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Drayton Manor Park

Drayton have been competitive and rather savvy with pricing. I think they realise having a fuller park with people spending money it better than high charges on the gate. Especially with prices of everything rising families will gravitate to parks that offer value for money
 
Curious to how the park would cope with a no admission day, surely they would need to restrict numbers it will be absolutely rammed.

Given the slow ops of some of the rides last season I hope there is some serious prep, or at least some conditions as to what the supposid free admission is limited to
 
We finally got to ride Gold Rush today and i throughly enjoyed it!

We arrived about 1130am and to my surprise it was walk-on meaning we got 4 rides in a row. We did the front, back and middle then back again. Definitely thought front was the best.

Then in the afternoon we had 1 more go on the alternative cycle. Quite a queue by then, i expect lots of people arrived later due to the fireworks tonight.

I prefer the first cycle, it feels like more of a logical narrative but the second one is longer so they both have benefits. It's a great novel feature, my sons little face beaming with surprise when we started going backwards on the second cycle was priceless 🥰

The show scene is somewhat underwhelming but that's partly because i was at Disneyland Paris last weekend so rather a high bar. It's a shame there's not a way to make it daylight free but it's a nice enough effort.

I like that it's not hideously intense. I suppose i'm getting old but riding it repeatedly was a pleasure compared to say RAGE which is an endurance test.

Overall it's basically Thirteen Junior but that's not a bad thing. A great ride for the park. It does make Accelerator rather redundant.

The Wave remains the UK's most slowly operated coaster but it was slightly better than our visits last year. Less messing around with the harnesses at least. I do have a renewed appreciation for its smoothness after Avengers Assemble.
 
The Wave remains the UK's most slowly operated coaster but it was slightly better than our visits last year. Less messing around with the harnesses at least. I do have a renewed appreciation for its smoothness after Avengers Assemble.
That I can attest to. The timings are accurate, for dispatch, but I didn't realise row 3 was still out when I set it to 24 seats per train, rather than the 20 it is.

Throw in that the back two rows are always reserved for Fastrack / Easy Access Pass, even if there isn't anybody queuing for those, and it makes for one slowly moving main queue.

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That I can attest to. The timings are accurate, for dispatch, but I didn't realise row 3 was still out when I set it to 24 seats per train, rather than the 20 it is.

Throw in that the back two rows are always reserved for Fastrack / Easy Access Pass, even if there isn't anybody queuing for those, and it makes for one slowly moving main queue.

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It's slowly improved, not by much. The queue is currently down to the bottom floor. Drayton Manor Park and Zoo are advertising a 30 mins wait on their screens, I can attest that it's most certainly longer than that.

Ops at the park haven't been the most stellar today, but they've been consistent enough for a busy event Saturday... Aside from The Wave. It's atrocious.

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Right the museum side of it was excellent with great information about the park history but the video was very disrespectful of the Bryan family and what they had brought to the park. It was more about the looping group and Victoria Lynn and the work she’s done on the park over the past 3 years.
 
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We waited nearly two hours from the second floor of the queue for The Wave yesterday, the queue was very slow although there was a lot of delays when we got to the station such as, birds hanging themselves from netting, coins being thrown on the track, more stuff being thrown on the track, and fastrack being prioritised over the main queue.
 
Kids cause so much issues.
We went Friday for 3 hrs between school run and did the wave first thing as expected issues. The first train of the day estopped on the lift due to phones being out
 
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