For my first review blog post I thought I would share something a little different.
With the boom in popularity of steel roller coasters in the late 70's and early 80's, Theme parks around the world were vying to out do one another in having the newest, biggest and best. The start of this in the USA was Magnum XL-200, the worlds first hypercoaster.
This then carried on with rides like Millennium force, Top thrill dragster and arguably concluding with Kingda Ka, the (at the time) tallest and fastest rollercoaster in the world, opened in 2005.
In the UK things panned out a little differently.
The Revolution at Blackpool pleasure beach was Europes first looping steel roller coaster. Built in 1979, it is an Arrow shuttle coaster and made waves across the UK.
One year later, a small park with beautiful gardens built around a dilapidated mansion built the Corkscrew. The bright yellow Vekoma Corkscrew put Alton Towers firmly on the map and started off the coaster wars in the UK.
The third park in this particular war was Drayton Manor. At the time they had just started to install bigger rides and gained their first looping roller coaster in 1984. Whilst other parks in the country were opening new rides at the same time, the choice of these three parks to include in my Blog post will soon become clear.
Alton towers, under new management, had been slowly expanding the parks collection of rides. To be a true theme park however, they would need a signature attraction with an underlying theme and backstory. John Wardley started to look at Arrow Pipeline coasters, but was then taken by the new Batman the ride suspended coaster by the Swiss firm Bollinger and Mabillard. This was the Genesis, of Nemesis.
Pleasure Beach Blackpool also wanted to boost attendance, seeing numbers stolen from them by (relatively)nearby Alton Towers. They then began planning the tallest, steepest and second fastest roller coaster in the world. The Big One.
Drayton Manor, like Alton towers, wanted to make its first big investment and first attack on the other UK theme park players and so invested £4 million into a new, state of the art roller coaster and mini land.
The year is 1994. Britains 3 best rollercoasters are opening this year. The final shots across the bow in the UK war of coasters.
Blackpool had the biggest, most spectacular, record breaking hypercoaster. Alton had the first Inverted roller coaster in Europe, but due to the planning restrictions barely has a drop and doesn't get more than 50ft above the ground. Finally Drayton Manor has Europes first stand-up roller coaster, built by Intamin.
20 Years on.
So now, 20 years on, how do they all stack up?
The Shock Wave, Drayton Manor.