First Time at Oakwood 16/04/16

[ben199]

So yesterday I visited Oakwood, a park I'd read and heard a lot about but hadn't actually been to yet. I was really excited about the two main coasters but curious as to what the rest of the park would be like.

 

First off this park is a nightmare to get to. I'm a student in Swansea so got a direct train from there to Narberth then from there you can either get a taxi or walk five miles to the park. I figured out that if I got a taxi both ways it would cost almost as much as my train and park ticket combined so I bit the bullet and walked. The first few miles I had a great time, it was a sunny morning and the countryside was lush but the final mile was down a busy A road with no pavement or grassy verves at the side so I had to walk on the actual road against the flow of traffic the whole way. After a bit Drenched and Speed loomed up in the distance and the excitement kicked in and soon enough I was at the entrance.

 

Outside there was a sign informing that Drenched would be closed all day then when I bought my ticket the man in the booth also told me this just to be sure I still wanted to come in. I was really surprised at this and it shows great transparency by the park. Considering the closed ride was a soaker and the temperature that day never went above ten degrees yet the park still made such an effort to communicate this to guests was great. I'm fairly certain Towers don't even have any signs up by the entrance and they have about seven rides closed! I was also informed upon buying my ticket that Megafobia was currently down and would be up within the next hour (it opened about twenty minutes after I entered the park), again great communication 

 

Scorecard:

Speed x 3

Megafobia x 5

Bobsleigh x 2

Bounce x 1

Spooky 3D x 1

 

Onto the ride reviews!

 

Megafobia - This was by far the ride I was most excited about, I'd heard so many good things about how it's possibly the best coaster in the UK so while going up the lift hill for the first time about 20% of me was expecting this to be better and as intense as Nemesis. And yeah, it's not. But that's not the point of the ride which I soon realised. I managed to get on the first ride of the day in the front seat and came off really disappointed. In the front there's only about two pops of decent airtime and no floater at all over the camelbacks. I'd heard it also takes time to warm up and get faster so I went and did some other stuff and came back a bit later for a back seat ride and **** me, this ride is nuts in a decent seat!

 

In the back you get sucked down the first drop and all the ones after the turnarounds so fast. As soon as you begin to crest the drops your whole body shoots up against the lapbar and stays there most of the way down and the camelbacks give some fairly decent floater. On the final out and back there's also some nice bits where you start to bank and turn mid hill which throws you off guard (and against the lap bars and the side of the train!) as the rest of the ride before it is mainly straight hills followed by a turnaround.

 

It's got a good pace to it too, it's pretty much constant action the whole way round and it lasts a really long time compared to most UK coasters. It's rough too but not uncomfortably so, just as much as you'd expect for a woodie really. I'd go as far to say it's the best family coaster in the country. While there's lots of airtime I don't think the whole experience is that intense and over the course of the day I saw a lot of elderly and young people leave with huge grins.

 

I definitely set my expectations too high for this, it's a brilliant ride but not really a white knuckle, intense AF thrill machine.

 

Spooky 3D - Now this was the complete opposite of my experience on Megafobia. When I heard this ride was a ghost train with 3D elements I assumed it would just be a load of corridors splattered with UV paint. And yeah, it kind of is but there's some cool effects in there and I jumped out my skin at least twice, especially one scene involving a well timed snake strike out of nowhere accompanied with a water jet. The 3D glasses are great too, unlike HPH at Chessington some of the stuff on the walls does actually look 3D. The best bit about this ride though is how trippy and confusing the glasses make everything. With them on everything goes a bit blurry and you can't really judge depth of view that well, especially in the dark so a lot of the time it's impossible to figure out what path the vehicle will take through the building. This is great for a ghost train, as well as not knowing where and what is going to jump out at you, you also have no clue whether the bit of darkness in front of you is a wall or the empty space in front of your car or when you're going to turn or go straight ahead into the dark blurryness. Reading back I really did not explain that clearly but yeah, great dark ride but without the glasses it would be awful.

 

Speed - Absolutely loved this ride. I've got a real soft spot for Eurofighters, I love how exposed the tiny cars feel and there's always a great mix of inversions and airtime. This one's slightly taller than Saw and it's actually really noticeable as soon as you start climbing the hill but the drop feels pretty much identical. The camelback that follows is absolutely ridiculous, in terms of ejector air I'd say it's easily as strong as the speed hill on Shambhala after the ampersand, just not nearly as sustained. The overbank and loop that follow are decent and as you'd expect (I'm not a fan of loops but I liked how this one was completely circular and went quite slow round the top) then you hit the MCBR. From here it goes a bit slow and doesn't really kick into gear again until the last half of the final helix at which point you're only a few seconds away from the brakes anyway.

 

Having now been on all 3 UK eurofighters, I reckon it goes Saw>Speed>Rage. Speed gains a load of points for the mental camelback (I cannot stress enough how amazing and powerful this element is) but Saw overall feels snappier and better paced. Speed beats Rage hands down though (and unsurprisingly so considering it's essentially the same layout but taller and with the camelback).

 

Bounce - The one disappointing ride of the day was this, the parks shot tower. The initial launch was reasonably forceful but it slows down too gradually at the top so that there's no airtime whatsoever on the bounces. Then when this sequence is done the gondala rises slowly to the top, waits a second and then is shot down. Except it's not because it launches with the force of a frog hopper (sadly not even an exaggeration, there was just no force or airtime at all) then there's a few more bounces and you're done. By far the worst thrill flat ride I've ever done but it does have an awesome view from the top.

 

Bobsleigh - I really enjoyed the bobsleigh. You sit in a tiny tray with no restraints by yourself, get hoisted up a lift hill by a cable then crest down a metal slide with turns. In the cart you have a brake handle, I think I made it round the first two turns full pelt before panicking and braking (there's a sign at the entrance saying to be careful not flip the carts over!). It's really nice to see a family ride that can also be thrilling if you make it so. Something like this would never exist in a Merlin park so well done Oakwood for keeping something open that could genuinely injure you.

 

I was wondering at what point does a ride like this become a credit? On RCDB this doesn't come up yet something like Avalance does, is it to do with how the vehicles attach to the lift hill and station?

 

Overall the park is a bit bare and there's virtually no theming outside of the Neverland bit but I don't think there needs to be as everything is clean and landscaped well to be presentable. The day I visited was absolutely dead, both coasters were on one train and going round half full more often than not which was great as they let you stay in your seat and reride as long as no one was waiting for your seat, something I wish every park allowed. The staff were all consistently friendly and helpful too which adds a lot to the day and even though there were no queues they were still checking restraints and dispatching the rides with a sense of urgency. At one point Megafobia was E stopped due to a stupid woman letting her kid play underneath the brake run and this was resolved with the ride back up and running within five minutes which I was impressed by, the maintenance guy popped up almost as soon as the operator put the phone down!

 

So all in all this is a great park for the size that it is. I wouldn't recommend making a ridiculously long journey just for this but if you live fairly nearby or are in Wales this is definitely worth a visit.

 

Thanks for reading everyone 

 

 

[Project LC]

A fellow Swansea student! It is certainly a pain to get there but luckily I know someone with a car  

Both times I have been there the park has been completely dead. The impression I get is that it is only busy in the summer.