• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Older Members

John Noakes (or another Blue Peter presenter) almost being sick on riding a looping coaster while on their annual summer jolly.

Was a thunderlooper style model well before the UK got corkscrew.

Was a big talking point in the playground in between rounds of conkers.
 
Ahr yes, back when you could buy a box of lego and it had NO instructions and no weird shaped blocks, just oblongs and squares of different shapes and colours, back when it contained a few hundred bricks in it capable of building ANYTHING (all be it a bit blocky) not just a single thing (that was Airfix's realm).

Back when health and safety consisted mostly of "Don't run with scissors", "Listen to the Green Cross Man" and "Don't talk to strangers" (unless they were the green cross man and a talking cat named Charley) and you had to be wary of the 'Humfreys' as they would steal your milk, that's milk that if you didn't drink you would only be good enough to play for Acrinton Stanley - "who are they?", I hear you ask.... "exaccccctly"

Back when Renta-Ghost and The Adventure Game ruled my TV viewing and Why Don't You showed me lots of things there was no way I was allowed to build/create/destroy/partake in.

By the way, I am surprised that this hasn't turned into the Monty Python - Yorkshire man sketch.

p.s. Shock -> No we weren't allowed to keep the worksheets. The activity sheets were handed in and then never mentioned again.
 
31 here and I agree that there are too many kids at theme parks, they should only be allowed in either on a Saturday or a Sunday and thats it. One day a week.
Theme parks are no places for kids!

As has been said, when I was at school you went to a museum or a falling down castle and that was it. No fun was allowed.
 
Well I'm pleased to see my original post has caused some more older members to stand up and be counted ! (Don't stand up for too long though, not at our age, you'll go dizzy!)

It's good to know I'm not the only one who can remember Alton Towers in the eighties, I'm not sure if it really was a better place back then or it just seems that way through these rose tinted glasses I have on.
The rides are certainly better now on the whole but I found myself missing one or two of my old favourites on my visit last July, which was my first revisit in years and years.

I'm hoping to get up there quite a lot this coming season and make full use of my MAP, as well as more visits to Thorpe and my first trip to Chessington already pencilled in for April.

Me and my grown up kids are also off to PortAventura for the first time in June, so I'll get a chance to experience one of those "oh so smooth" B&M Bargains mega giga wotsit coasters the youth of today seem to favour so much.
Of course in my day we didn't have any of this smooth coaster nonsense, if we didn't come of the ride with cranial bruising and blood loss from the ears we went straight round again for another go !
This Furios Baco chappy seems much more in my taste !

And Wagon Wheels were twice the size back then ! :'(
 
I'm 35 and had been feeling old among fellow geeks (although I generally hang around TPM, which is like a kindergarten sometimes!) until a trip to Alton last year when I got chatting to a guy in a queue who was at the park on his own wearing his RCCGB shirt and cap, was a little unkempt and told me he lived in Uttoxeter. I'd be surprised if he was a day under 70.

We rode Smiler and Oblivion together then went our separate ways, me feeling like a little kid. One day I will be that man, there's a whole lot of geek left in me yet.
 
Sorry to drag this into a more serious place, but something I just remembered.

When I was in the US, a couple of people I got talking too were enthusiasts who were about my age. The topic came up in the brief queueline conversation, about age and it seems (and this is based from 1 conversation with 1 pair of people who recognised my 13 tee and my perceptions) that the enthusiast community in America does seem to be older than it is here.
 
We need some kind of trial before people can be accepted in to our oldies club. I propose "make a ten minute mix tape using only a cassette recorder and the radio. Then copy it for three friends and hand make lables using nothing but felt tips."
 
DiogoJ42 said:
We need some kind of trial before people can be accepted in to our oldies club. I propose "make a ten minute mix tape using only a cassette recorder and the radio. Then copy it for three friends and hand make lables using nothing but felt tips."
Click to expand...

Part B - After the judge has pulled the tape out, the interviewee must repair said tape using only a pencil.
 
I'll dig out my TDK c-60's and put some batteries in my Tandy cassette recorder then. :D

If I can find one of those awful 80's hits compilations that were recorded by "artists" that sounded slightly like the singers that had the actual hits that should get me bonus points !
 
oh Tandy, the time i spent walking around the store browsing and buying bits.
 
Tandy was the Maplin of the 80s. You could buy literally anything in those stores!

Lol.... As for recording the top 40 , ahhh, the Sunday evenings I would sit by my dad's hifi, headphones on not to disturb my mum watching last of the summer wine on telly , with my TDK cassette in the tape deck, Dolby B on, bass turned up to max, with the cassette on rec and pause..... Trying to hit the pause button off as quickly as a tune I wanted to record started, then doing your best to press it again just before the dj started talking over it again at the end!

Then that week would be spent on the bus on the way to school with my Sony or was it Akai I had.... Walkman again with megabass turned up to max, listening to the songs I recorded, pressing the stop and fast forward button quickly to locate the tunes I wanted!

I tell ya, kids today with all this fandangle iPod malarkey are just missing out onall the fun we had. Ahhh, how funny it was too spend an entire evening making a mix tape, only for your walkman to chew it up the very next day and you spend the next half hour trying to remove the tape from the cassette heads inside the walkman without snapping it lol.
 
Can we get back on topic please of older members who've visited Towers? This is not the place for reminiscing about better times-Do that in Corner Coffee if you must! ;)
 
Sorry for popping in here (i'm only 26!), but can I just say this thread is very good, please keep it up :p Its been putting a smile on my face for the past few days, who would have thought we had some many old men and woman on this site :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top