Thrill me baby!

I braved the rain today in search or adrenaline fuelled fun at a theme park. I went with my daughter and a friend and his daughter to ride the roller coasters on a typical wet summer Sunday.

The plan was to rock up early and get in just as the park opened. This way we might get to have a go on the headline rides before they got busy.

The queues are one of the things that put me off about theme parks. You pay a large amount of your hard earned cash to spend most of the day shuffling along in a large line of people under signs that say things like, "45 minutes wait from this point".

I for one don't trust those signs, they are like the motorway 40 limit signs. Usually you drive under them at 5 mph looking at a long line of cars disappearing into the distance.

At the theme park you queue for 1 hour to spend 2 minutes on the ride. You have to join the queues or you pay a lot of money to watch other people having fun.

There is always the fast pass, or equivalent, but to use this you have to run around the park stamping the ticket only to be told to come back later at a specific time. This sounds like a waste of time to me, you may have well joined the queue in the first place, moreover you pay for the privilege to fast pass. This is similar to speedy boarding on Easy Jet, which by the way you get free if you take with you a child of 5 or under (they don't seem to advertise that when you book).

However, the English summer weather seemed to play a real part in the day. The forecast rain helped keep the crowds away. We arrived at the park fifteen minutes before opening and went straight in. The decision was made to make a beeline for the main ride, unfortunately this was under maintainance so the next best rollercoaster was our target. Would you believe it, not a single queue...

The wait time was just 5 mins and the queue was non existent.

And unbelievably it continued the same way all day. On one ride we were even asked if we wanted to just stay on and go round again. In total we rode all the rides, having multiple goes on many.

The rain mostly held off and the Sun shone for parts of the day and to be fair the English summer weather played a part in the best moment of the day. We were sat on the rocking pirate ship waiting for it to start, it was drizzling. Then as the ride started the heavens opened. The heavy rain sent all spectators scrabbling from cover. By the end of the ride we looked as if we had been on a boat in a real hurricane, soaked through, but laughing hysterically. Within minutes the Sun came out and we were dry.

Great fun and even better no 40 mph boards on the motorway. A good day.