Ireland 05/19 – Tayto Park
Had a little work jaunt over to Ireland this week and managed to squeeze in half a day at somewhere I’ve been meaning to get to for a while. Never quite had the motiviation to get on a plane for essentially 1 ride, though worryingly I am starting to reach that stage with certain trips.
A view of Dublin from the outbound ferry. Taking the boat ain’t much better.
Tayto Park
And here we are. Bit of a mismatch of styles going on at this park, didn’t expect it to require tokens/wristbands to go on the rides.
What seems to be the entrance to the main attraction is done rather nicely, but it’s also an entrance to fairground games and more ugly flat rides. All attempt at theming dies again once you enter the queue, apart from the funny bloke on the front of the train of course.
Had rather high hopes for this ride and it didn’t really deliver at all on the first few laps. The first drop was underwhelming and then it bumbled around for a very long time getting slower and slower. It was mildly enjoyable, but nothing special.
What else have we got then?
Spiting Voyage was closed sadly. A themed water ride that was by far the nicest looking attraction in the park.
RMC confirmed for Tayto 2022. Sorry Gwazi.
Spite school as well. I believe it opened the day I wrote this.
But there’s another cred. This is to SBF spinners what Parc Saint Paul did to the Wacky Worm. Better themed than the big rides.
The zoo is bigger and better than I expected and a rather nice place to spend the afternoon.
Fairly sure these went extinct with the dinosaurs.
The collection of majestic birds was particularly impressive. My favourite was the Griffon Vulture which again I didn’t know existed.
This was the only ‘new for 2019’ attraction that was actually open.
It was pretty cool walking around with this lot on the prowl.
There were more than just lemurs and the, what I’m gonna call groundhogs, were even more amusing.
Back to the main event then. It kicked more ass as the afternoon went on.
Once the first drop woke up and actually ejected you from your seat, the ride sort of divides itself into thirds. The first sequence being really, really strong in chucking you about all over the place, from the tiny hill in the tunnel to the signature twisty bouncy bits up into the ‘not an inversion’ corner.
From here it’s a decent woodie for the middle third, with some reasonable air time happening here and there.
Then it does too many high up sections of track and you just kinda sit there waiting for it to end.
Similar to that one in Xiamen that looked amazing but ran out of steam way too fast, not sure how Gravity Group ended up with that result against the other rides they put out.
Park was eventually dead enough to just stay on the ride each time they sent it, so it was a fun marathon and a good way to end the day.
A view of Wales from the ferry home.
The end.