Tuesday 25 February 2014

TowersNerd Feb Half Term (2014) review

15th February 2014

The sun arose and I was ready, ready for my first TowersNerd meet. Despite my slightly awkward greeting of simply saying "Hello" to receive a few confused looks of 'Who the Hell is she?' before explaining myself, it could have gone much worse. After a quick stop off at the ticket office, where I realised how bad my MAP was, we headed towards the rides. Well, until we saw the CBeebies Land construction and decided to take a little looksy, which mainly consisted of everyone looking over the top which I was too small to do, so had to resort to peeking through the holes left at the bottom and pull myself up over the fence to see the squirrels that had had their nuts removed.

Then, Sonic, Well we attempted it, until it broke down and Pete tried to nab a free fasttrack off the ride assistant, he failed. It was however fixed, and we got a go. Then we took a u-turn and headed towards Katanga Canyon to have a go on Runaway Mine Train, but during the journey we found Jollywood, the Moshi Monsters dancing destination, in which King Nemesis won Blue Jeeper's tears. Then after a bit of ChooChoo-ing and a slow run, we got off RMT to find to our amusement child 'Choo Choo' merch in the shop. Then onto Duel where a battle between myself and Coaster ensued to see who could get the highest score, and we came out with a draw of a minute 23,700 points each. Next, after King Nemesis had a reprimand from Stretchy for ruining the childrens' fun, we did Sub-Terra, then we practically walked onto Nemmy and air, and took a walk to Pizza Pasta for lunch.

After Lunch, the plan was Marauders Mayhem, but for some reason (which I was immensely grateful for, given the amount of Pizza I had) headed on into Sealife instead where Morgan had a slight disagreement with an Octopus, and had to visit medical. Sealife it self was, well, Sealife. After, we headed over to the medical tent to fetch Morgan and see if he needed hospital admission, turns out t'was but a stratch, so we continued on to have a near-death experience on Charlie due to the boat behind us trying to kill us by gradually getting closer and closer, before heading on over to Ice Age, where upon I discovered after hearing stories of Coaster in Blackpool that he was bi (which he denied?). We then proceeded to head back to Nemesis to find only 3 rows were running on one train, so decided to Duel it instead, taking 2 goes this time. The competition between Coaster and myself was rediscovered, and after thrashing him the first time (18,900 to 31,800) I gave him a few more points on the second time (22,000 to 27,000) only to be beaten by Pete who had 32,800.


Finally, we decided that despite the number of rows running Nemesis would be a good finale. So, after joining the queue, and seeing the new restraints on the train in the maintenance shed (which once I got home and looked at TN Live realised had been spotted the first time around many hours before), discussing the ways to paint deathly hallows symbols on the track and being blanked by my brother we got onto Nemmy again which at this point had 4 rows operating rather than the 3 that were operating before. After this, we headed back to Towers Street and poked our noses into Towers Trading, where I got very excited by all the new Oblivion merchandise, especially the bag. After this we started on the trek to the Hotels where I admitted my music tastes and my dislike of beer which allegedly has made me fall in the opinions of some. Once at the hotel, we sat in the Dragon Bar where I met my brother (who had been abandoned by his Towers Street lot) and in the end had to say a sad goodbye to everyone. 

TowersStreet North Meet (2013) review

Just found this on my computer, and after checking on the forum realised how late this is for it. Turns out the trip itself was the 13th-14th of July last year.... Ummm, but thought I should post it nonetheless.

I started the day at a fairly reasonable time, given the 1 hour distance between Flamingoland and my home, resulting in us, somehow being the first there. Luckily my brother managed to recognise some of the TowersStreeters, or else we would have been stood outside the entrance all day long.

We rode Mumbo Jumbo first, which I do love apart from that stupid hang time which as you may have guessed I have learnt to hate, I like the faster roller coasters over slow inverting roller coasters (yes call me strange if you have to, I’m used to it by now, and this won’t be the last time you will, I assure you).  After that, we were on to Flip Flop (as the later TSers rode Mumbo Jumbo), which as much as I like the quirky theming with the water bursting out of funnels, and a beached shark included, oh and not to forget the silly little forehead-rests on the restraints, I find the ride itself extremely nauseating, this I find not during the actual sequence, but in the slowing down at the end. Then we met those later TSers and all bundled into the Kumali queue, resulting in a few murmured introductions, something about Pirelli tyres and I’m sure a lot of other nonsense that I wouldn’t want to bore you with. I think the general consensus of Kumali was simply “Ow”, for some it was the head, for me personally it was my shoulders and my back. Then we took a wander around the front of the park, passing Hero (in test mode) as we went, which was still causing Mark, who had never been to the north before, to be absolutely flabbergasted by the Health and Safety in Yorkshire. Then, onto Zooom! Which continued to spark discussions all day, with it’s ridiculous number of vowels, and strange need for punctuation within the name. The ride itself was immensely underwhelming, to the point that I think the most satisfied rider was Will, whose satisfaction was down to purely gaining yet another credit. What’s next? Ahh Velocity, on which I think I suitably astounded Will, with my claims of the roughness being at a minimal level, to which I got a reply which consisted of the words ‘personal airbags’, and I was no longer trusted as an accurate judge of roughness, especially after claiming my ride on Furius Baco (at Port Aventura in Spain) was fairly smooth.

Lunch was spent in a dark place where we ate sandwiches that to Will’s misery did not contain Bacon, enough of that and we’ll move onto Little Monsters, by far the best ride in the park for me, it is thrilling and intense beyond all levels, and was only improved by the fact that the UV light made everyone’s teeth glow, and Will’s look of utter disgust and underwhelmment (not sure that’s a word, but ummm, ahh well) throughout the entire ride. After this we moved onto the new area which goes by the name of ‘Dino-stone park’, which contains a few ‘exciting’ Zamperlas. Twistosaurus was our first port of call, on which we had frankly beautiful renditions of ‘We love you Roland, we do’ and ‘Should have bought a Mack’. We had a particularly memorable moment on Dino Roller when a train packed of fully grown ‘children’ caused the train to struggle up the lift hill and roll back into the station, where we were then reprimanded and told that we had to have one-per-car. Pterodactyl was particularly amusing for me, as all but Will and I managed to find a seat, we were preparing to wait in the queue when the ride assistant informed us there was a seat free, so as Will had been left to sit on his own a number of times I opted to take the seat myself and laugh at him being alone again. On sitting in my seat Sam decided to follow suit of a previous (not too bad looking) rider and take his top off and then proceeded to ask me to follow his example, after a quick “No” from me and a shout of “SHE’S SIXTEEN!” from Hayden, whilst I was still laughing at the request, a sheepish looking Sam then apologised. Half of us then decided to have a go on Sky Flyer where I amused both Hayden and the half that had remained on the ground by screaming the words “I’m going to die” for the entirety of the ride. After an attempt to go on The Lost River Ride we saw the queue and decided to head off to eat instead.

The evening meal at the Harvester was an eye opener for me, as I had never dined at a Harvester before. The moments that stood out for me were Sam and Will ringing us to inform us all that they were going the wrong way and after 5 postcodes being created by us all we finally googled to find the correct postcode so they could join us for what turned out to be a delightful meal. I recall commenting on Sam’s brother-like abilities much to the amusement of Will and finally when Sam and I decided to share a sundae, this turned out to be buying separate sundaes and giving them to others to finish off.

The next day dawned and Lightwater Valley was next on the Menu. Me and my brother had arrived, and although I had added a few from the meet on Facebook, I had neglected to get their numbers and we realised fairly quickly that we would have no idea where they were, it turned out that someone had overslept. After waiting… a while for everyone to arrive my brother left me to sit on a bench by myself looking like a loner whilst he went to greet everyone.  Once everyone had arrived and I had grumped a suitable amount of time, we began the rides.

Raptor attack seemed to be the first port of call and was, as Raptor attack generally is, quite a calming little ride with dinosaurs eating professors featured. Then, I don’t think anything would do but a quick ride on The Ultimate, where I decided to go for a safe start to the day of gripping on, and the photo of my ‘flame hair’ amused Mark greatly. A few more rides of the Ultimate did feature, especially at the end of the day when we re-rode a couple of times, and throughout the day I gradually worked up the courage, firstly beginning with no hands but eventually got to the point of no hands and eyes closed, which is amazingly fun, but I had a few bruises for a week or two. The Pirate area impressed a fair few and we took a couple of goes on The Black Pearl which consisted of a few yelps and screams from me on one side and laughter from everyone else on the other side over the amusement of my ‘hair time’ (I blame John for starting that).  Lunch was well… It could be worse, the offering at Lightwater Valley I have to admit is fairly poor, and I feel I made the best choice I could by opting for the chicken nuggets which admittedly could have been much worse.
After trying the chair swings and having a good old chat about Eurovision, we headed up to Eagles claw for a run around from the exit, back into the queue line a couple of times and then, THEN we headed to the highlight of the day for me, Eagle’s Creek Farm! Oh my god, it was beyond brilliant, the entire ride I was dancing to the frankly brilliant and amazing tune that I do not under any circumstances have on my phone. Other than that, nothing of too much note took place to my recollection.


I did learn a few things from this trip. My brother’s username CGM are not merely initials, the Harvester in York is not posh enough to have a dispenser for both ice and water (they opted for ice instead) and finally, and most importantly I do believe, Animal dubstep does exist.

Monday 24 February 2014

The battle of the Forums

Oh dear, I really haven't posted in a while have I? Or kept up to my name of 'Theme Park Girl' I'll stop the mopey teenage stuff and try and stick to the topic now.

So, onto the post. As I have said in previous posts, I am a member of a few forums based around Alton Towers, I have now gone on meets with two of them. To begin with, last July I went on a TowersStreet meet up here in t' North, as my brother was going and my parents wouldn't allow me to go on a meet until I had been on one with my brother. We went to both Flamingoland and Lightwater Valley over two days (a day at each) and ate out together on the Saturday night too, and it was brilliant, some of them I got on with so well, such as Sam, oh Sam we spent the entire time pointing out good looking males to each other, and Will who was cynical about everything and we left to go by himself on nearly every ride, Ben who was such a child at heart, Hayden who was sweet and funny and Mark who again was absolutely lovely, like just a straight down honest to god lovely guy. So, after meeting all these lovely people who I'd got on with so well, I didn't really want to only meet them this once. I resolved as I still had TowersNerd who I wanted to go on meets with to alternate the coinciding events between the two forums. So, Feb Half-term with one, opening day with the other, and then any non-coinciding meets I could just go on. The next meet was Blackpool, which I unfortunately missed as I was at an open day, but according to my brother, I was missed, especially by Sam who was allegedly pining for me :(

This was all well and good, until a couple of weeks ago when I went on my first TowersNerd meet, and it was great and I mean really really great, they were all lovely, I got on with them and laughed and joked and just generally had a good time. Some of them I didn't really talk to, but after they'd accepted my friend request and liked some things on Facebook I've put that down to being shy. The whole event was full of humour and laughter and, oh it really was just great. So great in fact that I realised I didn't want to miss a single meet with them if I could help it. Now, this left me in a dilemma, I loved this meet-up, but could I not do any meets with TowersStreet and leave Sam pining for me again? I was debating over this for a few days, uuuntil I realised that sometimes TowersStreet do both Saturday and Sunday for their meets whereas TowersNerd only did the Saturday, so maybe neither would be too offended if I did the Saturday with the Nerds and then the Sunday with TowersStreet. Of course, I may not be free every time to do both days of a weekend, but if not then I am content with just visiting with Da Nerdzzz (I have no idea where that came from, but I cannot bring myself to delete it now) :)

Over and out for now :)

Tuesday 25 June 2013

Could my dream come true?...

A while ago now, I wrote about how down I was feeling about missing an opportunity with the Ginetta Juniors scholarship, well I may now have found a way to resolve this issue. I have after a lot of google-ing found another scholarship which I could possibly enter, with no upper age limit. It's a scholarship with Team Hard (I know, the team name has amazed me for a few years now, it's beyond amazing) for the VW racing cup. Now, as I said I love the name Team hard, but even better than that, my favourite BTCC driver, Tom Onslow-Cole drives for them this season. So, onto the scholarship itself, it's £299 for the whole thing, but that's still more than £400 less than the other one. Plus, as my parents have spent so much money on me this year, I don't want them to pay for this, they've offered, but as I'm finally getting a job (hopefully), I should be able to pay for it myself, which would make it all even more important to me.

In the first round, you get 2 lots of 15 minutes worth of driving, and get assessed on your media interaction on and off camera, and also get a fitness assessment and training programme by Tony Gilham (ex-Cage fighter-turned-race-driver who founded Team Hard). This is then increased to 2 lots of 30 minutes of driving, being assessed on things like car control, smoothness of gear-changes, ability to take criticism and use it to improve your driving etc.. the media interaction is then tested in what sounds like a similar, but obviously more scrutinising way. The thing is, even if I don't get through to the second round then I'll still get constructive criticism and help with my driving.

AGH! Driving, I can't wait until my 17th, it's only 32 days away now! I've told my brother that we're going karting before my 17th though, which i am also incredibly excited about. You see, my parents haven't let me go karting incase I got too obsessed with motorsport.. well that worked :) So, I think they've finally given in. I think I'm waaaay too obsessed as it is, so I doubt I can over-step the line anymore, I mean I've never sat in a car, but I know how to heel-toe, I watch videos of people driving around tracks and pretend that I've got a wheel, flappy-paddle gears and pedals. If I can't drive very well, then I'll just be very busy working on it during the summer.

So yeah, that's what I'm concentrating on now, as well as school obviously. I'll maybe blog soon :)

Tuesday 16 April 2013

Breakdown

As I'm sure some of you will have come to realise, I love motorsport, particularly F1 and BTCC. I went to watch a couple of BTCC races last season, and they have a lot of support races, one of which is the Ginetta Junior Championship, and I came to support a couple of the drivers, Charlie Robertson and Sennan Fielding stood out, and these two have both moved on to Formula 4 now. Tonight I came across both of their new websites, Sennan posted his on Facebook, and Charlie's was on twitter the other day, but looking at these brought this to life for me. Now I think I'll need to take you on a journey (a metaphorical one) into the past.

Last summer, I was going to be going to a Manchester United football camp, but then, advertised in a BTCC programme, was the Ginetta Junior Scholarship, a full scholarship to a season in the Ginetta Junior Championship. I jumped at the chance, a chance to be in motorsport without ridiculous amounts of money needed to be spent. We cancelled the booking on the Man Utd camp, but just before booking into the scholarship I got cold feet, it would still cost £700, and I'd never driven any vehicle, I didn't want to waste that £700, so we didn't book it.

Looking at Sennan's and Charlie's websites today just made me lose it, I'd let go of my one big chance last summer. What if I don't get another chance? What if I'm a natural? If I'd have taken the chance and won, I would have already done my first race and would be preparing for my second.

This determination to be in motorsport is causing my biggest fear at the moment though. I still haven't to this day driven anything other than a dodgem, I've never been karting, trust me I've wanted to, but I've never been allowed. My birthday is 101 days away now (almost into double figures!!), and although it's something that I've been waiting for for my entire life, and I'm getting very impatient, I'm terrified by it. What if I'm not a good driver? What if I can;t get my head around it? Then I'd have to give up my dream, I couldn't possibly pursue a career in driving if I can't naturally drive, no matter the number of lessons it needs to be natural. This will just keep building up the closer that I get to my birthday too.

Sorry, I just needed to get this off my chest, and this seemed to be a good place to do it.

Friday 29 March 2013

A trip to the airport...

I've just been on my ski trip. Yey! It was 41 boys, 6 sixth form girls and 6 teachers. I was obviously one of the sixth form girls.
We woke up bright and early at around 6ish to arrive at school for 7:15, and once we were there we were off. The hour coach journey to Leeds didn't take too long, funnily enough it took an hour. The airport was taken over by all of us, in the clearly permanent Jet2 terminal that had walls that moved from the air conditioning blowing on them. After that the day went swimmingly. It started with a 5 hour wait in the terminal due to delays, and then the plane was ironically cancelled due to snow, or so we thought. We later learnt that the plane was loaded with our bags and was safe, as was the runway, but the crew weren't available. Annoyed is not the word. So after that, we collected our bags, and the teachers arranged for us to get a plane two days later and for some of the money to be refunded. So, we sat and waited for the coach, which would take about an hour to get there. We ended up having to wait over 2 hours, as our coach broke down. Yey! So all grumbling we get on the coach, we travel for 20 minutes then have to transfer to a different coach as ours broke down, another break down.. Yey! So, yeah I would say that trip was very successful and everybody had a lot of fun. Well done Leeds Bradford Airport, you know how to deliver an enjoyable holiday.

Saturday 16 March 2013

My first open day

The title says it all... Today, I have been to my first university open day... YEY!! :D I still cannot believe that the time has FINALLY come around... I have been looking at universities for 6 to 7 years now... I knew my way around the UCAS website perfectly when I was in year 7, so to think that this is actually happening is slightly scary, but soooooo exciting :D
Today was amaazing though, I went to look at Royal Holloway, and oh my god, it was sooo much more than I dreamed it would be. The Victorian building was just as stunning as it looked in the pictures, but I wasn't drawn in by that to give up having a kitchen for a year. I loved the look of the building, but I want to be able to choose what I eat, and I couldn't put up with not being able to bake whenever I feel like it. Plus, the rooms were teenie, as in smaller than my pitiful excuse for a bedroom, so I have multiple excuses. Aaaand, the other modern accommodation looked beaaautiful, there's a little wood thing next to them, and I think that you'll be able to see the Victorian building from it too, and It's self-catered woop!
Ok, onto important things, such as the course. Eeeee, it looked ah-maaaazing... I couldn't find the areas that the lecturers specialised in on the website, but the one who was giving us a tour.. Dr. Tony Stead? .. anyway, him... He was a plant biologist! :D AND so were others there... It's like my perfect dream of a university with specialists in plant biology! It will take a lot to beat it I think... But, this is MAJOR motivation for my summer exams now... COME ON ZOE!
Ok, yeah, I'm excited, and I absolutely adore the look of it :) I'll sign off now and calm down.. but... Eeeeeeee! :D