Sunburn, Hamsters & Soakings: F-Crew @ Thorpe Park

Sunburn, Hamsters & Soakings: F-Crew @ Thorpe Park by Eddie July 29, 2002

It is a simple question, but one that has baffled scientists for months. What happens when you take 
a group of 6 Planetarion alliance HC and place theme into a theme park? Would they be able to cope
with the socialising required? Would they be able to go a whole day with very little talk of
Planetarion, and actually seem like normal people? And perhaps most importantly, would Wakey end
up in the rapids? These were the all important questions that a group of us set out to answer on a
hot sunday in July.

The guinea pigs: Eddie, DoUrden, Wakey, Mike, Pelleon, Bazz and Lavis [another Farnborough
export]. Arriving at the park around 10:15, I was quickly greeted by DoUrden and then introduced to
the rest of the gang. Any images that I had built up of these people in the past year were quickly
shattered in the course of about ten seconds. However, there was little time for idle chatting at the
start as bazz and Wakey were on a mission, one of getting all of us onto the worlds first 10 loop
rollercoaster, Collosus, the newest attraction of the park.

Bravely we all headed off and joined the queue, which was around an hour long. The time was filled
with around half casual conversation, and around half mutterings of how crazy we were to even be
queuing for this thing. We were getting closer and closer to the front of the queue, when all of a
sudden the ride, very unfortunately, broke down. Saved by the bell so to speak. We were issued
tickets on the way out for a quick re-entry to the ride later on when it re-opened, something that
some of us wasn't sure was a good or bad thing.

Not detered by this bad luck, we headed on over to Tidal Wave, another new ride at the park, that is
basically a 90 foot drop, at a speed that throws a ton of water into the air, which of course all lands
back on the riders, hence the name. After a queue nearing 90 minutes, we finally made it to the ride
itself. Whilst this didn't seem particularly fun at the time, probably because I'd never been on
anything similar before, looking back it was actually pretty fun, although I fear I may have warped
any small children behind me with my expletives on the way down. To say we were wet after this
was an understatement, something demonstrated when bazz removed his park map from his pocket,
opened it, when it proceeded to fall to pieces.

The next stop of the day was Burger King, something we all enjoyed on a bench outside, in some
kind of attempt to let the sun dry us off. It seemed to work very well though, as the only sign we'd
even been wet was the large quantities of water left on the benches when we left. Of course, after
this, we of course headed to another water ride, the Rumba Rapids. Rather tame in comparison to
Tidal Wave, we still managed to get slightly wet.

After this the fateful return to Collosus arrived. However, by this time, myself, Mike, Pell and Lavis
were all having some rather large doubts, and agreed that Wakey, bazz and Dou should head on
alone, while the rest of us would find enough excitement in just watching the others. However, Dou
returned a couple of minutes later, informing us that he couldn't get into the seat properly, and as
such wasn't allowed to go on the ride. This just left Wakey and bazz, who came off raving about how
great it was. Suffice to say we wasn't particularly convinced.

This was immediately followed by a trip to X:\No Way Out, a backwards, indoors, in darkness with
strobe lighting rollercoaster. The others joined the queue while I made use of the facilities, and by
the time I returned they were already near the front of the queue, so rather than queue jump, I
bought a bottle of ice cold coke and awaited their exit. I considered this a good decision when they
exited with bazz looking slightly icky and Pell complaining of headaches because of it.

By this time we hadn't been wet again for a couple of hours, and so it was obviously time to head to
Logger's Leap, the ride with the longest queue in the park, somewhere in the region of 90 minutes.
Wakey assured us that this would be tame before the ride, only once we were on it did he decide to
inform that not only did it feature one drop in the dark, but that it was also the tallest log flume in
the country. To make matters worse, bazz decided that rocking the boat from side to side would add
to the fun, something Wakey also took part in. Combine this with the fact that the boat was so
cramped I was virtually sitting on top of Lavis [don't worry Andrea, I didn't enjoy it], and this fast
became one of the least fun parts of the day, although it was easy to laugh about afterwards.

The day was drawing to a close by now, and so we enjoyed an ice cream in the shade before heading
across to Thorpe Farm on the Canada Creek railway, which was rather relaxing. We walked straight
through the farm and headed to the ferry jetty to make a return to the main park, largely because
leaving Dou anywhere near sheep isn't a great idea. After a quick look round Model World, which has
supposedly to scale replicas of world landmarks, it was time to head home. We said our goodbyes
and that was that.

Unfortunately no one did actually bring a camera [well, Mike did, but left it in the car], so we have no
pictures from the day [trust me, thats a good thing]. All in all it was a highly enjoyable day all round,
despite the immense amounts of tiredness, pain and sunburn that has followed. But perhaps most
importantly of all, we proved that Planetarion players can leave their PCs for more than a couple of
hours and actually enjoy themselves, even in the company of each other.