Daily distractions for sufferers of World Cup fatigue, from Ally Mullord.
Typical Rugby World Cup scenario: it’s a sunny Saturday afternoon and your husband (or wife, let’s not be gender-biased) is glued to the TV, watching Georgia and France rugby the everlasting heck out of each other.
What a perfect time to go to Rainbow’s End!
Go with children, if you have them, or get a group of friends together if you don’t. Bribe the un-keen with the promise of candy floss (they sell whopping great clouds of it) and freeing their inner child.
In no particular order, here's a bit of a guide to the rides:
Pirate Ship
This is the perfect warm-up ride; it’s the first thing you see when you enter the theme park (apart from mini-golf, but come on), gentle enough to ease you into theme park mode without too much drama but just interesting enough to give you a little rush and leave you wanting more adrenaline.
Fearfall
The Fearfall comes from the “hoist you into the air and then drop you” genre of rides, where the terror comes not from the drop itself but from being lifted up 18 stories strapped into a ride you suddenly realise you were completely insane to even consider going on, and knowing there’s only one way to get down.
I love the Fearfall and would only love it more if they left you sitting up the top for longer.
Corkscrew Coaster
My only complaint about the rollercoaster is that it’s too short. If the rollercoaster went around twice it would be the perfect rollercoaster and, perhaps, the perfect activity.
Log Flume
Every time I mention Rainbow’s End to someone they start frothing at the mouth and raving incoherently about the Log Flume (case in point: colleague just admitted to going on it ten times in a row). What they will fail to mention is that its alleged awesomeness guarantees it has the longest queues in the park, so get there early. I didn’t, and therefore am unable to tell you about what exactly happens or what exactly a flume is, but a friend had this to say:
“What is it like? It’s good. You jump in the flume of log, I think you can have 4 people, and they make the fatter ones spread out, so it’s not top or bottom heavy… and you go around, slowly at first. Relatively peaceful.
"Then you go in to this dark tunnel. There are lots of little set pieces happening around you. You’re suddenly in some kind of gnome mining town, with little men and women harvesting crystals and whatnot from the walls. At one point there is a big scary spider. He’s not after the gnomes, he’s after you. But from memory he doesn’t move. He’s just… there. And after you go ‘Did you see the spider?! I wasn’t scared!’"
Please bear in mind that this friend visited when they were ten.
Power Surge
The Power Surge combines vertical motion, horizontal spinning and sheer terror to present a ride which Rainbow’s End describes as “aggressive”. This is an understatement. This ride will take your tender soul in both hands and wring out every last drop of rationality until you are upside down on your back in midair, screaming your terror to the sky.
Apparently some people like that kind of thing.
Important note: if you don’t like being upside down, the Power Surge is not for you.
Invader
The Invader is the newest ride and one of the best ones – you sit on the edge of a spaceship-shaped disc (hence the name, I think) and whirl around like a Frisbee, while simultaneously whizzing up and down a track that, at points, takes you up high into the air. It looks like it will make you feel ill, but it doesn’t – it makes you feel awesome.
Important note: either close your mouth or remember to swallow during the ride, otherwise the wind will whip dribble out of your mouth and away through the air, thoroughly disgusting the person next to you.
Gold Rush
One of the longer lines, but also one of the better rides – I thought about the best way to describe this for a while and came up with ‘underground rollercoaster’. You rattle about in a mine cart, whipping around bends and coming face to face with some of the more startling aspects of a mine.
Important note: the photo is taken when you come out of the mine into the sunlight. It’s nice to know these things in advance.
Motion Master
If you would like to sit in a chair that moves and watch Brendan Fraser journey into the centre of the earth, then this is going to make your day. If not, I’d probably skip it.
The park also has dodgems, Scorpion Karts (which are more or less small racing cars), Bumper Boats (which are exactly what they sound like) and Castle Land, a children’s area with scaled-down versions of rides.
Visit the website for more information on opening times and pricing
For more entertainment that’s not rugby, go to FOUR