Blackpool's quirky coasters

Pleasure beach Blackpool has an awful lot of history:

Since the industrial revolution, the people living in the cities travelled on the new railway network to get away from the polluted, busy, smelly, dirty centres.

They travelled to the countryside, to see the beautiful unspoiled hills of the Peak District, for example. Visited country houses and their landscaped and flowered gardens. This is originally how Alton Towers got onto the tourist map.

They also travelled to the seaside. Brighton in the south, Great Yarmouth in the East and Blackpool in the North West. The salty sea air was considered healthy, an everyone could enjoy paddling in the shallows of the sea, eating ice cream and enjoying the promenade.

The pleasure beach made profit from the captive audience by offering sideshows, fun houses, parades and thrill rides to the masses.

Pleasure beach Blackpool is in the middle of the town, stuck between the seafront, hotels and housing estates. It cannot expand, this means rides there are one of two things; historic or removed and repurposed.

The historic rides in Blackpool, I think are what makes it so special, no other place in the world is there such an eclectic mix of roller coasters. And they are packed in tight! Here is my thoughts on the more quirky roller coasters Blackpool has to offer.

The Big Dipper.

In many ways this is just a classic wooden roller coaster that is approaching a century old. An out and back layout, Art Deco style station and large, upholstered, creaky trains that rattle their way down the track. However there are a few things that set it on the far side of quirky. It has a very tight turn out of the station. So tight that the metal wheels have to skid diagonally along the well greased rails in order to navigate the turn. It then has a small shallow lift hill (with no clickety clack of an anti rollback dog) and a turn right then left to start you up the main lift hill (which is a continuation of the chain from the first lift hill but in the opposite direction, confusing).

If the first turn out of the station didn't worry you, the next bit will. At the top of the lift is the same tight turn that has to be skidded around, but this time you are high in the air on an Art Deco monument. After the turn at the top, the layout is pretty much standard out and back with the added interest of intertwining with all the other rides along the way.

One of the rides it intertwines with is the Steeplechase.

The Steeplechase is a health and safety nightmare. Three tracks of single rail roller coaster "jumping" over hedges and fences, racing the other two participants in your very own horse race. The vehicles which transport you on this race are basically carousel horses bolted to wheels attached precariously to the rail. This wouldn't happen in America. Riders get on and there is no lap bar, no over the shoulder restraints, no ankle locks, just a seatbelt. There are stirrups for your feet and handles to hold onto. You never really go fast enough for it to be dangerous if you are following the regular instructions of no standing up, hold on at all times. But this ride seems like it's just a way of making sure people use common sense so they don't die and in this race against two other riders, it's not the winning, or the taking part, but the getting to the end that counts.

Revolution.

For a large number of people over a certain age in the north of England, this will be the first looping roller coaster they went on. It is an early arrow shuttle loop and differs from schwarzkopf shuttle loops in that it is launched both ways, there is a reason for this.

To ride Revolution, first you must climb about 8 flights of stairs. The ride, perched atop an arching latticework of steel must have looked very futuristic 30 years ago.

The ride course is thus: launch, drop out of the station, loop, hill to second platform, repeat.

Loud speakers announce that this is the most thrilling ride experience of your life. It isn't.

So I bet you are wondering, why launch out of the station straight into a drop, well, launch is a very loose term, to say I have seen cruise ships accelerate faster might be unfair however after a long hiatus of not riding it, (and riding Stealth, Rita, rock'n'rollercoaster) the launch wasn't a launch. It is barely faster than kicker wheels, which is why you need to climb so high to have the drop to get round the loop.

I find it very interesting that a loop was all the ride (at the time) needed to make it popular and ground breaking, yet I feel shuttle loops from schwarzkopf have a lot more to offer in terms of thrills and ride completeness.

The Grand National.

Much has been said about the fact that the grand national is a möbius loop roller coaster (one continuous track with two loading stations, but asides from entering a different side of the station to the one you left, it doesn't make a difference to the ride. The ride is however, great. Starting off with a double-down first drop with both trains head to head, it is bunny hills intersperse with flat turns. The turns at the start are slow, so the train on the inside slowly creeps past the other, but as the ride continues, those turns are taken faster and faster until by the end you are flying past the other train at the corner. This is how racing roller coasters should be, the speed, intensity and rivalry building towards the end of the ride. It's a great ride!

The Wild Mouse

Uncomfortable, brutal, painful, unsafe, absurd. All these words can be used to describe the wooden wild mouse. Incredible, intense, unique is how I would describe it.

For those who played Rollercoaster Tycoon and stared baffled at the Virginia reel and side friction coaster wondering which century did these contraptions originate, the wooden wild mouse looks exactly like it did in the game, from the lattice woodwork down to the little mouse shaped cars careening around the corners leaning precariously all the way.

It's not often you get a "mind your head" sign on a ride, let alone whilst you are climbing the lift hill of a roller coaster. And this isn't a theming element, directly after you have to duck to miss the track passing over you.

The wild mouse has it's quotient of box turns, taken more violently than a steel wild mouse, with the cars leaning out of every turn. The drops are just as violent as the turns, plummeting downwards and invariably you leave your seat (and there is only a very loose seatbelt). The reverse side to this is at the bottom of the drops you return to earth with a bump.

The wild mouse is intense, it is painful. It is out of control and unique. It is one of my favourite rides in the world, even if I do come off with bruises!

The Coaster wars in the UK, 20 years on.

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.

Hindsight is 20/20. Stand up roller coasters are uncomfortable and do not allow you to experience the same forces as regular sit down roller coasters. That combined with awkward restraints and slow to load times and you can guess I am not that enamored with this coaster as it stands.

After boarding the trains climb the lift, there is a three stage first drop, the pre drop, a curving banked drop to the left which then straightens and steepens. I like this however there is no perceptible airtime whatsoever. Following the drop is a vertical loop with plenty of hang time, then a zero-G roll (the only heartlined inversion on ANY stand up rollercoaster) which again provides hang time combined with strange rotation dynamics due to the heartline being far above your feet, this is magnified whilst stood in an outside seat. Two corkscrews follow and then a high speed slightly banked run back to the station which is my favorite part of the ride. Being stood up and rushing towards a building where another train is boarding and not having the brakes hit until you are inside the building. It's a fun ending to a ride that was relatively smooth, but short and frankly underwhelming and due to the restraints, uncomfortable.

The Big One, Pleasure Beach Blackpool

The Big One was built to impress, and it does look impressive. Its is an architectural monument, as recognizable as Blackpool Tower, further down the strip. Unfortunately, in many respects this is style over substance.

Leaving the station you climb the 213ft lift hill, offering amazing views of Blackpool and the Irish sea, If you look behind on a clear day you can also see the Lake district. The first drop is interesting, dropping steeply and banking right over to the right, so far infact that it has to bank back to the left midway down the drop. Its fast, and a little rough, but manageable. It then pulls out of the drop and goes up the first hill, but its a shallow incline, followed by a shallow drop at the other side. There is a great sense of speed near the bottom of the hills, but little to no airtime at all. There follows a turn-around, high in the air designed without the aid of computers showing what force there will be. It is hideously overbanked and leaves riders hanging out of the cars doing what seems like 10mph, 100ft above the arcades and fun houses that adorn the rest of the pleasure beach. after a couple more hills and the mid course brake run, there is a helix which starts out slow and builds in speed before a diving drop into a tunnel which has to be the highlight of the ride. The Big One is a good ride, but only because of the lack of Hypercoasters in the UK, compare it to GE-force or Silver star and it is tame and ill thought out in comparison.

Nemesis, ALton Towers

There are many reasons that Nemesis is world class.

The queue wanders down into a hole blasted into the side of the hill (one of the fixes on the building restrictions) there are rivers of 'blood' cascading down around you and coagulating in a lake at the bottom of the hole. Eerie music plays. Not a bad start.

The floor drops and you ascend the lift hill, not straying far from the hillside, a pre-drop and banking drop to the left leads into what seems like a 20ft straight drop which inexplicably gives the train enough energy to fly around a corkscrew. The best helix in the world then follows, high G force, skimming a fence, close to the ground before dropping slightly under a path then climbing up, over the station in a zero-g roll. A wingover then leads to the lowest point of the ride, just above the blood lake where a forceful vertical loop awaits. Another stall turn over the midway then drops down into a tunnel with a lightning quick corkscrew at the end of it. Nemesis is forceful and super smooth. Its themeing is great and it interacts beautifully with the landscape. It really is a masterpiece.