Dark Ride Hunting 10/22 – Lincolnshire + Yorkshire
Been a while since we’ve had one of these. With all the big, glamourous trips going on, there’s been nothing else to report on in the gaps, aside from a fun first time visit to IAAPA with DRdb and getting to watch Coaster Hipster ask Intamin about Juvelen just one more time. Sadly no one brought a big apple there though.
Oh and I went to ride #1399 Doggy Dog at Old Macdonald’s Farm out of nothing but tactical desperation.
It was time to get back to basics in October.
Fantasy Island
Always forget how grim the drive up here is. The reason for the visit (aside from one of the group needing the creds) – two new dark rides. One that nobody knows what it is and the other that I followed religiously on their website for months on end only for them to never actually update said website when it eventually opened late.
A.k.a. Harrington Flint’s Island Adventure. A second hand ride system from Dubai rehashed into an explorative romp of shooting screens with evil explorers and the tribal masses.
It’s clever what they’ve done with the space and there’s some physicality to the interactive part, which is always nice. Most of it is already broken however and the graphics lag pretty badly in places. S’alright.
I now know what the other one is, The Guardian, but it wasn’t running so that’s no good at all. Instead the staff member that was sending people away all morning went for a lunch break (someone needs to be here) and we ended up joining a few other confused guests on a journey into a completely unmanned, but switched on ride.
The queue was massive and well decorated, for what is just a 4 person simulator arm. Clearly there’s some sort of pre-show going on here. Something wasn’t right though.
Didn’t need Family Roller Coaster, but I’m shameless enough to lap it again if someone else does and it is in the spirit of hunting after all. This one has picked up an injury.
I can talk about many things in this shot. Most strikingly the colour of that water splash.
Millennium has lost the title of smoothest major Vekoma coaster, it now has a bit of jostle to it. The wind was up and it was super slow through most of the inversions, providing a weird, crunchy bit of flop time and then nearly stalling into the last section.
Rhombus Rocket wasn’t hauling as much as previously, clearly a back row only ride for that evil twisted hill.
Did The Volcano (shot tower) because nothing better to do. It’s a thing.
After somehow re-convincing myself it was for scientific research, I did dare to re-ride Odyssey after hating it several years prior. We arrived to the station just as it closed down for wind however so we’ll never know how that would have gone down. Gives it a 1 out of 4 success rate on my visits.
Feel like I’ve been to this park too many times already. It’s not the greatest. Stuff like Seaquarium and Toucan Tours have charm but it’s really not a revisit kinda place. Too much faff.
Never too much faff if it’s something new though. We headed up over the Humber bridge (another new bridge cred) and into central York, through castle walls and all. Why?
Jorvik Viking Centre
Dark ride, that’s why. 10% museum and 90% ride, I had stories of this attraction from my parents riding it back in the ‘80s. It’s all changed since then, receiving a new ride system in 2001 and new scenery from 2015. It’s long, slow and all rather impressive.
The new(er) vehicles for Time Ride have on-board audio and screens to teach you all about what’s going on in each scene.
Scenes include this guy, a man selling a cabbage to a woman who doesn’t want one and someone on the toilet. York, 948 A.D.
Would recommend.
Day 2