Flamingo Land - Saturday 1st July 2023

We woke early morning mostly recovered from our day at Blackpool. The weather though lightly raining when we left the hotel was predicted to be better than the day before, mostly cloudy with only a small chance of rain. Always a good start to find out you’ll likely not be damp all day two days in a row. 

The drive from our hotel to the park was about 1hr 40 mins as we stayed closer to Blackpool, the rain eased up pretty quickly and could see the occasional break in the clouds. We were surprised to find the park located in what felt like a small country town and if it wasn’t for the coach we were behind might have started to question if we were in the right place. 

Entrance into the park was quick and smooth, we were in about 20mins before the official park opening so we walked over to the entrance to Sik and joined the other 6 people already in the queue. While we were waiting we were able to watch Velocity, Kumali, and Sik itself testing as we started to make a rough plan for the day. As the time got closer to opening the queue began to grow a little but not huge which was a good sign for the day's crowd levels. At 10am we were officially let into the Sik queue.

We were on the first train of the day for Sik, which I don’t think is something either of us can claim we’ve experienced many times at all. Obviously, as a Colossus layout clone, I was expecting a very similar experience though maybe a bit smoother. Which wasn’t far off the experience, definitely smoother than the Colossus I rode last year, a layout that uses every inch to give you elements and inversions and at no point feels like it's just making its way back to the station. But it didn’t have the interaction with the paths and environment the same way Colossus does, which detracted a little but the mist tunnels and fountain were a good second choice. A fun ride and a great addition to the park to draw in guests from a little further away like us. 

I was surprised to learn in the station that the name is from its sponsor Sik Silk, I had assumed incorrectly that they were just going for an odd spelling of sick, as in “this ride is sick”. Still not keen on the name but the fact it's the sponsor's name makes more sense. 

Next, we headed over to Velocity, this would be Jason’s first bike coaster mine having been Booster Bikes at Toverland last year. We waited for maybe at most 15mins and were very much enjoying the random assortment of music playing in the station/queue. We lucked out and managed to nab the front row. I was expecting a very similar ride to Booster Bikes but we were both caught off guard at just how much of a kick the launch has, otherwise the course was pretty fun twisting around to the right of Sik before returning to the station. Definitely a favourite of mine and Jason’s at the park.

Now for the notorious Hero, I’d heard so many bad things about this ride/ride model. Many people listed it as one of the most uncomfortable rides they had been on, notorious for headaches, what were we getting ourselves into. Well about 15mins later we got to find out. We were called forward in the queue to fill a space of two people and had to board very quickly, in the rush I feel I may have stepped up 1 too many rungs on the ladder you use to board and is your footrest for the ride (if you know nothing about this ride or model look it up, it’s a flying coaster on a budget), this may have saved me from headaches as my head was very clear of anything though it did lead to some leg and shoulder pain, though no headache is good. One of the people in the vehicle with us asked if we had ridden it before my response was “No but I’ve heard stories”, he laughed and said “Yeah it's a bad one”. 

Now onto the actual ride experience, the spiral lift hill is actually a pretty cool way to ascend to the top without using too much space, its everything after that is the reason it’s become notorious. The transitions, the turns, and the vehicle itself all lead to a rough experience, though I did have fun just from how ridiculous and bad it was. Jason, on the other hand, his neck hurt, his back hurt, he had cramp in his calves, he couldn’t see where he was going, had no clue what was going on, wanted to die at first… but couldn’t stop laughing and kinda loved it in a weird way after we got off,  he described it as “being like a shitty action movie.” I don’t think you’d ever get me to go on it again but never say never. 

We took a quick break to grab a drink and really let what we just experienced sink in then headed over to Mumbo Jumbo.

This was probably our longest queue of the day at about 45mins, partially due to Kumali going down while we were in the queue and it seemed like they gave some sort of skip the queue to the people who were on that ride or in the queue and Mumbo Jumbo was the nearest ride so a good number of them seemed to choose it to use on there. This meant for about half the time we were in the queue only every other train was from the main queue but it went quickly enough.

From off the ride, we thought this might also be a rough ride especially as I noticed the split restraints (where the shoulder is separate from the lap bar) and previous experience with those had not been great.  However we were wrong, this little compact coaster was great and the restraints weren’t too bad though they need to sort out the location of the handles on them as it’s annoying as a way to hold on. 

As we came off Mumbo Jumbo we saw, thanks to a guy spinning a sign (he looked like he was having fun doing what could be rather boring), that Kumali was still closed, we both could do with a snack so we opted for donuts and hoped it would be back up after. Some really good donuts later it still wasn’t up, so we headed for Zooom!

Zoom! Was our second longest queue of the day partly down to the low capacity (it also had 3 seats out of action) and a not-so-polite family in front of us who kept having family member after family member push in front it started to get annoying when they were not being polite about it but only 30mins so we could easily deal with it. The ride itself is a rather cute kiddie ride, who doesn’t want to ride in a mini plane? Fun and you get to go round twice. 

Back over to Kumali as from on Zooom! We saw it running, obviously hadn't been up long as it was 10mins before we were boarding. I along with most people find most SLCs rough and a little painful, this however was Jason’s second ever after Blackpool the day before and he enjoyed Infusion, so maybe this one was going to be the one that showed him why they were notoriously rough rides… No actually the bigger layout meant it wasn’t too bad the transitions were still a bit iffy but not bad for an SLC. He’s starting to think I’m talking crap when it comes to SLCs, though he does like rougher rides (hey Goudurix) so even if I do find him a rougher one he still might like it. Good ride cool theming. 

Back over to Dino Roller and I think we may have been the only adults in the queue oh well a credit is a credit. This is a simple fairground ride that's small and compact, it goes around its circuit three times and honestly, I did not think it was going to complete its circuit, after the lift tires and before taking its path downwards it travels almost completely horizontally across the roof of the station which it does very slowly, I feel like if you back loaded the train with adults you might get this ride to stall. Otherwise, a pretty tame ride with 1 head chopper-feeling moment for adults. Credit done. 

Time to move on to the final credit, twistasaurs. Again not much of a wait had three train loads to go before our turn. Jason is not the biggest fan of spinning rides, so this was a do-it-for-the-credit moment kind of for him. Our first time around we didn't spin too much but it picked up from then on so maybe not his favourite ride of the day. I thought it was fun and added to the variety of rides at the park.

Once the credits were done we wanted to check out the zoo side of things, but we go sidetracked by the smell of donuts on the way so snack round 2 happened.

Distraction deliciously devoured we got back to checking out the zoo side of the park. I was really surprised by the size of the zoo section. I did have an odd bias that it might be a small zoo as I did not look it up beforehand but the fact the zoo had the same level of variety in animals I expect from Longleat and London Zoo was really nice to see in this park and all animals had these large pretty sprawling areas each was nice to see. We got lucky and saw most of the animals out and about, and made some new animal friends, which gave us a more relaxed slow pace to the end of the day. 

Once we were done in the zoo area we had about an hour till the park closing, we decided to ride Velocity again as it was one of our favourites at the park, we then took some pictures and called it a day as we had a very long drive home to do. 

Overall we both really enjoyed Flamingo Land, I went in expecting an okay mid-sized theme park with a small zoo and was greeted by a very varied and fairly big park. The fact that one of its biggest attractions is a clone of another park's ride does not take away from how good this park was and most rides (not you Hero) were fun enjoyable and had little wait making for an enjoyable day. The sun came out too so good weather to enjoy it in made it all the better.

Something I did notice was how inclusive this park was, it didn’t jump out immediately but the more I paid attention to it the more I started to see it. A lot of the rides (baring some older ones) were all ramp accessible, I noticed what seemed to be a disability system in action, there were wide access ways inside and out. It also reminded me a little of Toverland in the central indoor arcade and outdoor water areas were there for all ages to enjoy and give a place for the adults to sit and watch the kids from a distance having fun. I don’t know but the whole park gave off this welcoming and accessible feeling that I think some more parks could do with. 

Though this park can be out of the way for some we both would recommend it if you are in the area, and will definitely revisit it if they add another big ride.

Credit Counts at the end of the day:

Kate - 183 Jason - 62