Your weirdest park experience.

[rob666]

Discussion about ladybirds with a punter yesterday, steered, as always, to rollercoasters in the end.

Southport Cyclone, one hot summer Sunday afternoon in the heat of 1976.
We saw the dark cloud coming up the coast from Liverpool, but thought nothing of it.
Then the ladybirds arrived, millions of them.

Mum freaked out a bit, headed indoors to a cafe, I was allowed one last ride before heading home.
The train barely made it around the track, the plague had settled on every flat surface, including the woodie tracks.

Scarier than any ghost train.

What is your weirdest park experience?

 

[Matt N]

Great thread idea!

My weirdest was probably on my last visit to the now defunct Oakwood in 2019. Me and my mum were going to ride Speed, but we weren’t sure if it was open. I could see people in the station, so I investigated further… my mum was saying to me “it’s not open!”, but as a matter of fact, it was! The host let us on straight away, and off we went… the ride then ominously creaked and squeaked its way up the lift hill, and we had a solo ride on Speed!

Even when we got off, we were still the only guests in the entire ride area of Speed… it was an utterly bizarre experience! It was almost like we were in a closed, abandoned theme park at points… and this was in May half term, so not exactly off peak!

 

[rob666]

Likewise one early Sunday morning...
Got to the Beach early, and entered via the Ice Arena west gate, no security man on the cafe exit so I strolled into the park without issue.
Woops, clock change Sunday...just me on the south of the park, all alone, for about half an hour.
Then the ops staff slowly turned up.
"Who let that old man in early?"
Cheeky sod.

 

[Vik]

For me. Probably just 2 of us going through HEX. That felt proper odd.

 

[Matt N]

The post from @Vik reminds me of another one; last September, I had a ride on The Haunting at Drayton Manor completely alone. Two families were with me in the pre-shows, but their kids were scared off by the second pre-show and asked to leave… so I was in the ride portion entirely alone!

That was an extremely weird experience, more so than on most rides given how big Madhouses are…

 

[NuttySquirrel]

My husband and I queued for a night ride on Helix at Liseberg last September, only for the train in front of us to stall and we never got dispatched. We ended up being evacuated from the station about ten minutes before the park was due to close. We didn't want that to be the end of our night so we rushed around looking for anything that was still open (as Liseberg typically run off queues before park close). For some reason, no one had thought to close the queue for the Kallerado rapids ride - though by this time there only about two boats left on the system. We walked up to an almost deserted station run by one sleepy looking staff member and waited about five minutes for a raft to come round. We were batched with a group of Swedish teenagers who were having a right laugh. Never been on a rapids ride in such total darkness before, or with so few other people around - it was pretty strange.

I would probably still swap that for the Helix night ride we didn't get, but it was a unique experience I suppose!

 

[rob666]

Silliest solo experience.
Rained off work by lunch midweek, off to the Beach, where the rain came down harder.
Towards the end of the day on the Dipper, just me, so they sent me around alone after the usual few minutes wait.
Halfway up the lift hill, stop.
Nothing.
Just a steep slope and lots of rain.
Then the laughter from the operators cabin.
All three of them, laughing and pointing.

Then they sent me round in the wettest of Blackpool wet rain...
Then straight through the station again very slowly...
"Rinse cycle sir..." with a salute from the platform op...
And around again, with no choice.

The good old days, naughty people messing in the rain.

 

[DiogoJ42]

Back in 2008, when we were attempting to reach 100 creds in a year, we stopped off at some god-foresaken seaside hell hole to grab this waste of steel.

We paid and walked along the platform.
The seats were supposed to be yellow.
They were black.
And they were moving.
Carpeted in some kind of sand fly, clearly the whole local population had just hatched.

We very nearly turned back, but damnit, we needed every cred. We brushed as many of them as possible off, tucked in as much clothing as possible, and sat down. Naturally, they sent us round for about six laps, when all we wanted to do was leap off and burn our clothes.

 

[rob666]

See what happens when you do kiddie creds!
Had similar with flying ants, on peak days, at both Mingo and Lightwater.
Must be an east side thing.

 

[John_P]

Fantasiana last year.

We'd arrived by Salzburg on the Sunday afternoon and it started raining quite heavily, a worry as the now defunct wild train couldn't run in the rain.

Next day, a Monday in mid June it's still raining and we head to the park. We'd contacted them prior to the trip to see if we could get any behind the scenes access etc.

Anyhow we arrived at the park and they'd not opened. Eventually we're let in and we pay, though I vaguely caught the word gerschlossen which I knew meant closed.

And yes, they'd decided that morning not to open the park. Clearly after everything had tested that morning. However they were still expecting our arrival.

So the guy in charge of the park had a member of staff take us round the park turning on the rides and running the preshows etc. Was so good, got to go on everything we wanted. Then had lunch. He was very adamant we do the Castle Dracula walk through/animatronic/scare maze experience which he narrated for us (and our guide acted as a scare actor).

By this point it had been dry long enough for Wild Train to operate, suddenly another enthusiast turned up and joined us for a few laps. Then we went round the park doing the other rides again. We even got to go in the offices and learn all about Helios.

Was the very last day of a 2 week trip, and what could've been a damp squib of an ending turned into one of my favourite ever theme park experiences.