Richmond Virginia

Richmond Virginia was one of only two places on the trip where we stayed in the same place for a number of days and with us staying downtown we had plenty of opportunity to explore the city, mostly during silly hours (5am anyone?).

Towering over the city is the John Marshall Hotel, which used to be the most famous hotel in the city before being closed. Due to be demolished it had been recently saved so it will be interesting to see what comes of it.

They shouldn't lose the large sign on its roof though! It's well cool!

For the tourist the River Walk is probably the best place to go with small plaques explaining the city history and nice gardens to walk through.

Also a good area to go if you own a too-lazy-to-walk device.

For evenings head to Shockoe, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the city's history and now home to most of the nightlife and restaurants. The Sine Irish Pub was good for food but don't expect to be able to finish the main course, we found the portions too big. If you're too late for the restaurants then City Dogs should be open, a sports bar with an excellent array of food and friendly service!

The National is a small music venue and on the night we were staying, Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek was playing and we were going to check him out. We got there a little late and it was pretty loud from just outside the venue. The music sounded good but we could hear an awful singer trying to fill Jim Morrison's part and failing miserably. So we chose not to bother.

Nice chopper motorcycle outside the venue.

The Richmond Coliseum is the major entertainment venue in the city, well it was until a fire caused some damage that still needs to be sorted out. It has also been home to basketball and WWE wrestling events. At night it's a popular meeting place for the more unsavoury citizens of Richmond so we were only here for as long as we needed to be.

Nice statue inside the within the Virginia General Assembly grounds.

Around the back of the Virginia State Capitol building. This whole area was immaculate with well maintained lawns giving fireflies somewhere to play and flash the locals. There weren't 10 million of them but we did just stand and stare. I don't know if there's an owl in this city.

The Capitol building from the front. Very nice indeed and looking not too shabby for a building over 200 years old.

We liked it so much we went back in the morning to take more pics...before it rained and we went scuttling back to the hotel.

Cool mural not far from the hotel.

Richmond endorse pedestrian power!

Time for some Busch

Busch Gardens Europe

Busch Gardens is a park I had visited in 2006 but since that visit the park had opened 2 new coasters and got rid of arguably their best one "Big Bad Wolf".

At the start of the day we were given an ERS on the biggest of the new coasters, the B&M dive machine "Griffon". This had been the third of these I'd ridden after Oblivion at Alton Towers and Sheikra at Busch Gardens Africa in Tampa. This ride was too similar to Sheikra to pick one over the other. ERS was a lot of fun though, had the ride ops join us on the last train.

Alpengeist was rougher than last time and I coined a new condition called skier-ear where the train whipped round on the entry to the cobra roll and it was difficult to not take a blow to the side of the head.

Apollo's Chariot was great in the back, still good in the middle. The park were operating a locker scam where bags couldn't be left on the station platform and had to be checked into a paid for locker. This meant we chose designated bagmen who'd sit the ride out and let others ride. Fortunately the queues were quick enough to ensure that bagmen would get their rides.

The other new coaster was "Grover's Alpine Express" and it was really quick for a kiddy ride, getting back to the station within seconds of it leaving. It's part of a new Sesame Street themed area for kids and big kids. The ride's name is an anagram of "Engravers Explore Piss" which explains what that yellow writing was etched into the ride supports.

Loch Ness was holding up pretty well. The theory that it might be due to there being no corkscrews could be true. I got to share the ride with a local enthusiast who knew a lot about the ride and visited the park every week for her Loch Ness fix. "Loch Ness Monster" is an anagram of "Hornless Scot Men" which explains why the ride ops weren't wearing antlers.

With regards to the other rides, Curse of Darkastle the 3d motion simulator ride (similar to Spiderman at IOA) was still pretty good but let down by some of the effects not working.

The ride broke down whilst we were queueing so we entertained ourselves with a game of "How many pairs of glasses can we stick on Darren's head". If you want an anagram of this ride then try "Fake Sled Cars Tour", which sort of describes what the ride is about.

The park's new attraction was "Europe in the Air", an attempt to recreate the "Soaring Over" rides that Disney had made popular. However it was obvious that this had been done on a budget and the attention to detail had suffered. If you do go and watch this during the French section watch for the reflection of the camera in the rear window of some of the traffic in the bottom-left corner of the shot for an example of what I mean. One good thing about this ride is that the queue line is lovely and cool and offers respite from the blazing heat.

For a park that is tight on security I found it very amusing that in their Scottish section of the park they had swords and guns for sale.

Liking the use of the phone box!

Perhaps the best registration plate.

One of my best photos of the trip came at Busch and it wasn't even a shot of a ride. This is one of their bald eagles which was more than happy to pose for me.

Busch Gardens Europe is still a stunning park despite the loss of Big Bad Wolf, which a lot of regular visitors are upset about, but time is a great healer and additions like Griffon will soften the blow. The biggest complaint I have with this park is the lack of decent photo opportunities for some of the rides. Alpengeist and Apollo's Chariot both suffer from this. They have sort of addressed this with Griffon, which has plenty of opportunities for the first half of the ride at least. I did raise this with the park GM who joined us for lunch and who agreed to take it on board. So if you see things improve in this area you know who to thank!

Kings Dominion next

Kings Dominion

Kings Dominion was a park I had visited twice before, firstly in the mid-90s before I got into rollercoasters and again on the last East Coast trip. On this trip we actually visited it twice so that we could fit in 2 ERSs, one at the end of the day and then the following morning before the park opened.

Since the last trip the owners of Kings Dominion Paramount had left the theme park industry and sold their US parks to Cedar Fair, owners of Cedar Point and the same guys who'd just sold Googoo Lake park and needed somewhere to put the rides. (It's like a theme park soap opera, rereading that). The upshot of all that is that Dominator, the floorless B&M ride had found a new home in the car park of Kings Dominion.

A good ride but with a poor location, it's a shame they couldn't move over the lake that used to be beside this.

Volcano Blast The Blast Coaster is still as brilliant as ever even with the volcano now letting in light. It's certainly the most re-rideable coaster in the park and we rode it both at night and day. Hard to believe when I first rode this I queued for almost 4 hours to do so.

The main attraction and reason for coming here however was for Intimidator 305, a very large and fast Intamin coaster, like the ride at Carowinds themed around that Nascar chap Dale. To say it's a ride that can't be taken for granted would be a massive understatement. If you're not familiar with the ride prepare to get your face smashed in by the awful restraints (something that's been addressed since our visit). The G-Forces are also very strong on this especially on the first turn which follows the lift hill. I had a momentary black out on one of the runs in the back row. This is also being looked into. It's fair to say this ride needs some serious tuning done to it, they'd already played with the brake configuration from when it first opened and it still was doing this.

Intimidator was still very quick first thing in the morning. On this occasion I rode in row 2.

I'd noticed a spelling mistake on the entry signs that the park have now sorted. It looks like they're taking gs off the signage as well as the ride!

Once we'd learnt the ride and appreciated it was built for speed not grace I think its fair to say that the club really enjoyed the ERS.

The park had also given us Volcano for the morning ERS. Still a good ride that I'm not going to spoil here.

Backlot Stunt Coaster has lost it's Italian Job theming and is now a poor shadow of its former past. The cars are no longer door-opening minis, some of the effects and sets were missing and the ride is more a "tick. next" coaster than a fun re-rideable one.

Darren beats his "most glasses worn" record set previously at Busch. We needed to borrow some pairs from some young kids behind us to get so many on his head.

This is the kiddy woodie "Ghoster Coaster". This has nothing to do with Scooby Doo anymore. It is however still a really good ride!

When soft toys attack!

How are you supposed to get these home?

With Rebel Yell, I was expecting a repeat of Thunder Road but didn't get it. What I got was a coaster that rode pretty well actually with the 50p wheels providing random bursts of airtime on the straights. The park were only running half the ride today though.

The Ricochet mouse has a unique layout being based on a triangular wedge shape. The park could theme it around a piece of cheese!

The test seat is wheeled, so there's an opportunity for a little tomfoolery if you so need.

Hurler was more terrible than Nick's play-posing would lead you to believe. That is all.

Poor Snoopy has gone through a bad patch that has now left him carrying a colostomy bag where ever he goes.

Grizzly was much better with stupid airtime in the back that sent me from my seat onto the seat divide...twice. I can now be found singing soprano at the local choir.

Shockwave is a perfect coaster for contortionists with the most difficult restraint to get into more than any other ride I've ridden. The ride was over quickly fortunately, about the same time as it took to get into the ride in the first place.

The final coaster of a pretty big list was Avalanche, the Mack bobsled. This was fun but too short. We contemplated the idea of stealing one of the cars to take to Knoebel's so that we could ride their Flying Turns.

Next to Boo Blasters is a sex themed attraction educating the people of Doswell on the value in practising safe sex. Whoever is buried here (the gravestone doesn't say) must have got it bad!

For the photographer a trip up the tower is a must. Here's Dominator.

and Volcano. Behind it and sadly overlooked by the public (and some of the club, I had a hard job convincing Nina there was a coaster in there) is the Outer Limits ride which is much improved since they changed the restraint and added a little bit of lighting. ERSs aside it was this coaster we rode the most due in part to us being the only people riding.

The towering Intimidator305 with the now tired Anaconda in front of it. An interesting fact on the new coaster is that the lift hill takes 17 seconds to climb, that has to be the fastest lift hill. There are also rumours that during the initial opening the first turn was being hit at close to 100 miles an hour which may make it the fastest non-launch element on any coaster, but that's not one the park are likely to want to admit.

Overall I was impressed with KD. They didn't run everything to military levels of efficiency but the small crowds meant they didn't need to.

Special mention to the 2 kids in front of us on Anaconda who came up with this little gem.

"This ride is boring"
"So is your face"

Let's visit the countries capital shall we?