilet duties sorted and it was time to check out the amusement park. For some reason, I had it in my head that WMSP had just plonked 3 creds in a field, well I'm glad to admit I was wrong. Aswell as the amusement park area looking very well presented, the ride line up itself was quite impressive. Now while those creds aren't going to do anything for people like us, they are no doubt great family creds and all presented in a much cleaner way than I was expecting. Other than the credits, the amusement park is also home to a log flume, a ghost train, a fantastic drop tower, a Fabbri rapids ride, a swinging ship, a frisbee, a disko and various other famliy/childrens attractions. There's easily enough there to keep a family busy for a few hours, so it's probably worth the £14 on the day cost and of course you can get it cheaper online, so all round good value in my eyes. The staff were all super friendly as well which always helps. This thing really kicks ass, I believe it's manufactured by Fabbri and as you can see it uses the same firing you down the tower technology as Det, it's intense! After ticking off everything of interest to me in the amusement park, I headed out to check out the on foot zoo stuff. While there's nothing too exciting going on, there's easily enough there to kill or an hour or two. The highlights for me were the reptile house (snakes are awesome) and the lemur walkthrough (was convinced I was going to get mauled by them). On route back to the car I had a browse at the food on offer and much like the park itself, it all appeared to be really good value for money. I told myself when booking the tickets I wouldn't take my reasonably pricey, leased and sporty car (not showing off, setting you up for comedy) through the safari drive through but after being impressed by the rest of the park I convinced myself it was a good idea, it wasn't. The safari experience started off terrifying but ended up being extremely boring. Sitting in your own car with rhinos walking casually inches from you is both awesome and oh so scary. Talking of scary, driving a leased car past horny bastards is rather thrilling. Sadly that's about as good as it gets and the rest of the experience is pretty crap. All the animals that want to eat you are behind fences, so it feels like you're driving through a zoo at many points. Also on more than 1 occasion a section would be completely devoid of any animals. The major problem with the drive through though is, all the electric gates you have to wait forever to get through and there's so many of them! Less than 2 minutes of driving past a fence or nothing at all, then waiting 10 minutes for an electric gate to let you through, this situation plays out so many times that by the end of the safari I was so damn bored. Mercifully I made it out of the safari before I completely gave up on life. If you've got the patience for waiting for millions of gates to open, then I'm sure you'll love the novelty of the safari but I could quite happily never do it again. So in summary, the amusement park is rather good, the zoo is alright and the safari is a bit crap, either way I'm glad to say I have now been to West Midland Safari Park. Thanks for reading.

I'm sure it will be fine, all the VIP MAP's will be in their hospitality crèche anyway.

Yeah I assume that’s what it’s for which is pretty good of them - fingers crossed it’s running well then!

YAYYYYY! I do hope so, love a good little run on Quantum... she always makes me laugh!!!

Would they launch a marketing campaign about the last year of a maze? Would they launch a marketing campaign about Saw during the year of the walking dead? Combine the two... maybe it's the final goodbye for Saw: Alive before it comes another WD attraction? Remove the blood written words, take the dolls out, stick some walkers in there, sorted!

Thorpe will be open 10-10 on May 19th - The Walking Dead: The Ride will be open exclusively for pass holders between 5pm and 10pm too. https://www.thorpepark.com/blog/need-a-place-to-celebrate-on-may-19th

Got to ride Wickerman on Friday at Towers - I was very concerned we weren't going to get on after travelling 200 miles to get to Towers - but, fair play to Merlin, as despite being down from 1.30 ish, they re-opened at 3.45 with officially 15 minutes of queue-open time remaining - and then stayed open until 4.45pm. In the morning - the ride didn't open until AFTER ERT (oops) and the queues in the morning were peaking at 60-80 minutes so we decided to wait until the afternoon and do the 0 minute queue rides instead, which nearly ended in our downfall Anyway - have to say that I think Merlin are on to a winner with Wickerman here. The queueline is the best I've been in some time in terms of setting you up for the ride, the Wickerman statue looks awesome, and the coaster as a whole is stunning. It really does roar round <3 The pre-show was spot on and sets the scene perfectly. The ride itself I loved (got to ride twice!) - screamed and laughed around the track, fantastic stuff - you can really feel it slide into the corners and it's pretty relentless, and picks up decent speed - it's pitched perfectly if you ask me, a properly fun and thrilling ride, that looks incredible and rides just as well. Great attraction to the lineup, and glad it's come to fruition as I wonder if it was close to getting shelved due to the Smiler accident. Well done Towers - now just fingers crossed the Wickerman starts behaving itself and has less down-time.

The biggest problem with this refurbishment is they seem to have spend the money in all the wrong places. Of all the ride’s flaws, why’d they bother fixing up the zombie tomb at the entrance? It’s looked cheap since the beginning of time, reparing part of it wasn’t going to fix that. Demolishing it really would’ve been better, as it makes the ride seem super tacky, hence most guests don’t bother riding. The space it’s in would serve much better as a proper entrance sign. Likewise, the money for those TV’s in the queue was a huge waste, they’re too bright, and distracting from the proper portraits. While on their own they’re a nice touch, they certainly should not have been a priority. The lighting in most places is still tragic, especially the timing. The great hall demon is only lit up towards the end of its movement, yet we see the whole thing reset. The same can be said for plenty of the effects. I think the only one that disappeared on time was electric bill? On the topic of the ride’s exterior- while it’s pleasing to see they’re now diverting guests though the woodland queue, rather than just shoving them though by the side of the house, the entrance really could benefit from having a proper sign to make it stand out, it sort of just seems like a gap in the hedge at the minute. Oh, and please change the name. No guest reads “Duel” and thinks ‘ghost train’. If it had a name that actually told you what the ride was, maybe it’d be more popular

Europa is becoming a bit of a lazy comparison these days. It's the best theme park in Europe, possibly the world so is there much point saying Europa do this, Europa do that when Merlin are never going to be at that level. Saying they should aim to be that also isn't ever going to happen. The UK theme park market is stagnating and whilst I love the Wicker Man and I think Icon will be excellent, its a temporary positive and I think 2019 will be back to normal. Ooh go on then. Big Thunder Mountain smoke effect as well as the water splashdown, off. Snow Whites hand which has been broken for at least a year off, half of the last room on It's a Small World not working, water effects in Adventureland off, Cheshire cat's eyes off and no water effects on Alice in Wonderlands maze, R2 D2 stuck looking one way in one room, robot covered in tarp in the next room on Star Tours, no fire on Frontierland entrance sign. This is why Merlin shouldn't do the effects thing too often because they don't have the budgets to maintain them. When someone said the fire on Swarm was still on I was taken aback.