T
tomcotard
Guest
Guest
Having visited the Bennerly Viaduct earlier that day, me and Hbarnacle of this forum, teamed up to visit American Adventure.
American Adventure was opened in 1985 under the name of Britannia Park, a park that was supposed to celebrate all good things British. After 20 weeks of it's initial opening it closed. It was reopened as American Adventure, how ironic then, that it was changed to American Adventure and celebrated all things American! In 1989, £4 million was invested in building The Missile which was at that time, hailed as the best roller coaster in Britain (before Nemesis came along and owned it). They later brought in a second coaster, the Twin Looper (although it's been called a lot of things in it's time).
From there it went downhill, nothing new happened, there was the addition of Sky Coaster, a huge bungee like ride that swung you around, but that was not enough and in 2006 it closed it's gates for the last time.
A sad story really. Unfortunately, when we visited, non of the original rides were here, in fact, barely anything was here, most of it was auctioned off between early 2007 to early 2008. A lot of it was also taken down, even before the park closed, because it was just so unsafe. Having said that, we did find some interesting sights.
So to start of with we found the old entrance sign, minus the logo:
We then walked into the car park and found a surprisingly easy entrance to the park. In fact, we saw three hooded youths sheepishly walking out of the fence, I think we were as scared that they might be security as they were us. When we realised our mistake we sort of went our separate ways, however one of the lads said, "There's a fake alarm in the heads building, just don't be scared of it". Upon entry, we found the old entrance that was closed down, again, due to safety problems, there was a mine underneath the entrance and if people had kept walking over it it would have weakened to much and, well, it wouldn't be great:
At the old entrance we found a heavily vandalised area with quite a bit knocked down, however we found a fairly interesting lost property area with masses of clothes, bags, lunch boxes and toys which was rather interesting. We found a few stocked items including the only customised bag we saw in the whole of the park:
We walked into the park find a lot of old sites of where the rollercoasters had been, nothing riveting really as demonstrated in this picture of where the Twin Looper used to be:
We made our way to "the heads building":
Here we luckily found an entrance:
It wasn't easy to get in, we had to go through a smashed window, over a door and down a drop. We didn't find much really apart from a bizarre room full of retro telephones. Midway our exploration we suddenly heard a loud voice however, "Warning, your presence has been detected, security has surrounded the building, get out." We thought nothing of it, thinking it was pre-recorded, however, it did seem odd as the alarm seemed intermittent, almost as if it was being controlled by someone. After finding nothing, we found an open door, duh. We exited to be greeted by a lot of 3D glasses all scattered across the floor.
We made our way around the park and found an old pier:
We also found a run for the log flume:
The go kart track:
And finally, the river rapids run, although it had all been filled in:
We made our way to the exit only to be stopped by a security man who, in rather a rude tone asked us what were doing and then telling us that we weren't doing it any more and told us to leave else he'd have us arrested. We left without a word but the man accused me of smirking, I just told him I wasn't (although I should have told him that there was nothing wrong with that!) and that was that.
Would I recommend it to anyone? It was fairly interesting, but it just didn't have that interest to it had it had any of the rides there.
American Adventure was opened in 1985 under the name of Britannia Park, a park that was supposed to celebrate all good things British. After 20 weeks of it's initial opening it closed. It was reopened as American Adventure, how ironic then, that it was changed to American Adventure and celebrated all things American! In 1989, £4 million was invested in building The Missile which was at that time, hailed as the best roller coaster in Britain (before Nemesis came along and owned it). They later brought in a second coaster, the Twin Looper (although it's been called a lot of things in it's time).
From there it went downhill, nothing new happened, there was the addition of Sky Coaster, a huge bungee like ride that swung you around, but that was not enough and in 2006 it closed it's gates for the last time.
A sad story really. Unfortunately, when we visited, non of the original rides were here, in fact, barely anything was here, most of it was auctioned off between early 2007 to early 2008. A lot of it was also taken down, even before the park closed, because it was just so unsafe. Having said that, we did find some interesting sights.
So to start of with we found the old entrance sign, minus the logo:
We then walked into the car park and found a surprisingly easy entrance to the park. In fact, we saw three hooded youths sheepishly walking out of the fence, I think we were as scared that they might be security as they were us. When we realised our mistake we sort of went our separate ways, however one of the lads said, "There's a fake alarm in the heads building, just don't be scared of it". Upon entry, we found the old entrance that was closed down, again, due to safety problems, there was a mine underneath the entrance and if people had kept walking over it it would have weakened to much and, well, it wouldn't be great:
At the old entrance we found a heavily vandalised area with quite a bit knocked down, however we found a fairly interesting lost property area with masses of clothes, bags, lunch boxes and toys which was rather interesting. We found a few stocked items including the only customised bag we saw in the whole of the park:
We walked into the park find a lot of old sites of where the rollercoasters had been, nothing riveting really as demonstrated in this picture of where the Twin Looper used to be:
We made our way to "the heads building":
Here we luckily found an entrance:
It wasn't easy to get in, we had to go through a smashed window, over a door and down a drop. We didn't find much really apart from a bizarre room full of retro telephones. Midway our exploration we suddenly heard a loud voice however, "Warning, your presence has been detected, security has surrounded the building, get out." We thought nothing of it, thinking it was pre-recorded, however, it did seem odd as the alarm seemed intermittent, almost as if it was being controlled by someone. After finding nothing, we found an open door, duh. We exited to be greeted by a lot of 3D glasses all scattered across the floor.
We made our way around the park and found an old pier:
We also found a run for the log flume:
The go kart track:
And finally, the river rapids run, although it had all been filled in:
We made our way to the exit only to be stopped by a security man who, in rather a rude tone asked us what were doing and then telling us that we weren't doing it any more and told us to leave else he'd have us arrested. We left without a word but the man accused me of smirking, I just told him I wasn't (although I should have told him that there was nothing wrong with that!) and that was that.
Would I recommend it to anyone? It was fairly interesting, but it just didn't have that interest to it had it had any of the rides there.
