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Oakwood Discussion

ringo said:
Bounce has been down for years, you’re correct they were working to get it going again but I assume they’ve run into problems.

Was at park last weekend, that Dizzy Disk seemed to go on forever, some people were looking a bit white at the end :D

https://wales247.co.uk/oakwood-is-bringing-back-a-classic-ride-this-summer/
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I can agree with your sentiment on Dizzy Disk!! Once was enough. It was popular though which is good.

Speed lives up to its name, the first half felt really fast! It was a bit bumpy in places but I really liked it, much more than Typhoon or Saw The Ride.

Megafobia was fantastic. It is rough though. Unfortunately there was only one person operating it on one train, which led to a 50 minute queue for much of the day. Fast track users did not help this.

My biggest complaint is the food (or lack of it). Basically burgers, pizza or (bought in) baugettes. These were the only options I could find and they were each being sold at different corners of the park.

Overall it's a nice park! Reminds me of Lightwater Valley. At £23 for a student it's good value for money in my opinion. Just bring a packed lunch.
 
Bump!

Did someone say airtime? :p

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RoyJess said:
Looks like an optical illusion to me, those wheels should be a snug fit. Could just be the light bouncing off the top of the rail making it look like part of the sky/background or someone had a play with photo shop
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Other coasters also do that, such as smiler and Oblivion. There's always a little bit of leeway.

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I think the wheels do very briefly leave the track when experiencing airtime.

If you listen very closely when watching POVs of coasters with airtime, you can often hear a mild clicking sound when the coaster has just crested an airtime moment. I think this is when the wheels hit the track again.

Of course, I use the term “leaving the track” very loosely, as upstops and wheel assemblies are designed such that a coaster can’t genuinely fly off the track, but I think the wheels do definitely drift away from the track slightly when the ride experiences airtime; negative g-force (at least in the vertical axis) by its very definition propels things upwards.
 
It’s pretty standard on Gersts. The Smiler has always been like it. You can usually see it when the trains are going up (or down!) the vertical lift. Especially on a reverse you’ll see some wheels don’t turn at all where they’re not in contact with the track.

I believe it’s partly due to the tight nature of the track. If you clamped the wheels down too tight you might find the assemblies drag when going through tight turns.

Shockwave at Drayton is one that’s quite noticeable. If you’re stood under the brakes and it stacks you’ll hear the upstops whirring as they continue to spin.

Take a look at a lot of coasters (particularly those that are quite compact) that have been bedded in for a few seasons and you’ll normally see spots on the track where the wheels have worn the paint on one side/face of the track but not the opposite. Depends on which direction the force is pushing the train in at that time and opening up a gap. It’s normal on these coasters. Nothing to be concerned about.

A lot of more modern coasters I understand use dampening and tensioning systems to try and keep the bogies closer to the rails with a small degree of freedom to move if they really need to, but with dampers to absorb some of the ill effects and clattering this can lead to.
 
RicketyCricket said:
El Toro famously makes a right racket over it's airtime hills, I'd imagine the wheels leave the track significantly more than the above photos.
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Course El Toro does it but i'm surprised Megafobia doesn't also do it. Any update on Bounce recently because when i last saw it, it looked ready to operate!
 
Is everything OK with Oakwood at the moment? I haven’t heard much from there, but I’ve heard a fair few very negative sentiments from people who’ve visited the park as of late, which is a shame.

I had a really nice day there in 2019, but it seems to be struggling a bit at the moment, and the reviews of those visiting are not good.

Apparently Megafobia has somehow aged drastically in 2 years, as Scott from PBE recently went back and said that the coaster is riding notably worse in 2021 than it did in 2019, for unknown reasons. The back row is now being likened to Grand National for the level of roughness (I remember the back being pretty brutal in 2019, but not a GN level of brutal, so it must have aged drastically for that to be the case now), and PBE’s Scott compared the way the coaster is currently running to Stampida at PortAventura.

Here are links to some of the reviews I’m citing:

https://coasterforce.com/forums/threads/somehow-even-worse-than-expected-oakwood-05-08-2021.44833/

I know you cannot judge off of two reviews, but I’m hearing a lot of negative sentiment about Oakwood lately. Has something happened? Have they really been hit hard by COVID?
 
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I think Oakwood will be closed in the next few years unless they pull their socks up and get a huge amount of investment in the park. I wouldnt visit the place personally. My last visit was about 7 years ago and I said then it was my last visit. Expensive, dirty, run down, understaffed and its the only place outside of a travelling fair when I actually felt unsafe on a ride (Bounce) while ride ops were letting children under the minimum height on to the rides so the parents didn't complain.

Its a huge shame as the park has huge potential, especially with the large blue stone development next door for staying over, but its just been left to rot.

I never thought I would say this but I do actually wish Merlin would take it over and pump some money into the place.
 
I’ve got to say, I actually very much liked Oakwood on my last visit there; I think it’s a really charming park, with a solid ride collection, a nice location and some nice theming, in places! I did enjoy my couple of hours there!

However, the park was deserted on the day we went. One of the main things I remember was me and my mum walking up to Speed’s area and wondering if it was even open, because there was no one around there bar some staff in the station, there was no noise coming from the ride and there was nobody in the queue. As it turned out, the ride was open, and the ride op looked quite surprised to see us; I think we may have been the first riders of the day. I should point out that it wasn’t exactly opening time, either; the park had been open for a good hour or so by this point. As such, I then had one of my few rides on a virtually empty coaster train. The crowd levels didn’t look to have picked up much (if at all) by the time we came back into the station, either, so it almost felt as though me and my mum had had an ERS or something! Well, apart from the fact we only rode once.

That was possibly one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had in a theme park…

I know that a deserted park is great for ride count, but Oakwood often seems deserted in people’s trip reports these days, and did even pre-COVID. I’d be staggered if they make much money.
 
I had one or two good visits to Oakwood back in the 90s. One was before Megafobia, the second I was too scared to ride it back then.
But I have great memories of the assault courses that all ended with a zipwire and the bobsleigh toboggans.
I think there was a good indoor play area too back then.
Those simpler experiences like assault courses were great. Although not sure they would be seen as safe nowadays!
 
Same here. I went before megafobia, then the year megafobia opened. The park was great then. It was family run, staff were great, park was generally looked after but importantly it was a fun, value for money day out.

Then the awful Hydro accident happened and I think it this which crippled the park financially and it’s still not recovered to this day, not to mention new owners.

When I went last the toilets were awful, broken, smelly, dirty, the food was barely eatable and very expensive, the whole place was swarming with wasps. I saw little kids going on speed obviously under height. I asked the teenager holding the measuring stick at the entrance ( using it to lean against) and she said it’s better to let them on than have the parents complain. I wrote to oakwood to alert them , especially after the hydro incident but not even a reply.

The area around the old mine ride was derelict, spooky 3D was no better than a fun fair ghost train. The pedalo lake was green, the dingys and the tubes they go down were black with mold while all the rides were understaffed with one staff member operating each one. The poor guy stood at the top of snake river falls all day in the sun having to load 3 dingys and release them all day on his own whereas in the past it was at least 2 staff up there. The only good part of the day was megafobia.

However I felt unsafe on bounce. Went in twice and both times the ride was making funny noises on the drop, and the emergency brakes would activate at the very top of the bounce up. It closed and has not reopened since that season.

I’ve never returned and nothing Oakwood has introduced of late, not the reviews online have tempted me back.
 
Out of interest, is it widely known how many guests Oakwood gets in a typical year these days? I remember hearing 500,000 somewhere, but that seems a bit high based on the reports of the park being mostly deserted that commonly existed even pre-COVID.

For some idea, the park is open for 158 days in 2021, and assuming an average of 1,000 guests visiting each day (at a guess; could be higher or lower. I purposely went quite low given how deserted the place often is), I calculated that their guest figures per season would be around 158,000.

Has the park ever released any official stats?
 
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On the visitor figures front; I’ve just had a Google, and while visitor numbers were said to be around 400,000-500,000 during the 2000s, they did not make the top 10 most visited paid-for visitor attractions in Wales in 2018: https://gov.wales/sites/default/fil...sits-to-tourist-attractions-in-wales-2018.pdf

For reference, 10th place here was the Great Orme Tramway, with 191,613 visitors. That would imply that Oakwood currently gets less than 191,613 visitors, and that their visitor figures have fallen pretty drastically (by at least 50%) since the 2000s. Surely the Drenched incident in 2004 can’t be all of what caused this drastic fall, or does the stigma still linger 17 years on?
P.S. Sorry for double posting.
 
I would think the Drenched incident didn't help.
But its also somewhat inbetween a small charming park and a big theme park now. It doesn't have the smaller attractions that were offered in the 90s, but doesn't get the crowds it needs to fully maintain the larger rides?
 
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