Skegness, Lincolnshire, England, UK – Monday, June 14th, 2010
And now, I wait.
All the parks and most other businesses in the UK seem to close up shop very early in the evening, I presume due to an infestation of vampires that requires everyone to be safely inside their homes or pubs before nightfall (never mind that the sun doesn’t set till after 10pm in the summer anyway… better safe than sorry when dealing with vampires). Regardless it meant more waiting around hotel rooms without Wifi access for me after the rides had stopped running by five or six in the evening. This night I spent most of the time fretting over how I would wake myself before six the next morning to catch my train to Skegness as I was now short a cell phone and the hotels don’t provide you with alarm clocks. Thankfully I discovered my iPod had an alarm device in it that I was able to set to have Pink Floyd startle me from my slumber. No one else in the hotel was up yet so I set the key in the main office and then waited for my train to arrive.
On board the trains while waiting for the arrival, sleeping is the best way to make the time go by, if you’re able to sleep that is. I’d still get some butterflies in my stomach whenever my waiting onboard the was close to coming to an end, the prospects of what unknown world I would find outside the station platform seeming a bit intimidating. Normally the thrill would die off when I realized Skegness was the same as everyplace else I’d ever been, and all I’d have to look forward to next would be waiting
for a bus or a long walk into town.
I journeyed down the shopping boulevard in Skegness to reach the roller coasters that I had been waiting all my life to ride for the first time. Skegness is an ugly little seaside town in the butthole of Britain, which seems to be an accurate reflection of the population that lives there. I didn’t want to believe there was any truth in the smug, entitled southerners who refer to working class fellow citizens as ‘northern monkeys’, but then again I had not yet been to Skegness. Was I even that far north yet? I thought I still had a ways to go before reaching Scotland which is once again
cool because it’s not England. Along the seaside I found Botton’s Pleasure Beach, which maintained the egalitarian ideals of this community that nothing and no one should be any less ugly than anything else.
The Rockin’ Roller spinning coaster was closed due to high winds. That was Botton’s only adult coaster. I buy enough coins to get one lap on each of the three children’s coasters they have that are open. I intended to just make this a credit grab anyway; the principal objects of my desire were a few miles down the road in Ingoldmells. The most interesting of the three were an inverted Wacky Worm called the Queen Bee, which wasn’t that interesting at all. I always had an urge to hide my American accent because even when they don’t say anything I could sense the recognition of a foreigner in their look, but wasn’t sure of my fake British accent and was terrified of the consequences should I get caught.
There’s no place in the world like Ingoldmells. I say that having been to a reasonable share of foreign locales. You approach it through seemingly miles of identical white temporary homes set up on empty fields without a single public service structure in sight save for a grid of dirt roads. In the center of these homes is a large flea market where vendors sell mainly t-shirts, used puzzles and cannabis pipes (one assumes). In the middle of the flea market is a modern pyramid with nearly 200 foot tall roller coasters that can been seen from miles away. This is someone’s community. The name “Fantasy Island” would hardly be more apt if only it were surrounded by water on more than one side.
The sight of the Jubilee Odyssey’s red track sketched across the skyline, the light fog rendering its white supports nearly invisible from a distance, is indeed a very exciting one. Less exciting is observing it for five minutes from the bus and never once seeing a train take a lap. Same goes for the Millennium Roller Coaster, as well as the other tower rides that can be seen from a distance.
Getting off the bus I discovered that the park is indeed open for business. Fantasy Island has in fact developed an ingenious method of eliminating all queues from their attractions that is light years ahead of any similar systems devised by Lo-Q or Disney. They start by setting themselves up in a really shitty location no one is ever going to want to travel to save for diehard coaster nuts. Then they close all of their E-ticket attractions due to the weather, effectively rendering all queues to absolute zero. To go on a ride you first must go to the entrance of that ride, use a digital device known as a camera to grab a photo of the gated off sign, which is all you can do. Then you go to guest services, where they will give you a return time to ride, i.e. the Millennium Coaster might open at two o’clock if the weather improves. You still wait for the ride, but rather than stand in a queue you are free to go explore the rest of the park in an attempt to find any other operating that are not indoor children’s rides,
each of which will have their own return times ranging from ‘as soon as the wind drops below 30mph’, ‘once the schools let out for summer holiday’, and in a few cases, ‘we’re working on it for next season’. In the end you use the freedom provided by Fantasy Island’s advanced queuing system sit at a table inside the pyramid, amused by the realization that one of the scenarios from the first RollerCoaster Tycoon expansion pack was based on this park while trying to forget that you’re booked for the last train departing that night because you didn’t want to risk cutting your time short in Fantasy Island.
I do have to say in Fantasy Island’s defense that the people that helped me at the guest services booth were very kind and understanding, admitting their own frustrations
that the rides so frequently have to be closed and that the people that develop their website for them never act on their requests to put adequate warning information about the availability of some rides during off-peak times, meaning that they’re left to deal with the ire of angry visitors… though I would recommend that before blaming the web designers for not posting warnings, they should blame management for building rides that can’t be operated when any wind or light rain is present, which is basically the definition of weather in Ingoldmells. Not only were they able to refund my pre-purchased online ticket, after my request they even gave me a pass to take one ride on the Fantasy Mouse and Rhombus’s Rocket (the two coasters that were open) for free.
Jubilee Odyssey was destined to be shut long before I had gotten there. Regardless of the weather they apparently only ever run it during weekends and during peak season, a bit of information that undoubtedly would have been useful before I planned my trip (so I at least can pass it along to you, dear reader). It looked like it would have been a great coaster to, one of the tallest and fastest inverted coasters in the world. From what I’ve heard it was originally supposed to be over 300’ tall, and both Vekoma had a design and Fantasy Island had the cash ready to go, but they couldn’t get final approval from the city who insisted on cutting it down to nearly half its height (because an 
eyesore like that would be damaging to the rest of Ingoldsmells’ property values). I would be simultaneously curious and fearful over what that would have looked like if actually built.
The Millennium Roller Coaster on the other hand was likely to open but the high winds (which didn’t seem that high to me on the ground but whatever) resulted in a last minute decision to keep it shut. I probably could have made a day out of just the Millennium Coaster, as I’ve heard it’s one of Vekoma’s smoothest and best looping coasters. The layout looks a bit snooze-inducing whenever it’s not going upside down to me, but obviously I could never test it for myself. Of their six “Extreme Rides”, only the Fantasy Mouse was operating, as well as four of their six family rides. I tried to get more out of my time by taking photos but the combined poor lighting and overall frustration that I had nothing to show for my day but five credits on mostly irrelevant coasters meant I just wanted to get back to Skegness and wait for my train.
And now, I wait some more. A lot more.
A solid ten hours from when I left Fantasy Island until I arrived in York. I started by trying to kill four of those hours in Skegness, getting some food, checking for a cheap way to fix my shoes which after five months of travel around Europe had worn through the sole and I still had a couple weeks to go, and then wearing them down further by taking a long walk along the beach back and forth. Finally I just sat down in the station with my iPod and put on some favorites of English progressive rock. Normally I’m a listener of more dynamic, experimental groups (exemplified by King Crimson while also enjoying Pink Floyd, Yes, some Jethro Tull 
and a lot of obscure continental stuff), yet somehow I ended up with Genesis playing which has always been one of my least favorites (though the first half of Selling England by the Pound is quite good). I guess I needed something slow and long-winded to help fill the time. By the time I got to it The Waiting Room quite accurately described my state of mind, aided by the fact that I was sharing my own waiting room where my only other entertainment was watching a bloke carefully apply more makeup then I had ever seen amassed in a single location before boarding his train; I’m guessing whatever story was behind that was far from over when that train pulled out of the station. After more sitting and waiting, I was finally checking into my hotel a little before one in the morning, where I was happy to discover for perhaps the second time in the entirety of my European travels I could actually get the promised free Wifi in my room.
At last, my eternal wait paid off.
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