Manchester1894
TS Member
Having previously visited Drayton Manor in 2015 (for my son’s 4th birthday) and 2018 (when his baby brother had grown to around the same height/age), we never really made it out of Thomas Land and the zoo on those occasions. My eldest turned 14 last week and for this visit, he wanted to come back to try the main park and of course do some new rides and we duly obliged. We have fond memories of Troublesome Trucks being his first coaster, so happy to come back and see the other side of the ‘Manor. A family ticket was booked at a total cost of £75.00. The offer was part of the 75th anniversary. Park hours today were 1030 to 1700 which is short but we planned to get as much in as possible
Before we set off at 8am from Manchester, we’d prepared a pack lunch too to keep costs reasonable. Sat-Nav gave us a 90 min journey, but the M6 kindly added another 30 due to snarl-ups along the way.
First impressions going through the car park - I’d forgotten how nice the park looked,first impressions were good. On par with Warwick Castle and Alton - Nice you can see the park before you enter too. We pulled up in row D of the car park which was dead. We made a toilet stop before going through the main entrance at 10am. I realised I’d left my water bottle in the car, but having read there are no water fountains we decided to plod on and buy drinks along the way. I also read there was no app for the park, so I nabbed a paper map from the counter on the left then went to join a queue ready for the 1030 ride opening. I’d heard the operations on Gold Rush and The Wave can be bad due to both running a single train and with a few visitors saying Gold Rush doesn’t always open dead on time, we made a right into the colourful area that contains Stormforce 10 & Maelstrom to make our way to our first coaster of the day…
1030 - The Wave
The most colourfully-themed ride greeted us in the Tamworth sunshine. The track looked shorter than I imagined so I assumed with around 12/13 people in front of us, it must be a 4 or 8 seater carriage and envisaged 3rd/4th train. We made our way up the stairs to a surprisingly long 24 seater train meaning we were first on. Not had this type of flat lap bar before. Could hardly feel it, so strange to the B&M/Mack equivalents. Off we went and boy is this smooth, but it’s very short. It’s fun enough but not very punchy. A perfect ride for younger kids that might ride their first coaster maybe? Or a cred in our case.
1040 Air Race
This was a walk-on as we came off The Wave, and good fun as you get spun upside down repeatedly and even some nice hang moments. It wouldn’t have been out of place in the Retro Squad that used to be at AT. More intense than the Wave but I needed this to get the blood flowing.
1100 Accelerator.
We made our way towards Gold Rush but stopped here on the way. We went into a queue line with some unexpected detailed car theming that was indoors and nice to chill out in. The single train slowed ops but as the queue wasn’t too rammed it wasn’t too bad. Looked slow off-ride but on-ride had a nice nippy feel in the turns, but again it’s a short and sweet ride. My first boomerang coaster too, I get to ride Raik in a few months to double my tally.
1127 Gold Rush (Cycle 1)
When my son wanted to come I was looking forward to this new one immediately just to see what the hype was about. The theming was absolutely perfect. Loved it. The queue was a bit slow again due to the 1 train, but half hour wait was decent. Alton makes you really appreciate anything like this
Then the ride - maybe the smoothest coaster I’ve ridden. The layout was fantastic and the barn “pull” was fun and forceful. However this did feel maybe a bit kiddy for my liking. It’s excellent for families and I see why it gets the praise. However I wanted to come back later on for the post 2pm cycle to see if it was any better.
1210 The Haunting - Pack lunch downed in the queue that has just cleared. And a 25 min wait due to a technical issue helped us digest our food. I thought it was a haunted house car ride so it was a good surprise to find it was in fact a mini Vekoma madhouse! The pre-ride room was good. The ride itself was ok too, the coffin is badly positioned as it’s too high for people on the front row, but it was fine for a small park.
1300 Blasting Barrells - Mrs ‘1894 suffers from motion sickness on teacups so she swerved this whilst me and the kids when spinning furiously (standard practice). Nice tilt and again the best theming I’ve seen for a ride like this. Well done Drayton.
1330 Sheriff Shootout - Had hoped it was a simple shoot ‘em up and wasn’t disappointed. Love the sound effects from the targets. Got a real soft spot for these rides.
However the queue line has a grid wide enough for any mobile phone to drop into and that gives me a weird anxiety. Looked like a water wheel underneath! Albeit no water.
1400 River Rapids - Sunny weather so we hit the rapids, got wet, no complaints. It’s a decent layout for the space. We saw the Wave had gone down, so wrote off any rerides of that. The day was running away with us as it was a 5pm closure.
1430 Stormforce 10 - Sunny weather still so we hit this water ride too. Now the poncho got unpacked as we watched countless people get drowned… needn’t have bothered. Down drop one… I got a faceful, by drop 2 the poncho was compromised and I was feeling half the lake go down my neckline and my arms and hands (fully under the poncho) were really wet. Drop 3 made me and my wife braced so much we headbutted the rubber bar (which demonstrates why it’s there!) and my god that’s a final soaking and a half. My son wouldn’t wear a poncho and showed no regrets as his teeth chattered and his legs brought up enough goosebumps to resemble a raw chicken leg. Our shoes dried fully 2 days later! We’ve bought some silicone shoe covers for summer water rides now. This simply is the wettest ride I’ve ever been on. But I loved it!
Side note: The queue-line had regular announcements from the operations teams telling people that had queue jumped to walk back to the entrance and queue properly. People enjoy hearing genuine queue jumpers get embarrassed like this however at the exit my perception changed drastically. The area where the ride photos/exit is located wasn’t manned. The exit sign is located to the side. The reason I noticed it was I put my bag in front of it whilst I popped the poncho back in. A member of the public wandered through, obviously no staff to correct them and then I’m assuming people come down the steps realising it’s the exit and see an empty cattle pen over a waist high fence and go over to join the main queue. It’s not pushing in imo. It’s a shortcut because the park don’t make it clear where the entrance is (which as many of you know is a small door that looks like a fire exit for the shop. Minor gripe and helped a few people get to the right place whilst I was there.
1500 Maelstrom - We were in this queue for 25 mins to begin with but as we neared the front someone was sick at the exit and delayed us for another 15-20 mins. Gave us time for tops to dry off too. Looking at this I couldn’t help think how big that BPB gyro is going to be and how many people might be sick on that as the sea air hits them. The ride is fantastic. A great flat and will be an eye-catcher for Blackpool if it’s almost double this!
1615 Gold Rush (cycle 2)
The queue had gone further back than before and envisaged this would be our last ride of the day. A lot of fast-passers made a late surge making From the queue line it looked like two phases of cycle 1 were just swapped around and I didn’t think it would add much but I actually think this cycle is a LOT better as you get pulled backwards at what feels a quicker pace (maybe it had also warmed up a bit? Really good family coaster as everyone says.
1650 Thor
A brisk walk got us onto this for surely the last ride of the day… good fun and the second one I’ve done (after Chessingtons). However the system had an issue where it couldn’t stop so we rocked back and forth for an AGE until it stopped and then the engineers had to come to get it into a mode where the restraints could be released.
1715 Jormungandr
We made our way home and this ride was closed for the last 2 hours but had a gate open and a train made its way past so we ran in and got on. Nice gentle ride over the water with a few fast corners.
Statistics: 13 rides in 6.5 hours. 12 unique rides and re-ride being a different cycle on Gold Rush.
Overall thoughts.
Great value with the £75 offer - when I look at ride count thats about £1.45 a ride/pp. There are a lot of poor throughputs due to too many rides having just 1 train - not a reflection on the operators of the ride just poor ride choices by the park management (unless they have spares hiding away for peak season - if not peak might be grim for visitors). Great theming all over. Staff were some of the most friendly I’ve seen in a UK park and visitors were well behaved on my visit. There are not enough thrill rides for us to warrant a revisit but felt as a one-off this trip was totally warranted and enjoyable. I’d like to see more water fountains for free drinking water.. If the park invests heavily into some ground breaking thrill rides, it might have a very strong future indeed. I do feel it may instead invest towards the younger audience which is also fine. It seems like a missed opportunity to rival a Merlin Park but I get it comes with risk. They nail what they do overall. DIdn't have time to bob my head into the zoo or tease my boys into re-riding Troublesome Trucks but you can't win them all!
Before we set off at 8am from Manchester, we’d prepared a pack lunch too to keep costs reasonable. Sat-Nav gave us a 90 min journey, but the M6 kindly added another 30 due to snarl-ups along the way.
First impressions going through the car park - I’d forgotten how nice the park looked,first impressions were good. On par with Warwick Castle and Alton - Nice you can see the park before you enter too. We pulled up in row D of the car park which was dead. We made a toilet stop before going through the main entrance at 10am. I realised I’d left my water bottle in the car, but having read there are no water fountains we decided to plod on and buy drinks along the way. I also read there was no app for the park, so I nabbed a paper map from the counter on the left then went to join a queue ready for the 1030 ride opening. I’d heard the operations on Gold Rush and The Wave can be bad due to both running a single train and with a few visitors saying Gold Rush doesn’t always open dead on time, we made a right into the colourful area that contains Stormforce 10 & Maelstrom to make our way to our first coaster of the day…
1030 - The Wave
The most colourfully-themed ride greeted us in the Tamworth sunshine. The track looked shorter than I imagined so I assumed with around 12/13 people in front of us, it must be a 4 or 8 seater carriage and envisaged 3rd/4th train. We made our way up the stairs to a surprisingly long 24 seater train meaning we were first on. Not had this type of flat lap bar before. Could hardly feel it, so strange to the B&M/Mack equivalents. Off we went and boy is this smooth, but it’s very short. It’s fun enough but not very punchy. A perfect ride for younger kids that might ride their first coaster maybe? Or a cred in our case.
1040 Air Race
This was a walk-on as we came off The Wave, and good fun as you get spun upside down repeatedly and even some nice hang moments. It wouldn’t have been out of place in the Retro Squad that used to be at AT. More intense than the Wave but I needed this to get the blood flowing.
1100 Accelerator.
We made our way towards Gold Rush but stopped here on the way. We went into a queue line with some unexpected detailed car theming that was indoors and nice to chill out in. The single train slowed ops but as the queue wasn’t too rammed it wasn’t too bad. Looked slow off-ride but on-ride had a nice nippy feel in the turns, but again it’s a short and sweet ride. My first boomerang coaster too, I get to ride Raik in a few months to double my tally.
1127 Gold Rush (Cycle 1)
When my son wanted to come I was looking forward to this new one immediately just to see what the hype was about. The theming was absolutely perfect. Loved it. The queue was a bit slow again due to the 1 train, but half hour wait was decent. Alton makes you really appreciate anything like this
Then the ride - maybe the smoothest coaster I’ve ridden. The layout was fantastic and the barn “pull” was fun and forceful. However this did feel maybe a bit kiddy for my liking. It’s excellent for families and I see why it gets the praise. However I wanted to come back later on for the post 2pm cycle to see if it was any better.
1210 The Haunting - Pack lunch downed in the queue that has just cleared. And a 25 min wait due to a technical issue helped us digest our food. I thought it was a haunted house car ride so it was a good surprise to find it was in fact a mini Vekoma madhouse! The pre-ride room was good. The ride itself was ok too, the coffin is badly positioned as it’s too high for people on the front row, but it was fine for a small park.
1300 Blasting Barrells - Mrs ‘1894 suffers from motion sickness on teacups so she swerved this whilst me and the kids when spinning furiously (standard practice). Nice tilt and again the best theming I’ve seen for a ride like this. Well done Drayton.
1330 Sheriff Shootout - Had hoped it was a simple shoot ‘em up and wasn’t disappointed. Love the sound effects from the targets. Got a real soft spot for these rides.
However the queue line has a grid wide enough for any mobile phone to drop into and that gives me a weird anxiety. Looked like a water wheel underneath! Albeit no water.
1400 River Rapids - Sunny weather so we hit the rapids, got wet, no complaints. It’s a decent layout for the space. We saw the Wave had gone down, so wrote off any rerides of that. The day was running away with us as it was a 5pm closure.
1430 Stormforce 10 - Sunny weather still so we hit this water ride too. Now the poncho got unpacked as we watched countless people get drowned… needn’t have bothered. Down drop one… I got a faceful, by drop 2 the poncho was compromised and I was feeling half the lake go down my neckline and my arms and hands (fully under the poncho) were really wet. Drop 3 made me and my wife braced so much we headbutted the rubber bar (which demonstrates why it’s there!) and my god that’s a final soaking and a half. My son wouldn’t wear a poncho and showed no regrets as his teeth chattered and his legs brought up enough goosebumps to resemble a raw chicken leg. Our shoes dried fully 2 days later! We’ve bought some silicone shoe covers for summer water rides now. This simply is the wettest ride I’ve ever been on. But I loved it!
Side note: The queue-line had regular announcements from the operations teams telling people that had queue jumped to walk back to the entrance and queue properly. People enjoy hearing genuine queue jumpers get embarrassed like this however at the exit my perception changed drastically. The area where the ride photos/exit is located wasn’t manned. The exit sign is located to the side. The reason I noticed it was I put my bag in front of it whilst I popped the poncho back in. A member of the public wandered through, obviously no staff to correct them and then I’m assuming people come down the steps realising it’s the exit and see an empty cattle pen over a waist high fence and go over to join the main queue. It’s not pushing in imo. It’s a shortcut because the park don’t make it clear where the entrance is (which as many of you know is a small door that looks like a fire exit for the shop. Minor gripe and helped a few people get to the right place whilst I was there.
1500 Maelstrom - We were in this queue for 25 mins to begin with but as we neared the front someone was sick at the exit and delayed us for another 15-20 mins. Gave us time for tops to dry off too. Looking at this I couldn’t help think how big that BPB gyro is going to be and how many people might be sick on that as the sea air hits them. The ride is fantastic. A great flat and will be an eye-catcher for Blackpool if it’s almost double this!
1615 Gold Rush (cycle 2)
The queue had gone further back than before and envisaged this would be our last ride of the day. A lot of fast-passers made a late surge making From the queue line it looked like two phases of cycle 1 were just swapped around and I didn’t think it would add much but I actually think this cycle is a LOT better as you get pulled backwards at what feels a quicker pace (maybe it had also warmed up a bit? Really good family coaster as everyone says.
1650 Thor
A brisk walk got us onto this for surely the last ride of the day… good fun and the second one I’ve done (after Chessingtons). However the system had an issue where it couldn’t stop so we rocked back and forth for an AGE until it stopped and then the engineers had to come to get it into a mode where the restraints could be released.
1715 Jormungandr
We made our way home and this ride was closed for the last 2 hours but had a gate open and a train made its way past so we ran in and got on. Nice gentle ride over the water with a few fast corners.
Statistics: 13 rides in 6.5 hours. 12 unique rides and re-ride being a different cycle on Gold Rush.
Overall thoughts.
Great value with the £75 offer - when I look at ride count thats about £1.45 a ride/pp. There are a lot of poor throughputs due to too many rides having just 1 train - not a reflection on the operators of the ride just poor ride choices by the park management (unless they have spares hiding away for peak season - if not peak might be grim for visitors). Great theming all over. Staff were some of the most friendly I’ve seen in a UK park and visitors were well behaved on my visit. There are not enough thrill rides for us to warrant a revisit but felt as a one-off this trip was totally warranted and enjoyable. I’d like to see more water fountains for free drinking water.. If the park invests heavily into some ground breaking thrill rides, it might have a very strong future indeed. I do feel it may instead invest towards the younger audience which is also fine. It seems like a missed opportunity to rival a Merlin Park but I get it comes with risk. They nail what they do overall. DIdn't have time to bob my head into the zoo or tease my boys into re-riding Troublesome Trucks but you can't win them all!