Trip Report - Loopathon 2011 - Alton Towers & Drayton Manor

It's that time of the year again, the last coaster trip of the season and what better place than to spend it at Alton Towers & Drayton Manor. Members started arriving on the Friday evening with some taking in the nearby Goose Fair in Nottingham which has luckily fallen on the same weekend as Loopathon. It was good to see The Runaway Mine Train from The American Adventure travelling the fairs with James Mellors. After a couple of hours at the fair we were off to Alton to meet up with other members. Having checked into our hotel it was off to The Blacksmiths Arms for a bite to eat, catch up with other members and getting Dan to do his rendition of 500 miles.

Unfortunately the regular band members weren't at the pub this year so Dan didn't get to do his song! You Tube followers will have to wait until next year! Later it was back to the hotel to get some sleep. After an early breakfast it was a short drive to Alton Towers and then a walk to the entrance where members had started to gather. We were soon into the park and Loopathon had started. We headed over to Oblivion for our first ERS of the day. Unfortunatley the weather wasn't kind to us and we were experiencing a misty rain. My camera was having problems but unknown to me at the time, my flash had blown, this didn't affect any of the photo's I was taking at the time.

After Oblivion we headed over to Rita for a combined ERS with Alton Towers Hotel Guests, the rain was still coming down!. After the ERS's had finished we split up into our individual guests and checked out the other park's rides including Nemesis & Air in Forbidden Valley and Sonic Spinball near the hospitality suite, our base at Alton Towers. At 12.30PM it was time for lunch, some members did their own thing and others had the all new hot buffet lunch in the hospitality suite. During lunch there was a bucket going round asking for donations to the park's charity Give Kids The World. Club member Colin Blanchard aka Death had said he would shave his beard off if we raised a certain amount, not to be disappointed Club members dug deep and soon this limit was raised and off the beard came! Death was a different person! and still asking for a lift to Tamworth! I collected the newbies for a group photo before heading back into the park for some more riding. At 5.30PM we headed back to the hospitality suite to wait for the public to leave before heading back to Forbidden Valley for our dark ERS on Nemesis, our favourite ride in the park. I must thank club member Wendy Aston for lending me her camera to get photo's of the ERS as I had lost my ability to get night-time photo's earlier in the day. After the ERS we exited the park through the Nemesis side gate to the car park and headed to our hotels for the night in readiness for Day 2 at Drayton Manor.

Day 2 of Loopathon started when we met up at 9AM for tea and coffee at Drayton Manor. We were issued with our tickets and then headed into the park for our first ERS on Apocalypse. We were then going to have a takeover on Maelstrom but Drayton Manor's new roller coaster ride Ben 10 was en-route so club members decided the takeover would be on their new ride. After this we headed off in our groups to do more of the parks ride including Maelstrom and their stand-up coaster Shockwave. Everyone enjoyed a group lunch which has become a club favourite. After lunch we got taken through some of the forthcoming plans, and with Europa Park getting a new woodie this was again on the club's agenda and Nev was at hand with some brochures! After the Q & A session it was back into the park to enjoy the rest of their rides, The Buffalo Coaster, The Boat trip on the lake, The Rapids and more. Some members visited their Zoo and got a ride back into the park on Thomas! At the end of the day we gathered by the entrance of G-Force for our last ERS of the day and our last ERS of the Season. Unlike last year when the ride broke down just before the ERS the ride was working well and we had our last club coaster fix and many rides. The ERS was followed by us gathering in a large circle and having fun attempting the Hokey Cokey. Nev then invited some of the new members into the centre of the circle. They didn't know what was coming, you guessed it, GROUP HUG!! and that was it, another great trip over, and another season over. We then left the park, collected in the car park to say goodbye to everyone for the year. The next club trip is the annual skiing trip in January followed by the party event of the year, The Blackpool Bash, and don't forget the USA Trip, back to the west coast which we last did in 2005 and for those high rollers an option to stay a couple of days in Vegas. I had a substitute camera for the day at Drayton due to the problems experienced the day before, and disappointingly I cannot get any photo's from my camera from Drayton although i'm still trying. Thanks to Nicholas Willmott aka Nemesis Nick who has given me some photo's for the website. I'll have to get a new camera for next season!

Below are the pictures from the trip....Enjoy the memories!