Yep, it's definately October

This October has proven to be better than last year, but it still isn’t as grand as the festivities back home.

Last year hubby and I did absolutely NOTHING for Halloween, which really bugged me because I LOVE Halloween and I LOVE October. It’s my favorite time of year. So….With that in mind, I think we’re going a bit overboard this year with the trips/outings/etc to make October fun.

The main event was going to Alton Towers theme park for their ‘Scare Fest’:

SCAREFEST:

There were 3 mazes. 1 which was free with your ticket…which wasn’t that great but it was housed in the ‘Alton Tower’ which is this huge castle in the middle of the park, so it was quite long and you had to wait to get into it.

The other 2 mazes were THE BEST, but you had to pay up to 13 pounds per person and you could only go through these mazes within a 40min time span.

One Maze was called ‘Carnival of Screams’ which, if I’m being honest, was a more cohesive, funnier and scarier version of Jokesters. You entered the maze through a carnival tent into this open-aired abandoned carnival ground where this clown told you the set up/creepy story and then you went into the ‘main tent’ where all the scary trippy carnival scares happened. SO cool.

The other maze, The Sanctuary, was set up to be like a hospital Pysch ward where this mad scientist conducted experiments on living people, turning them mad by brainwashing them(ala Clockwork Orange Style) to make everyone ‘smile’. Those were some of the BEST scares I’ve ever seen and the maze had some surprising twists in there.

The Park, OVERALL:

The park had some enjoyable unique rides…but it will never compare to my love of Magic Mountain, growing up there and working there.

Some rides, like ‘TH3RTEEN’ had some unique twists that would only be good for the first time, when it could surprise you. But I could see that after maybe the 2nd time those surprises would just become old hat and make the ride boring.

Some other rides, like “Air” and “Nemesis” seemed VERY similar to rides at Magic, almost identical, and I did enjoy myself on those, but still…made me a little jaded, like ‘yeah….been on this ride like 20x before….nothing new here’.


AIR, at Alton Towers Theme Park





Tatsu, at Magic Mountain.....kinda similar, don't ya think?





Batman                                                          Nemesis

And the attractions, namely “Nemisis: Sub-terra”…..were just plain lame. Nemesis was a good coaster, but they decided to make a sequel of it, except make it a lame attraction instead of a ride.

There was ONE good ride….OBLIVION. I didn’t go on it because I’ve been on enough coasters to know what I do and don’t like, but I would say that it was the most unique thrill-seeking ride at Alton Towers.

Going up.....

ONE STRAIGHT DROP DOWN...and this is the last thing you see before getting swallowed into a massive hole into oblivion.

A cool thing to note about Alton Towers vs. Magic Mountain is their ride picture experience. Instead of buying all the ride photos that you like throughout the day….you have an option to buy a USB wristband, which I thought is a cool idea in this new age.

The overall experience at Alton Towers wasn’t great (employees giving us the run around, giving out misinformation, not hearing out guest complaints, as well as WAYYYYY too many Park regulations not enforced—dress code, no smoking, no littering, line jumping), but for not being Magic Mountain, it was alright.

The other event this month (not Halloween related, but still fun) was going to see Ice Age LIVE! On Ice! Lyndsey, Greg, Robert and I won tickets at a Charity auction earlier this year and yesterday was our day to go see the show.

Hubby and I went down early to check out the shopping mall across the street from the theatre and ending up having a nice meal at T.G.I.Fridays which was SO BUSY, but good.

The theatre was small, but it was interesting to see how an Ice show in a small arena would work out. The pre show was set up just like the beginning of Ice age 1 the movie, where the squirrel runs across the ice to get his acorn and causes the ice to crack.

After that the show just became its own little mini combo storyline of all the movies (I think), but with Ice-skating, acrobatics, gymnastics, etc etc….all while in those gigantic fluffy costumes. I managed to sneak a quite photo to show you, but this doesn’t even begin to describe the type of things we saw in that arena.



Next up on October’s to do list is The Vidler Halloween extravaganza next Friday. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some good photos of our costumes for the next blog. J

West Midland Safari Park

For our latest adventure Hubby and I went to the West Midlands Safari Park. The first part of the day consisted of us driving through habitats of animals, Jurassic Park style.

Some parts of it, it just felt like driving through fields….we got to feed some deer and other harmless creatures.

Then other parts were on total LOCK DOWN, for the dangerous animals. We had to wait for electrified gates to open, drive through, get locked in, then wait for a second electrified gate to open for us to drive through to where the dangerous animals were kept.

It was cool to drive around and see most of the animals up close. Here’s what we saw on our drive through the Safari:

And my favorite part….the white Lions. They were so CUTE! They kept jumping up and down from their little perch/landing:

And my favorite park was feeding the Giraffes and having it stick its head through our sunroof:

After the drive through safari, there was a little Theme park to go in to….kind of like a Zoo with more carnival type rides and such.

We saw a Sea Lion training show, walked through a dark room where bats flew free around us, went through the reptile house where we saw some hostile Gaters and Crocks, saw some escapee baby Goats, mingled with some meerkats, and walked through Lemur Woods where Lemurs wandered freely around us.

Aberdovey

Blogger has been weird for me lately; I’ve tried posting this blog a few times before, but FINALLY it’s letting me post.

Quite a few weeks back(‘bout mid September) the Hubby and I took 3 days off and went to Aberdovey, Wales for the weekend to hang out with "the group". The group consists of his old High School/College Friends.....Ben(Russ), Chris, Louise, and Emily. Sometimes there's others, but in this instance it was just the 6 of us.

Aberdovey is lovey but about a 3 and a half hour drive for us. We started out relatively early(5pm roughly, when hubby got off work Saturday night), and drove until we reached Aderdovey when it got dark.

The last hour of our journey was the scariest because it was getting dark, we had never driven this route before and the roads were up, down, winding, and taking us through NOWHERESVILLE....population: sheep (and maybe the odd farmer).


It look beautiful in the picture, but at night it’s SUPER scary to drive through. It felt like, if we broke down....we’d get raped/murdered in the middle of nowhere where our screams couldn’t be heard. The kicker was...one of the towns in this nowhereland was called “Dylife”...die life. Oh...that makes us feel alot better.
   

In the daytime however, it was a beautiful, quite little seaside town.

A family friend of Louise’s owns a flat in the town that she doesn’t use anymore, so we stayed there for free. To say thank you for having the gang over, I made cupcakes!

Mostly the entire weekend we drank, ate junk food, and just hung out.

First night we were there we went down to the pier, which was cool, and hung out on a little wooden deck underneath the pier until about 2am.

The second night we went crab fishing. I’d been before in California, but that was in a bay, and no where near as rough waters as where we were fishing this time. Needless to say....I didn’t catch any, but other people did! Here’s Emily with the crab that Rob caught:

We played games, and I taught the gang how to play Hand and Foot.

We hung out at the beach and chilled on the sand dunes. Some of us were even brave enough to jump off the Dunes.

One morning I cooked breakfast for 5 of us(this was before Emily got there, she was coming late). Breakfast consisted of 10 pieces of THICK palm-width bacon, 10 pieces of Cumberland size sausages, and about 18 pancakes....all of which was gone in a matter of minutes.

One of the nights we were there someone decided(beforehand) that it’s be a fun idea to go to the pub in suits and cocktail dresses. It was fun to dress up...I needed that. Here’s a picture of the girls....I was too mad that the boys went to the pub before us that I forgot to take a picture of them:



After the 3 day weekend was over, hubby and I drove back to Ross, with enough time to eat and get ready to go out with father in law. He was taking us and harry to a comedy show.

The show itself was great (The comedian, Michael McIntyre is hysterical!), but after continuous nights of no sleep, followed by this comedy show which put us getting home at 1 in the morning and me having to get up and go to work at 9am-6pm the rest of the week, I have been absolutely KNACKERED!

But there we go....it pays to have that much fun. The bonus stuff the week after were:

1. Signed up to and went to my first and second of 10 acting classes at the adult learning centre. I can tell I’m the only one with experience in my class, but it’s still nice to get around people and play theatre games again....I really do miss that.

2. I picked up a cupcake gig via my father in law for October 26th, so that’s coming up.

3. I got a fat paycheck this month(800 pounds) because I’ve been working LOADS of hours and I get 12 hrs holiday pay for my weekend away.

4. Hubby and I went to the safari Park, but I’ll put that on a separate blog. .....