Brighton Pier and Fort Fun
24 June 2006
Last week I was browsing through RCDB
and realised that there aren't a great deal of "worthwhile"
parks I haven't visited in the south east. One that I hadn't
been to was
Brighton Pier. Saturday seemed a good time to take a trip there,
especially when I found out how much of a bargain it would be to go by
train.
Unusually the train journey went without any hiccups.
No delays, no cancellations, no leaves on the line. Arriving at
Brighton a couple of minutes late isn't anything of note. The
station charging 20p to go to the toilet is however. That's
London prices!
Brighton Seafront
I looked in on the pier and then took a stroll along the seafront
while I waited for Paul who had opted to come in his own private motor
conveyance, which should have been a good idea. As it turned out
it was very useful, even if he got delayed for ages in traffic
approaching the city centre.
Brighton Pier (and three seagulls)
Paul arrived and I met him by the pier. £10 later and we had
20 precious tokens in our hands - surely enough to last most of the
afternoon. Nah, that would be silly.
The rides at the far end of the Pier
First up was a ride on Turbo,
the pier's recently infamous coaster. Infamous on account of it taking
passengers for a ride when a piece of track was missing. I'd
made sure I watched the train complete a circuit earlier in the
morning, just in case.
Turbo
The ride itself was rough and generally a nasty experience: in fact
pretty much what you would expect from a Pinfari ZL42. At 6
tokens (£3) a go it's a con, but it seems people are prepared to
pay. I did.
Next up was a ride on the pier's new Ghost Train (5 tokens =
£2.50). The previous incarnation of the ride burnt
down in 2003 (how many links to news stories about disasters on
the pier are there going to be in this report?).
Apparently the old version was even worse than this one, which
means it must have been indescribably bad. Most of the ride
consists of travelling down dark corridors before wobbling through
doors and cornering in some of the tightest turning circles I've ever
seen. Notice something missing? Yep, no scary
things. Well, there was Paul sitting next to me. He's
always a bit scary but since he wasn't part of the ride that doesn't
count. :p
Brighton Pier's other coaster is Crazy
Mouse (6 tokens = £3), which perhaps unsurprisingly is a Spinning
Wild Mouse. While the rest of the Pier's rides were pretty
pants, Crazy Mouse was great. I do love a wild mouse which isn't
afraid to spin and this one was on the
hurry-up-I-don't-have-time-for-this quick-dry spin-cycle-of-doom
mode. Wahoo!
It's a spinny spinny crazy mousey world
Three rides down - let's do a quick token check. Here's one
... hold on ... let me dig right down into my pocket ... two, three
... wait ... oh no, that's 5p ... erm ... looks like that's all
of them. Yep, three rides done and only three tokens left.
Damn this pier is expensive.
So, what do you do with 3 tokens? You either buy more and
ride the portable log flume (sadly the new Fabbri Air Diver wasn't
running) or you find a cheapo ride. I wasn't shelling out
another £1.50 to ride a log flume for £3, so on to the cheapo ride
it was.
Nothing says seaside fairground like a Helter Skelter, and it's
been years since I last went on one. Thinking about it, my last
encounter was probably at the fair behind St Paul's Cathedral after
the Lord Mayor's Show when I went with the cubs. So up the
overgrown slide we went, then down the overgrown slide we came.
Helter Skelter
About fifteen minutes and we'd done the pier.
Luckily Paul had done a bit of research and found a small park
called Fort Fun with a kiddie coaster and an Adventure Golf course
just along the coast. That's one more reason than we needed, so
after a spot of lunch we made our way to Eastbourne.
I'm not old, so I've never been to Eastbourne before. It's
quite unlikely that many mathematicians or other numerate people have
been either, or at least travelled there in a car from Brighton.
What leads me to that deduction you ask? Road signs.
Most sane persons would reckon that driving towards your
destination would result in the mileage to your destination
decreasing. To most places it would, but not to
Eastbourne. Instead, a variety of road signs led us to believe
we were 16 miles away, then 12, then 14, then 12 again. Once we
were apparently 7 miles away, then five minutes later we had 6 miles
to go. Paul don't drive that slow.
How far to Eastbourne? Absolutely no idea.
Everybody always makes jokes about Eastbourne being full of old
people, which I think is unfair. It's just not true. As we
entered the town the first thing we saw was an OAP riding one of those
little electric shopping trolley chair things. Now, go back and
re-write your jokes.
Much as they can be interesting to watch, we hadn't come to see old
people. We'd come to have fun at Fort Fun.
Welcome to the Fort of Fun Park of Theme
Fort Fun was never going to be a major attraction, but it seemed a
much better option than staying in Brighton for the afternoon and
either getting sunstroke on the beach or emptying our bank accounts on
the Pier.
The park gains an entry on RCDB thanks to Runaway
Train, a small kiddie coaster built by Big Country Motioneering.
Yes, that Big Country Motioneering. The co-creators of The
Ultimate at Chavwater Valley.
Runaway Train
Runaway Train is really good and great value for money - we got
about six circuits! Easily my favourite coaster of the
day. I don't care what Rich says: kiddie parks and kiddie
coasters are cool!
The train waits in the station
Overview of the Runaway Train
What's up with the theming? Why is the cowboy
sinking but not the horse?
Navigating the track
After riding the coaster we had an ice cream and then
went for a round of Adventure Golf. The course was fun, but had
a little bit of a budget homemade feel to it. We found a major
problem to be some of the secret shortcut tubes: the ball didn't come
out of the other end, leaving us fishing for it with the club.
Still a great game!
Fort Fun proved to be, erm, fun and managed to consume
much more of our time and much less of our money than Brighton
Pier. Whilst it certainly isn't a park I'd recommend travelling
for, it's worth a quick visit to sample its atmosphere if you're in
the area (maybe when you retire). And hey, it's only
12/18/14/16/3/8 miles away.
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