It’s that time of year again! We spent the last few weeks deciding on who or what deserves a personal recognition from us this year. This is a group decision and doesn’t necessarily reflect individual opinions and its meant as a bit of fun to show our love and appreciation to the scare, theme park, LGBT+ and escape room communities. So shall we get started!
Roller Coaster of the Year
Wicker Man at Alton Towers & Flight Of The Pterosaur at Paultons Park
It was hard to choose a single coaster this year so we decided to go with 1 coaster that represents our heart and 1 that represents our brain. Wicker Man is of course close to our hearts because its where Dane proposed to Dan this year so its our heart and Flight Of The Pterosaur impressed us in a nerd way as its quite intense for a family coaster in the helix’s and overall it was just a fun ride that gives some great views of Lost Kingdom.
Flat Ride Of The Year
Venom at West Midlands Safari Park
Anyone who has ridden Venom will completely understand why this ride is our flat ride of the year. It looks like its something that wont be intense and just looks like it will give a smooth and gently freefall experience, it is after all at a safari park that is fun for the whole family, but then you experience it all that goes out the bloody window and you are left stunned about what you experienced. Its stupidly intense and just a joy to experience.
Water Ride Of The Year
Congo River Rapids at Alton Towers
Its just a classic isn’t it. Its one of those water rides that just brings a huge smile to your face and doesn’t really need much of an explanation. It was just a fun ride this year which is why it’s our winner.
Dark Ride Of The Year
Hex At Alton Towers
Again this is another one that is pretty obvious, especially when you consider what dark rides were actually open this year. I think it’s pretty self explanatory as to why we chose Hex as our dark ride of the year.
Theme Park Of The Year
Paultons park
This one was super easy to decide. As much as we love all the other parks we visited this year, Paultons Park just blew us away. It’s got a great mix of rides that will keep everyone in the family happy, it’s new area looks amazing and will be such a huge thing for them and the park is just clean and tidy. It’s such a great park and we had such a brilliant day there.
Scare Maze Of The Year
Freakshow: Toxic Junkyard at Alton Towers
We did struggle with this decision purely because Survival Zone in Weymouth was also soooooo good but Toxic Junkyard just pipped it to the post purely because more of us experienced it and enjoyed it immensely. It had everything. Small groups (thanks social distancing), high detailed sets, humour, terror and changed as it’s got darker. A lot of people, including our Dan said it beat The Sanctuary in their opinions, which is high praise indeed.
Scare Experience Of The Year
The Retreat
Scare experience is different to scare maze because to us an experience is something that lasts longer than 30 mins. Whilst there wasn’t much this year that falls into this category, the ones that do are all incredible but for us it had to go to The Retreat because A. We are biased and totally love these guys 😂 and B. It really was that fucking good. It was terrifying and our review can be found https://parksscaresandglitter.blog/2020/07/08/the-retreat-review/
Scare Event Of The Year
Scare Kingdom Scream Park
So many events deserve to be mentioned here as there really were so many amazing events that managed to open but Scare Kingdom were able to run both a normal event in February and a covid event in Halloween as well as somehow managing to open their Psychomanteum attraction. They brought the terror and deserve to be recognised for it.
Escape Room Of The Year
Paralysis Escape Room
Technically this is two rooms, both run by the team but Entity and Phobia are so good. They are scary and just well put together and we had such a blast doing them. We always have a great time doing escape rooms and we did quite a few this year but these two rooms really stood out.
LGBTQIA+ Icon Of The Year
Jacques Luey
Every year we like to acknowledge a member of the LGBT+ community who is iconic in either the scare or theme park industry and this year we decided that we would show our appreciation and love for Alton Towers most iconic freak who made us both laugh and scream this year.
There you have it. There are our New Year’s Honours for the start of 2021. We want to wish you all a Happy New Year and here’s hoping 2021 is better than ever!
