Made my first trip to the hills in a couple of seasons last weekend and I must say I was pretty impressed!
Having not been for a while I didn't know what to really expect. I was pleasantly surprised by how well kept everywhere looked. Considering it's the tail end of the season, the upkeep of the park looked good. All the new signage and paintwork was really vibrant and made the place look nice and up to date. The new signposts dotted about the park are a nice touch too.
Bottom end of the park is a mess and barely worth visiting so I really hope there's plans to redevkop the rattlesnake site as it all looks very sad right now. Wipeout was running well and I prefer the new location of the on ride photo. Also I much prefer the music on wipeout now that it's more themed... although could do with more than 2 songs!
Speaking of music I like that there's atmospheric music dotted around the park now. Noticed it in the Main Street area and also near the safari ride. It's little things like this that make huge differences! Pleasing to see music added at Cannobball's entrance too.
I gave my thoughts on Rootin Tootin in the relevant thread but it's a cracking addition - more of this and less of Hyper Drive please. Waveswinger also makes an impressive entrance feature and you'd never know that TOTC was there thanks to the quality landscaping done there!
F&B was also much improved compared to the past too! Losing Merry Mariner is really no great loss, and the options offered between Smokey Joe's, Sharky's and Bear's Grill were enough to satisfy the group. Plus they were all close enough together to allow us all to buy separately before meeting inside Smokey Joe's to eat!
Marble Madness was fun as ever and I like that it now has on ride photos... As a side note I went on it about 30 mins before ride close and it unfortunately broke down. We were literally 2ft up the lift hill so getting off was no real issue but all the same maintenance were there in less than 2 mins and apparently physically ran to the ride. They were incredibly professional and friendly and I can imagine would be very calming to someone if they were panicked or worried which we fortunately were not. Also after walking out of the ride area there were around 3 more members of staff making sure we were okay! They also gave us all complimentary return tickets to use before season end too which I thought was fantastic!
Basically tl;dr is that I had a great day, the park was really busy and my impression from visiting is that the future can be bright!
I went with a small group of goons who have never visited, and they were all impressed with how cute the park was. Naturally I was very happy about that.
And we also got stuck on Marble Madness, in the brakes above the station, was only there for around 90 seconds but still got free return tickets for all 6 of us! And they even changed the date to 2018 as we won't be able to go back this year.
Wipeout was bloody awful at the start of this year. It didn't smash my head in that bad (and never has) but just rattled the whole way round a bit like saw. Glad to hear it's running well again. The park audio sounds like a good step in the right direction as well. What is music on wipeout now?
The audio has honestly made a massive difference to the atmosphere in the park, I hope they keep and continue to add more so the entire park is covered.
The main area of the park has improved so much with the small things like audio, new signage and entertainment, yet the bottom end looks like it's from an abandoned park...
I cant see much change to the bottom end anytime soon. it could be a big area with many more things added yet withe the chalets over the fence it will probably never happen, they probably love that there is no more snake
The fact they don't open it till mid day says it all, and remember the old plans to cut that end of the park off.. i think that's what they'll end up doing in time, which is a pity
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