Richard Bannister

My second of four planned visits to Emerald Park this year began in a very different manner to how it might have done in times past. I’d planned to get out of bed at about 8:30am, but my seven-week-old daughter started chirping half an hour ahead of the alarm, and I decided that I should take care of her feed so that my fiancée could enjoy a lie-in.

With that out of the way I got in the car and drove to Dublin Airport, where I picked up my friend Cy who’d flown in on an overnight service from Washington DC. Readers will well appreciate that it’s not particularly smart to schedule a full-on day after the purgatory of an abbreviated transatlantic overnight, yet doing so is almost a rite of passage for coaster enthusiasts, especially those with more bucket list destinations than annual leave. Regardless we were more or less on an equal footing today; as a new parent I haven’t had a proper night of sleep in weeks.

The weather was close to perfect from an enthusiast perspective – damp enough to keep the multitudes away, yet dry enough that everything was open except the Skywalk (which is treacherous in the wet) and the Ladybird Loop (which has trouble when the tyre drives are damp). While the former did not open the latter had sprung to life by mid-afternoon allowing us to score a clean sweep of the park’s six coasters. Better yet, the longest wait of the day was twenty minutes, with most rides being walk-on, including both of the new credits in Tír na nÓg.

Our visit began with a front seat on Quest, the park’s Family Boomerang. The ride was absolutely fine and we very much enjoyed it, though it would be remiss of me not to record that it remains something of a construction site. Park management had plans to do additional theming of the station after opening day, though there were no obvious changes today over what it looked like two months ago; my guess is that work has been postponed until the off-season.

Much of the Tír na nÓg area has been decorated with artificial rock. A recent documentary on Irish television gave some insight into how this was built up, though there was an even better look available today; a small section beside Quest’s second airtime hill (above the water) had broken away, revealing the concrete structure underneath. I’m guessing this failure was triggered by vibration from the moving train; either way, I’m sure it will similarly be sorted out once the ride is no longer in daily operation.

Our second stop was at Fianna Force, where we enjoyed three rides in half an hour. It was great to see two trains in use despite the minimal crowds, a guest-friendly operational policy that many larger parks could learn from. Better yet, the crew on duty were doing an excellent job at keeping things moving. Two months after opening the ride has properly broken in, resulting in an experience that feels both faster and more forceful than before. Despite this however it remains perfectly smooth, a testament to the quality of Vekoma’s improved build process. Today the back seat was definitely the place to be, though the front seat was also nice for the view.

After we’d had our fill we made our way across to the park’s two family coasters. Dino Dash now features a water splash effect that is almost certainly more of an improvement in good weather than it was today. Readers should be aware that the back of the train gets the best/worst of this, making us regret that we'd denied a request from another group to swap. We waited fifteen minutes here, and twenty for the adjacent Flight School which was similarly running well.

We enjoyed an extremely leisurely lunch in The Lodge before making our way over to Ladybird Loop, which I firmly believe to be the best themed figure eight spinner in existence. Our three-lap cycle in the back had more spinning than is typical for the genre, though that may well have been because two heavy adults unbalanced the car rather nicely. I’m vaguely embarrassed to admit that I’ve ridden a little over half of these now; perhaps I’ll feel less self-conscious in a few years when I bring my little one on board with me.

The last coaster on our to-do list was Cú Chulainn, a wooden Gravitykraft creation that until this year was the park’s star attraction. The ride remains visually spectacular and it still delivers just as it did on opening day, though I can’t help but wonder whether its popularity will begin to wane now that it shares the limelight with an adult-sized coaster that is much less of a physical workout. There was nothing wrong with our back seat ride, but we didn’t feel compelled to do more than one circuit.

Instead, we took another four rides on Fianna Force before wrapping up our day with Viking Voyage. The park’s flume is always worth doing, albeit with a poncho as the second splashdown in particular is a drencher. Today those brave/silly enough to ride without ended up spending the same money on the human dryer afterwards – with altogether less satisfactory results.