Alton Towers

It has been a pretty eventful couple of days. After work on Thursday, I went to the New Yorker bar and had a pint of beer and a plate of chips and cheese with my friend Joe. Then I went home and got ready for the trip. I left home at around half past ten to meet Alan and Jackie at the Golden Gates, a pub I had never been to before despite it being only about a block from work. It wasn't a bad place, but quite small and very much a kind of 'local' pub, where everyone knew everyone else. I was supposed to meet the others at around eleven, but I got a message saying there had been a change of plan, and so I ended up meeting them at the New Yorker at eleven just as they were calling out last orders. We went to a bar a couple of doors along from the New Yorker, called Jock's Lodge, which was also shutting down, and the bar immediately next to the New Yorker (the Limelite) was already shut, and so we went back to the Golden Gates. I had already had a bottle of Budweiser while waiting for them, and because we were about to spend hours on coach, I really didn't want to drink anything else, but Alan and Jackie drank a couple of pints each, and spent the hour before we were about to depart dashing to and from the nearest toilet. The coach departed from the office car park at one in the morning. Although not many people from work had booked on the trip, the amount of friends and various relations raised the numbers. The coach ride went fairly smoothly. We had two stops along the way. The first was just for about quarter of an hour for people to go to the toilet and stretch their legs or whatever. The second was about forty-five minutes (or at least it was supposed to be, it was actually more like an hour and a half). In the service station, I bought myself a bowl of Weetabix and a cup of coffee (it was a complete rip-off though at £4.25).

We arrived at Alton Towers at about half past eight, an hour before the park was due to open. Alan, Jackie and myself hung around for the rest of the day with a couple of women (who were both named Heather). The first ride we went on was called Oblivion "The World's First Vertical Rollercoaster" (according to the sign). Basically, you sit in the car and it trundles up this very steep, very high ramp, and then the track makes this vertical drop into a large dark hole, and the car suspends you looking straight down for a couple of seconds and then you drop into the hole, which is full of smoke and pitch black before your whisked along the track and end up back where you started. The whole thing takes about twenty seconds. After that, we went on a rollercoaster called 'Rita: Queen of Speed' which accelerates from 0 to 100 miles per hour in seconds. Then we went on a rollercoaster called Corkscrew which basically twists and turns along and upside-down. We went on a ghost-train ride called 'Duel' where the carts had kind of light guns fitted to them and when the ghosts and things appeared you shot at them. That was fun. We went on a flume ride, four of us in a kind of bathtup thing along slides and foaming water, we all got wet, but Jackie, who was sitting in the front was absolutely drenched and not happy. I wasn't too bad because my coat was waterproof. Probably my favourite ride was one called 'Air', a rollercoaster where you sit in a chair and then they drop the floor from your feet and swing the chair back and then your suspended so your like lying on your front and it heads off really high and you can see everything elow you, and your twisted around until your on your back and your on the side, the idea is that it's like you are flying. I am terrified of heights and I was very reluctant to go on it, but I actually found it extremely exhilirating. We had lunch at a Pizza Hut and then went on to white water dinghy ride, which was fun. We also went on a ride called 'Hex', which starts off with this long video introduction about a cursed tree, and then your in a seat in this room where the seat shakes and the walls spin around, it actually messes around with your head a bit. Then we went on a ride based around Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where the book's story was told through a range of animated videos and animatronic models and you go on a boat ride and a kind of simulator thing. It wasn't really a thrill ride, but it was fun. The bus took us back at around a quarter to six, and we had one stop on the way back for about forty five minutes, where we had a Burger King. We got back to the office at around ten past midnight, and I got back home at about half past. It was a good day, but very tiring!