Luke_A

*Ta-daaah!* The first inverted drop has finally been pulled into place. I can see these two drops pulling some great G's just like the inline after the MCBR on Speed @ Oakwood, should be a great feeling! (Thanks to TowersTimes)

I'm afraid I'm going to have to pull out of this trip, very sorry guys! I'm not sure if this will affect anyone else but South West Trains are carrying out engineering works at Waterloo, and the Waterloo - Chessington South service is affected by this. Quote & link from their website below. Damn. http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/MEW.aspx#119213 As if a train journey on a Sunday isn't bad enough this has just completely ruled it out for me... A rail replacement bus service would just add to an already lengthy journey for me, & the first train from my home station is just after 9:00 anyway. Grr. Hope you all have a good time anyway.

One thing which *really* frustrates me in the music industry is when people outright and obviously take part of a song from somebody, and either just cut it up to make it less obvious, or add lyrics onto the top of the track with no credit given to the artist who has produced the original track. WHY in a world where we have SO many talented musicians and a spectrum of music like never before, with so many genres and styles; do some of the most creative people in the industry decide to copy or steal from somebody else. will.I.am & Chris Brown have recently released their song "Let's Go" (Yes same name as the Calvin Harris track, different song), and it is an almost identical clone to the song "Rebound" by Mat Zo & Arty, signed to label Anjunabeats... A well known trance/house/progressive house Electronic Dance Music label. Anjunabeats had nobody approach them asking for permission to use the track, and will.I.am's label released it obviously without being fair, and they obviously didn't know that Anjunabeats own the copyright for the track! Check out the dislike bar on the video for it below. The ratio of dislikes to likes is more than that of Rebecca Black's "Friday", now that says something doesn't it..! Go to around 1:20 in the real version of the song, and you can see how will.I.am's version is a rip. The way this should have been done is the same way Far East Movement dealt with Bingo Players when they wanted to use their song "Rattle." Rattle was released in late 2011, being a club banger all the way through 2012... It got to late 2012 and Far East Movement wanted to use the backing of the track with their lyrics, so contacted Bingo Players if they could produce the song and have it re-released with both artists names on it. That's exactly what happened and everyone involved is happy, the song in my opinion wasn't as good as the original, but it was a success for all. - Why can't it always happen like this?? Azealia Banks also annoyed me when she released her song "Esta Noche", which was originally produced by an artist called Munchi, who I love so much. I also adore Azealia's music. The song was good, but she didn't even approach Munchi and ended up in a Twitter feud (typical Azealia) with him because he was sticking up for his rights. She ended up giving him no credit at all, don't think she ever intended to really. Just felt I needed to say that because it's in our interest to know that when we purchase music that the rightful artist and label gets the reputation and respect they deserve for what they do.

Hmm! Maybe we just got lucky with the food... We could see they actually cooked everything fresh in front of us as it was very quiet and past the lunch rush. I've still not tried Burger Kitchen at Towers / Chessie & don't even know if I will...

I may be wrong - but are they magnetic brake fins on the lift? Could The Smiler use a similar lift system to what I beleieve happens on Millenium Coaster at Fantasy Island Ingoldmells as well as some other Vekoma's, where in the event of the lift chain stopping, the train will steadily roll to the base of the lift... Could explain that 'odd-looking' track section on the approach to the vertical lift. Just wondering... As this would be much quieter than having the 'clank clank' of standard anti-rollbacks... Would also remove the necessity of ever having to evacuate the vertical lift, no need for the lifting cage up the side of the structure.

Is this still happening every time or just now and again? I first noticed it not shutting around April last year, to come back on opening weekend this season to find the shutter still not closing! It really does ruin the effect of the crypt as none of the lighting effects can be seen.

Well well well, looks like a certain someone didn't read the terms & conditions to using his iMac...

Disabled riders & riders who are given exit passes from other rides which have broken down, etc.

Amended my list since last time as well as added on the Oakwood coasters. 1.) Speed: No Limits 2.) Saw: The Ride 3.) Oblivion 4.) Stealth 5.) Megafobia 6.) Nemesis Inferno 7.) Rita 8.) Colossus 9.) Grand National 10.) Nemesis (had to do this...) 11.) Wild Mouse (PBB) - Love this one, I've said it before, but this is a special coaster; very unique and unlike anything else on offer in our world of roller coasters today.

So, as part of my Monday - Friday Easter trip to South-west Wales, I made a trip to Oakwood Theme Park last Tuesday. I was looking forward to visiting Oakwood, having heard good reviews about the place before. The park is *literally* in the middle of nowhere, you'll be driving through a bumpy single lane road and start to see the park in the distance, with Drenched dominating the skyline of Oakwood. Admission prices were very reasonable, at £21.00 for an adult ticket on the gate although we did use Tesco clubcard vouchers... Very good value in my opinion when you consider the other prices for parks in the UK. Park open hours were 10am - 5pm. Here's something though... Oakwood is open until 10PM on quite a few days in July & August, take that, Merlin opening hours. (psst... I've tried to keep this report as concise as possible but I think I've still rambled on a bit! Thanks if you do read it all!) The park entrance reminded me of Alton Towers, once you have collected your tickets (no queuing at all for this!) you go straight through into a station and wait for a diesel train to come along much like the old CCR which takes you through the woods and over to the park entrance, where you enter via a gift shop. Naturally, the first ride we headed to was Oakwood's Gerstlauer Eurofighter which is situated right at the back of the park; Speed: No Limits Speed is one of those rides which manages to do everything right. It doesn't claim to be anything special, have any special gimmick or try to break any records. Speed was running 1 car all day, and was walk on all day too. It had about a 5 min queue at maximum, 2 cars and it would have been waiting for riders! The ride can run with only 1 member of staff with the use of the handy Gerstlauer dispatch console, identical to that of Cobra at Paultons park enabling for speedy operations. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX7Ae-dUGv8 Damn, that roar & the speed the car chucks itself over that airtime hill!! Speed stands at a height of 115ft, superior to the 100ft of Saw. Once seated, a quick visual check of the bars and you're dispatched, off up the vertical lift. The drop is brilliant, giving a nice feeling of floaty airtime as you go past-vertical, the highlight of the ride then happens, an airtime hill which according to the Gerstlauer website pulls -1.3G, it's not uber-extreme airtime, but it's damn good and will have you flying up into your restraint well and proper. Like nothing I have ever experienced before, it's stronger than the -1.1G that Saw pulls. It must have been an area for concern for Gerstlauer seeing as it's got trim mounts on the approach to it, no trims on there though. You then approach what may be the lowlight of the ride, an over-banked turnaround. A *true* vertical loop then follows, this is where the ride shows it's Schwarzkopf roots, it's not one of these modern-day clothoid loops where the forces even out as you get to the top, it's a classic circular one which is approached and carried out at speed, blurring your vision as you enter and exit the loop. The MCBR follows the loop, which gives you (again!!) a good dose of strong airtime as you crest the hill onto the brakes, a tiny magnetic trim (which is needed because of the following helix) and then you get a little bit of floaty airtime as you leave the MCBR, which is more noticeable in the back seats. An elevated inline twist is immediately after the brakes, which is taken at quite a speed, giving some good all-round forces. Next up is the final helixes... This part is a twisted pit of intensity. This section starts off with a lighter leftwards helix after the elevated inline... Before going over a little crest of a hill and into a strong, fast rightwards helix, this one gains speed as you go downwards, which caused my vision to start blurring in my my eyes every time! The track levels out and you hit the brakes right in time as the stars in your eyes disappear, general reactions such as "wow, omg" occur at the end. Speed - a truly brilliant ride which isn't hugely regarded as being anything special worldwide, but it does everything it does do, very very well. It's my No.1 steel coaster in the UK now, and I look forward to seeing how The Smiler compares. On a side note - Speed has a 1.25M height restriction, and does not have the 'joltiness' that Saw has. It does however have a slight 'rawness' to it, where there are some quite intense vibrations on some parts, comparable to Nemesis if any other ride is comparable to it in that aspect... 10/10 - Top notch, No.1. I do wonder how this layout would ride with the new Gerst lap bars. Megafobia Bearing in mind the only other wooden coasters I have ridden are the ones at BPB and the one at Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach, my standards of wooden coasters aren't that high yet. Megafobia, again; was awesome. You may start noticing a trend here, as Oakwood is home to a few rides which are a real credit to the park. Rode the back seat first, first drop was great, not too rough, just a typical bit of woodie bounciness. Good bits of airtime around the course with relentless speed around the corners, this coaster doesn't let up right up until the brakes. It was very hard to get any pics as the majority of the ride is in a field! There's another note, Oakwood is set in a lovely location, with lakes, woods and hills throughout the park. A very pleasant place! Couple of Megafobia pics below, great ride in all seats, the first airtime hill in the front seat was especially brilliant! Megafobia is easily the best wooden roller coaster in the UK, Grand National a close 2nd. 8/10 Drenched (aka Hydro) Opened at 2PM, which wasn't a problem as it was walk on immediately and all the time after opening, not once did it cycle with a full boat. In true Intamin style this chute ride starts off with a speedy lift to the top where it then slows down to a crawl before going round the turnaround and then flying down that near-vertical drop at a pretty high speed... Let's just say I was in the back seat for my ride on Drenched and I definitely flew up into the restraint... I understand why it doesn't have lap bars anymore, but the OTSR's didn't block the airtime too much on the drop. Lap bars would have been better of course though. The splash wasn't as fierce as that of Tidal Wave's, but still got us drenched though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYektXFSxlg Ride on it's own = Drenched > Tidal Wave Ride as a whole = Tidal Wave > Drenched 7/10 Bounce A Huss shot & drop tower. Opened at about 2:45 due to a problem with the compressor system, a van from control gear pneumatics was parked outside the ride during the morning. It was better than Ice Blast, although the drop was a bit dismal, the shot was *immediate* and there is no "hiss" noise beforehand to let you know it's going to start. Shot = 7/10 Drop = 4/10 Another highlight of the park was the Bob Sleigh / Toboggan thing. Check my Vine below and it'll give a pretty good overview of what the ride is... You go up a loooonng lift, then control the brakes yourself! Cool huh... As long as you don't get some slow coach in front of you, you can speed down it all the way with no brakes 'til the end. I'd been on one before, but still; fun rides! >>>>> https://vine.co/v/btqT5HbXXFM <<<<< Another thing I'll point out is the food & beverage options available at Oakwood. They have an equivalent of the Merlin Burger Kitchen if you like... And it is GOOD, probably couldn't get any closer to Burger King standards. The prices were more expensive than Merlin's alternatives, but this was justified because.. well.. it was good! (£7.80 for double cheeseburger meal.) Treetops coaster was a cool little coaster through the trees... Identical layout to the same coaster at Pleasurewood Hills I think. Brer Rabbit was a train ride through some caves with animated scenes, quite cool for kids I guess, a classic ride! Spooky 3D was Oakwood's answer to something like Duel, except you have no guns and wear 3D glasses instead, whilst it was an OK attraction it wouldn't win any awards let's say. There does happen to be a full-on AIR HORN in the middle of this ride though, which you could hear when other cars went past it, it made me jump so much... Quite deafening; Lol. Finally, Oakwood has AWESOME merchandise!! "I <3 Coasters" merchandise came as hats, magnets, and (I think) shirts too. Of course I got a few things. You can also get Megafobia shirts, Speed mugs, "Ride the Big 4 magnets" etc... Ride Count. Speed X6 Megafobia X5 Drenched X1 Bounce X1 Bob Sleigh X2 Treetops coaster X1 Pirate Ship X1 Brer Rabbit X1 Spooky 3D X1 Pedalo's on the lake X1 'Python' enclosed water slide X1 Train to park entrance & exit X2 Overall, Oakwood is a great park, with great rides, in a great location, which is 100% worth a visit if you're ever in the area. Thank you for reading!

I miss the days of 3 train operation before all of this over the top H&S with stuff like unnecessary re-checks... Where guests knew they had 25secs to be seated and ready to go. Staff would be efficient and run the ride like it was a constant challenge, and always seemed to love what they were doing. Ahh those were the days. It's a shame the park's going downhill in so many areas...

Ridden many of these in my time... I rate them as one of the most intense rides out there. Still one of the few rides to make me grey out / get dodgy vision when running fast and if I'm not properly hydrated, just like a Mondial Capriolo on a good cycle. The ride experience is one of those which you will probably love or hate depending on your preferences of thrill rides... When the arms reach the top all of your body weight goes onto the right hand side of your body, very extreme forces. They're not sickening to me however. At about 1:40 onwards in the video below is the point of "oh my god these things are literally Extreme" There are already around about 13 of these in the UK (including Ireland) though believe it or not, and they are made here by Tivoli manufacturing in Kent! Tivoli use KMG's seat design for the Extreme's and also sub-contract the manufacturing of KMG Move It's at times. All travelling models though, even though some are in parks such as Bottons Pleasure beach, they tend to run theirs quite slow though because of this. It would be a good ride for a Theme Park if they operated it the way it's designed, e.g, the 6 arm model comes with self-closing restraints like Vortex, which do not need to be checked, and if you're large the little light won't go off beside your seat, making it easy to see which restraint isn't closed. Great system for getting high capacity numbers with 36 riders in total, just like the video below. Wouldn't want all the lighting at a park either, unless they found a suitable theme. An amusement park however, of course it would fit in. Thorpe to me is a bit of a mishmash of theme / amusement park right now, Zodiac, Vortex, Samurai, Quantum & Detonator all have their variants in the fairground market, so maybe this would work. Then on the other hand I don't think a chain owned theme park would operate it to potential, so in that aspect maybe it wouldn't be a good investment. I'm 50/50.. Ooooops about the long post. I just think these things are incredible.

Ah right, a bit like the dispute of whether or not S&S 4D coasters should have their rotating seat inversions counted with the actual track inversions. Now I understand... Although we all sort of know the washing machine is not happening now.

Ehh? Surely an inversion is an inversion? How would it have 14 inversions but not invert you 14 times?

From CWoA Twitter: Does cold weather really cause a Wild Mouse not to operate?? I'm sure if you were to go to any other park in the UK with a Wild Mouse right now in these cold weather conditions it would be open. I think how Stealth and other Thorpe coasters operating in sleet / light snow shows how Chessington are being a bit too over-cautious yet again here... Unless it is literally tipping it down with snow..?

I'm a maybe for now, as it's my birthday the day before on the 20th and I'm not sure what's going on with family etc yet for that! If I do attend the earliest I can leave home is just after 9:00 and I should get to the park for about 11:15 if I'm lucky through London... Will also have to leave at around 6 at the latest because of stupid Sunday train service on the way home too! I will confirm early next week.

Great news! WiFi is much needed at Thorpe, as the 3G masts around the area usually end up hitting capacity meaning it's a nightmare to use, happened to me in the summer last year at Thorpe as well as at FN when the park was busy. Towers WiFi is probably one of the best 'not for profit from guests' things they've ever done... haha.

So sassy.

Do the trains still stop on every brake section? If so does it still shuffle around on one of them, like it used to..?

Just out of interest, is the second train back on the track again yet?

Hmm yeah but surely if a lapbar can hold your body in the ride for just a few inversions there should be no problem with multiple inversions? I'd love to know the reason once it opens why they went for OTSR's, and to find out if Gerstlauer even offered them!

Exactly what I think; you worded that perfectly. Saw is my favourite coaster in the UK at the moment so I'm sure these will be great nonetheless, it's nice to see vibrant colours on a ride for once instead of the usual darker Merlin colours of choice! Of course lap bars would have been better but this will still be good. Didn't mean to sound too negative in my last post aha.

They are indeed OTSR's. Disappointing. (from Towers twitter) Bit of a let down because Tripsdrill's new launched Eurofighter for 2013 is also having lap bars similar / identical to that of Iron Shark's. I feel like Alton have missed a trick here, seeing as lap bars are becoming more and more common from manufacturers innovating in this field... I'm sure if a Eurofighter can do 4 inversions with lap bars, it should be fine doing ~14!

Most Wild Mouse's which have individual lap bars have a 1.0M height restriction from the manufacturer, I'd say X is on the same level as these types of ride so it should be fine! Ben 10 at Drayton Manor has a 1.0M restriction.

Bit of a long post here about a group who have been quite important to me who I loved very much. So read if you wish. Swedish House Mafia broke up yesterday after their final show at Ultra in Miami. They announced the break up in mid-2012, and were quite short lived if you consider they released their first song in 2010 and last song in 2012. I remember hearing their first song 'One' when I was on holiday on the south coast in the Summer of 2010, I can remember it was Vernon Kay on the radio who played it and he was saying how 'they were going to be huge, something to look out for over the years' etc... How right he was. It was one of them songs which just instantly clicked with you and you knew it was good. I've followed what they've done & loved them ever since really and it's quite amazing that they managed to get so much out of what they did in so many countries without having to sort of.. 'water their music down' like quite a lot of electronic artists will do these days in order to make it more pop-like just to get the public liking it and into the charts. The trio that are SHM went on to have multiple hits, with pretty much everyone now knowing who they are... One, Miami 2 Ibiza, Save The World, Antidote, Greyhound, and then finally Don't You Worry Child; being the complete set of songs they produced. I will miss them and I'm sure even if you're not a huge fan a lot of people have enjoyed some of their music over their short time in existence. Though hey... Maybe they will reform one day, anything can happen; who knows.