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Your 2024 in Review

Matt N

Matt N

TS Member
Favourite Ride
Shambhala (PortAventura Park)
Hi guys. I know it may be hard to believe, but we’re now getting towards the point in the season where parks are starting to wind down again ahead of the closed season; the end of the season is nearly upon us once again! With this in mind, I thought it might be nice to look back on 2024 and see what our highlights from the year have been. So, how has 2024 been for you in theme park terms?

I’ll get the ball rolling with a few stats and personal highlights from my season…

Let’s kick things off with the numbers…
  • Coaster count at start of 2024: 111
  • Coaster count at end of 2024: 134
  • Coaster count increase: 23 (+6 on 2023) - New personal best!
  • Park count at start of 2024: 24
  • Park count at end of 2024: 29
  • Park count increase: 5 (+3 on 2023) - Joint personal best!
  • Number of coaster rides: 101 (+24 on 2023) - New personal best!
  • Number of park visits: 14 (-2 on 2023)
  • Unique coasters ridden: 40 (-1 on 2023)
  • Unique parks visited: 9 (Same as 2023)
In terms of stats, I’d say it’s been a resoundingly successful year for me, on the whole! Even though a couple of key stats fell compared to 2023, I still attained a new personal best in terms of both new coasters ridden and number of coaster rides, with 2024 being my first year ever exceeding 20 new coasters and 100 coaster rides, respectively! I also matched my personal best in terms of new parks visited; this has been quite a weak metric for me for a number of years, so I was pleased by this!

Now if I were to reel off a few highlights and lowlights of the year from a more personal standpoint, I would say something like the following:
  • Favourite new-to-me coaster of 2024: Shambhala at PortAventura Park (#1/134) - I’ve long wanted to ride Shambhala, and my goodness, it did not disappoint! The sustained airtime, the speed, the first drop, the smoothness, the rerideability, the forces… not one aspect of it disappointed, and all the above aspects and more meshed together to make it a simply wonderful coaster for me!
  • Favourite new-to-me non-coaster of 2024: Sesame Street: Street Mission at PortAventura Park - It’s easy to overlook a dark ride themed to Sesame Street, but I thought Street Mission was wonderful, and a definite hidden gem of PortAventura for me! The blend of screens and physical set pieces was brilliant, the animatronics were excellent, the interactivity and 3D were great, and overall, I just thought the ride was really, really good fun, and definitely my favourite interactive dark ride I’ve ridden!
  • Favourite new-to-me park of 2024: PortAventura Park - I’d heard wildly mixed reviews of PortAventura, but I found the park absolutely wonderful, with some great rides, gorgeous theming, and operations that were nowhere near as bad as I was expecting!
  • Biggest positive surprise of 2024: Gold Rush at Drayton Manor - After hearing some slightly muted initial reviews of Gold Rush, I went in with lowered expectations, but I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised! I found the ride to be a brilliantly fun family coaster, with some fun twists and turns, fun tricks and backwards sections, and an overall very fun ride experience!
  • Biggest disappointment of 2024: It’s tough to say; I haven’t really had any significant disappointments in terms of new things this year. I found Pleasurewood Hills a bit disappointing, but I went in there with quite lowered expectations to begin with, so I’d struggle to really call it a major disappointment as such.
  • Favourite coaster ride of 2024: Any ride on Shambhala would probably be a strong candidate here, as would the final two back row rides on Hyperia, but those are two examples of where I had multiple similarly phenomenal rides on a coaster in succession. In terms of an example where an individual ride really sticks out, I’m actually going to raise my night ride on Wicker Man at Alton After Dark. The day had been, to put it politely, less than successful up to that point, and we’d waited 2.5 hours for the ride on Wicker Man. We weren’t originally expecting a night ride, but by the time we got on, we’d actually waited so long that we got an unexpected night ride! When we got on, the combination of the awesome speed and airtime of the coaster with the rain that was lashing down and the added thrill of the darkness and the area lighting made the experience truly unforgettable and left us all in complete stitches!
  • Favourite park trip of 2024: PortAventura in September was a definite highlight of the year, as I loved experiencing a new foreign park for the first time and getting a new #1 coaster, but I’d also raise my solo trip to Thorpe Park and Legoland Windsor in June, as I was so pleased to finally do a solo overnight trip and both park days were great fun!
  • Biggest enthusiast achievement of 2024: As mentioned above, I was really proud to finally do my first ever solo overnight trip in June. It was a great trip, and I was also very proud of myself for how everything logistically went to plan without any major hitches (well, aside from being spited by Hyperia…)!
In conclusion, then, I think 2024 was a pretty great year for me! I’m not sensing 2025 will be as fruitful for a litany of reasons, but we shall see!

So, how was your 2024 in theme parks? I’d absolutely love to know!
 
I’ll flesh it out a bit more in a couple of months but as it stands:

  • Creds: +117 (total 267). This will go up again by the end of the year
  • New unique parks: 32
  • Total park visits: 53
  • Best new cred of the year: EGF, although Voltron is VERY close. It was a toss up between the two but EGF edges out as it’s exactly my sort of ride
  • Worst new cred of the year: Mammut. Not because it’s rough, or because it’s particularly egregious in any way, but because it does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It’s a waste of wood
  • Best new park: EP
  • Worst new park: Pavilion Fun Park, Clacton. For conning me £14 for a ride on a Wacky Worm which the op had to push around
 
A solid year, just about my biggest year for riding new coasters.

New Creds - 130
Total Count - 646
New Parks - 31
Total Parks - 126
Favourite new park - 1st Tripsdrill 2nd Gardaland 3rd Rulantica
Favourite New Coaster - 1st Voltron 2nd Expedition GeForce 3rd Hyperia
Favourite New non coaster ride - 1st Pirates In Batavia

Overall a great year knocked off loads of bucket list parks and coasters across Europe over the summer.

Lucky enough to ride every major new for 2024 European coaster I can think of as well, Voltron, Na Fianna Force, Hyperia, Mini Figure Speedway, Gold Rush, Fjord Explorer, and Mahuka.


Revisits in 2024
Pleasure Beach x 4
Europa Park x 2
Thorpe Park x 2
Alton Towers x 1
Legoland Windsor x 1
Gullivers Milton Keynes x 1
Drayton Manor x 1

New Parks
Skyline Park x 1
Legoland Deutschland x 1
Tripsdrill x 1
Schwaben Park x 1
Holiday Park x 1
Walygator x 1
Fraspertuis City x 1
Rulantica x 1
Geiselwind x 1
Pottenstein x1
Belantis x 1
Allwetterrodelbahn Weissenfels x1
Plohn x 1
WurzelRudi's Erlebniswelt x1
AltmuhlBOB x 1
Churpfalzpark x 1
D'rodelbahn st Englmar x 1
Edelwies x 1
Bayern Park x 1
Chiemgau Coaster x 1
Ruhpolding x 1
Fantasiana x 1
Emerald Park x 1
Movieland Park x 1
Gardaland x 2
Luna Farm x 1
Mirabilandia x 2
Fiabilandia x 1
Vulcania x 1
Le Pal x 1
Parc des Combes x 1
Walibi Rhone-Alpes x 1
 
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Park visits:
Parc Asterix
Alton Towers
Europa Park x 3
Thorpe x 16

New parks:
Walibi Belgium

Best new creds:
1. Toutatis
2. Voltron
3. Hyperia
4. Kondaa

Never thought I'd ever purchase a Thorpe Gold Pass, but I've definitely got my money's worth with it. I work nearby pretty regularly and 99% of my visits have been from 4pm until park close, mostly spent in the Hyperia SRQ. Whilst Hyperia isn't a top 10er for me, I do rate it very highly and it's wonderful to have a coaster that actually has good airtime so close to home. 45 rides on it (so far).

Toutatis is comfortably my favourite new to me coaster. Visited on the parks opening weekend after being spited last year and was blown away. There's something special about those Intamin LSM coasters.

Voltron is fantastic too, obviously.

So a quieter year than usual travel wise but it's been great.

Got my eye on the ECC trip to Parque Warner in late November to round it off. ERT on Gotham City Escape 😍
 
Less eventful but

2x Thorpe Park
2x Alton towers

On the bright side…
• 4 visits (4 in 2023 too) actually marks the most theme park visits I’ve had in a single year since maybe 2014. Although in 2023 my first trip to thorpe in April was spited by a storm, so really I visited 3 1/2 times) - so personal best in 10 years!

New Additions
• I don’t have a coaster count, I’m too disorganised for that, but hyperia is a clear #1 overall coaster for me, replacing shambhala at portaventura, which held the title for 9 years!
• Also great to have reborn back.

Pleasant surprises
• Galactica has soared up my rankings, after 2 great front row rides this July. I used to think this ride was meh, and was my least favourite of the big 7, but front row is really where this ride shines, and I’ve grown to appreciate the tamer experience that the ride offers compared to other rides.

Overall:
For my usual standards, this year has been a great one and has been my most accomplished year in a while.

In February I’m going to south east Asia for around 3 months, so we’ll see, maybe I can convince my friends to go to any noteworthy parks out there.

Also planning a Europa Park and Phantasialand road trip with my boyfriend next summer, which will be great
 
So far this year, expecting the numbers to rise:

  • Coaster count at start of 2024: 334
  • Coaster count so far 2024: 406
  • Coaster count increase: +72
  • Number of rides this year: 551
  • Current total rides: 4072
  • Number of park visits: 50
  • Number of fairs visits: 7
  • Unique rides ridden: 230
  • Unique parks visited: 28
  • Unique fairs visited: 6
  • Best new park: Liseberg
  • Worst new park: Clacton Pavillion
  • Best new coaster: Toutatis
  • Worst new coaster: Looping star, Clacton Pier if being sensible. Vertika for being annoyed with it. It is unacceptably crap.
 
For me, I started my coaster count at 54 at the beginning of 2024. Now, my coaster count is 79 with an increase of 25 coasters.

Park visits this year:

Thorpe Park x 23 (1 more visit planned)
Chessington x 3 (1 more visit planned)
Europa Park x 4 (1 trip)
Phantasialand x 2 (1 trip)
Blackpool Pleasure Beach x 2 (1 trip)
Drayton Manor x 1

35 in total, this makes me wonder how much I visit theme parks 😱😅

Best New Coaster: Taron - whilst there was a lot of competition, Taron has the complete package, airtime, pacing and immersive theming. With Voltron and Hyperia, you can get rough rides whilst Taron, you don't.

Best New Park: Whilst it is very hard to choose, I will go with Phantasialand as the park is incredibly immersive and you feel like you're in a different world. Europa also has fantastic presentation and had that similar feeling too.

Best Surprise: I would have to go for Hyperia on this one. I wasn't expecting too much with the short layout however it packs a punch and you don't feel you're short changed. The airtime rivals that of Voltron and Taron.

Best Non Coaster Ride: Chiapas - this ride has been on the top of my bucket list for water rides and this ride didn't disappoint. The layout is incredibly fun and the length is right. The theming is incredible. To be honest, it actually makes me think what Alton Towers and to an extent, Thorpe Park is missing.

Biggest Disappointment: That is hard but I would say Gold Rush at Drayton Manor. I expected there to be more to it as it was described as a "Family Thrill" coaster and the best in Europe. Whilst it is really good especially for a family coaster, I was hoping it was slightly more thrilling and closer to Storm Chaser, Vampire, Dragon's Fury etc.

Worst Coaster/Ride: Infusion and Grand National - enough said! 😅

Underrated Gems: I would say that the dark rides at both Phantasialand and Europa Park are hidden gems at the park. I would say Feng Ju Palace, The Cute and Charming Granny and her Dinosaurs ride by Eurosat, Pirates of Batavia and Snorri Touren were incredible rides.

There were some disappointing dark rides at Europa Park such as the one in Russia and near Geisterschloss in Italy however they seem to be dated and designed more for younger families. The animatronics remind me of Camberwick Green and stop motion shows of the 70s and 80s 🤔

Revisited Favourites: Both Icon and Valhalla were two favourites of mine when I first visited BPB. Having revisited the park, I appreciated both rides more now I've been on both rides multiple times.

The effects on Valhalla are spectacular and whilst some didn't work (the hammers), it is absolutely fantastic.

Icon has incredible airtime for a coaster and having been on this before Taron, Voltron and Hyperia - this was a fantastic warm up for similar coasters. It isn't the most spectacular or intense coaster but is an underrated gem.

In summary, 2024 has been a very successful year for me in terms of theme parks and has built upon 2023 and previous years very well. The trips to Phantasialand and Europa were my first ones overseas and solo so am very proud of this.

I'm intending for 2025 to be an even bigger year with plans to hit 100 on my coaster credit count and to visit even more new UK and European parks.
 
I don't keep track of the statistics but visited 4 new parks this year, including 2 abroad with my son which i thought might never be possible due to his condition so in that sense its been an amazing theme park year!

Highlights were:

Efteling - Easily my favourite park ever and will happily sing its praise given the smallest opportunity. Super excited to hopefully go back in 2025, especially as there will be 5 new rides for my son to go on (1 brand new, 1 he will be tall enough now and 3 we didn't get round to).

Plopsaland - This was our first European trip so holds a sentimental place forevermore. Bolstered by a lovely park with a great RAP system plus a delightfully themed waterpark too. Another one with a likely return trip for 2025. Also my first time driving from the UK to Europe so a little accomplishment there.

Universal Osaka - An amazing experience, albeit for quite different reasons as this one was with friends not family but so happy i got to go. Disappointed that Donkey Kong wasn't open (and seems to have vanished off the face of the earth from it's original Spring opening) but more than made up for by the fun in Nintendo Land and above all my new favourite rollercoaster ever the sensational Flying Dinosaur!

Drayton Manor was the other new park for us, which whilst it doesn't hold a candle to the other three mentioned is still nice enough, though i remain bitter we didn't get to go on Gold Rush.

Still have a fair few trips left for 2024 though!
 
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Interesting year for me, aim was to get back into things after years out of the game and I definitely did that. Didn't quite break the 150 mark but did get a new number 1 (and 4,5 and 6)

Had a few potential trips that didn't come to anything due to the usually plentiful overtime I was planning on using to pay for them drying up, and got let down by travel arrangements not working out as hoped for a trip to Walibi Holland whilst in Amsterdam for the F1.

Still, got back to EP, finally did the other southern Merlin parks, took advantage of the EP pass free entry to Emerald and made a fairly last minute pilgrimage over to Katowice. EL wasn't one of the parks I was thinking of doing this year, was expecting maybe next year or the year after, but it all came together quickly and I found a way to justify it to myself - was literally trying to come up with a gentle way of backing out right up until an hour before making all the payments 😂

Next year will probably be a quieter year, as most of my disposable income and annual leave is going towards Primavera, and I'm still debating whether to renew my MAP, but the intention is to make a few quick hops over the the likes of Asterix whenever I spot any cheap flights. My EP pass is valid until May too so hoping to take advantage of at least one more partner park and/or go back EP itself. I will finally get on Dragon's Fury.

Parks visited:
Towers x3 (up to at least 4 by end of season)
Thorpe (3 days)
Chessington*
Legoland Windsor*
Europa-Park (2 days)
Energylandia* (2 days)
Legendia*
Emerald Park*

*First time

Coaster count up from 113 to 146

Best new credits
Volton
Lech
Zadra

Highlights
Voltron
An hour of Lech to ourselves

Lowlights
Dragon's Fury breaking down for the day when we were about to board, going back a month later just to tick it off and the same thing happening again
 
Martin said:
Interesting year for me, aim was to get back into things after years out of the game and I definitely did that. Didn't quite break the 150 mark but did get a new number 1 (and 4,5 and 6)

Had a few potential trips that didn't come to anything due to the usually plentiful overtime I was planning on using to pay for them drying up, and got let down by travel arrangements not working out as hoped for a trip to Walibi Holland whilst in Amsterdam for the F1.

Still, got back to EP, finally did the other southern Merlin parks, took advantage of the EP pass free entry to Emerald and made a fairly last minute pilgrimage over to Katowice. EL wasn't one of the parks I was thinking of doing this year, was expecting maybe next year or the year after, but it all came together quickly and I found a way to justify it to myself - was literally trying to come up with a gentle way of backing out right up until an hour before making all the payments 😂

Next year will probably be a quieter year, as most of my disposable income and annual leave is going towards Primavera, and I'm still debating whether to renew my MAP, but the intention is to make a few quick hops over the the likes of Asterix whenever I spot any cheap flights. My EP pass is valid until May too so hoping to take advantage of at least one more partner park and/or go back EP itself. I will finally get on Dragon's Fury.

Parks visited:
Towers x3 (up to at least 4 by end of season)
Thorpe (3 days)
Chessington*
Legoland Windsor*
Europa-Park (2 days)
Energylandia* (2 days)
Legendia*
Emerald Park*

*First time

Coaster count up from 113 to 146

Best new credits
Volton
Lech
Zadra

Highlights
Voltron
An hour of Lech to ourselves

Lowlights
Dragon's Fury breaking down for the day when we were about to board, going back a month later just to tick it off and the same thing happening again
Click to expand...
Dragon's Fury is hopelessly unreliable these days. When it is working it's often got an unacceptably long queue due to the horrible capacity issues. I've missed out on it the last three visits I've had to Chessington, in fact I've not ridden it now since September 2022. There's not much else to lure me back to Chessington especially when a visit there involves driving past Thorpe Park. It's a good ride but it's becoming a bit of a white elephant now.
 
I believe they already have done. Worth noting though that Spinball's reliability was dreadful after the new control system was put in. All such systems are now rated for a 20 year operational life so after that they should be replaced which is the reason for both rides having work done. In theory this should have no effect on reliability however in several cases at Merlin parks it seems to have introduced new issues.
 
They spent a lot of time on the last brake run with spanners, wrenches and hitting it with hammers. They had managed to get cars to move so whatever it was it hadn't seized completely. Of course, it ran pretty much all day the day after 🫠
 
This is my first year of tracking individual rides, and my second year of properly tracking visits so my data won’t be as thorough as others, however here’s my numbers for 2024:

Creds at start of year: 76

Creds as at 14 November: 148 (+72)

Planned creds remaining: 2

Park Visits Last year: 24

Park Visits This year: 43 (+19)

Number of International parks visited in year: 3

Total rides 2024: 382

Highlights:

First “mad” trip with Poisson and Leigh to Liseberg. Flew out Saturday, day on park, flew back Sunday. Never done anything like that but it was tremendous fun and can’t wait for the next one.

The BIG TRIP with the scary driving. I won’t repeat what’s in my trip report, but that trip really pushed my boundaries of what I thought I could do, and also gave me more Thoosie points as I (accidentally) ended up at Danse Macabre’s opening day.

Attending every TST meet (except Voltron). Always good fun to meet up with people, and whether it’s a mini meet with the Discord gang, or a proper big meet, I’ve enjoyed all of them.

Hitting 100 creds for both Chimpy and I.

Almost managing a new cred every month all year: Feb was Paultons, March – Nemesis (allow me that one), April – Funderworld, May – WMSP, Flamingoland, June – Hyperia, July – GYPB, Joyland, PWH, August – Welsh silliness, Liseberg & Oakwood, September – Bridgwater Fair, October – Cornish silliness, Toverland & Efteling, November – fail, December – Wildmaus XXL and something silly planned.

Lowlights – I’m skint. I believe this is a typical Thoosie problem.
 
Pretty good year for me. My aim this year was to reach 100 creds and yay, I managed it and have finished the year on 104.

I visited Plopsaland, Oakwood, Flamingoland and Drayton for the first time.

April, I went to Towers for Nemesis reborn.

May was my trip to Plopsa and my first time riding RTH. This was a fantastic day and one of my highlights, not just for the park but also for driving abroad for the first time and doing the channel tunnel.

June, I did a Welsh trip picking up several kiddy creds on the way to Oakwood. My day at Oakwood was another highlight. It was a beautiful sunny day and I adored Megaphobia (I think if I remember correctly, I rode it 21 times).

July was my first time on Hyperia. Thorpe is my closest park but I’ve not been as much as usual this year due to the Hyperia hype and big crowds. Not that fussed on Hyperia personally.

September was my north of England trip, we did BPB, Mingoland and Drayton. On a last minute whim I also booked an extra Travelodge night and had a day at Towers as well. This turned out to be one of the best days at Towers that Ive had. The weather was gorgeous, the park was quiet, the coasters were all pretty much working that day and there were minimal queues.

(Frustratingly, the season was cut short for me due to health reasons and I missed the whole of Halloween and any last visits before everywhere shut. I’ve been sulking for a few weeks due to this as was hoping for a couple of trips to Thorpe and maybe, possibly a trip to Parc Asterix but am under doctors orders at present not to ride coasters or do anything remotely fun or exciting!)

Some stats:

New creds 36
Days at parks 24 (2 up from 2023)
New parks 4 (5 if you count Barry Island)

Best new cred - Ride to Happiness
Honourable mention for Megaphobia which I personally enjoyed more than Hyperia, it’s just so fun!
Worst new cred - Hero
Biggest disappointment - Hyperia, I just don’t think it lives up to the hype. The first drop is amazing but after that, it doesn’t do it for me.
Spites - spited by Big Dipper for the second year in a row.
Biggest achievement - Driving to Belgium.
 
Pretty pants really. I can't really afford to go abroad because of the house move (worth it though) and until my apprenticeship ends. Since it took until the latter half of the season to get Drayton's new coaster open, I didn't even manage my Dayton and Flamingo Land trip.

Popped to Towers twice and it was so bad I couldn't be bothered to go again for the rest of the season. I missed my first Scarefest in 16 years. Then there was a Thorpe trip which was a better day out than any I've had at Towers for the last couple of years. Sad that I can't even rely on Towers for a decent day out anymore.
 
An uneventful year that only compromised three trips to Alton Towers, and a two day visit to Thorpe Park at a time where Hyperia was closed, the weather was terrible and the ops weren’t great. But to be fair my trips to Towers were great for ops and availability, considering the tough year they had. Oh and I also had a trip to Cadbury World so got on the dark ride.

Coasters
Nemesis Reborn - 7
Thirteen - 6
Wicker-Man - 5
Rita - 5
Oblivion - 3
Runaway Mine Train - 3
Spinball Whizzer - 3
The Swarm - 3
Colossus - 2
Galactica - 2
The Smiler - 2
Nemesis Inferno - 2
Saw - 1
Stealth - 1
Flying Fish - 1
15 coasters, 0 new coasters, 46 total rides

Other rides
The Curse at Alton Manor - 4
Gangsta Granny - 1
Nemesis Sub-Terra - 1
Rumba Rapids - 1
Storm Surge - 1
Cadbury Chocolate Quest - 1

Hope to be a bit more adventurous next year but have to balance it against all my many other interests that also demand my time and money.
 
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Can update this properly now the year is pretty much over unless I do HPWW next week.

  • Cred count: started on 140, ended on 289. +149
  • New unique parks: 35
  • Total park visits: 62
Everything else the same. Despite managing an impromptu trip to Movie Park Germany and getting on Bandit, surprisingly it wasn’t quite as horrendous an experience as I was expecting it to be (@Poisson tells me I was extremely lucky), so it doesn’t supplant Mammut as worst coaster I’ve done all year.

I’ll also add my favourite non-coaster ride this year was Danse Macabre (Intamin nonsense at its most Intamin), and my least favourite was Geister Rikscha (because it’s just crap).
 
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