Lee’s Daily Blog

This post is for Tuesday, 16th June 2009

This week’s photo was taken at my recent trip to Alton Towers and is of Air

Air at Alton Towers

This was taken towards the end of the day (we got on the last but one car before closing). What I like about the Air queue is how close to the track you can get – you could almost touch some of the cars as they went past.

Being a coaster which puts you into a ‘flying position’ it does mean you get the unusual views of people lying on their back which this photo pictures quite well.

This week’s photo is of Oblivion at Alton Towers

Oblivion at Alton Towers - About to go up the lift hill

The photo above was taken whilst walking along the queue to get on Oblivion itself. It’s one of those views that you don’t see very often, but looks very impressive with the climb up the hill that the car has to go.

What always strikes me about Oblivion is how large the track is and wide the cars are, causing the rollercoaster to stand out from it’s background surroundings. Through in the easily recognisable noise as it goes up the lift hill and I can’t wait to get on it.

As you can see, we were very lucky with the weather on our trip to Alton Towers, having a pretty much clear blue sky the entire day – sun cream was a must!

I have got a series of photos of Oblivion with the car in different places of the track, taken from different parts of the queue. Read more to see them all.

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This post is for Saturday 9th May 2009

In the last week seaworld has started opening Manta for some of it’s theme park guests.

Feedback on the internet seems to be very positive on the ride on the whole, as well as the theming of the lagoon in the queue area (although not all the sealife is present in the pool yet).

The Manta Wing Dip

Feedback on the ride itself has suggested that (from Orlando Sentinel):

Row 8 — the back row — is a very intense ride, according to folks who have been front and back of the coaster. In fact, we’d say the back is best reserved for coaster buffs, not the lily-livered. It’s all about the G’s. One rider told me Row 7 was “bad” but that 8 was significantly more jarring. You’ve been warned.

Hopefully, when I’m over in July I’ll get a chance to try a few different rider positions and see if there is much difference.

One of the things I was worried about was the ride capacity, having seen these flying coasters take a lot longer to load than your standard coaster. Seaworld are saying that they could get up to 1500 people through, but as humans are involved, so will want to remove shoes etc. They’re hoping to get a throughput of 1000 people an hour which is similar to Kraken. I think this is largely being assisted by the fact they have 2 loading stations – but no complaints there!

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One of the rides I’m most looking forward to when I visit Florida in June / July this year, is the opportunity to ride the new coaster at Seaworld – Manta.

I’ve ridden Air at Alton Towers and thought it was a fantastic experience, and knowing how the parks in Florida usually do things even better, it has got me highly looking forward to it.

In the last couple of weeks, Manta has been seen making ‘test flights’. Some of these test flights can be seen in the video below from Orlando Attractions Magazine

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