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TraumaTizer When Vekoma's
first Suspended Looping Coaster (SLC), El Condor, opened at what is now
Six Flags Holland, one man who heaped a surprising amount of praise on
the ride was Geoffrey Thompson, MD of Blackpool Pleasure Beach. In
interviews, he started to drop thinly veiled hints that he was
interested in buying one for one of his parks. Although many assumed
that the ride was bound for BPB, it turned out that the ride would be
built at Pleasureland, BPB's sister park in Southport. The problem
with building large rides at Pleasureland was that, although the BPB
company ran the park, many of the rides and stalls were privately owned,
and would not budge until their leases ran out. This meant that the ride
would not open until 1999, a full five years after the opening El Condor
and (more importantly) Nemesis, which had already captured the public's
imagination. On the positive side, Vekoma spent this time tweaking the
design to create the Mark 3 version of the ride, intended to eliminate
the severe roughness that plagued the Mark 1 model (El Condor was the
only Mark 1 ever built), and the multitude of Mark 2 models, which had a
reputation for being genuinely traumatising to ride. When
originally announced, the ride was given the rather dreary name
"Hang Over", but also said that the name would change if a
sponsor could be found. Usually, sponsorship deals lead to truly awful
ride names, but in this case a deal was struck with the Barr soft drinks
firm, who wanted to use the ride to promote the Tizer brand, and so the
name "TraumaTizer" was born. While being a surprisingly witty
name for a sponsored ride, I do suspect that if I were Barr's marketing
man, I would be concerned that the brand name is not really prominent
enough - after all, people were never going to think of it as "The
Tizer ride", as they think of The Big One as "The Pepsi
Max". The park began
promoting the ride as "The tallest, fastest suspended looping
coaster in the UK", although any claim to the height record was
debatable, as the height of Nemesis has always been open to
interpretation due to it being built on such uneven ground. In any case,
both records have since been lost to Fantasy Island's Odyssey Jubilee,
rendering the argument academic. TraumaTizer
sits at the southern edge of the park, directly opposite the 1937
Cyclone. Compared to the slightly run-down look of much of the park,
TraumaTizer looks fabulous. From a distance, the ride looks wonderful,
with almost the entire track visible from anywhere in the park. From the
seafront, the imposing blue structure and bright red track stand out as
a beacon for thrill-seekers. Come nightfall, the subtle floodlighting
looks superb. My only reservation is that the choice of paint scheme is
exactly the same as BPB's Big One, and therefore fails to give the ride
an identity of its own. Rightly or wrongly, Nemesis and The Big One are
probably Britain's two most famous coasters, and it seems a shame that
people may see the ride and dismiss it as "Nemesis in The Big One's
colours". Also, if I can slip back into the role of Barr's
marketing man for a moment, I'd be concerned that people would make the
quite logical assumption that it was Pepsi that was involved in the
ride, which would be a quite spectacular own goal. Vekoma's
design conveniently leaves a large space in the middle of the ride,
allowing parks the chance to build Tussaud's-style paths and spectator
areas under most of the ride. Happily, Pleasureland have made good use
of this feature, as the main path to the ride takes you under the brake
run, past a large name sign made out of old Big One track (much like
everything else the BPB company builds). The wide path eventually
narrows as it reaches the stations, blurring the distinction between
spectator area and queue line. While negotiating this path, it becomes
obvious that almost all of the space beneath the ride has been used to
create a very pleasant garden. OK, it's not spectacular in the Alton
Towers sense, but it's a very nice touch for a park that has never
exactly been a place of outstanding beauty. The station is
surprisingly stylish, given that it's not particularly visible from
anywhere other than the car park. Although the ride itself has no
tangible theme, the station was obviously intended to fit the Moroccan
theme which the park briefly tried to adopt, and therefore has a very
similar look to Casablanca, the park's family entertainment centre (or
"Posh arcade" as they're also known). The queue continues up
two ramps, which lead to the loading platform. It is here that you will
often find a bizarre tape loop of hopelessly outdated pop music, so if
you've ever found yourself having a blazing row about the lyrics to New
Kids on the Block songs, this is the place to settle your differences.
In all honesty, this is not a great queue line once you get past the
spectator area. The outside section gives you nothing to do but watch
the lift motor or the car park, and you enter the station a long way
below the loading platform, and can't see anything of the ride itself.
It's a bit of a shame that, while the spectators have such a good view
of everything the ride does, those of us in the queue see virtually
nothing. Eventually,
you are let onto the platform, where the crowd sorts itself into the
automatic gates. Amusingly, the original SLCs had 9 cars, later reduced
to 8 because of the roughness of the early rides. Although TraumaTizer
only ever ran 8 car trains, the designs were obviously never adapted to
suit - the train still has the chassis of the ninth car, while the
platform still has 9 gates, with one permanently blocked off. In a rather
cheeky move, Pleasureland's original press blurb for the ride made great
play of the fact that the cars are two seats wide, "So all riders
get a good view", an obvious reference to the complaints that the
four abreast trains of B&M inverters like Nemesis don't offer a
great view to riders on the inside seats. What they don't mention is
that, compared to the comfort of B&M's trains, Vekoma's restraints
are like straightjackets, restricting your view far more than Nemesis
ever does. Due to the roughness of the earlier versions of the ride, the
restraint features huge and very restrictive padded cushions either side
of the head, while the lower half is shaped in such a way as to severely
restrict arm movement, possibly to stop long-limbed riders being able to
reach dangerous parts of the train. Nervous riders are given a strange
handlebar at the bottom of the restraint, shaped like a bull's horns,
which offer no reassurance at all. Frankly, if you're going to hold on,
you're better off using the bars at the side of the seat than those on
the restraint. Overall, if B&M produce the Rolls Royce of inverter
trains, Vekoma's rank somewhere in the Sinclair C5 league. As you take
your seat, the safety instructions will play out over the speakers.
Strangely, apart from substituting the park and ride names, it is
exactly the same announcement as on The Big One, even including the line
"And now, it is time to experience Vertical Reality". After
the ride ops check the restraints, doing their best to crush you into
the seat as they do so, the train rolls out of the station and the floor
drops away - in that order. In fact, half the train is out of the
station before the floor moves at all. To me, this just highlights the
fact that moving floor is a totally pointless feature of these rides, as
the only people likely to catch the feet on the floor would be too busy
playing for Harlem Globetrotters to visit Southport in the first place.
It's worth remembering, incidentally, that EuroStar's floor doesn't
move, and it certainly doesn't seem hinder operation there! The lift hill
is nice and quiet compared to the B&M version, and cleverly avoids
the need to have a floor beneath train, allowing riders a good view of
the ground. This being the case, why is the ground under the lift hill
the only area of the ride with no landscaping whatsoever? Most of the
ride takes place over a nice little garden, but at the only point where
riders have time to look down, they see a pile of dirt, gravel, and
large chunks of rusty old metal. This totally defies logic, and must go
down as a major black spot on the ride's otherwise excellent appearance.
I'm not the kind of person who insists that all rides should be
elaborately themed and decorated from top to bottom, but I certainly
don't want to look down from the lift hill of an inverter (or any other
coaster for that matter) at what looks like an abandoned scrap yard,
particularly when the designer gone to the trouble of creating a system
which allows the lift to be totally floorless. As for the
layout, it is exactly the same as any other Vekoma SLC so anyone who has
ridden other versions of the ride, feel free to skip the next two
paragraphs. From the top of the lift, you have a few seconds to look out
at Southport's sea front before rolling down a not-particularly-steep
first drop, twisting 180 degrees to the right. The style of the ride is
exactly what you'd expect from an inverted coaster, relying far more on
inversions and turns for excitement than drops. The first two inversions
are provided by the novel and quite spectacular "Butterfly"
element. This is more or less a vertical loop, but with a twist at the
top which means that train rights itself, before twisting back
upside-down and continuing down the loop. It was the second half of this
element that caused people to complain that earlier versions of the ride
were too rough. Even after several years of operation, TraumaTizer gets
you through the element without the slightest hint of roughness,
regardless of where on the train you ride. Vekoma deserve a lot of
credit for listening to the complaints and finding such an effective
solution, although it helps that Pleasureland's maintenance department
obviously know what they're doing. Next, the
train performs a neat fly-by of the station, coming very close to the
exit ramp, and hits the next inversion, the Immelman (to borrow
B&M's name for it), again without the slightest hint of roughness.
Next, a dive straight into a right hand helix, and directly into two
inversions, somewhere between corkscrews and in-line twists. This whole
section goes by without any respite, and has a good, relentless rhythm
to it. All that remains is a turn and a swoop into the brakes. Annoyingly, if
you want to re-ride, there's quite a walk ahead of you. I always hate it
when a ride exit forces you into the souvenir shop, as I always think it
to be a rather blatant form of customer manipulation. TraumaTizer's exit
is worse than most, partly because 99% of the stuff on offer is
unrelated to the park or ride in any way, and partly because the shop
itself is quite a way away from the station, meaning that you can't
re-ride without taking an annoyingly long detour. A further gripe, the
exit of the shop doesn't seem to have been designed to cope with groups
of 16 people funnelling through every two minutes, meaning that the shop
can get quite congested. It's just as well the trains are only two seats
wide, I suppose! TraumaTizer
has plenty of good points. There's nothing on the ride that could be
described as remotely rough. The five inversions are well paced,
although I think there is a good argument for losing an inversion or two
in favour or more drops and tight turns (5 inversions presumably suited
the park though, being one more than Nemesis has). Apart from the lift
hill, the area is nicely landscaped, and forms a very pleasant area of
the park. So surely I should be raving about the ride? Well, no. For
some reason I just found it impossible to enjoy the ride very much. I
can only think of two reasons for this. Firstly, the
awful train that made me feel overly restrained, crushing and clamping
my head in place, while totally restricting all arm movement. This makes
the ride far too claustrophobic for my liking, and only served to make
me appreciate how good B&M's trains are. It is quite ironic that
TraumaTizer, one of the smoothest looping coasters in the country,
features restraints designed to clamp riders in place and protect them
against the sheer roughness of earlier models. There are a lot of rough
Vekoma coasters that would benefit a lot more from such heavily padded
restraints than TraumaTizer does, that's for certain! The second
reason for my lukewarm reaction to the ride is not entirely unrelated to
the first. A lot of Vekoma rides (such as Alton Towers' Corkscrew, Parc
Asterix`s Gouderix, and the earlier SLCs), have been heavily criticised
over the years for being far too rough. Vekoma have put a lot of effort
into make their rides smoother and have succeeded. As strange as it may
seem, I now find that I have to criticise TraumaTizer for being too
smooth. I'm not saying a ride should leave me battered and bruised (as
happens on TraumaTizer's neighbour, King Solomon's Mines), but I should
leave the train feeling like something's happened. With any great
coaster, there's a constant bombardment of sensations to get the
adrenaline flowing. My favourite inverter, EuroStar, makes riders sit
there wondering how much more G force their bodies can take before being
crushed. Nemesis does the same, while also making them worry about how
close they are to smashing into the scenery. On TraumaTizer, I found the
ride had so little impact that when my mind wasn't focused on how awful
the restraints were, it would be drifting off onto totally unrelated
subjects, only for me to find we'd hit the brakes before I knew it.
"What shall I have for dinner? Which park shall I visit next week?
When will ... what, the ride's over? I never noticed". It's hard to
get enthusiastic about a ride that fails so badly to grab your attention
that you can barely remember anything about it even as you negotiate the
exit ramp! I'm no psychologist, but I'm sure this condition wouldn't be
classified as "Traumatised". One final
criticism, one that has been applied to hundreds of coasters over the
years, that of the park's refusal to run the ride to maximum capacity.
It is always frustrating to queue for twice long as is necessary simply
because the park won't bring the second train into service until the
queue reaches some ridiculous length. In my personal experience, queues
have reached anything between the 45 minute to one hour, yet I have
never seen the second train brought to life, or even any sign that
anyone is considering the possibility of doing so. A more cynical person
than I might suggest that if the park still operated solely on a
pay-per-ride basis, efficient operation would be higher on the list of
priorities. It really is
difficult to judge TraumaTizer. Other than the trains, there is no real
reason to dislike the ride, but neither is there any real reason to
recommend that you make a particular effort to go and ride it. It looks
superb, both from within the park, and throughout the surrounding area.
Standing on the seafront to the north of the park, the ride appears to
tower majestically over the Cyclone, and has a real impact on
Southport's otherwise modest skyline. Despite being an off-the-shelf
design, it seems to be doing a good job of giving Pleasureland a
"signature" ride, and the people of Southport seem quite proud
of it as a local landmark, even if most riders do seem perfectly aware
of the fact that it is just a cheaper version of Nemesis. No matter how
much the ride has become part of the fabric of Southport society, this
doesn't disguise the fact that it really isn't as good as it ought to
be. No part of the ride really stands out as a highlight, which is a
little worrying if you're comparing it to the competition. With great
rides (including Nemesis and EuroStar), you leave the train thinking
things like "Wow, that drop was great, the loop was amazing, and
the helix was phenomenal". On TraumaTizer, I left the train trying
to remember what had happened almost as if I'd dozed off somewhere on
the lift hill and woken up on the brake run. Maybe it's because Nemesis
and EuroStar are such incredible rides that TraumaTizer suffers in
comparison. Maybe having my head squashed against two enormous pillows
fooled my brain into thinking it was bedtime. Whatever it was, it was
not good. I'm not going to tell you that TraumaTizer is worth booking yourself onto a train to Southport for, but similarly I'm not going to tell you that TraumaTizer is a ride to avoid at all costs, a comment often heard when describing Vekoma's earlier versions of the ride. It's certainly a nice ride, and Pleasureland is a much better place for having installed it, if only because it is nice to see the park get a brand new ride, rather than BPB's cast-offs. Unfortunately, it's not a ride that will put the park anywhere near the top of you list of priorities next time you are deciding which park to visit. With a few modifications to the train to allow riders more freedom of movement, I suspect there's a much better coaster waiting to be uncovered, but until we get the chance to find out, TraumaTizer fails to provoke even the slightest emotion, good or bad. |
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