Yesterday we went to Thorpe Park Resort! It was so much fun. I went on every single ride apart from the silly ones like the tea-cup ride (branded, of course, with massive Tetley Tea tea-cups) and also the virtual-reality ghost train which Tilly and Mummy went on. They said it was terrifying so I stayed behind (for forty minutes, or until the gift shop lady was getting concerned. I didn’t see that coming).
The first ride we went on was called The Swarm. It was one of my favourites because the seats were really comfortable and it didn’t bash your head around 😉 It took you up a very steep hill, then turned you upside-down and dropped you down while you were upside-down, at speeds of (and I quote) 57 mph and 4.5 times the force of gravity. It was really really fun and quite scary!
The second ride we went on was called Rush. It was a giant swing ride which, when it opened in 2005, was the tallest of its kind ever. Its full height is 75 feet and its top speed of 50 mph! At the top of the swing you feel really strong negative G-forces. Due to the set-up and how gravity works, it’s practically impossible to fall out. I experienced pretty bad vertigo when I got to the top, especially knowing that there’s literally one small bar that goes across you and stops before you even get to your right hip! Still, it was pretty cool 😉
Other rides that we went on included Nemesis and Colossus, two similar rides that went very quickly and turned you upside-down and round and round and were basically super fun.
Probably the most daring of rides that we ventured to go on was Stealth. It takes 2.3 seconds to accelerate from 0 to 80 mph! You see five red lights turn on, on, on, on, on and then GREEN! And wham you’re off. The whole ride in total takes 11 seconds, six or so of which take you up a whopping sixty-two metre top hat hill, and then just DROPS you. You fall and fall and fall until you think you’re going to go wheeling off the tracks, but then it scoops you up and lifts you up a comparatively teensy hill to keep the momentum going until it finishes a couple of seconds later.
After we’d been at the theme park for a good few hours, we saw that the traffic on the motorway was massive as it was rush-hour, so we decided to go to Pizza Express for dinner and return home later. We ordered three massive pizzas to share and then had sweeties in the car home! Yummy!