Category: United Kingdom

A visit to Legoland Windsor

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Legoland Windsor

After Alton Towers, Legoland Windsor is the most popular Merlin Entertainments Group theme park in the UK, so expect long queues. Its location on a hill overlooking Windsor Castle in the distance gives the park a remarkable appeal.

From the top of the hill, several paths wind their way down, with slides similar to those at Tolk Show. The most interesting way to descend, or rather conquer, the hill is to take the Hill Train funicular railway, from where you have a great view of the Vikings River Splash rafting ride.

Vikings River Splash

Due to the canal, this ride is certainly not a beauty, but the view from the lower levels of the park is something special, as rafting boats floating many metres above you is not an everyday sight. The ride also seemed to be very wet, which even in England is a miracle on a ride like this.

Jolly Rocker

If you follow the path down from the rafting, you will pass a maze and Zierer Kontiki to reach the park’s pirate themed area, where an old acquaintance from Germany’s Heide-Park makes his swings. In addition to the HUSS Pirate Jolly Rocker, there is a teacup ride, a log flume and the Pirate Falls Dynamite Drench. There are also plenty of play areas for the little ones.

Knight’s Quest and Dragon’s Apprentice

If you’re looking for Adrealin, at least a little bit, you’ll find it in Knight’s Kingdom, where you’ll find the two coasters Dragon and Dragon’s Apprentice next to the rather popular torture machine Knight’s Quest, a rather uncomfortable Old Train by Mack Rides. While the latter is a nice children’s coaster with a downward helix and slight turns, the Dragon is a rather strange and interesting family coaster. Like many other rides at Legoland Windsor, both coasters were built by the English company WGH Transportation.

Dragon

The Dragon is a little reminiscent of Lightwater Valley’s legendary coaster The Ultimate, but without the height or length of the ride. The Dragon starts with a dark section, similar to the other Dragon coasters at Legoland. Towards the end of the ride, the Dragon heads towards the lift hill without a steep drop or launch. The lift hill is not very quiet due to the metal plates on the catwalk and the track is unnecessarily twisty. The first drop is followed by a figure of eight until you pass under the first lifthill on a second curvy lift and gain some more height. With the collected energy, you now pass through a tunnel and complete another figure of eight. The braking section consists of friction wheels, which have been installed on another curvy hill.

While the Billund Dragon has a fast course and a strong acceleration after the dark ride part, which is reminiscent of a launch, and the Legoland Germany Dragon has a comparatively large size and a rather abrupt first descent, the Windsor Dragon has nothing special to offer. Although the ride is suitable for children and is quite fun because of the sudden turns, the Dragon offers a more or less uneventful ride, often interrupted by lift hills.

Laser Raiders

If you follow the paths, the Egyptian themed area Kingdom of the Pharaohs offers another highlight in the form of the Laser Raiders, for which you are welcome to queue a little longer. As much as I would have liked to test the ride from Sally, the time I had left in the park went by very quickly. Due to the general traffic in London that day, as well as the big rush at Legoland Windsor, I was only able to visit the two roller coasters, Miniland, the Hill Train and the new 4D film.

The unique rides of Legoland Windsor

In addition to the usual Legoland repertoire, Legoland Windsor has a number of special features. For example, you can drive a real excavator in the Digger Challenge, move or turn your helicopter up and down on a stick at Duplo Valley Airport, slide down a twisting track in a dinghy on the Raft River Racer, pass by well-animated Lego models on the Fairytale Brook fairytale ride or take a ride in small submarines through a Sealife Centre in Atlantis Submarine Voyage.

Miniland

While the kids get wet in the Duplo water area, the adults can check out the Lego models in Miniland. This is quite nice and has models from the UK, France and the Netherlands. Star Wars models are not to be found in this part of the park, but fortunately they have their own display near the entrance.

Legends of Chima 4D

The park’s 4-D cinema is showing an agent film as well as a film exclusively about Lego’s new product series The Legends of Chima. As Lego have already shown how to animate properly with their series, I was quite curious to see this film, even though I didn’t know much about the subject matter and a Ninjago film would have been more appealing. The animation was very clean and the 3D effect was actually as clear as I have ever seen it in any other cinema. The other effects were all well adapted to the film, so it is definitely worth seeing, as long as you can cope with large amounts of water and are not necessarily averse to the animation genre.

Conclusion Legoland Windsor

Legoland Windsor is a park that really surprised me. Due to its location in a valley, the park offers unusual views and still knows how to make use of them. Everything seems to be in harmony, even if it is a bit more densely built than other comparable parks. Smaller children up to a certain age have plenty of opportunities to let off steam, which is generously accepted.

 

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Legoland Windsor

Get corrected on The Smiler!

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The Smiler

Opening Day Impressions

As chance would sometimes have it, events happen very much for one’s own benefit, as was also the case on the last day of May by the Ministry of Joy. This institution, based in the county of Staffordshire – more precisely at the Alton Towers amusement park –, was looking for volunteers for their novel apparatus for correcting the human mind, called The Smiler.

Built on the site of the former Black Hole roller coaster, the Smiler attracts everyone’s attention and sends one train after the other through the layout. The number of people to be corrected on that day was quite high, resulting in a queue with a small swerve inside the X-Sector up to the towers. However, after filling up the entire official waiting area, the situation was halfway settled. There was no preferential treatment for individuals and private patients on this day, however, only outpatient cases were recovered at short notice.

After leaving the outdoor waiting area, you enter the station building, where you are made to wait for a rather short time with all kinds of subliminal messages and optical illusions. In addition, there is the fully corrected staff that prepares you for the upcoming activities and frees you from everything that is not necessary. The station of the machine, which is not unlike a roller coaster, is kept simple and creates trust. The already marmallized persons seem to have successfully left their therapy behind. Shortly after, our mindbending journey is about to start.

The Ride

The ride begins with a curvy descent, which ends in a heartlineroll covered by fog and illuminated to match, after which one waits under loud laughter for the driver of the lift hill in front of one. Once hooked into the lift, the brake swords are lowered – just like on the second lift – which allows a safe roll down in case of a broken chain. After adding enough energy, we start our descend to the ground, whereby the second inversion takes place. Now everything follows in a very fast pace. We go up into an Immelmann only to be led into a Dive Loop. The first hill, which is pretty steep, follows and lifts us out of our seats. This is followed by an element, not dissimilar to a Batwing, where we first pass a corkscrew and follow a half loop, whereupon we experience the same in a mirrored form. A surprisingly high corkscrew joins in and releases the passengers half way corrected into the second lift hill.

In comparison to the first hill, the climb to the sky is now much steeper. Then, the game starts all over again the same way: A curvy drop guided us into a roll to the ground. Next we pass a roll over, which again turns us over twice, whereupon the second hill kicks us out of our seats. This is followed by a cobra roll, which features the only weak point in the otherwise very smooth ride, as you actually come into contact with the restraints when exiting the element. In the consecutive heartline rolls, this is already forgotten and the last inversion-free curve ends our therapy by leading us into the brake run.

With the words “You belong to The Smiler” you are released from the station, whereupon, after a few steps, you can collect your belongings and enjoy the spiritual purity to the full. Under all sorts of optical illusions, you leave the station in the direction of the exit, whereupon the grin continues to be visible in your face.

Conclusion

The Smiler is without exaggeration a very big coup for Alton Towers and makes you hungry for more. Whatever the next Secret Weapon will be, it will be outstanding. The ride on this roller coaster of the Münsterhausen manufacturer Gerstlauer is totally insane and reaches the goal in perfection. Hardly any other roller coaster is as fitting in its name as The Smiler and hardly any other roller coaster has the effects along the ride being so well received by the passengers as The Smiler. There is no need for a lavish design, as often requested by fans, but simply a good idea and minimalism in its most distinctive form. The waiting passengers are entertained by all the movements within the ride before they take a seat in one of the rows of, according to the author, the best roller coaster in Europe.

Pictures

 

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Alton Towers

X Sunny hours in Thorpe Park

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Preface

As the month of May is not one of the busiest months for English amusement parks, Merlin Entertainments has launched a very nice promotion for Annual Pass holders, where they can take their friends to the group’s four amusement parks in England for £15. Compared to the 50% discount that already exists, this offer is much more worthwhile and so my English friend and fellow student Connor went back to Staines after some time.

A relatively empty park

The park was relatively empty for a Sunday of a Bank Holiday Weekend in the sunniest weather, but occasionally there were longer queues, for example at the beginning of the day 120 minutes were spent at Colossus, while at Saw the Ride one could walk up to the station. Also at Stealth and The Swarm there was a longer queue, but not necessarily with the reverse option of that.

While the right side of the Swarm can generally be quietly considered the better one, it is the left side that scores much more when riding backwards. While the forward ride through a single Near-Miss could convince since this year, you don’t notice anything of it when going backwards, but you are surprised by almost every element, which was mainly unexpected on the last roll. It’s a funny feeling, which keeps me laughing all ride long.

X

The second novelty this year is the redesigned roller coaster X:\ No Way Out, which now operates under the simple name X. After entering the redesigned queue, the now quite nice and atmospheric queue goes towards the station, where you enter the new trains, but leave the station in a forward motion. In the hall you can expect good lighting effects and a great soundtrack. The forward and backward passages on the lifts don’t exist anymore and so you race down the track until the last two block sections. There you can wait a little bit longer, which isn’t that annoying with the light effects, moreover this break offers a good view of the track.

Merlin Entertainments and Thorpe Park did nothing wrong with the redesign of X, because last year’s X:\ No Way Out was really not an interesting ride anymore. The music, the ride and the lighting effects are quite nice, even though you missed the fact that the trains are running in reverse.

 

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Thorpe Park