Drayton Manor Resort, August 2024

It felt like forever since we’d been on a rollercoaster. Was PortAventura so long ago? No, it was about 3 weeks, but we were itching for some rollercoaster action.

We’d been holding off on a visit to Drayton Manor this season as we, like many, were eagerly waiting for their ‘new for 2024’ family coaster to open, and whilst we still hadn’t ridden ‘The Wave’, which opened earlier in the season we though we’d wait for Gold Rush too!

We were never definitely going to Drayton Manor as we’d not long returned from a week in PortAventura World, so money was tight, but we were keeping an eye out as they always offer some good deals on Facebook. And they did. They were celebrating ‘National Rollercoaster Day’ and had an offer on tickets. £96 for 4 on a Friday in the school summer holidays seemed like a good deal to us.

So, with 4 tickets in the bag, plus £7 for parking, we ventured out on the 2-hour drive to Drayton Manor in Tamworth on a Friday morning, following on from our trip the previous day to the Trafford Centre for Jurassic World – The Exhibition.

The weather was good, a nice sunny morning for standing around in queues at a theme park, and we’d arrived nice and early. Always good when you get in the car park near the entrance, just behind Thomas Land, so you don’t have to walk miles at the beginning and end of your day. And it was good news for me as I was BURSTING for the toilet. 2 cups of coffee and a bowl of cereal in the morning had me sprinting to the toilets at the entrance before I had an accident that would’ve ruined a perfectly good day!

We joined the queues, scanned our tickets and we were in and heading straight for Frontier Falls and the newest coaster in the UK, Gold Rush.

Gold Rush looks fantastic. They’ve done a really good job with adding Gold Rush into that corner of the park and updating all of the facades and rides in the area to a Western Theme. The ride itself is equally impressive with its gold track, bright red station and barn buildings and the gold mine theming in the queue.

Before you get into the main station, turn your attention to the right to see the memorial to Apocalypse. A nice touch from Drayton Manor as they’ve added a gravestone where the former Intamin drop tower stood only a few years prior. We’d had a few stomach-churning rides on that monster. Definitely one of the more intense drop towers we’d done. Much better than Falcon’s Fury in Busch Gardens Tampa, anyway! RIP Apocalypse.

Anyway, back to Gold Rush. The queue and theming were great, the area looks a whole lot better (aside from Accelerator) and the character actors are a fun addition. The ride is a lot of fun too! If you haven’t seen or heard about Gold Rush, it’s an Intamin family coaster with switch tracks, launches and 2 different settings, where depending on the time of day, your ride will start either forwards or backwards first. Both are great fun, but we preferred the afternoon setting where you go backwards first.

We’d managed to get 3 rides throughout the day – 2 forward, 1 backward- and operations were good, so the queues were moving steadily. It did break down a few times (once when we were sitting on the train just outside the station), but it was resolved pretty quickly. Elliott loved it, Evan thought it was good and Jo and I enjoyed it too! Overall, a great, fun addition to Drayton Manor, expanding on its goal to be a family friendly park for all ages.

Next up was one of Elliotts all-time favourite coasters – Accelerator. It was the first ‘big’ coaster he was allowed to do as it’s only got a 1-metre height requirement, so after 7 or 8 laps that day, he’s got a soft spot for it.

This fun, little Vekoma boomerang coaster has definitely seen better days and desperately needs another re-theme to match it into Frontier Falls. You can see they’ve started at the front, with some new wooden panelling and boards for ‘The Jim Green Electric Co’, but the back of the building still has the old logo, and the interior is still themed to fast cars with some futuristic elements. So, I hope they carry on with the ‘Jim Green’ theme with a Western Steampunk vibe, or just completely re-think it. Surely next season it’ll be sorted. It’s a fun ride nevertheless, and Elliott and Jo made several trips to it through the day.

Time for another new thing to try. Well, a new-old thing. We headed over and joined the hour-long queue for The Wave – the new for 2024 re-imagining of Shockwave. We’d had to make an emergency trip at the end of last season so Evan could try the stand-up version before it closed. Does it count as a new credit if you change the train from stand up to sit down? I’m saying no.

The entrance with the new logo and lifeguard tower looks much better. Clean and really colourful. The new ‘headchopper’ billboard moment fits in nicely and the station building has had a well needed paintjob and new posters inside – “Hang Ten with the Wave”. It looks infinitely better than the tatty station it was only a few months before – and they’ve even fixed the leak in the queue that seemed to be there forever. Unfortunately, there still seems to be vandals in the queue, that feel the need to scrawl on the walls even after the refresh. Some people just have to spoil things.

The new sit-down trains made The Wave a much better ride experience than the uncomfortable stand-up trains when it was Shockwave. It’s a much smoother ride now and reduced to a 1.2m height requirement, so another great family coaster with a couple of inversions. We tried to get Jo on it, but it was a solid no.

With the reduction in height requirement, it means the ride can now get more people on than ever before, so here’s to hoping they can get a 2nd train added, because its always busy in there and slow to get trains dispatched.

While we were trying out The Wave, Jo took Elliott for a look around Thomas Land. He’s getting a bit big for some of the rides in Thomas Land now and he’s preferring some of the more ‘grown up’ rides, but he still loves the colourful characters and some of the more ‘fast paced’ rides. Unfortunately for him, the best ride in Thomas Land – Troublesome Trucks – was closed. Devastated.

It is a great area for toddlers and little kids to get their first rollercoaster and amusement ride experiences with some familiar characters. They have fun rides like James and the Red Balloon, the spinning Toby’s Tram Express, Bulstrode the Rocking Tug, Cranky’s tower drop, the new mini flume ride Thomas and Percy’s Submarine Splash and getting to take a ride around the park with Thomas himself.

Elliott was being fussy, so didn’t get on much. The queues weren’t bad considering it was the school holidays, and he got on Harold’s Helicopter Tour and the Blue Mountain Engines ride before deciding he wanted to go elsewhere.

As usual, we’d brought food with us because its cheaper and the kids don’t always like to stop, so we can eat on the move if needed. Eating cuts into ride time! We have eaten at Drayton Manor in the past. Burger Kitchen wasn’t great; burgers were dry and lukewarm. Fish and Chips just outside Vikings were nice although chips weren’t that warm again. But the Chicken Nuggets from the chicken shop are always a winner for Evan. Today though, ham and cheese sandwiches on the benches outside Fun Foods. One day, the kids might try something different…

After lunch we did a few more of the flat rides. Jo and Elliott did another lap on Accelerator and the spinning pirate ship ride ‘Jolly Buccaneer’, which is one of Jo’s faves, whilst me and Evan headed back to Adventure Cove for a go on our favourite gyro swing, Maelstrom. Aside from a queue full of rude, annoying people, we had a great ride on Maelstrom. Hope it doesn’t fall victim to the new family aesthetic of the park.

It was a sunny day and ‘National Rollercoaster Day’, so we decided to celebrate with a drink from the Bar.

It was a fairly busy day, but the queue wasn’t big. 2 or 3 ahead of is so should be quick. Alas, no. We probably waited about 25 minutes for 3 drinks. There was an issue with one of the barrels and it just wouldn’t work, and after some more meddling with it, still no joy. By this time a massive queue had formed, and they were all getting a little impatient while the staff member was getting more stressed. It was a sunny Friday in the holidays, so you’d think they’d have additional staff on hand at the bar or someone to call and cover while the issue was resolved.

Vikings is a brilliant area of Drayton Manor with some great rides and theming. It was a welcome addition to the park when it opened a few years ago. We waited around 30 minutes for a ride on Jormungandr, the 1987 Zamperla powered coaster that was formerly The Buffalo. We didn’t manage to get on anything else. Thor, the Zamperla Disk’o had a 40-minute queue, and Loki, the Zamperla Nebula, is a fun ride and looks great, but it’s so slow to load and unload, that the queue is always long. Jo and Elliott took a quick lap on Sleipnir, the kids horse ride, but we gave it a miss.

We’d managed to get quite a bit done considering it was a Friday in the holidays and quite busy, plus we were lucky with the weather. We didn’t do everything though. We’d missed out on the Zoo, the 4D cinema, some of the Thomas rides, the ‘The Bounty’ Pirate Ship and ‘Air Race’ (which Evan loves). Stormforce 10 was out of the question, as it’s an absolute soaker! But, we’d done our priorities like Gold Rush, Accelerator, The Wave, plus a few others so we’d had a good day!

And as it was National Rollercoaster Day, we’d spotted a few of our favourite YouTubers around. I managed to grab a picture with Digital Dan, and we saw Shawn and Charlotte from Theme Park Worldwide on Gold Rush.

As is customary for us at the end of a Drayton Manor day, we finished by grabbing some donuts from the shop and a coffee to keep me awake on the drive home. Might have gone overboard as I got 10 donuts. FYI, they don’t taste as good the next day.

We love Drayton Manor and we’re enjoying the changes they’re making. Well, I’d bring back Apocalypse, but hey. It’s a fantastic family park that we love coming to, with a great selection of rides for each of us to enjoy, and it’s one of the closer parks to us too!

Should we get an annual pass? Maybe.