Screamage kicks
In these topsy-turvy days of global warming, when Mother Nature can barely make up her mind up when the seasons are supposed to start, there’s a neat way of gauging when spring should have sprung. It’s not the flowering of bluebells in the woods, it’s the return of screaming – the sound of theme parks coming out of hibernation.
So what’s changed in the white-knuckle world since you last had a chance to be thrown around like an empty chip bag in a hurricane?
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Argggghhhhhhh
Here are the new attractions in Britain’s major theme parks.
Thorpe Park
Chertsey, Surrey
Be sure to bring a change of underwear if you’re heading for Thorpe Park this year.
The nerve-shredding SAW – The Ride features the three lunch-losing inversions and the steepest freefall drop in the world: a beyond vertical 100 degree plunge from a height of 100ft that’s near-enough guaranteed to make your legs wobbly for the next half an hour.
SAW – The Ride is the Surrey park’s fourth major rollercoaster, joining Stealth, Colossus and Nemesis Inferno.
Drayton Manor
near Tamworth, Staffordshire
4D CINEMA may sound like something plucked from the fevered imagination of a sci-fi writer, but it actually exists. Just not in the way you might think.
It’s the term for 3D film with physical effects. So you stick on the glasses and there’s all manner of shaky stuff going on in the seats.
Drayton Manor has a £1 million 4D cinema for the new season.
You watch a movie in 3D and your seats react to scenes in the film by jolting around, releasing sprays of water, bursts of air, bubbles and various smells.
The opening film is Curse of Skull Rock, which lets you feel the spray of the ocean and the sway of a pirate ship and gives you a whiff of stinky, one-eyed Captain Scabb before sending you off on board a rapid adventure on the high seas.
Alton Towers
Staffordshire
ADRENALINE junkies will have to make do with the old favourites at the daddy of British theme parks in 2009.
The new addition to the Alton Towers line-up is reassuringly sedate by comparison with rides such as Oblivion, Air and Rita – Queen of Speed.
Sharkbait Reef is an aquarium introduced to the Staffordshire park with Sealife.
Explore the underwater shipwreck located in the pirate-themed Mutiny Bay and come face to face with creatures from the deepest depths of the world’s seas and oceans.
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