Finally back! I've been on a break over closed season as it was a lot of stress starting a new year at school and getting into my gcse's. With no parks open over closed season, i thought it was the best time to rest before I started writing again.
In Easter I headed up to Lincolnshire with my family and we spent a day out in Skegness including a few hours in Fantasy Island. First of all, Odyssey and Millennium are great coasters and so smooth for their age! Obviously Odyssey is an SLC so it's expected it will hurt, but all the rides I've had on it were great. Both are definitely not top UK coasters, but if it's not too much of a journey it's definitely worth the trip up to this park to ride both Vekomas.
Rhombus Rocket is a great family coaster and its so intense for its small height restriction, and then the crazy caterpillar is the same as any other theme park wacky worm and looks just as out of place as any other ride. I've never done Jellikins but it looks a lot more themed than any of the other coasters, so there's that. Volcano and Starflyer are great flats that are definitely unique in the UK but to me the standout flat ride at this park is Magic. It's got such an insanely long cycle of 3-6 minutes, great throughput for a flat ride and it's just generally really fun, especially the first time.
I don't know if I've mentioned it before but I LOVE the pyramid in the centre of the park đ. The way each ride or attraction layers over the others; it feels like everywhere you look there's rides. The theming of this indoor area feels very much like that of a European park. From the beautiful lighting to wonderfully decorated ride vehicles and entrances all of the indoor area of this park is just beautiful. Speaking of the indoor area, we finally got on The Guardian for the first time this trip and.... eh, it wasn't great. The queueline and holding room were themed very well with no particularly visible unthemed areas. It seems the queue had been taken from a disused part of a Fear Island maze or maze queue with there being stocks in the queue with #FearIsland printed on.
After about a 5 minute wait in the holding room (a square room with a set of double doors and a few knight statues and a wooden bench to wait on), the doors opened to reveal the ride.. gondola? vehicle? It was a row of 4 seats kind of like a row of a Mondail Top Scan. The seat was comfortable but the restraint wasn't very nice.
The overall ride experience was interesting. The movement of the gondola was like a robo-arm, with large, jerky movements. The curved screen had obvious lines between the panels and didn't feel big enough to 'immerse' you into the video. The video was also about 140p and was such low quality a lot of the time I could hardly tell what was happening. I just about followed the storyline but struggling to understand who was talking when didn't help. All in all, the concept of this ride was really cool and the theming was great, but the ride experience itself wasn't great.
The ticketing system of Fantasy Island is very easy to understand but also quite practical for a park like this. You can put money onto an I-Card which can get you on rides, pay for arcade machines or pay for wristbands, or you can pay directly for a day wristband. Park entry is free so if there's only one or two riders in your group, they'll be the only ones paying anything.
With it being my second trip, I only really needed a half day to get in all the rides I wanted (I think even a few hours would be fine if it wasn't incredibly crowded). We then went out for lunch as the food options are slim and then headed elsewhere cred hunting; I'll talk about Botton's Pleasure Beach at a later date, it was an interesting place.
So, that's Fantasy Island! Have you been to fantasy island? what's your favour ride there? Thank you so much for reading, I'll see you later!
Cleo x
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