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TS Drayton75 Meet: Saturday, 5th July 2025

AstroDan

AstroDan

TS Team
Favourite Ride
Steel Vengeance, Cedar Point
📍 Where: Drayton Manor Park
📆 When: Saturday, 5th July 2025
🕣 Meet Up Window: Between 10.00-10.30am outside the main entrance of The Wave
📸 Group Photo: Afternoon photo (approx 3pm) location TBC (check Discord channel or with the group on the day)
✅ RSVP: Please confirm above
🛌 Accommodation: Drayton Manor Hotel

We're heading to a park on the up for the first time in seven years - it's Drayton Manor Park's 75th birthday!​

Please take a look at the Welcome to TowersStreet Meets topic for further information on how our meets work.

Since our last official meet to Drayton Manor in 2018 so much has changed. With several new rides and lands in recent years - including a unique family coaster - the time has come to check out the new Drayton Manor offering in 2025. Not only are there lots of new rides... the park is hosting a Wild West Fest with live music, special food offerings and more. On top of this, there's a fireworks display scheduled after the rides close - and they are open until 9pm! There's also a 75th anniversary museum which will be fantastic to visit along with the zoo. It promises to be a fantastic day of fun and we can't wait to see you there.

Drayton Manor Park hours: 10.30am - 9.00pm (gates open 10.00am, fireworks display after ride close)

Please note, due to throughput issues, we will be riding The Wave at 10.30am, hence the meet up location being at the ride entrance. Please ensure you arrive on time to avoid missing out as we understand loading/unloading on this coaster can be very slow and waiting times build.

Please meet the rest of the group at the locations indicated in the meet window above. Running late? Shout up when you're at the park on Discord and we can let you know where we are.

The day will be informal, but we'll share a meeting point for a group photo on the day - most likely around 3pm.

On Saturday evening, although this is a one-day meet, some of the group will be staying at the Drayton Manor hotel. Prices are from £70pppn and include breakfast and parking.

Please book your tickets in advance for the best prices. At the time of posting, you can pick up a day ticket to the park for just £28pp!
 
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I will be there! Not been to Drayton for a long time now so looking forward to getting back.

Currently not stopping but if prices are fairly cheap and anyone wishes to stop over let me know.
 
Happy to stop over if there's scope to do so - if not will be a day tripper.
 
Room rates via booking.com have fallen. Rooms hold 3 adults and we're paying £60pp.
 
Will be there, likely just for the day.

Will be getting into Tamworth just after 9 so if anyone can give me a lift from the station, it'd be much appreciated!
 
@Cheese and I will be there and staying over.

We're planning to visit Statfold Country Park for some narrow gauge railway fun and the National Fairground Museum on the Sunday, if anyone else would like to come along It's only 15 minutes up the road so hwhy not, ey?
 
If I can get this off work, I will attend as I am very local. I will hopefully have an update this week.
 
Also cannot remember the last time I went to Drayton. Very much looking forward to all the Western festivities! Apologies in advance....!
 
Couldn't make it unfortunately, but followed your socials to see updates.

Looks like a great day. I will be interested to see what some of you guys that attended think of Drayton Manor now in 2025, especially if you havent visited in a while.
 
DistortAMG said:
Couldn't make it unfortunately, but followed your socials to see updates.

Looks like a great day. I will be interested to see what some of you guys that attended think of Drayton Manor now in 2025, especially if you havent visited in a while.
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It was my first ever visit to the park and I have to be honest, I am glad I managed to get all the coasters done because I probably won't be back any time soon.

I have no experience of Shockwave but The Wave seems to be a decent, fun coaster that's not rough or rattly, I think it's good for the family-focused vibe the park are clearly going for. We did the front row queue which at the time was slightly shorter than the main queue. It's nothing special but it's a good fun ride.

Gold Rush again seems to be a good fit for the park, it's a decent family coaster and a good length. I guess I had hoped for something a bit more exciting, but it's probably right for the target market the park are going for, and the morning/afternoon change in cycle adds some variety.

What ruined both coasters for me though was the one-train operations, the park is really too busy for this to be acceptable and the number of people using the Easy Access system only compounds the problem. The Wave had a row out so discounting the front row there were only 2 rows being batched from main queue and 2 rows from Fastpass each train. The Easy Access system doesn't enforce any sort of timeouts so it's clearly being used by many as a free fastpass. Neither coaster had a queue much below an hour all day, and it was disappointing to manage only one ride on each coaster, on a day when the park was open for over 10 hours.

(On that note - the queue times are frustratingly difficult to check, being displayed on boards that cycle around with so much advertising you have to stand in front of it for about five minutes - and then you have no time to actually read the board before it disappears again. There aren't any queue times at the ride entrances and there's no app. They didn't seem to be updated very frequently either.)

The rest of the line-up is pretty forgettable - Jormungandr is painfully slow and Accelerator is a thoroughly unremarkable Vekoma shuttle like so many others out there. Troublesome Trucks is a fun family coaster but not the sort of ride I'd go out of my way to do again. In terms of other attractions, the Rapids has been so neutralised by H&S as to be pointless and Stormforce 10 is far too wet to ever be a sensible idea in Staffordshire. The quality of the dark rides left rather a lot to be desired and the 4-cycles-an-hour operation on the Haunting is just not acceptable. Maelstrom, on the other hand, is a great flat ride and probably the most thrilling ride in the park.

The entertainment was fine but not really to my taste, with a couple of bang-average tribute acts and a strange wrestling show. I'm also not sure why they thought a daylight firework show was worth putting on - they might have got away with it had they waited until 10pm but at 9pm the sky was so light you could see the smoke trails far better than you could see the fireworks themselves. The price of drinks was crazy (£8 for 0.0% Guinness??) and the plastic cup tax was just annoying - basically you have to buy a hard-plastic reusable cup which is marketed as a 'souvenir' and there's no option to return the cup for a refund. I don't want to think how many of these just end up in the bin, what a total waste! I didn't manage to get much food - the only coeliac-friendly option being at Pizza & Pasta and given the queue times I didn't want to take that much time out of the day.

To be fair, park tickets were reasonable at under £30pp if booked in advance, but if I'm honest, I think I'd rather pay £40+ at somewhere like Paultons and have a guaranteed good day out.
 
NuttySquirrel said:
It was my first ever visit to the park and I have to be honest, I am glad I managed to get all the coasters done because I probably won't be back any time soon.

I have no experience of Shockwave but The Wave seems to be a decent, fun coaster that's not rough or rattly, I think it's good for the family-focused vibe the park are clearly going for. We did the front row queue which at the time was slightly shorter than the main queue. It's nothing special but it's a good fun ride.

Gold Rush again seems to be a good fit for the park, it's a decent family coaster and a good length. I guess I had hoped for something a bit more exciting, but it's probably right for the target market the park are going for, and the morning/afternoon change in cycle adds some variety.

What ruined both coasters for me though was the one-train operations, the park is really too busy for this to be acceptable and the number of people using the Easy Access system only compounds the problem. The Wave had a row out so discounting the front row there were only 2 rows being batched from main queue and 2 rows from Fastpass each train. The Easy Access system doesn't enforce any sort of timeouts so it's clearly being used by many as a free fastpass. Neither coaster had a queue much below an hour all day, and it was disappointing to manage only one ride on each coaster, on a day when the park was open for over 10 hours.

(On that note - the queue times are frustratingly difficult to check, being displayed on boards that cycle around with so much advertising you have to stand in front of it for about five minutes - and then you have no time to actually read the board before it disappears again. There aren't any queue times at the ride entrances and there's no app. They didn't seem to be updated very frequently either.)

The rest of the line-up is pretty forgettable - Jormungandr is painfully slow and Accelerator is a thoroughly unremarkable Vekoma shuttle like so many others out there. Troublesome Trucks is a fun family coaster but not the sort of ride I'd go out of my way to do again. In terms of other attractions, the Rapids has been so neutralised by H&S as to be pointless and Stormforce 10 is far too wet to ever be a sensible idea in Staffordshire. The quality of the dark rides left rather a lot to be desired and the 4-cycles-an-hour operation on the Haunting is just not acceptable. Maelstrom, on the other hand, is a great flat ride and probably the most thrilling ride in the park.

The entertainment was fine but not really to my taste, with a couple of bang-average tribute acts and a strange wrestling show. I'm also not sure why they thought a daylight firework show was worth putting on - they might have got away with it had they waited until 10pm but at 9pm the sky was so light you could see the smoke trails far better than you could see the fireworks themselves. The price of drinks was crazy (£8 for 0.0% Guinness??) and the plastic cup tax was just annoying - basically you have to buy a hard-plastic reusable cup which is marketed as a 'souvenir' and there's no option to return the cup for a refund. I don't want to think how many of these just end up in the bin, what a total waste! I didn't manage to get much food - the only coeliac-friendly option being at Pizza & Pasta and given the queue times I didn't want to take that much time out of the day.

To be fair, park tickets were reasonable at under £30pp if booked in advance, but if I'm honest, I think I'd rather pay £40+ at somewhere like Paultons and have a guaranteed good day out.
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Interesting thoughts, I have to say I pretty much agree with all of them.

While the park has improved on paper, it has fell short in other areas, big time.
 
It's a park that has no stand out anything. It just...is. Nothing awful outside of ops/train availability but nothing good to really write about.

Gold Rush seems to have cost a fair bit but I question if some of the money to be saved by not having the poor cycle 1 and the extra faff it involves could have gone elsewhere in the park.

EDIT: I had clearly blanked Haunting from my mind. They've made it so bad it's now worse than Kassandra. Bonus points we may have ruined it for some others.
 
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