Benin

Dunno why you're agreeing with me Sidders, since I was disagreeing with you in my post...Jovial or not, there's certain topics where rather poor tasteless 'jokes' aren't a good idea...

This basically... Was a bit of a needless post... This sort of topic isn't one where silly comments about people being potentially confused belong, due to the very nature of the situation...

We peaked too early it seems...Thing is, the way in which Nemesis was built back then will NEVER be repeated... The sheer scale of the build is something unaffordable by today's prices, and it's just such an unique experience that will never be repeated...Unless someone decides to repeat it... I can dream...

Day 6 – Chilling in VeronaThe original plan for this trip was to do all 4 of the major Italian parks, including Movieworld Studios, right is effectively next door to Gardaland, however, we must have angered the Coaster Gods, as the opening times for the park changed for the worse, meaning it was shut midweek and we had very little alternative as to what to do...So we sat in our hotel room all day and chilled... I like days like this on holiday, as it allows everyone to either sleep/read/sit or just do whatever without any need for rushing or walking... We did venture out for extra supplies of food midway through the day, but aside from that didn’t do anything until the evening, where me, John and Mark hit the town to see what it was like...A rather depiction of Italian roads I feel... Random canoeing in the river is random... Looked fun though... And just what could lay beyond this rather dark and dingy hallway? Why it’s Juliet’s Balcony of course, from that rather popular play of Shakespearian standards... Dunno why Verona have claimed it, but they have... DEAL WITH IT! Meanwhile, in Verona... Most epic looking music venue ever! The Arena is slap bang in the middle of the city and has more restaurants than you can shake a stick at... And who was playing?George Michael... Hungry, we elected to eat at the weirdest theme/name for a restaurant in Italy... Even this place has Spider Crabs... And as John is demonstrating, the biggest menus I’ve seen in a long time...Talking of big things, here’s the drinks... Totally extraordinary... Unfortunately so much ice made it practically undrinkable after a while, but still, epic size is epic... Spag Bol, Italian style... Do try the Oreo and Kinder Ice Cream... It’s AMAZING <3 Unable to get into the concert, we wandered back towards the hotel, only to find... OMG I’M SO THERE!Next up – Gardaland...

OM NOM NOM!I cooked me some delicious chicken... Not to be modest or anything, but it's damn juicy perfection...

Funnily enough I don't... Exactly the same for Katun and Raptor over in Italy... Able to sit there and just let the ride do what it does... I very rarely brace myself on rides unless I absolutely need to (another example recently, Sequoia Adventure), and I have never felt a need to do so on Nemesis... Next time I go to Towers I will do exactly that, sit down, and not hold on/loosen up/whatever else to be comfy and I will 100% predict that I will not come off with either a bashed head or a headache...In order to enjoy iSpeed, I had to place my hands on the sides of my neck on the restraint... THAT, is poor design... And is similar of basically every Intamin I've been on that corners with OTSRs... Awfully designed restraints...

Whenever I hear this about any coaster I automatically have an annoyance with it...Why should I NEED to brace myself throughout to prevent getting a head/neck/back/lifeache? That's not the design of a good coaster, and is why Intamin aren't particularly my fave ride manufacturers, as their restraint systems prevented Maverick and iSpeed being top 10 coasters...In short, if I have to brace myself to enjoy myself, what's the point?

Nah, the term for straights is 'breeders'... Get your info right

Merlin's coming after Blackpool first it seems... Source MeThat is insanely good value and rather surprising to say the least... Merlin to be in charge of Blackpool in the next few years?

^Redoing Vamp's station as well? Two birds one stone... Love it...P.S. Send some flames towards Trucks please...

Lol wut?Please post up the news story for that... Would make my week...

Well, at least Colossus isn't the roughest steel coaster I've been on..2nd roughest now... But, small victories...

^Shame the rest of the park is so awful (barring the dark rides)

Why don't our parks believe that rides (any of them) don't need repainting once they're open? Vampire, Fury, Oblivion to name a few.It's so noticeable how bad our parks are when you go abroad.

Why not invest into Animal Kingdom with anything other than that piece of over-rated tripe though?Potterland envy is what it is, but how a fake world fits into the rather realistic theming of the park (even DINOLAND is realistic) I don't get... I dislike this a lot... At least the other non-Disney IPs (Star Tours/Indy/Aerosmith) suit their parks and areas...This though... URGH... I'll use that meme if I want to because it's quite frankly a stupid idea... Where's Beastly Kingdom when you need it?

Well this was unexpected...

I liked that one of the options was to effectively redo the entire ride...Even with comparisons to the original, I don't want that back, onwards and upwards methinks because an attempt at re-creating the original will never be quite the same...Plus I got to say EVERYTHING was wrong with the new one... Result

Moved into Stoke, house is soooo roomy...This is gonna be a fab 3rd year...

Day 5 – More Mira and Driving to VeronaSo Mirabilandia do a rather epic deal atm, you get 2 days worth for the price of one, even if you really have to commit to it but getting a wristband, wearing it through the night and bringing it in the next day... But we did it for more Katuny goodness...Two more rides on Katun (including front row which had spited us the day before) followed a walk towards iSpeed and extended faff times in the arcade (Terminator 3 pinball ftw)... None of my opinions had changed on these 2 rides, but there was one new ride for the day...DeliriumHonestly, I have no idea what ride type this is or the manufacturer... The easiest way to describe it would be a massive tilted flying jumbos like ride... You could control your height (and get similarly high amounts of airtime) and the tilting aspect of the central arm provided an interesting experience... A bit uncomfortable on the seating but was still a good bit of fun...6/10After this we headed off to Reset to see if it was any better, and it wasn’t really... Oh well...So one last ride on Katun was to be done before some lunch and the trip up to Verona... Which one again involved a massive detour, I really disliked the directions and road-signs... Maybe next time a Sat-Nav can happen... But we eventually got there and were greeted by the strangest hotel on the trip...Indeed, it was probably preparing me for uni once more, as it had more in common with halls than a hotel, with 6 rooms including a massive upstairs empty room, a kitchen (lacking oven) and just essentially everything needed to live... It was quite cool, and it’s balcony was put to great use after a quick trip to the supermarket (and me and John’s long search for a Lidl)... Chat about rides and life happened amongst the drinking... I was later attacked by Mirabilandia duck, which kinda says it all really...

There WERE meant to be interesting developments before I went to Italy...I was expecting at least a lift hill when I came back... Least if Asterix is anything to go by this won't take long to build...

Can imagine so, plus Air doesn't have oil dripping off everywhere... That's the main issue for Colossus...You can always tell with UK construction topics when boredom sets in... Complaining about the colour... I can't wait for the inevitable trim picture to turn up and make everyone angry...

Releasing the inner Raptor...

Swarm is grey, not black for one thing...And why does the track and supports having the same colour matter? Do we want a Silver Bullet look to it?Big coasters often work better as big and evil contraptions, depending on the theme of the ride of course... So why a dark colour shouldn't be chosen when this is the apocalypse, I don't know...Also, I find that darker coasters work well in photos very well, regardless of weather... And really, the colour will affect the ride in absaolutely no way... Here's something I'm gonna throw out here after riding Raptor which will probs be contraversial to a few people... Swarm will probs be the best ride at Thorpe, but it won't be the most intense due to the very nature of the ride...And if you are of considerable girth, forget it...

Major rides done, we decided it would be nice to relax and hence walked around for a bit before deciding the ride the Monorail...MonorailRather airy trains and gives some nice views of iSpeed and the rest of the park, however, we did sit on the wrong side of the train so missed most of these... And the fact it’s at the back of the park and doesn’t stop again to me makes little sense or point... Oh well, it was an air conditioned sit down...We decided to grab a bite to eat to keep going, and enjoyed a terrace meal on the lake, feeding sparrows and wondering why loud noises were coming from the opposite side of us... So we headed over to investigate...MonosaurusThis dinosaur themed monorail ride is SO stupid... Go around, look at stationary models, have a long walk through the exit... It makes Legoland’s SkyRider look good... The models were entertaining but only due to the stupid poses they were in... Silly ride...3/10More faff ensued before we elected on heading towards the flight themed area (me neither) of the park...ColumbiaThese two S&S Towers are quite a landmark for the park personally, and appear a lot in images and posters... However as the Drop side (Discovery) was long, we went on the shot tower instead... And like every other S&S tower, it was exactly the same ride experience... Good, but nothing special...7/10All other rides finished, it was time to photograph and ride Katun, getting 3 more in and lots of pretty pictures... Mirabilandia is a very good park in the end, with two class coasters and a solid back-up of rides... Whilst it has no themed areas as such, the theming the park has works very well, and the chart music works a lot better in this respect as it’s rather background and a good mix of listenable things... Complete opposite of Thorpe’s singular genre choice really...I enjoyed the park, and can only wonder why people don’t mention Katun as much as they should...

After the show, it was time to continue the car theme and head over to the park’s 2nd big coaster...iSpeedApple naming rights aside, iSpeed has a well done atmosphere around it even though you can’t see most of the ride from the outside or the queue... But what you do see is the trains dashing around madly refusing to lose pace at any point in the ride...After a dull shaded queue, we reached the station and this is when I realised this was not a hydraulic launch, but rather LSMs, making it a lot more like Maverick than I thought it would be...After a quick speil the launch happens, and boy is it fast... No wonder Intamin thought the hydraulic launch was a bit poor now, fast and powerful and barely needs the same amount of space as the others... The top hat provided a great dose of airtime as did the hill afterwards, even with the trims attached onto it...The rest of the ride is a complete blur, with twists, turns, loops and dives coming at you thick and fast... It’s amazing how it keeps the speed on it throughout the entire course all the way to the random MCBR above the station... Also random was how the final turn swooped up into about 2 feet of brakes which then went down into MORE brakes... Why did THAT happen?However, as great as the ride and layout is, there is one major issue... And just like Maverick, it’s the restraint system... Intamins just do not agree with my neck and corners with their OTSRs, and iSpeed was no exception... If they could fix this issue this (and Maverick) would make it into my top 10 no question, but because I need to constantly brace myself in order to enjoy it fully, it loses marks for that... A real shame that it’s so easily ruined...9/10On our way to the next attraction, we discovered a ride which perked our interest so much we had to experience it...Crazy HouseMost random experience on a flat ride for a while... Spinning, talking and random effects are the order of the day here, and it was worth it just for the sheer randomness it produced... Great fun and I think more parks should have these... Could be easily modified into some rather interesting concepts and themes...8/10Distraction aside, it was time to head towards the only dark ride of the park...ResetReset is so far away from the rest of the park it’s unbelievable, indeed, it could easily be classed as a car park dark ride as it’s closer to that than the park itself... It does and doesn’t work with the theme, as the apocalyptic theme works as you wander further away from the hustle and bustle (with some great music Swarm needs to be inspired by) but it’s just so out of the way it didn’t have much of a people atmosphere, which at a theme park is sometimes needed...However, into the dark corridors we went and straight onto the ride, where the weird shooting system annoyed me as well as the lack of story... It is apparently explained in tv form in the queue, but as one didn’t exist, we knew not why the world had ended, or what we were meant to be doing... Even a Portal Personality Core couldn’t help matters... Probably not helped by Huntik’s awesomeness two days before, but it just didn’t seem to have a really engaging narrative and seemed even more mish-mashy than Duel... Just didn’t enjoy it as well as I thought I would...6/10Walking back from Reset, we noticed that Depth Charge’s clone had no queue, so we went on...Blu RiverIt’s Depth Charge, only you can’t ride by yourself... And I lost my hat on it into the channel, however, this did work in my favour as a soaked through hat was bloody amazing in the hot weather...6/10We then did iSpeed again where we met the wonderful FABio ride op, who ensured that idiots trying to jump into the shorter normal queue from the longer front row queue were sent to the back, always like seeing staff do their job effectively even on empty days... Well done...After bracing myself, it was time for some more water ride action...AutoSplashAn unique Log Flume theme here which perhaps could have a lot more going on for it... With only two drops and a random tunnel between them it’s definitely not the best version of it’s type, especially as it suffers from the first drop being wetter than the final drop, and the tunnel actually has absolutely nothing in it... But still the water was well received in the heat...6/10