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Back from Whitby

April 19, 2006 at 11:47 pm · Filed under Chaff

We spent a long weekend in Whitby visiting Kate’s relatives. Had a great time as always, but its damn tiring. We got in late last night and were both back at work today. Most of the time was spent pottering around Whitby but on the Monday we went to Flamingo Land, which is a Theme Park and Zoo about 20 miles south of Whitby, with some of our nieces and nephews.

We went on the Wild Mouse ride first which we foolish thought would be a nice slow ride for the kids to enjoy. Hmmmm… we had one who’d nearly knocked themselves out on the side of one of the carriages, another who burst into tears as soon as the ride started to descend and another who was almost threw up and ended up with a nose bleed. We decided after that to take them on gentler rides and they loved it.

Its a bit of an odd place. On first impressions I wasn’t exactly blown away and if you’ve been to somewhere like Alton Towers then the theme park doesn’t really compare. Parts of the park are really old and need overhauling, but it looks like thats exactly what they’re doing, with new areas and replacements of old rides. In a few years time I reckon it’ll be pretty impressive.

The zoo was great (Lynx’s are odd looking cats) and I was impressed with how they’d combined the water ride (Lost River) with the lion enclosure. The highlight for me was watching the meerkats fighting! Vicious little buggers.

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Bal said,

April 20, 2006 @ 10:03 am

Haha, I like the description of the first ride, poor kids. =) Guess the name “Wild Mouse” is a bit ambiguous as to what the ride is like. Did you let them play with the meerkats and lynx’s afterwards? ;)

Paul said,

April 20, 2006 @ 11:47 am

Here’s what it looks like:

It looked ok to us, but it fairly shifts on the way down and the curves at the top are pretty sharp. There are cameras on the ride and the photos afterwards looked like we’d tortured them :).

I was thinking about nabbing a meerkat but when I saw their teeth I thought I’d give it a miss! The kids were more interested in the baboons and why they had red arses… “Uncle Paul, that monkey has a red bum, is it coz he scratches it too much?”

Bal said,

April 20, 2006 @ 1:32 pm

Hehe, damn kids. =)
Then again, I know I’m horrible on those kinds of rides, it takes alot of convincing to get me on one in the first place. Unfortunatly for me, my girlfriend loves that kind of stuff… ¬__¬

Paul said,

April 20, 2006 @ 1:48 pm

I’m not a big fan either. I have to go on one quickly, otherwise if I’m kept waiting too long I change my mind. Kate’s worse than me, which is good!

Us grown ups were going to go on one called the Cork Screw. We were sat in the ride waiting, strapped in and everything, when one of the lads running it walked past and said “Is it safe?”

Apparently the Cock Screw is over 20 years old and gets up to about 40mph, I didn’t want to be on something that didn’t stop. We had people on the ride taking about it being like Final Destination 3!

After which a manager turned up and turfed us off it whilst they fixed it. I overhead them talking about brake problems! That put me off going on any rides for the rest of the day.

Bal said,

April 21, 2006 @ 12:42 pm

Yeah actually while I was at the hotel in Bruges, I was watching TV (still don’t have any at home) and there was this documentary about the highest roller coaster in the US, it was this giant thing that would send you up really high, and then you’d fall back down on the other side. They had so many problems when building it, and the ride kept fucking up with the dummies, it would go almost all the way up, but then slide back down backwards on the same side, was freaky, definatly convinced me never to get talked into to getting on one of those evil contraptions. =D

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