Luke's Oakwood Photo Trip Report ((photo heavy)) - 9/4/13

[Luke_A]

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 2^nd.

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!

[EC!]

Totally agree, I love the place I hope I can go this year to try out the new area and log flume
Plus the reason that Drenched has OTSR's is because of safety precautions after the girl fell out and died in 2004.

[Mitchada04]

Great report Luke. This is one of the few parks in Britain that I have yet to visit and actually want to. Love the sound of getting a train over to the entrance and Megafobia looks great next to that lake. Speed doesn't look to bad either Will definitely be paying a visit to this park in the future.

[EC!]

OAKWOOD TPM MEET

[Fred]

I do adore oakwood, good park though not much there. Went for their fireworks event last year, thoroughly enjoyed it (though ride closing times were irritating).
Will be going again this year for their fireworks event, though earlier in August so less busy hopefully.

Food wise.. I thought their burgers were awful. Did not like them one bit. Don't like merlins brand of burgers either to be honest, it was just a shame it was only place without a queue at the time!

[Coaster]

I agree the fireworks event was good but Megafobia closed really early on my visit!
And yeah, the food was overpriced rubbish in my opinion but not as bad as the new Burger Kitchen at Chessington.

[Fred]

Thinking about it, when I had tasted Burger Kitchen for the first time, it reminded me of Oakwood burgers. Was not impressed.

Equally, megafobia closed at 845 (on a park close of 10pm!) when I visited, and ended up doing no rides after that cos everything closed as we approached or were in the queue (Spooky 3d closed the doors in our faces). Still enjoy the place though.

[Luke_A]

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...