Expedition
Ge-Force, Holiday Park
I regard record-breaking
statistics as a marketing tool, and not necessarily representative of
the ride to be had. A good example is Blackpool Pleasure Beach’s Big
One. At little over 200ft, it is still sold to us as being the Worlds’
tallest, fastest and steepest roller coaster. What they don’t mention
is that this record was lost over five years ago, moreover the middling
ride to be had at the end of it.
I’m not into statistics. I
don’t know in terms of feet how long a ride is, I am not entirely sure
how many coasters I have ridden and how many times I have ridden them.
I’m in it for the adrenaline. I enjoy the feeling of impending doom
when roller coasters are as safe as houses.
Magnum XL200 was the first
200ft-tall roller coaster to be built. Since then, so-called hyper
coasters have spread like fungi throughout the world. The textbook term
of hyper coaster is an out and back roller coaster to go over 200ft.
This term has
been hazed somewhat by rides like X (which includes loops)
and Steel Eel (has all the credentials but stands at only 150ft). This
proves my point that this whole culture of statistics is flawed.
To claim the tallest now is
becoming a feat in itself. At nearly 350ft, Steel Dragon is currently
the tallest, and few parks have the financial clout let alone the space
to build such a behemoth. As such, we’re enjoying more coasters around
the 200-250ft mark like Superman, Raging Bull and more recently,
Expedition Ge-Force.
Expedition Ge-Force is in this
field of ambiguity at 175ft tall. It isn’t the tallest, nor the
longest, but it is the perfect example of how the term ‘worlds
tallest’ is merely something to put on the front of the park map, not
a benchmark in thrills.
Holiday Park is a bit like
Oakwood. It was unheard of until recently, and as far as Joe Public
goes, it remains so. The skyline has always been broken by the 200ft
Intamin Freefall Tower, and has since been re-drawn again by the vivid
track of Expedition Ge-Force.
A woodland area towards the back
of the park has been cleared for a colonial expedition camp base.
Supplies are stacked up, tents congregate around the base of the drop
and jeeps are parked up where the gravel roadway meets the dense foliage
surrounding.
Many tents are open for supplies
such as doughnuts and drinks, there is also the Pi Pi Station, a place
to relieve yourself before you enjoy the expedition itself.
Enveloping this camp, the vivid
orange crosshatch track of Expedition Ge-Force. The supports are a musty
green-brown colour and support the insane direction changes of
Intamin’s latest contribution to the world of coasters.
Every element of Expedition
Ge-Force is completely over-exaggerated. The first drop is not far off
vertical, flicking you 95-degrees to the right before swooping off into
a parabolic hill. Not too long after disappearing into the trees behind,
the track does a dramatic overbanked turn above the pathway.
After diving behind the campsite,
an undulating series of bunnyhops takes you into the final brake run
with a 180-degree turn taking you into the station.
Before you ride, you can check
your dimensions in a mock up seat and restraint set up at the entrance
to the ride. If you pass this ‘test’, let the expedition begin. You
pass under a corrugated Expedition Ge-Force sign before the queue veers
off to the left.
The lift hill that you queue
beneath has quite a minimalist structure – no more than Thorpe
Parks’ Colossus. The similarities here end, though. Following on
from
the complex but necessary cable lift from Millennium Force, Expedition
Ge-Force makes use of a similar, more refined system. The queue weaves
under the taught return of this cable, with makeshift scaffolding
arching above your head.
As you approach the station, the
queue forks into two for people who wish to queue for the front, and for
those who wish to queue elsewhere. A corrugated tunnel takes those who
have lost the will to ride beneath the lift back to safety, before those
who are hardy enough climb the stairs to the station.
The station is large and
minimalist. It features little more than a small building for the
operators, a corrugated ‘shelter’ for storing those valuables that
you’ll lose on the ride and the automatic gates for you to queue
behind with a barrier further separating the back seats for your
enjoyment.
The trains come in a brighter
shade of bright and brighter still. The orange one is the most tasteful,
yet still bright enough to make a road cone seem inconspicuous. Most
worrying of all is the day-glow fluorescent yellow train, bright enough
to burn itself onto the back of your retinas.
Fortunately, minimalism prevails,
meaning most of the train is the relatively dull emerald green, not the
almost insulting shades fore mentioned.
The trains follow a popular trend
of being little more than seats on wheels. The train makes use of tiered
seating, meaning the second row of each car is higher than the first
meaning your view of the twisted track ahead is unrestricted.
There are no sides to the train,
just a snug lap bar and seat belt to hold you in. The lap bar is
strongly enforced, pushed down as far as it will go by members of staff.
Having ridden Expedition Ge-Force, it is a wise move not to take
liberties or you could easily be regretting it.
Unfortunately, loading of the
train is slow. Seat belts are fastened by members of the public, checked
and tightened by members of staff before lap bars are lowered and pushed
down as they’re checked. The ride is quite short, so halfway through
these proceedings, the other train sits in wait on the brake run.
Once you’re in, the train
smoothly, silently and swiftly starts the climb on the lift. With a
single clunk of anti-rollbacks, complete silence accompanies your
accelerated jaunt up this lift. As you climb, there is ample opportunity
to pan right and look at the glorious layout of this sprawling giant.
You approach the mast at the top
of the lift, and without pausing, without even slowing, the train drops
from beneath you.
Before you can even breathe, you
pitch impossibly to the right, cavorting towards the ground in a literal
second of perfectly engineered madness. Despite being almost vertical,
despite plunging beyond the natural angle of descent, the drop is fluid
with the train almost floating down.
You bottom out, pulling unnatural
amounts of Gs before you are peeled away from the ground into a
near-parabolic hill. Before you even hit the top, you rise from your
seat and are pulled by the restraints on your legs as the train drops
back towards the ground.
Before you can even get there,
once again in a flurry of G-forces, the train turns and banks to the
right, tilting beyond the normal 90-degrees into a particularly exposed
moment in an overbanked turn.
Bottoming out once again delivers
generous amounts of Gs before you are plunged over another enormous
bunny hop. You soon realise that as you jump over each drop, the wheels
lift from the track and are complete silence until the bottom.
Another overbanked turn takes
place towards the station and the pathway in front before you slalom
over a lake essentially forming an over-sized figure-eight. Another turn
towards the back of the ride takes you through the first of two magnetic
trim-brakes, both of which are noticeable, neither of which succeed in
taking the bite out of the remainder of the ride.
You soon clock a twist in the
track approaching. As you brace your legs for what seems inevitable, the
train is spectacularly flicked from a right-hand curve into a left-hand
stance in the matter of feet with unparalleled elegance.
Now in the shadow of the first
overbanked turn, a sweeping curve takes you into another bunny-hop,
shrouded in the supports from the second hill offering some of the most
sustained and cranium scraping head choppers ever experienced just as
you raise from your seat in another unrelenting moment of airtime.
Another climb before a relatively
shallow drop, unfortunately crowned by another trim, turning behind the
beige tents that form the campsite, now running parallel in the opposite
direction to the lift throwing you up once, twice in two instances of
airtime on the final bunny hops forming the return stretch, before a
flash of cameras as you are swiftly brought to a halt by the magnetic
brakes.
As you slowly advance into the
station, you have an opportunity to fumble around with your seatbelt
before a member of staff does the honours for you. Most seatbelts are
unfastened by the time the restraint unlocks leaving you to jump from
the train.
The one thing that strikes me
about Expedition Ge-Force are the many directions in which the train is
turned on the first drop, the overstated angles of the overbanked turns
and the sharp twist to the left mid-course. Yet every one feels so
natural, so fluid and so normal.
The train executes each insanely
rough-looking element with unrivalled grace. The ride also gets the mix
of sensations just right. The overbanked turns are a novel addition in
comparison to many hyper coasters, but whilst the aim of these is to
emphasise the feeling of speed, the drops and bunny-hops take care of
airtime, leaving your toes curling as your seat is pulled from beneath.
Trim brakes are normally as
welcome on a ride as Britney Spears at an Eminem concert, yet whilst
these are clearly felt as you pass them, the rest of the ride is as
powerful as when it starts, and isn’t spent going down steep hills
slowly, thinking what a waste the end is.
As well as the track being
perfectly manufactured perfection, the trains completely show up the
wheeled buckets of the Big One. The feeling of vulnerability is strongly
exaggerated, something which helps no end in my enthusiasm towards the
ride.
To ride a coaster with high
expectations and to have them met is always a pleasure. To have them
exceeded is just heavenly.
MS Undated
Good points:
▪
Many wild transitions,
sharp turns and steep drops
▪
Always smooth, always
forceful
▪
Excellent trains with
minimal bodywork
▪
Good mixture of
airtime hills and overbanked turns
▪
Probably the best drop
in the world
Bad points:
▪ Very slow loading of
the ride means a very low capacity
▪ Two trim brakes take a
little bite out of the ending
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