Ah yes, Alton Towers. The biggest themepark in England (i'm pretty sure it is.) It's in the direction of the BIG LOOMING STORM CLOUDS. In case you haven't gathered by my wonderfully worded introduction to this entry, I went to Alton Towers today with Jamie and his dad.
We got there pretty early and took the monorail from the carpark to the entrance. Then we proceeded to wait in the queue for entrance tickets for an hour. Every other queue seemed to be moving super fast, but because it was us we got the queue that hardly moved at all. It started raining whilst we were waiting so we decided to go on the water rides first, considering we were already soaking wet. So as soon as we got inside the entrance we made our way over to Katanga Canyon.
(All the different sections have different names depending on what the theme is, etc. And for those of you that are thinking 'duuh, I knoooow' i'm just explaining this for people who may not know about Alton Towers and it's glory, so nyah!)
So anyway, we got to Katanga Canyon and noticed that, oddly, the queue for the Log Flume was uber short. So we ran through the winding queue line to the entrance and got on practically straight away. The flume got sponsored by Imperial Leather a while back, so now all the 'logs' are shaped like bath tubs ^^. One part of the flume is in the dark, you drop down and then turn a corner and usually there's a really scary giant rubber ducky.. But it wasn't there this time!
After that we wandered across the path to the Rapids. We weren't too wet from the Flume so we figured we'd be soaked from the rapids, but it was quite tame. I think it was because it was still really early in the day and as it gets further into the afternoon they release more water and make it more.. Rapid-y.. Whatever. They had the big waterfalls on anyway, so that was cool. We didn't get very wet though.
The first ride you see when you leave the rapids is the Runaway Mine train, Jamie didn't want to go on it because he said it was rubbish (bollocks.) The queue was still really small (where was everyone?) So we went on that and it was awesome. It's like a little rollercoaster, that goes bloody fast! The first time round it's super fast, especially when you spin round the corner and drop into the cave that goes round past the rapids. The second time they speed it up a little so the wind whips past you and you can barely keep your eyes open!
We wandered up to Gloomy Wood, which only has one ride in it. Obviously, the haunted house. The haunted house, and maybe Hex, are the only rides I don't mind queuing for. Because the queue is practically a ride in itself. You walk into the house through the front door and there's a crooked room with portaits that have glowing eyes on the walls, that seem to follow you around. Then you walk through a door and there's a playroom with an old rocking horse rocking by itself and a dolls house with a hologram of a little girl walking around inside it. It's so cool. The ride itself used to be normal, sit in a little train and go slowly round the house whilst plastic witches, devils and rubber spiders jumped out at you. But I guess technology has finally caught up with Gloomy Wood and now there's laser gun equipment installed so now it's like a laser quest style game where you shoot the goblins and ghouls that jump out at you and you get points for how many you hit.
Call me old fashioned, but it just takes all the fun out of the ghost train. You don't take notice of what's jumping out at you, you just point your gun at it and shoot. That's rubbish!
After duel (which is what the haunted house is now called) we walked up to Forbidden Valley, which has some of the biggest rides in the park. We immediately ran over to Nemesis, but Jamie's dad refused to go on it, so me and Jamie joined the queue ourselves... Actually we cheated and went in the single riders queue because it was shorter, but we ended up getting two seats together anyway.
(The single rider's queue is used to cut down on queue time by anyone who's on their own or people in groups that don't mind being split up queuing in a different place to everyone else, then if there's a spare seat or two that need to be filled, they choose people from the single riders queue.. It got us on really quickly ^^)
I don't really know the story of Nemesis, I think it's something about a mythical monster rose from the ground and had to be pinned with bars of steel or something, and that's why the layout of Nemesis is like a rollercoaster on the carcass of a monster. There's rivers of blood (Ribena, thank you very much.) running underneath as well. It's pretty cool. It used to be the fastest rollercoaster in Europe (I think) but it's been overtaken now. The G-Force is so strong when you're hurling through the air and twisting this way and that is breath taking.
The next obvious choice in the Forbidden Valley is Air. It's not been there long, and the queue was pretty huge but again me and Jamie joined the single rider's queue and managed to get in pretty quickly (and score two seats next to each other again, wahey!) Air is a huge, blue rollercoaster. It doesn't go very fast, but that's not the point. The point is, it makes you feel like you can fly.. Let me explain. When you get in the car thing, the safety belts lock around your chest and your legs, then the entire carriage turns so you're horizontal and are staring at the floor. You have the option of sticking your arms out in front like Superman, or you can clench tightly onto the safety rails, which is what I was doing. I'm terrified of flying! As we were going up the first hill I managed to stick my arms out in front of me, so i'm proud of myself for that ^^. It is quite amazing, because it really does feel like you're not in a rollercoaster, you're actually in the air of your own accord, twisting upside down and whatever.
It started to rain again as we left Air so we bought a hot dog and watched Ripsaw for a bit (you just get thrown this way and that in a carriage and then get jets of water sprayed into your face.) Then we boarded the cable cars and travelled across the park to Cred Street, which is where a lot of the rides for younger kids are. It's also the where the new Charlie and The Chocolate Factory ride had been built. I really wanted to go on that but as we approached it we realised where everyone in the park was. They were queuing for Charlie. We decided to come back later to see if the queue had diminished any, and wandered down to the enormous house in the middle.
Jamie's dad decided he wanted to go on Hex, so we went in that with him. That's set inside a half renovated house and as you're queuing there are video's telling you about how the Alton Towers team were renovating the house when they stumbled on a secret chamber that had been sealed for 2 centuries and how there's a tree that was chained up in the park and no one realised the two could be connected in some way. Then you go into the next room and it tells the story of how Earl whateverhisnamewas that owned the house in the 1600's was on his way home when his carriage was stopped by an old woman who begged for a farthing, when he cast her away she put a curse on him and his family, which was basically everytime a branch from the oak tree falls, one of his family shall die. Lo and behold a storm rages that night, a branch falls and poof, one of his family are dead. So he has the tree chained up and then spends the rest of his life in a laboratory under his house going insane whilst doing experiments on the fallen branch, trying to banish the curse. After that you go into the next room, which is the laboratory and there's lots of darkness and lightening. Then the next room you sit down and the branch is in the middle, then the room starts to spin round and round and you get the effect that you're being twisted around, but it's just an optical illusion. I think it's supposed to represent the descent into madness, but I 'unno. Makes me dizzy just thinking about it!
After Hex we wandered down Towers Street to Adventure Land to go on the Spinball Whizzer. That's a little rollercoaster where the car you're in spins round as it's going round the track. We did the single rider thing again but this time we got split up, it was okay though the people we were with were pretty cool. It started raining again as we were on that ride, but I wasn't that bothered.
Adventure Land is right next to the X-Sector, which is where we went afterwards. Jamie's dad took one look at Oblivion, and decided he wasn't going on it. Oblivion is the first vertical drop rollercoaster in the world, it's basically up, round and free fall into darkness. I was TERRIFIED in the queue and absolutely shaking in my boots as we went up the hill. When you reach the drop, you go over the edge slightly so you can see the ground and then the ride brakes and holds you there for a few seconds. There's huge writing on the floor at the bottom that says 'Don't Look Down'. Then you just drop and the floor rushes up to meet you. I closed my eyes for the drop ^^ but as soon as I felt us straighten out in the tunnel I opened them again, and then it was over! It only lasts about 20 seconds, but it's really scary!!
We went on Enterprise after that, which is like a ferris wheel, but instead of the cars staying upright, they lock into place so as the wheel goes up in the air (it starts off flat) you end up going upside down and being held into place by the centrafugal (sp?) force. It's pretty cool, the queue was short too ^^
We wandered back past the Charlie ride, but the queue was still an hour and a half long, so stuff that! We also walked up to Ugland, which is where the new rollercoaster is, Rita; Queen Of Speed. I have a feeling it's the fastest in England, maybe Europe. Apparently it can do 0-100 in 2.5 seconds. We worked out that it has an acceleration of 25 metres per second! The queue was really big though, so we decided not to go on it. We ended up walking along the Cross Valley Pathway back towards Katanga Canyon and decided to have one last go on the Rapids. Which, I got soaked on, thank you. -_-. Because it was late in the afternoon they'd let way more water through, and it was faster and more furious! Way more fun than the first time.
After that we decided we'd pretty much done everything we wanted to do and came home. I'm so tired now! I'm going to bed! Night all ^^