Ink and Incapability: June 2007

Lets do something different I said - so we went to a couple of art galleries.

This was to be M's first visit to a gallery of any kind so I was a bit aprehensive as to whether he would like it or not - turns out he prefers the architecture of the buildings to the actual art but at least he was game! In fact the National and National Portrait Galleries are on his list of things he wants to do (a very long list it is too) along with sightseeing in London gernerally so he was actually pretty keen on the whole idea :o)

You're obviously not allowed to take photo's in the galleries but we also did a bit of tourist piccy taking outside - the weather was shit so none of them turned out great :o(

As per usual I am waiting for M to upload his pics -hoping that he will have some better ones!

After we had looked around the Galleries and I had established that I really don't like Van Gogh or Cezanne we were both hungry so headed for Leicester Square to get some lunch. We didn't know before hand but they had West End Live going on in Leicester Square this weekend - the first we knew about it was seeing a big fat stage in the square with Sue Pollard singing on it :o/

Confused? We were! Until that is a nice lady gave us a free programme which explained that West End Live is like a mini musical festival where there are performances from participating West End Shows. It is also sponsered by various organisations who had tents / little exhibition areas around the stage.

We met Shaun the Sheep, Paddington Bear, had our pictures taken with the stars of Ratatouille: Rat-a-too-ee and Doctor Who. We saw the Batmobile, the Pink Panther car, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, James Bond's car, and I stood inside a bubble! To top it all of they gave us each a plastic bag with a load of freebies in when we left. How jammy are we?!

Oh and if you are wondering - Sue Pollard is apparently in Menopause the Musical...

After all the excitment of West End Live we really were hungry so went to Garfunkels for lunch - M had a yummy looking club sandwich and I had the spiciest Penne Arrabiata in the world. Obviously ate far too much so tried to walk it off with more sightseeing...

Down the Mall to Buckingham Palace:

Through St James Park to the Horse Guards Parade Grounds:

Past Downing Street then over the bridge to the South Bank:

Calling it a day and jumping on the Tube back to Paddington for the train home.

The forecast was woefull but we took the chance and headed to Chessington World of Adventures on our day off yesterday - it was the right decision :o)

We had lots of fun and actually the weather was fine - a couple of short showers but not the torrential downpours and thunderstorms that had been forecast!

We started the day in Transylvania by riding the Vampire which was a bit of a blast from the past. It must be at least 10 years since I have been to Chessington and they have taken the floor out of this coaster since then. I wasn't expecting much from the Vampire as it is hardly hardcore but the lack of floor and the fact that the trees have grown so you are actually weaving through the treetops make for a pretty entertaining ride.

I should say now that M likes to take pictures at theme parks but he hasn't uploaded his yet so you will just have to be content with mine. Some of them are pictures of M taking pictures...

We then entered The Land of the Dragons riding Dragons Fury which is one of those spinny rollercoasters like Spinball Whizzer at Alton Towers. I don't know why but these things just make me laugh and laugh - they're just sooo silly! Fun though. We rode this a couple of times and the second time (later in the day) it was much faster and more spinny - I think coasters must warm up or something as they always seem to be better later in the day.

We almost went on Ramases Revenge after leaving the Land of the Dragons but they had the water going at full blast and we didn't really fancy getting THAT wet! Ramases Revenge still seems to draw the biggest crowd of spectators which just goes to show that the older rides

can still compete with the new. Speaking of new rides it was at this point I think that M spotted our next coaster Rattlesnake - which is situated in "Mexicana" with the Runaway Train, which I found a bit odd. In fact I found the whole theming of Chessington to be a bit strange - they seem to have made new "Lands" everytime they put a new ride in. Consequently I never knew where I was and the older rides / areas don't really gel with the new. They now have TEN different areas which seems a bit excessive to me and all merge into each other anyway.

For instance Pirates Cove consists of the Swinging Ship (which should be outlawed anyway IMHO as they are EVIL) , a kiddies carousel thing and a chipshop. Pirates Cove is situated basically in Transylvania which consists of Vampire, the Bubbleworks and more refreshments / gift shops. Thats two areas for essentially four rides and can someone please explain to me what is Transylvanian about a Bubbleworks??? (no longer Proffessor Burp's I might add - it is now sponsered but Imperial Leather and based around rubber ducks)

It is the same lazy theming that they have in some areas of Alton Towers (did someone say Imperial Leather Log Flume??) Adding rubber ducks to a ride does not constitute re-theming in my book... and I play enough Roller Coaster Tycoon to know!! They really need to limit the number of areas and rethink the theming on some of the rides to get things into some kind of order.

Anyway - Rattlesnake is difficult to explain, you go round in individual cars holding 4 people and there are lots of tight turns and ups and downs. I really liked it as there were some good moments of airtime. M liked it too but found it a bit uncomfortable as he was crammed into the car and everytime we went round a corner he got a bit crushed :o/

We went for a bit of relaxation after Rattlesnake and had a ride on the Safari Skyway - this takes you over the Zoo area of the park and if you had a better camera than mine you could get some good pictures. Sadly my camera is too slow and also eats batteries like they are going out of fashion - I spend most of my time waiting for it to fire up and by that time we had gone past most of the interesting stuff. I should have just used my mobile phone camera as I always end up resorting to it anyway!

I do like the Zoo at Chessington - it's a shame it's not bigger though. The Sea Lions have a lovely area and we got a good look at it as next on the agenda was the Sea Lion Show festuring Boris (big male) Harley (one of Boris's sons) and Ocean (Boris's daughter, young and obviously being groomed for greatness!) . The show was very cool - Boris doesn't do much but Harley and Ocean were very clever and funny. My favourite part was where they demonstrated how a Seal moves compared to a Sea Lion.

We were sitting next the thickest woman in the world throughout the show who kept telling her children that only "The big one" was a sea lion... I'm not sure what she thought the others were!

Next to the sea lion area they have creepy crawly caves that house snakes, lizzards as well as the requisite creepy crawlies. Behind the sea lions they have The Trail of the Kings where you come face to face with Lions, Tigers, Leopards, and Gorillas. At the moment they have three tiger cubs, all female, which is great as they are part of the Sumatrun Tiger Endangered Species Breeding Programme (there are only 400

Sumatran Tigers left in the wild). The Gorilla family has three generations and is headed by Kumba who is 40 this year, the newest addition being Kumi who was born in 2004.

In another area of the park there is also a monkey and bird walkthrough area, some penguins, and a petting zoo. All the enclosures were clean and tidy, the animals seemed happy and they were obviously using positive reinforcement training on the sea lions (like clicker training but with whistles).

Having watched the sea lion show we thought it was about time for a few more rides and jumped onto the runaway train - no queues meant that we got to go round five times and the operator guy sped it up for the last two. Very tame but still fun :o) Mark took some pictures on this one - I'll have to post them later. Also managed to take a few pictures on the log flume (called Dragon Falls but not in The Land of the Dragons - oh no, Dragon Falls lives in Mystic East. Obviously)...

It started out nice a gentle... we were happy:

Then we realised we were at the top of a bloody great drop... we were a bit worried:

Turns out that going done the drop is fun... We're happy again!

We continued the soggy theme by heading into the Bubbleworks which is still good fun even if it is an exercise in advertising soap (Bring back Proffessor Burp!!). I am struggling to remember the order in which we went on rides now but I think it was Hocus Pocus Hall which was just weird. It's a walkthrough and you have to wear "Magic Glasses" as modelled by M in the picture on the right. There are some cool visual illusions and it ends with a maze of mirrors. Think horror film - girl lost in maze of mirrors, man with axe bursts through the mirror as she is looking at her self, man lops girls head off - thats the feeling it gave me, but then maybe I watch too many horror films...

We did visit Beanoland at some point in the afternoon but it doesn't really have anything of interest for the over-12's apart from one of those whirly rides with swings on big long chains. These things freak me out so Beanoland really does have nothing of interest for me - it is one of the better areas of theming though.

We also stopped for food in KFC - it was fine, like KFC everywhere else.

Tomblaster was next on the list - it's an indoor shooting ride. Tomblaster pissed me off a bit. We barely had any wait time on any of the other rides - definately no more than 10 minutes. On Tomblaster we had at least a 20min wait - mainly due to it being run by gormless park employees. This must be where they send the really cretinous people who can't be trusted with any of the more dangerous rides. We were also joined in the queue by a group of highly irritating teenagers - one of the girls was of the "if a boy tickles me I have to fall to the floor screaming in a very over the top loud screechy way" type. I hated girls like this when I was a teenager let alone now... so I killed them all.

It was also unecessarily hot in the queue for an indoor attraction (not going to be nice in the summer) and when we finally did get on the ride my bloody gun didn't work properly. Not impressed.

We needed some fun after Tomblaster so hopped back on Dragons Fury for our final ride of the day before having another quick mooch round the zoo and buying our fridge magnet and some sweets for the journey home. Dragons Fury was running faster this late in the day and it was definatley the antidote to Tomblaster! We remembered to pick up our ride photo from our first go on Dragons Fury and then it was back to the car for a very long and dull journey home. Took ages to get on and off the M25 as always but we finally got home at about 6.30pm .

Had a yummy dinner of spag bol and then watched a great film - Walk the Line. Joaquin Phoenix and Reece Witherspoon both put in brilliant performances - M and I both agree that they did a great job of interpreting the characters (Johnny Cash and June Carter) and delivering a performance rather than just trying to impersonate them which would be the easy thing to do.

Well worth watching if you havn't already!